5x5x5 Growth Awards: Service/Retail - Seventh Generation remains true to its mission, The

Vermont Business Magazine, Sep 01, 2004 by Barna, Ed

Few companies have their mission as clearly embodied in their name Seventh Generation, which refers to the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy's Great Law of Peace: "In every deliberation we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations." And few Vermont companies have been able to establish themselves in the marketplace as solidly by keeping to the goal of preserving and renewing the environment, in the workplace as well as the world.

Along the way to becoming the nation's leading brand of nontoxic and environmentally safe household products, with distribution in thousands of natural product and grocery stores nationwide, Seventh Generation has won more than a dozen environmental and business awards - the 5x5x5 following on the 2002 Socially Responsible Business Award. The latter was a national honor for "exemplary efforts in promoting and practicing socially responsible business practices," with Seventh Generation one of four recipients who went to Washington, DC, to receive it.

Anyone who wants to review the ethical side of Seventh Generation can download the Corporate Responsibility Report they commissioned in 2003 (see www.seventhgencration.com). And there's president and CEO Jeffrey Hollander's recent book, written with Stephen Fenichell: What Matters Most - How a Small Group of Pioneers Is Teaching Social Responsibility to Big Business, and Why Big Business Is Listening.

While the focus hasn't shifted, the marketing has. Seventh Generation started in 1988 when the present owners took over an energy conservation products catalog from a Burlington area organization called Renew America, which didn't have to capital to bring it to its potential. By 1995, the greatly expanded product list was doing so well that it wasn't feasible for one company to handle both the consumer catalog and the business-to-business wholesale operation, so the catalog part was sold to Boulder, Colorado's Gaiam (now renamed Harmony).

Now another chapter is being written in the company's story. According to executive vice-president Jeffrey Phillips (Hollander, who has become a soughtafter speaker at conventions and conferences due to the book, wasn't available) "We're in every health food store in North America," but not yet on enough of the shelves that mainstream shoppers are most likely to see.

Drugstores, discounters like Costco and Target - these are growth opportunities for the future, Phillips. Arid as before, product development is a continuing source of growth, like last year's chlorine-bleching-free disposable diapers. Pushing to eliminate chlorine bleaching from a wide variety of products has been a major recent goal, he said, because of chlorine's proven ability to react with organic compounds to form highly toxic substances like dioxin.

Among the company's watchwords have been "nonhazardous," "non-toxic," "biodegradable," "recyclable," 'hypoallergenic," "phosphate-free," and "vegetablederived." Not petrochernically derived, no animal cruelty, no genetically modified organisms.

"I like to call what we do the non-food equivalent of organics," he said. Behind all the specific means of growing the company, the foundation is consumer trust in Seventh Generation as what Phillips called "a solutions center," a place where building relationships with customers is "always a work in progress.