What do you do if you are young and ambitious and want to change the world? One innovative answer is to start an ecomarketing business.

When Nik Blosser, Tom Koehler and Tim Raphael met on an Oregon representative’s political campaign, they began a conversation about how they might address the environmental and social issues that they cared about from the private sector. Nik says, “I personally got a little frustrated with the pace of change in the political realm, and thought wouldn’t it be something to try and work in the private sector and take on some of these big issues from that vantage point.”

A few years later, in April of 1999, the Celilo Group was launched in an unheated warehouse. It was an environmental consulting outfit at the start, but the team had their eye on something a bit different. Says Nik, ”We really wanted to have a hybrid business where part of our work was consulting and part of it was building and selling a product or something more entrepreneurial.” Tom adds: “We placed a small bet and a large bet at the same time. We knew the consulting would be steady, but not as invigorating.”

One of their first successes was creation of the Oregon Business Association (www.oba-online.org), the first new statewide business association in decades. According to Tom, “Three years ago in Oregon there was not a progressive, or even a mainstream voice from business in the legislature. We put together a group of businesses that wanted to change that. There is a growing split in the business community: do we want to ignore environmental and public education issues, pretend they don’t exist, or do we want to address them and move forward?” With leadership from many of Oregon’s homegrown businesses including Powell’s Books, Neil Kelly, and Norm Thompson, the Association has become a strong new voice in the Oregon political landscape. Though the Celilo Group is no longer formally involved, Nik serves on the board of the Association.

From the start, the Celilo Group’s stated mission has been to “expand markets for sustainable products.” Since they did not have a specific product of their own to start, they explored a number of possibilities. Nik laughs when he remembers a food grinder for organic restaurant waste he considered as a possible investment. “I went to the demo and the thing didn’t work. Stuff was flying all over the place.”

Nik also interviewed environmentally-friendly businesses in the Portland area “with great products that not many people know about.” He quickly found that their primary challenge is the high cost of marketing. “At the same time,” Nik remembers, “we were talking with the City of Portland about how to get people on a day-to-day, household, personal level to understand how their choices impact the environment.” Tom describes what happened next: “everything kind of exploded and came into focus at once.”

The two needs they had identified – for affordable marketing and consumer education – led to the idea for the Chinook Book: The Coupon Book for Healthy Living. Nik describes it as “a cross between the Entertainment Book and Fifty Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Planet.” It debuted in the Portland area in 1999, chock full of bright colors, catchy graphics, good deals, and information. Rather than boring the reader with preachy appeals to recycle or die, the Chinook Book entices with coupons for bowling, yoga, kayak tours, bamboo flooring, free bus rides, organic socks, and a cornucopia of feel-good foodstuffs. It also includes a resource guide with “Good Ideas” (internet carpool matching, cloth shopping bags) and whimsical plugs for “Simple Things” (picnics, conversation, walking in the moonlight.)

The Celilo Group worked with the City of Portland’s Sustainable Development Commission to create an environmental criteria system that every product or service in the book has to meet. Says Nik, “We have huge criteria binders with a page on each coupon describing why it meets our criteria. Only two people have ever called to look at it, but we have it.” All paid advertising has to meet the same environmental criteria, a requirement shared with no other publication in the country. You won’t find an ad for an SUV nestled among information on alternative transportation.

The Book has been a success by almost any measure. Over 50,000 people in the region came into contact with a Chinook Book in 2001. Three hundred businesses in the Pacific Northwest, mostly small local companies with limited marketing resources, have come to rely on the Chinook Book to get customers in the door. Several small companies have said this publication is the only marketing tool that has ever worked for them. Ninty-five percent of the businesses in the 2002 edition in Portland are repeat customers. The majority of the books are now sold as a fundraiser. “So now preschools, schools and churches are not selling candy and pepperoni sticks, they are selling the Chinook Book and spreading the sustainability message,” says Nik.

While it makes money “on the spreadsheets,” profits from the Chinook Book are being reinvested in expansion. While Tim Raphael left recently to join the Trust for Public Land, the Celilo Group has grown to 10 staff members, $1 million in revenues, and offices and books in Portland, Seattle and Minneapolis/St. Paul. Says Tom, “It’s just like any business, unless you hit the jackpot right away with something, it takes time.”

The potential for continued growth is strong. According to Nik, “We get probably a call a week from places around the country wanting to do a Chinook Book.” Additionally, Celilo Group is rolling out two new publications in the near term. The Sustainable Industries Journal is a business and government trade publication that provides synthesis and commentary on the emerging sustainable business sector in the Pacific Northwest, covering “what works and more importantly what doesn’t work.” Nik says, “This may be the riskiest thing we’ve tried, but it seems like if it’s going to work anywhere, it will work here.”

Their other new publication, Baby Steps, is modeled on the Chinook Book, but it will be given away for free to all new parents in the Portland metro area. Nik explains, “It has coupons and educational content, but it is all focused on creating a healthy home for your new kid.” Coupons for indoor parks and kid-friendly restaurants will be paired with information on non-toxic cleaners and lawn fertilizer.

Says Nik, “We are a bit schizophrenic, being a for-profit and wanting to help people and society, while at the same time having a bottom line.” Given all they have been able to accomplish in just three years, without relying on donations, the Celilo Group’s model for social change may be unusual, but it shows great promise.

Contact
Wallowa Resources
200 W. North Street
Enterprise, OR 97828
Phone: 541-426-8053
FAX: 541-426-9053
e-mail:info@wallowaresources.org
www.wallowaresources.org