Ellie's eco-friendly store opens in Boulder

Retail outlet spinoff of maker of green products

By Joyzelle Davis, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published November 15, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Photo by Dennis Schroeder / The Rocky

Eco-Products boss Steve Savage backs an electric scooter out of the company's store in Boulder recently. Savage also is founder of the new Boulder retail outlet Ellie's Eco Home Store, which sells environmental-ly friendly products.

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Ellie's Eco Home Store opens its first retail store in Boulder today, aiming to be an emporium of environmentally friendly goods from rolls of chlorine- free parchment paper to bed frames salvaged from 100-year- old South American barns.

The store plans to stock 7,000 items in 20 departments, hoping to take advantage of the booming market for green home and body products. It remains to be seen whether shoppers are willing to pay a premium for sustainable products in the face of a swooning economy and withering consumer confidence.

"You have to be concerned opening up a retail store right now," said Steve Savage, Ellie's founder. "But I think Ellie's will do just fine. We feel fortunate to be opening up in Boulder. Boulder's economy is still pretty strong."

Ellie's also has a pretty strong base to fall back on. The retail store is a spinoff of Savage's Eco-Products, the nation's largest manufacturer of biodegradable utensils and other food service products. Eco- Products, which counts Invesco Field, Google and NBC among its customers, is on track to generate $40 million in revenue this year and $100 million in sales in 2009.

Savage, who co-founded Eco-Products in the family garage along with his father, Kent, in 1990 at age 22, had planned to add a retail store as part of the business plan since the beginning. The company started out as a recycled paper distributorship and eventually expanded into selling food service and janitorial supplies. In 2005, the company added manufacturing capabilities to make its own line of compostable cups, bowls, forks and other food service items made from corn and sugar cane.

That was the move that turned Eco-Products into one of Boulder's fastest-growing companies. Sales soared from $2.5 million in 2005 to $11 million last year. Eco-Products now employs around 65 workers, and Ellie's has another 25 or so.

Savage tested out the retail store idea near Eco-Products old headquarters. Even though that store was located in a nondescript warehouse, it still managed to pull in $1,100 in monthly sales per square foot - an amount higher than industry leaders like Whole Foods.

Now Ellie's - named after Savage's daughter, Eleanor -- has a higher profile location next to the Sunflower Farmers Market on Arapahoe Avenue. The new store features soft lighting piped in from the 14 solar tubes on the ceiling, panels made from Sorghum plant stalks and a low-maintenance polished concrete floor.

The store is opening at a time when shaky consumer spending appears to be tapering off sales of natural and organic foods after a decade of double- digit growth.

Organic household and body products have fared better than food, however, because they're still new. Until Ellie's opened, most consumers couldn't touch or see the products because they had to buy them online or through catalogues, said Darrin Duber- Smith, president of Green Marketing and a marketing professor at Metro State.

"This is a hugely underserved area. There's no established supply chain," Duber-Smith said.

On top of that, he said, the hardcore organic consumers - a demographic known in the industry as Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability - aren't price-sensitive when it comes to shopping for green products.

Ellie's also plans to place value front and center, offering pallets of its bulk-sized private label detergent and other cleaning products as soon as customers walk in the door, said Carly Marriott, store manager.

The store features everything for the home, including, literally, a home: a 300-square- foot passive solar bungalow that can be assembled by snapping together 8-by-8-foot panels. Price: $24,500.

Ellie's aims to have four price points throughout the store, ranging from "the cheapest we could find" to aspirational items like the $4,400 bed frame that's "just too cool not to carry," said Eliza DeBoom, home department manager.

When the economy improves, Savage hopes to roll the Ellie's idea out to markets beyond Boulder - although focusing on similarly environmentally minded consumers who might be found in areas like Austin, Texas, or Santa Cruz, Calif.

The company also launched a Web site last month, elliesecohomestore.com, that sells many of the same products as the store.

Some green goods

Ellie's sells more than 7,000 sustainable products, each tagged with "benefit icons" such as Fair Trade, Compostable, Rapidly Renewable. Among the products for sale at the store, located at 2525 Arapahoe Ave. in Boulder:

* Nau Eco-Friendly Activewear and Outdoor Clothing

* Hemp Corduroy Dog Leashes

* Natural Cork Flooring

* VOC-colorant free interior paint

* Pangea Organics Body Products * gDiapers plastic-free flushable diapers

* Environmentally friendly toys

* Drainbo Natural Drain Cleaner

* Organic fertilizer

* Recycled glass plates and tablewear

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