Thoughts on Small Business and Sustainability

Posted By Michael D'Elicio ~ 15th January 2009

I have been putting off this first blog entry for some time now. There has been so much to be done – what with starting a new business, talking to new clients, and doing the work required for their sites – that taking the time to sit down to write what I envisioned would be a kind of mission statement to set the tone for the rest of the blog seemed like more of a chore than something to jump at with alacrity. But as my father always said: “The perfect is the enemy of good.” Actually, Voltaire said it first. But my father speaks a little bit of French as well, and I bet Voltaire didn’t ride his bike anywhere near as much as Dad does, so we’ll call this one a draw.

Another event had a larger role in inspiring me to get to work on this blog. Last night, I attended an open forum at the Greenburgh Nature Center in Scarsdale, NY, of small business owners who were going “green”: i.e. reducing their ecological footprint for both ethical and financial reasons. It turns out that going green was improving their bottom line, and enhancing their public image. Turns out that going green is also good branding.

For some time, I have been quite taken with the idea of sustainability – that is, environments which limit their usage of resources and remain largely self-sufficient – and the importance of small businesses in fostering a sustainable economy. I first started researching this topic about eight years ago, when the internet was making headlines but was still too young and esoteric for most mom-and-pop stores to consider anything more than a glorified Yellow Page ad as their web presence. At that time, my interest lay more in sustainable design – creating mixes of residential, commercial, and public spaces for optimal efficiency, health, and quality of living standards – but I intuitively felt that the internet could play some role.

Friends of mine in Austin, Texas, where I lived, were heavily into Mexican fair-trade activism, during the time of the massive university strikes and general discontent that ensued in Mexican cities following the IMF recommendations after the US bail-out of the Mexican government. We decided to take a trip down to Oaxaca, to see for ourselves some of the living conditions of the Mayan, Mixe, Mixteco, and other native peoples of the area. They were predictably squalid.

What I did not know was that the indigenous people were fantastic artisans, and crafted what is known as Oaxacan black pottery. They sell for cheap down south, but in America, they go for a pretty penny. Someone was obviously buying the pottery low and selling high, and it wasn’t a local. We quickly realized that if the Oaxacan people we got to know had had e-commerce sites pumping that mark-up directly into their coffers instead of a middle man’s, they might have been able to weather the economic upheaval that took place post-NAFTA, and our national immigration conversation might be very different today.

Since that time, I’ve worked as a marketer promoting small businesses, and I still feel that same intuitive sense that the internet has the most to offer the people I represent. There are no “big” websites or “little” websites – just quality websites and shoddy ones, just easily-found sites and invisible ones. A single blogger can get as many hits a day as the New York Times. A college student can start an online facebook that dominates the social networking market. The web has the potential to radically democratize capitalism, and it’s been my experience over and over that it rewards a job well done. The cooler you are, the more the internet likes you.

At the forum I was at last night, the mayor of Irvington, New York, Nicola Coddington, spoke of creating a network of these small businesses moving in a greener direction in order to sustain the town, and a greater network of the townships in Westchester County. She had every part down; she just needed the mechanism.

Folks, the mechanism is here. You’re on it right now. You can click on any of the links I’ve put up, and check out any of the resources I’ve mentioned. For those of you interested in some of the events that took place in Mexico, you can visit here or here. Everything is parallel here in cyberspace. We stand on “more equal” ground.

And so while our business continues to be promoting small businesses via internet marketing, SEO, and social networking, this blog is to be a space for discussion and resources on creating sustainable zones that we all want to live in – clean, walkable, diverse, vibrant, unique – and how we can use the internet to promote local economies as a vital component of such zones. We will promote any organization or business looking to contribute to the greater end of sustainability, and we invite suggestions, comments, and links at all times. We want to work with our local community offline, and our global community online.

Like anything worth doing, this is going to take a lot of time and effort. We’re aiming for perfect. Voltaire be damned.