June 28, 2005 - Selling sustainability — Earth-friendly businesses like Meadowsweet Herbs go mainstream By ROBERT STRUCKMAN of the Missoulian

John Goicovich and his wife, Elaine Sheff, are the owners of Meadowsweet Herbs, which recently was named Sustainable Business of the Year by the Missoula Area Sustainable Business Council. "You can follow your ethics and have a successful business," Sheff said. "Those things are not mutually exclusive."
Photo by LINDA THOMPSON/Missoulian

In the modest basement of Meadowsweet Herbs, brown glass gallon jars line homemade shelves.

At a workbench along one wall, John Goicovich, who is chopping and stuffing Idaho-grown figwort into a jar, glances up. Goicovich co-owns the business with his wife, Elaine Sheff. They make and sell herbal products and other related items in the ground-floor level of the shop.
As manufacturing operations go, theirs may be one of the most low-key. Basically, herbs soak in liquids for upward of a month. The herbs themselves come from nearby, as near as possible, anyway. And the herbs are cultivated by organic farmers, not harvested from the wild.

"Some of the popular ones - like echinacea - are endangered in the wild," Sheff said.

Sheff and Goicovich are picky about what they use and how they use it. That means that some hot-selling items aren't on their shelves. But the two are willing to forego that business, they said, in order to operate more closely to their idea of sustainable commerce.

The business was recently named Sustainable Business of the Year by the Missoula Area Sustainable Business Council.

This is not purely an ethical or environmental movement, although it is those things, too, Sheff said.

It's also a marketing strategy. And it's part of a broad international movement that has spawned numerous organizations, Web sites galore, stables of business consultants and even some charlatans - as well as groups like Oakland-based CorpWatch who expose the fakes with their "Greenwash" campaign.

The movement came to Missoula in 2002 in an organized fashion when the local sustainable business group formed. But it is much older than that - it sprang out of the climate of social change and the energy crisis of the 1970s, said Jerry Goldstein, editor and publisher of In Business Magazine.

Groups similar to the Sustainable Business Council have been springing up across the country, Goldstein said, although not as fast as he expected they would back in 1979, when he founded the magazine in eastern Pennsylvania.

"I always think it will happen in larger numbers, and gradually and steadily it has been," he said.

Over the past 13 years, Goldstein has seen a number of encouraging signs. Led by the booming organic food industry, "earth-minded" businesses have entered the mainstream, he said.

More and more colleges are offering courses on sustainable business practices. The public sector has gotten involved, too. More cities recycle waste, for instance. Major corporations such as Exxon and Pepsi have jumped on the "green" bandwagon. And even some venture capitalists and investment groups have geared themselves to invest in "socially responsible" businesses.

For small companies in towns like Missoula, the sustainable business movement has provided entries into niche markets.

"The question is, how do you differentiate yourself in a competitive, global marketplace?" said Matt Hirshland of the Berkeley-based Business for Social Responsibility.

One answer is to tap into the segment of the local consuming public who want, even demand, healthy and sustainable products, Hirshland said.

That notion was in the minds of Sheff and Goicovich when Meadowsweet Herbs was still just an idea.

The two met about a decade ago while studying herbs and botanical medicine in Boulder, Colo. Before that, both worked separately in the mineral supplement and herbal industry.

A retail and wholesale operation was part of their vision from the start, Sheff said.

After graduating, the couple looked for a place to open a store. They settled on Missoula and opened the store about nine years ago. Their families helped them with startup capital. Their needs were modest, "less than $100,000," Sheff said.

This notion of sustainable business can be a vague one, but for Sheff it was pretty simple. She wanted to run the store in an environmentally and socially responsible way, she said.

It's not easy, she said.

The demands of a business and the pull of her conscience don't always meet up.

For instance, she would like to offer health insurance to Meadowsweet's employees, but the business can't afford it, she said.

On the other hand, she can focus on what the business can do.

The business recycles and buys recycled products. It reuses packaging and composts the material left over on the manufacturing side. It bought lighting that uses less energy.

The herbal industry is not always light on the land, Sheff said. Some manufacturers buy the raw herbs from pickers who, in turn, have damaged wild habitats. So Sheff and Goicovich search out responsible vendors.

"It was years before we were able to carry golden seal in our store," she said.

But the upside is that Missoula consumers respect and patronize sustainable businesses, she said.

"It's especially important for people who shop with us," Sheff said.

At the end of the day, sustainable practices are simply a part of the company's overall business strategy.

In the coming year, Sheff and Goicovich hope to grow the wholesale side of Meadowsweet's operation. They also want to learn to beef up business in the slower summer months. To that end, the business has begun to offer classes on health issues and how to use herbal remedies.

"It has taken us a while to address that. We continually need to refocus," she said.

Reporter Robert Struckman can be reached at 523-5262 or rstruckman@missoulian.com.

Original Missoulian Article