Where I’ve Been
First off thank you to our customers!  I keep seeing a lot of you over and over and it’s pretty cool.

I’m still learning a lot about everybody and will mostly add products based on what people tell me they like.  So if you have a recommendation please make it.  I keep a list.  I don’t always order right away because it’s a long list requiring insane prioritizing.  Hopefully you’ve been to the store recently because we added a ton of stuff over the summer and will continue adding until it’s kinda full.

On the contracting side we’re installing water heaters, renovating a house, installing solar attic fans, and building gates/doors regularly.  We are also doing a 2KW solar panel project installation in NW DC.  I’m surprised Steve’s head hasn’t popped right off but he’s doing really well managing it.  We also have a new woodworker/designer/builder, James, working on gates.  I met him yesterday and talked him into glassy eye mode.  If you actually read this welcome!  Please don’t ask me questions that allow me to keep yapping because I don’t shut up too well.

Dawn, our webmaster, if you come by the store she’s the one with the baby, made it clear to me that I better do more baby stuff or else.  I was sufficiently intimidated so we will be expanding our baby section.  And at some point we will actually make it into a section since it’s not right now.

Upgrades
We will be opening our online store shortly.  Dawn has been working like mad to get it done and we’re almost there so keep a lookout.  We will be improving our services section with more descriptions, photos, and pricing.

New Seminar
Every Wednesday at 7pm, starting August 6, we will be hosting a FREE seminar on everything you need to know about installing solar photovoltaic and solar water heating in your home or business.  Please RSVP at 202.449.6070 or email classesatgreatergoods.com because we only have 10 spots.

Special Cause Product Pitch
One of our newest products is the Solar Hot Pot from Solar Household Energy Inc.  They provide solar cookers to people who really need them in Mexico, Africa, and Central America.  Yes you can actually cook stuff with the sun.

Please pull up some popcorn for this one.

Last night one of my best friends called me up asking what was going on in the economy. We went to undergrad together where she studied to become a nurse, we’ll call her Buffy, or B for short. Buffy took Econ 101, Micro-economics, and pretty much loved it. Unfortunately it was impractical at the time for her to double degree so she let it go. I love hearing myself talk so she let me do an econ mind dump on her because of one question: Why are gas prices so high?

Yay, I Get To Hear Myself Talk For An Hour

Gas prices are getting higher because the real and perceived value of the entire economy is coming into question. I know, that’s a big statement to make requiring big words to back them up, and dammit, I like big words! The problem is that big words are easily used to con people so I’ll stick to the little ones. What I mean is that we are having “a crisis of confidence” in our economy. Okay, what that means is that all the people who have loaned us money (China, Japan, Europe, the UK, Canada, and the Middle East) think that we are about to run out on the check.

Check? What Check?

Over the last 200 years the US has been a very productive country. More productive than most actually. We invented, or stole and said we invented: automobiles, cars, light-bulbs, telephones, televisions, radar, computers and software, etc… Basically we invented a lot of crap that a lot of people wanted. All things being equal, we’ve done a really good job of MAKING things, including services. All over the world, people have looked at our track record and felt like we are consistently a better bet than other industrialized nations, and in many cases a much better investment than developing countries. All over the world people loaned us their cash and in general we used that money to create stuff that people wanted and made even more cash. Happy joy!

Printing 101
The scorecards for economies can get really complicated, involving acronyms like GDP, CPI, PPI, etc… All valuable ways to get confused. But how do we do it in shorthand? The value of the US dollar versus the Yen (Japan), Pound (UK), Euro (Um. Europe), Renminbi or Yuan (China), Peso (lots of places), and the Loonie (Canada!) are a really simple way to measure what everyone thinks a country is worth versus another country. The currency is like the stock market for countries. Sure, it’s a little more complicated than that but you really don’t want to get into it. If each country starts out with a 10 slice pie of their own currency you’d be able to tell a lot about the quality of that country by watching what happens to those exchange rates.

Each country does its own thing. Results vary due to geography, history, culture, laws, etc… Let’s pretend that the US in this instance is very successful at bringing things to market, products and services that their people really like and subsequently Canada wants to buy from us. All they have to give is Loonies. Sure they could send us a Moose or something else that’s a little harder to trade with. But we can’ t do anything with Loonies. McDonald’s is not going to take a Loonie. So what do we do? We establish a rate of exchange based on what each country believes the other is worth. The US pie of 10 slices grew bigger than the Canadian pie.

(First person to bring up the gold standard gets a smack to the face and gets dragged off into a dark alley.)

But we only have 10 dollars pies to exchange with. If we give them 5 slices of the dollar pie then what are people going to use? AH-HA! EUREKA! BINGO! I got it. Since their Loonie pie is clearly worth less than our Dollar pie we could make thinner slices. It would bring down the value of the other dollars but it would actually be better for everyone because there are more slices to go around. We are actually worth more. And when I mean print it’s not a metaphor or analogy. We print two more dollars. The value of each one could drop but realistically we’re all better off because the pie got bigger.

Hmm…. Canada says. Those wacky Yanks just printed money. We many not be able to make as much stuff as they do but if we could just print more money wouldn’t that make us all richer? Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. So they do it. It’s cool for a while. Nobody notices it. But eventually even the dummies start figuring out that these two pies are not equal. The US had a really big pie so instead of slicing huge slices they made them thinner. But each slice is still big. Canada instead had a smaller pie with more slices.

So what happens next? When the US, and by extension every other country in the world, figures out what Canada has been doing they get pissed. They decide that the exchange rate is going to have to increase to compensate for the thinner slices of the pie. The next morning all the Canadians wake up and figure it out that it costs more Loonies (Hah, Loonies!) to buy gasoline because the real value isn’t there, it’s just make believe increases in money. So basically, Canada get’s smacked upside the head by the invisible hand of Adams Smith fame. At my Alma Matars econ department we had one of these “Invisible Hands”, not “The Invisible Hand”, but I think an 17th century prototype of it in a glass box. Pretty amazing.

You would think that someone would make up a name for something like what happened to Canada. And sure enough if some wacky economist at some point borrowed the word Inflation when he saw some pervert in a clown costume blowing up balloons shaped like (insert inappropriate finish).

Seriously You Talk Way Too Much, She Says

Everybody with me? If not please go back up and re-read all that crap because I’ve almost got a point about gas prices that’s kinda neat. If oil, the basis for gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, almost all plastic stuff including toys and tupperware, asphalt, etc. is priced in Loonies (Loonies!) and we all agree about the pie thing, then should oil cost more? We all agree that Canada just made Loonies out of thin air with no real reason for it. But oil is a “Thing”. It’s a commodity. It does stuff. You can’t just print oil.

The US has always borrowed money. It just happens that this time we’ve borrowed more than ever before, like that cousin who maxed out the credit cards and comes over to bum a few bucks to fill up the Escalade. The thing is that most of the time we paid it back. Sometimes though we did what we’re doing now. We’re trying to run out on the check.

Inflation is created by the Federal Reserve, an independant entity outside of the US government, and the US Treasury, the guys with the giant printing presses. It happens whenever the Fed and Treasury decide that we can go on a shopping spree. We did it in the early 70’s when Nixon and his spineless Federal Reserve Chairman, Arthur Burns, created the inflation that killed us in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

When Nixon wound down the Vietnam War our debts were catching up with us. You see war, as much fun as it’s made out to be, cost money. It’s a big government program, welfare for contractors if you will. War is great for states like Texas and horrible for anyone who is not making ships, planes, bullets, and all the other things the warrior class needs to conquer. War makes you poor. Say it with me now: WAR = POOR.

After WWII, when everyone else on the planet had been blown up, we were it. We could make anything and nobody else had the factories that we had because they got bombed by somebody else. Suddenly we found ourselves in this lucky place where we were making everything for everybody. But the US wanted to be the good guys. We rebuilt Europe and Japan because it was the right thing to do and helps us. Destroyed countries can become difficult to deal with, like Afghanistan or Sudan or Rwanda. It doesn’t always work though. Europe and Japan may have been ridiculously special cases for reasons I’m not going to get into. The myth that War = $$$$ was born out of WWII. If you look at every other war that we’ve ever fought there was nothing like the boom after WWII. Usually there was a recession not too far behind.

In 1978 Paul Volcker became Fed chairman. Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan started the great interest rise that stopped inflation from killing us. The policies were followed by Greenspan until Bush II. Reagan, who I don’t hate, don’t love, don’t really care much about either way, decided to lower taxes too far as a way to stimulate economic growth. You see whenever you hear the rhetoric of lower taxes at all costs the idiots forget to mention a few things. For instance it is not lower taxes that brings economic growth. It’s lower taxes + lower expenditures all other things being equal. You know a budget. Reagan realized too late that Congress would never lower expenditures. HE RAISED TAXES TWICE. TWICE!!! TWICE!!! REAGAN RAISED TAXES TWICE!!! In 1982, that’s right boys and girls, two years after he was in office he realized he’d been conned. The second came from the Social Security Tax in 83 (Paul Krugman, New York Times, 06/08/2004).

Sorry I had to do that. I did agree that taxes were too high prior to Reagan but he also realized they went too low with the major cuts that came through. These tax cuts came from a DEMOCRAT controlled congress. After Reagan, Bush Sr. continued to raise taxes and was fired for it. Clinton finished it in the 90’s with a REPUBLICAN congress in charge. Wow, our government can occasionally solve a big problem or two. By the time Clinton came around we could start paying off the debt, inflation was a joke, and we had a massive economic expansion. Teamwork baby, teamwork.

Gas Prices What?

Bush Jr turned out to be not so bright on Economics. I’m not saying he’s dumb, but it’s like he only looked at the comic strips in “Econ For Dummies”, and maybe the Cliff Notes. Up above, where I was talking about pies and Loonies, that’s what happening with us.

Bush II did not follow the prescription set out by Volker, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton. Instead he dropped taxes, raised expenditures, started a new war, raised expenditures some more. I don’t know what happened to Greenspan when Bush came in. Maybe he thought that Bush would whip congress into shape and therefore we could afford to lower taxes. I think Greenspan got conned by Bush. Or maybe he thought Bush was a new Reagan incarnate. I’m not here to defend or attack Greenspan. Once he realized that the party wasn’t going to stop post Dot-Com bust and 9-11 he started raising rates but it was too late. Without an economic team of the caliber used by Reagan, Bush Sr, and Clinton, there was no way to help with just interest rates. It just wasn’t enough. I’m not saying the Bush team sucks. I’m saying they may be the worst economics team since Nixon and good old Arthur Burns, that punk. But the rot starts at the top. On Bernanke, I second guess the PHD but I think he’s screwed. Not his fault really.

Conclusion

LBJ blew (Vietnam ate a lot of cash and American lives), Nixon blew, Carter blew until Volker, Reagan was decent, Bush Sr was decent, Clinton was decent. Bush Jr royally blows. Economics only, I’m not talking about any other policies anywhere.

The Magic 8 Ball Says

We’re screwed. Inflation’s back. The deficit is huge. Oil is going up and I’ve got no clue how high. The new stimulus package will make it worse. We owe loads of money so we decide to give ourselves a bonus? Where in the world does this make sense?

Apologies

Yes, I know, I don’t post often enough. I realized after my last post just how much time and energy a posting can consume when it competes with everything else. I will do my best to post more frequently.

Inventory

I know that we need more stuff you crazy Yelpers! I actually add something new each week. The problem is that this space, wonderful as it is, is much larger than I originally planned. All my extra cash is going for inventory as we speak but it isn’t going to happen any faster than my budget will allow. Trust me when I say I wish we had more stuff. I would love nothing more than having a ton more stuff. But the reality is that I’m playing poker with a short stack. Meaning that I must purchase slowly and carefully because any time a product does not sell well, and there are plenty of them, my cash is not available for something new and interesting.

Are We Going To “Make It?”

Looking over the crystal ball, I don’t see us going out of business just yet. Rahmen noodle is not the main ingredient in most of our meals. So we’re doing okay. What’s okay? The situation is not currently deteriorating and it is showing signs that we may be alright for the coming year. At this stage in the game there is absolutely nothing that I can do besides what I’m doing. I listen to customers, friends, and advisers. I try to incorporate as much of the input I receive into actions that will help the store grow. Each dollar I spend is deliberate and expensive.

Like What’s New?

We have a small selection of dimmable compact fluorescent light-bulbs in lower wattages. The brightest is the equivalent of a 40 watt bulb. We’ve added toothpastes, cleaning scrubbers, picnic/shopping baskets, new soaps, and Ecoglue. By next week we hope to have a floor soap for hardwood/bamboo/cork. What’s after that? I’m not tellin’.

We will also be placing several products on Sale starting March 1. Finally our recycling options are expanding. We now recycle CFL’s for .50 cents. We had to charge because they’re not that cheap to recycle. The CFL’s are in addition to our current cell phone, print cartridge, and rechargeable battery recycling.

Everybody remember to breathe.

DV

The concept of trade is really easy. You have an apple that costs a dollar. I have a dollar which represents some agreed upon value. We trade. Everybody happy! That’s how it’s supposed to work. Right?

The problem is it only works like that some of the time. When I call a manufacturer or distributor I never know what to expect. That’s not even including the amount of time I’ve had to spend tracking them down. There are companies that treat you well and answer all communications very quickly. I’ve had wonderful experiences with many of our suppliers. I’ve dealt with big distributors that were ridiculously easy to order from.

Then there’s the other group. I don’t have a theory as to why one group can do it well and the other cannot. Some distributors/suppliers require piles of documentation. Every time a company forces me to jump through something in order to purchase their product I immediately start looking for a substitute. On many occasions there are none. For instance, when I was trying to order Brita water filter products from the wholesale company I was bounced around at least 6 times. Someone told me that they wouldn’t sell me anything smaller than a $30,000 order. I carry over 300 individual items. Imagine how much time I have spent setting up accounts.

I can accept that I’m small and therefore at the mercy of whatever a supplier decides is the most effective way to distribute their product. With all of the huge companies out there it’s just plain easier to ignore a little guy. That’s fine. Eventually I will have a list of decent suppliers for most of my products. Until then it’s back to the grind.

Yes Mr. Murphy.
I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted on this blog but in my defense I was assaulted by Mr. Murphy and his law of human endeavors: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. If you visited the blog during its blackout you would know that we wrecked it with Dreamweaver. Yes, I know, RTFM. Holiday vacations were another speed bump. I couldn’t get the host, our web designer, and our tech guru on the same page. It was very frustrating.

Keys
I received the keys on Friday October 12th. That weekend we lent our space to ARTDC.org. They had a wonderful show. Real work started that Monday.

Open. Dogs Welcome!
The weeks before we opened were exhausting for everyone involved. I slept very little. We ran out of construction supplies regularly, slowing down the pace we were trying to sustain. The sign was installed two days before we opened. You can’t install a sign when it’s raining. It rained almost that entire week. The mini green roofs in front also had to be installed between November showers. It was an unseasonably warm November.

We had cost overruns in some places that were magically balanced out by lack of spending in other areas. I went home at 4 am the night before we opened and was back at the store by 8:30 am. It was a marathon until it became a sprint. We didn’t have enough stuff to stock. The cupboards looked bare. We definitely didn’t have enough sign-age to describe the products. I had literally everything in the store on the shelves and the place looked more like an art gallery than a retail store. My business partner who designed most of the store and helped build it wanted us to wait a week. We probably should have. I decided against it. It was approaching mid-November. My reasoning was that we would not be able to attract much attention through advertising. At that time of year everyone is inundated with all sorts of marketing pitches. We would not be heard above the noise. Therefore most of our customers would come from the sidewalk. Factor in the holidays and my lack of patience. I was just completely done with anticipation.

Cha-cough, cough, ching
I couldn’t process my first customer because something was wrong with the way we had setup the register. There was no opening time. I just unlocked the doors while still stocking, pricing, cleaning, organizing. It poured rain. Outside of friends, family, and Tim from Chesapeake Solar, we had maybe 10 people come through. We were open. I made my first sale around 6:30. We closed at 8. I slept like a rock that night.

By the end of the first weekend we had run out of a lot of stuff. That’s great right? Not exactly. When you only stock 5 of something, it doesn’t take much to clear the shelves. Once those shelves are clear it may take you 2 weeks to get a shipment, depending on the supplier. That means that your most popular products are running out the quickest. So lots of customers will leave empty handed. They’ll be nothing for them to see. And no sale for us.

Go to the company page and you’ll see everyone who participated. Some more than others but every paint brush stroke that someone else finished when helping us for an hour meant one less to go.

This is where the real pain begins.  The universe has conspired against me.  The price has been money and time, each at a premium.  My original opening date?  September 1st!  Current opening date?  Mid-November.  No points for me on this one.  I haven’t received the keys as of this writing.  It’s been at least two weeks since the most recent deadline.

SNAFU
Most building owner/managers want chains and restaurants.  Even a small chain makes more sense than an untested retail store.  I had to develop the elevator speech because I realized I was bumbling the description of the store.  I use the phrase ‘Environmental technology for the home,’ and then, ‘products to reduce your energy consumption, reduce your water consumption, and help you manage recycling.’  I then give details about specific products that are easy to understand.  Imagine hearing that for the first time when it’s your responsibility to rent out the space.

Start.Stop.Start.
I started the search two weeks before my loan came through.  Credible people told me that I should get the cash first while others said the space should come first.  I looked in my target areas.   Called a ton of them.  Nothing. There was one on 18th.  Asking rent was $75 a square foot(($75 * SqFt)/12) with terms so awful I suspected that I was being pushed away because the owner wants a restaurant to take it.  And it needed massive amounts of work.  Some called back.  Some didn’t.  Some were rude.

I was informed that I was being stupid and that I needed a commercial realtor.  That was a pretty accurate assessment.  After the loan came through I found an awesome commercial realtor (Contact Info Upon Request).  She knew tons of building managers by first name.  Almost immediately we went in for our first spot.  On paper it looked like a decent deal in a brand new building for a reasonable price.  I tried to impress.  I thought I was getting a good vibe.  I may have stumbled a little but I recovered.  Yep, this was going to be my new place.  New wall over on the left.  The floor would be gorgeous polished concrete.  Everything brand new.  Perfect.

After weeks of talking, negotiating, answering questions, and generally being held hostage to that location, it was dead.  It was probably dead from the beginning but I got too excited.  There were signs in the way the guy was responding to questions.  Stalling.  Hindsight.  There were a few other dead ends.

Finally! Oh, wait.
We were in.  There’s this phase where you agree to the big stuff before touching a lease.  Basically how much and who fixes what.  Our landlord gave us a good deal.  Then came the actual negotiations.  15 pages of excruciatingly, mind-numbingly, slower than molasses, negotiations.  It lasted much longer than either party expected.

In the end the current relationship with the landlord has been really good.  They’ve been very accommodating and enthusiastic about our use of the space.  They are almost ready to hand us the keys so we can begin our construction phase.  Meaning it’s a month before opening day, at least.  I’ve accepted that it’s out of my hands at the moment.

The first person I had to convince was me.   I didn’t start this thinking I was going to open a retail store.  I just kept wondering why no one else was doing anything like this in my area.   There are similar stores in California and in the Northeast.  The research process and writing of the business plan convinced me that it was possible.  It was also the key to getting support.  It forced me to answer a lot of annoying questions early.  By the way, most people do not read your business plan.  They look at it and then ask you questions already in there.  Accept it and don’t patronize.

Going into this isn’t a solo adventure.  I’m married so the first and most important person I had to convince was my wife.  Thankfully that part was easy.  She comes from a family with a dad who started his own company while her mom was pregnant with her older brother.  We talked about the issues her parents faced: mom supporting the family while dad hustled to get business in the door.  It was rough at times.  We looked at our budget and discovered that we could barely support ourselves on her salary even with many changes to our lifestyle.  We eventually took in a roommate for extra cash.  We talked about the amount of time it would consume.  How I wouldn’t be able to help out as much around the house because I would probably be working 16 hour days.  We talked about what impact if any it would have on our having kids.  We decided that once the lease was signed that would be the point of no return because of the contract obligations involved.  We also picked points in time and money that we would consider the business a failure and talked about what that would mean.  If she wasn’t 100% behind me it could never have worked.  And her employer would provide our health insurance, which is ridiculously important.  We wanted to go into with with our eyes as open as possible.

The Rest of the Crew
I met up with my mom for lunch after we knew it was serious.  I told her all about it.  I don’t really think she got it entirely.  But the thing is she didn’t care.  She said she couldn’t give me any cash but she’d come in to work weekend shifts.  Same thing happened with my brothers.  They’re coming in on weekends to work the register and sales floor.  They would probably help me with anything I tried to do.  They’re just like that.  See what I mean about being lucky?

Compadres
No matter what you think about your capabilities or talents, if you cannot attract people to help you then you’re boned.  The cool thing is, if you’re lucky and passionate about your adventure, you can get lots of people to help you.  I’m lucky in that I live in DC, which has lots of brains sitting around after working hours begging for challenging work.  I have long time friends and new ones who jumped in.  Doing it alone would kill me.   I have people helping me with marketing, interior design, graphics design, finance, website development, product testing, contracting, construction, environmental engineering, community outreach, and plain old heavy lifting.  These are busy people with so much to do that I often feel guilty about asking for so much out of them.  Thankfully they keep saying ‘yes’.

Compensation
We incorporated as an LLC.  I’m giving shares of the company to the people who have worked tons of hours on it.  Everyone else gets a t-shirt.  I had to give people something for their time.  They’re doing professional work.  They get worthless invisible paper saying they own X number of dollars worth of the company.  It’s only right, it’s their company too in many ways.  Look at it like this, if the company succeeds that paper becomes real money.  If it fails the paper remains invisible.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year and a half thinking, and talking to my friends, about our mission, but never got anything down that I really liked. Instead of trying to perfect it right of the bat, because I’m not so good at these things. I’ve compiled a list of ideas that are related and intertwined at places but the eloquence, I’m not so good with:

- Provide customers with the technology and knowledge to forward the goals below with MEASURABLE results:
Reduce their production of CO2 in the form of energy;
Reduce their water consumption;
Encourage recycling and the use of products from recycled materials.
- Don’t screw our customers, partners, and employees in any transaction.
- Make contributions to the betterment of our local community.
- Make our carbon footprint less than zero.
- Encourage our suppliers and manufacturers to reform their operations to improve their carbon footprint.
- Make a profit, without which nothing else happens.

Conflicts of Interest
The decisions I make will probably have unintended consequences, if they haven’t already. Each and every transaction we’ve participated in has effects that go beyond our immediate horizon. Profit and purpose must work together. In a private company the latter cannot exist without the former. I’m talking about this stuff because I keep hearing the echoes of moral and ethical questions in the decisions. For example: Lexxoni is an oil company. They’ve done a great many things that could be construed as being somewhat, well, unethical. Maybe even a little wicked. Lexxoni, driven by the profit motive or a CEO who has a near death experience, whatever, they decide to begin producing a widget that will have a positive impact on carbon emissions. But they’re not giving up on the oil business. What do you do? Depending on who you are you may take positions for or against purchasing the widget. Your reasons for either doing it or not may vary greatly but the question isn’t multiple choice. This may seem like a silly example but imagine that you own a store and must stock it with products that meet the main goals while ignoring those secondary effects. It’s how we got ourselves into the current situation in the first place.

I’ll continue thinking about and talking about these issues in future postings because they are central to the future of Greater Goods. In a weird way the closer I get to opening day, the less I feel the place is mine. It was all mine when it was just knocking in my head. It’s still not fully formed. Weird

Hi,

We’re in the process of bringing this blog back from the dead. I know, it’ s been a long time. A lot has happened. We lost some of the entries because I committed the ultimate computer sin of not backing up the blog. Not terribly bright.

I’ll be adding some older entries as I recover them and updating everything soon. Welcome back!

Sincerely,

DV