Ecohaus, formerly Environmental Home Center, is the oldest supplier of green building materials in the U.S. Founder Matt Freeman-Gleason says, “It was really frustration that got me started in this business – a desire to do better.”

Matt was a carpenter and boatbuilder on Bainbridge Island with a passion for conservation. “My avocation has always been the environment, so I did all the things that your typical citizen activist does, waving my hands on the evenings and weekends. This is very important and it can be very effective, but I found that I would show up to work on the weekdays and basically do all of those things that I had been frantically waving my arms about.”

So in 1992, Matt decided to walk his talk, and opened an 800-squarefoot store on Bainbridge Island, featuring environmentally-friendly building supplies. “We started with the idea of an earth-wise general store. We did everything from clothing to cleaning supplies, and personal care products to paints and finishes.” The diversity of products led to some customer confusion. “People would walk in and look around, and generally ask, ‘What the heck is this all about?’”

As customers on Bainbridge Island caught on, the store grew. “We met the demands of the community and we used that to leverage the business.” In 1995, Matt’s Environmental Home Center graduated to a 12,000-square-foot showroom, office and warehouse in downtown Seattle. Matt says he had his eye on bigger things from the beginning. “The focus on building materials and mainstreaming the business – it was very clear to me that it was just a matter of when it would happen. I wanted to create a business that was on the cutting edge. That’s always been the vision.”

Environmental Home Center’s commitment to sustainability begins with the products. In addition to its main product lines such as sustainably- sourced wood, natural fiber carpeting and safer paints, the stylish showroom features bath dechlorinators, recycled-glass paving stones, insulation made from blue jean scraps, and Predator-friendly wool blankets (see profile on Thirteen Mile Farms).

Soon after the move to Seattle, Matt got in touch with Tim Taylor, then CEO of Laird Norton, a family-owned holding company with an investment in one of the largest building materials retailers. Matt was looking for an investor, but initially he just found a business advisor. He and Tim met informally over several years; then in 2000, Tim left Laird Norton and became a partner and CEO of Environmental Home Center.

Says Matt, “It’s been an interesting couple of years that went from a small business where I was head cook and bottle washer to where I’m part of the management team.” He adds, “One of the things that we needed that I didn’t have a lot of experience with was some really deep and good and broad experience in management, so we could grow successfully, ethically, and sustainably.”

For his part, Tim saw the opportunity to put some of his core beliefs and interests to work in a very tangible way. “I had developed very firm beliefs and convictions about integrating corporate responsibility and sustainability principles into the core of the business. It is not only the right thing to do, but it is the strategically smart way to do business.”

“I was attracted to the idea that there might be a place that had already moved in that direction, where I could fulfill those dreams, those principals, those ways of doing business.” Tim also felt Environmental Home Center had good growth potential. “It appeared that the tide had turned and the current was with the business, as opposed to in against it.”

Every product in Environmental Home Center has a story. “You need two things to sell sustainability: the materials, obviously, and the information,” says Matt. “This business takes a philosophy or at least an understanding of the connectedness of everything, and makes that solid through materials.” Every product has a web of information attached to it that Environmental Home Center attempts to make visible. “You need a staff who are well-versed and articulate, and who can listen to a customer’s needs and help them wend their way through the thicket of visible, or invisible information,” explains Matt.

The internet has proven to be a valuable resource for conveying the information about products. Says Tim, “Most people think of web businesses as being a way to directly generate income. That’s not what ours is for.” With its website, Environmental Home Center has positioned itself as a national resource on green building materials. And of course, the informational calls generated by the website can often be converted into sales. Tim explains, “The call center and the web group are 20 feet apart. So the call center can say things like, ‘Hey, we say this on the website; this is causing a problem’, or ‘Hey! This actually is really working can we do more of this?’ So there’s a very strong feedback loop between the web and the call center.”

Sustainability principles permeate how the business is managed as well. Tim explains, “If you can develop more of a partnership model for how you bring products in, you’re going to have a more efficient and consistent supply chain. You may have a greater ability to defend that supply chain. If you treat your employees with respect – which basically means you compensate them fairly, you provide information for them, you provide a path to grow – then turnover is lower. If turnover is lower, you can afford to pay people a better wage.”

Beyond sounding good, Tim attributes improved efficiencies to these practices. Sales and profit margins increased significantly in 2002, while costs dropped. Plus, he calculates that Environmental Home Center generated twice as many new customers for every dollar spent on marketing last year. “We’re not churning our marketing and advertising dollars for no end result. We’re actually being more effective. Part of that is word of mouth, part of that is reputation, and part of that is people who are involved in this business are actually more effective overall in generating business.”

Unlike the initial shop on Bainbridge Island, today’s customer suffers no confusion about the focus of Environmental Home Center. Says Matt, “Now, if you sit down in the showroom and watch, people stream in the front door: ‘I want, I need, can you find...’ So the demand and the understanding have developed that this is what’s going on in the built environment.”

Tim describes the Center’s recent growth pattern as “a hockey stick;” revenues in 2002 were nearly 50% over the prior year. With the rapid growth of the green building sector, they plan to keep expanding. Says Tim of the near future, “We want this model to continue its success here in Seattle, and we want to build a second model in another city to prove that this business is more than a Seattle phenomenon, that we’re a team that’s capable of expanding, and that there are growing markets for sustainable products.”

Plans for the future also include some less conventional goals. Tim explains, “We’re particularly interested in expanding our understanding, analysis and dissemination of information on the footprint and climate impact of this business. What are the true inputs and outputs of the business? What’s our contribution to global warming? What’s our contribution in water savings? What’s our contribution to hectares of forest still standing?”

Again, Tim sees good business sense as the driver of sustainable practices. “One of the biggest corporate areas that will come under scrutiny is undisclosed liabilities, or off-balance sheet liabilities. We’ve seen it with Enron. We’ve seen it with corporate culture. We’ve seen it with environmental interests. And frankly, I think one of the biggest undisclosed liabilities that we’re going to see being scrutinized is the environmental liabilities.”

For all of their success, Tim and Matt have found a few things to be different than they originally anticipated. They had expected most investors' top criteria to be that Environmental Home Center is "socially responsible" investment. Tim has been surprised by the support from traditional investors, who have "based their decision primarily on their belief that it is a good business proposition."

But consumer awareness has certainly come a long way. Matt says, “I think the most surprising thing is the variety of people we get in the store on a daily basis. It’s amazing, across the board there’s just this desire to do things better. People understand intrinsically that there’s something more that their house can embody, whether it’s healthy buildings, resource and energy efficiency, or larger environmental issues.”

Contact
Ecohaus - Environmental Home Center
Matt Freeman-Gleason, Founder/Chief Knowledge Officer
Tim Taylor, CEO
4121 First Avenue South
Seattle, WA 98134
206.682.7332
www.ecohaus.com