Green Screen

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Low Impact Living LLC


Founded:

March 2006


Core Business:

Online green home improvement product and service referrals


Employees in 2007:

5 and part-time contractors


Employees in 2006:

2


Goals:

Reaching 200,000 Web site visitors per month; having the largest nationwide database of green companies by 2008


Driving Force:

Consumers’ desire to find authentic green products and services amid hype and clutter in the marketplace


These days the Internet is chock-full of Web sites that hawk the green living lifestyle and the products necessary to make it happen.


Los Angeles-based Low Impact Living LLC is trying to make sense of all the clutter. The company’s own Web site, lowimpactliving.com, includes a list of green retailers and service providers that the company founders say they have vetted to weed out the fakes and phonies trying to cash in on the environmental business boom.


It was an idea that husband-and-wife team Jason Pelletier and Jessica Jensen, former management consultants, came up with after buying a home in Los Angeles a few years ago.


“We bought a home in central L.A. and had been working on greening it over time and realized how difficult the process is,” said Jensen. “If that process didn’t become a lot easier, then people less committed wouldn’t do it. We thought there should be a centralized place to do this.”


The site only launched last November and had 70,000 hits last month, with a goal of 200,000 monthly visitors by year’s end. That would help the company meet its annual revenue target of $250,000.


Low Impact makes money from advertising that appears on its site. But it also charges some suppliers and companies to have their products and services listed. Annual listing charges range from $299 for a standard listing to $399 for a featured listing.


Pelletier, 37, said that all the companies and service providers are vetted so as to ensure their legitimacy, though not all are contacted directly by the company.


“We are really thrilled by the number of inquiries from people who want to be listed on the site,” he said. “We review every product and every service provider, it is extremely time consuming. We probably turn away one in four because they don’t offer environmental benefits.”


However, it’s not easy for a Web site visitor to tell which products and services are paid and which the couple listed for free. Featured listings, which are highlighted in orange, are paid listings, but other paid listings scattered throughout the site are not noted as such.


That decision to mix listings would be a no-no at established outfits such as Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports magazine and a sister Web site.


“There’s an unspoken assumption on the part of most consumers that the content of a site is separate and distinct from the advertising section,” said Meghann Marco, associate editor of consumerist.com, an editorial-oriented consumer watchdog site run by Gawker Media. “This isn’t always the case, so as consumers we must be wary of sites that mix the two, and if possible, avoid them altogether. We always recommend that people use a non-commercial source for product reviews.”


Jensen said she is aware of the issue and the couple is considering addressing it. “Over time, we may decide to put the paid listings at the top,” she said.



Getting started

The couple, married four years, got the company off the ground with an initial investment of about $500,000. That money came from personal money, friends and family, and small group of angel investors who contributed about $300,000.


“We really bootstrapped it,” said Jensen, 35, who most recently was head of marketing and business development for Investor’s Business Daily, a national daily business newspaper based in Los Angeles. “We put our own money in and did consulting on the side.”


The pair has a strong business background to go along with its environmentally-conscious bent. Jensen has an M.B.A. from the French business school Insead and Pelletier got his M.B.A. at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. They met in 1998 while management consultants at the Boston Consulting Group.


Pelletier’s career has always had an environmental focus. He has worked as an environmental engineer for Radian Corp., cleaning up hazardous waste sites and since 2002 he has done consulting work for the U.S. Forest Service.


To get their site off the ground and attract attention, Pelletier and Jensen listed companies and service providers for free. But four months ago they began charging for listings on the site, which includes 600 products and nearly 3,000 service providers. The couple would not disclose the number of paid listings.


Jensen said that the couple inspects products and packaging and talks to companies about their products and services. But they have not physically reviewed all of the products and services.


“We have firms listed where we know of their reputation and we know of their work so we don’t feel it’s necessary to talk to them. I will not say we are perfect but we are making a very educated and thorough effort and we are always interested in consumer feedback and questions,” she said.


The site gives users the opportunity to rate products and service providers with pine trees replacing the typical stars to help consumers get more feedback.


Randy Lewis, president of SoCal Computer Recyclers Inc., found his electronic recycling company listed on the site after Low Impact reviewed his services and decided to list it.


“I think it’s a valuable service,” said Lewis. “I wholeheartedly endorse the concept of anything that gets at the idea of doing something right.”


However, Lewis said he has yet to talk to a customer who has been referred to his company by the Low Impact Web site.


The site includes articles on how to complete home renovations and other projects in a way that reduces the environmental impact. It also includes an “impact calculator” that allows users to enter data about their homes into a calculator that then computes energy consumption and waste creation.


“Our calculator is much broader than a carbon footprint calculator. People can look at the costs of the projects and the benefits,” Jensen said.


Carey Okrand, a Van Nuys resident, said that she uses the site for general information on green living. Currently, she is in the market for an environmentally-friendly washing machine and dryer and has used the site for research.


“I am doing research on the site and I like that it is easy to go through and has layers that are interesting,” Okrand said. “I will buy a washer and dryer based on the information there.”


Later this month, the site will begin featuring a blog on green home improvement. Jensen said that tools like this will round out Low Impact Living’s educational element. Also, this fall site will debut a retooled impact calculator that Pelletier has upgraded with more features. Jensen said that this work could coincide with a second round of funding.

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