Green Rooms boosting sales for some stores

By SHELBY STANGER | January 28, 2010 06:00 AM      SHOP-EAT-SURF.COM

Jake Schwaner of Hobie and Frank Scura of ASEC. Hobie has seen a double digit increase in sales since it added a Green Room with eco-friendly products.           

For the last seven years, Frank Scura, founder of the Action Sports Environmental Coalition (ASEC), dreamt of action sports brands coming together with retailers to showcase eco-friendly lines in 100 percent green environments. Today, his ideas are coming to fruition and the results are paying dividends.

Hobie, Pacific Beach Surf Shop, Surfside Sports, and Sun Diego are four stores that have already launched Green Rooms. All have seen positive results, and in some cases, substantial profit increases.

I talked to Frank Scura and the various Green Room retailers about the concept of the Green Room, how it came to be, and how consumers are responding.

The Green Room concept

Frank presented the Green Room concept at the first annual ASEC summit in Laguna Beach about three years ago. He brought in experts including Michael Burbank, then CEO of the UBS Financial Personal Wealth Management division.

Michael explained that the housing bubble was not going to last and that action sports brands needed a way to collectively stimulate new economics during a forecasted recession, as well as a way to keep customers from going to mainstream stores versus independent retailers.

“It was the whole idea of ‘coopatition’ - competitors uniting on common practices to collectively gain benefits that could give them an overall competitive advantage in the open market,” said Frank. “Being green was not only the right thing to do, but it could help business and provide action sports companies a bigger and better story that mainstream press would be excited about.”

Frank displayed this concept about five ASR’s ago by bringing in various brands and working with them to display eco-friendly products from their line in a 100 percent green environment. “There were a lot of brands that had one or two SKUs that were green in their line, but mixed in with the rest, it was hard to tell them apart,” said Frank. Merchandising all green products together, however, created a more powerful presentation.

Hobie Surf Shop

Jake Schwaner and Mark Christy who run Hobie, both live green lifestyles and had quietly been producing their own private label organic clothing line for the store. When they saw the Green Room at ASR they thought the concept would work perfectly in their Laguna Beach Hobie store.

This past June, they opened their first Green Room using 600 square feet of the Laguna Beach store where they already had Patagonia products. They also included Volcom, Billabong, Element, Hippy Tree, Ando and Friends, Livity, Arbor, Sector 9, Evocal, Hurley, L-Space, IPath, and Quiksilver in the space. Each brand built a green display to showcase their products.

The build-outs include Element shelves made from compressed cow dung, a Sector 9 showcase made of skateboard scraps, and a Billabong display using plastic bottles to explain how their boardshorts are made from recycled materials.

Hobie used mostly existing brands for their new store, but with ASEC’s advice brought in new lines from eco-minded companies like Livity, Evocal and Arbor.

Since opening, Jake said same sales from last year to this year in that space rose 20%. Because of the success, Hobie opened an entire green store in San Clemente, converting their 1,200-square-foot hard goods store into a 100 percent green retail space with soft goods.

Using natural lighting and all custom-built displays, the shop has been bringing in new customers and sales every day. Sales in that store are also up 20%. Selling clothing rather than surfboards also has contributed to margin increases.

“Our local customers that shop our stores really like what we have done because it represents something that makes sense and is completely different than any other surf shop you go into,” said Jake. “You can always come in and find something new and fresh that you don't see anywhere else.”

Jake said going forward, he plans to add more accessories, green surfboards and green gifts to the shop. He says he also plans to collaborate more with Evocal, a newer eco-minded company that works with local artists to make custom T-shirts and green displays. He said Hobie recently acquired a 4,200 square foot space in Dana Point. They plan to put large a “green footprint” in the location from the lighting and landscaping to the brands they will carry.