We occasionally hear customers ask why Merida has embraced sustainability. The question is a good one, especially for small and medium companies that struggle so hard to have thriving businesses in this tough economic time. I want to share Merida’s reasons for deciding to embark in the sustainability journey…

It’s well accepted that low-hanging fruits of sustainability programs result in long term savings. For example, implementing procedures for reducing-reusing-recycling energy, material and resources in your own facility usually payoff quite quickly. But,  a skeptical business person could argue that going beyond the low-hanging fruits, for example , performing life-cycle analysis of products to minimize total environmental impact, developing products for closed loop systems and practicing fair trade with suppliers do not necessarily benefit the business. For them, it actually adds unnecessary costs besides overburdening the agenda and distracting from the focus on business results.

“The growing embrace of sustainability by consumers is one of those tectonics movements that can take companies not well positioned by surprise.”

The punch line in the skeptical argument is: consumers do not really demand that companies adopt sustainability. Therefore, the costs of more difficult undertakings are not supported by customer demand. Let’s exam some of the arguments now and I’ll share Merida’s position on them. 

The principles of sustainability are congruent with the values of Merida’s shareholders and employees. As important as it is, this is actually reason number two for Merida to commit aligning our business with these principles.

The main reason the company embarked on the journey of sustainability it that we are sure it also guarantees the healthy continuance of our business. We understand the argument that there can be significant costs to the organization and agree that without a thriving business it is useless for any company to embrace sustainability principles… While each individual at Merida might personally do their share for helping minimize the effects of the unsustainable practices of our society, as a company we can be effective only if Merida thrives.

So why is it that we feel the cost of running a truly sustainable business will end up contributing to a healthy balance sheet? Let’s start by commenting on consumers…

Running a business is about finding the right balance between meeting customer’s current and short term demands, needs, and tastes as and positioning the company to meet them in the future. Most fashion and home furnishing business know how to meet current and short term changes. We come up with new products every season; we refresh our collections according to changes in taste. There are, however, slower and fundamental changes that are difficult to detect and to adapt to.

The growing embrace of sustainability by consumers is one of those tectonics movements that can take companies not well positioned by surprise. There is plenty of evidence of this trend.

In the last couple of years, we have been getting increasingly frequent questions from customers asking for more information about the material content of our products, about the conditions under which they are produced, about what we do for the communities we work with and other questions which give us impressionistic evidence of a growing concern for sustainability.

The architects and interior designers that we have contact with have shown even higher levels of concern for these issues. I recently attended the Green Building Conference in Boston and witnessed first-hand the energy, creativity, and engagement of all professionals involved with “green building”. With 25,000 attendees, this was no small group.

As we develop this blog we will continue to discuss this topic and I will show more evidence of this tectonic change in consumer’s concerns. I welcome your insights and thoughts on this topic as well.  Is this just a short lived trend or a real change?