Ecoman shares his story with students

Ecoman shares his story with students

Malcolm Rands doesn’t talk statistics.

“People are sick of information, people always like stories — but they have to be authentic. Stories from your own life,” he says.

The Ecostore founder originally from Wellington, also known as Ecoman, was telling his tale of how, and why, he set up the business to students and staff at Lincoln University last week as a visiting speaker in Business and Sustainability and Global Business Environment courses.

Ecostore makes plant-based cleaners, and other products with a focus on the health and wellbeing of people, as well as the planet.

His unconventional story involves how he found in the permaculture village he set up in Northland that there were more chemicals inside his house than he the ones he had rejected putting on the land.

So in 1993 he set about changing that, by making natural cleaning products, initially sold from his home and which has now become a business which sells throughout New Zealand, and Australia and is moving into the USA, UK and Asia.

He became Ecoman after his daughter Ahi stayed up all night to draw a cartoon book of his story for Father’s Day. He still uses the Ecoman character in marketing Ecostore, as well as his daughter’s artistic talents.

Mr Rands had to experiment with the look of his products and stay away from what he calls the ‘hippy grunge’ – they had to be modern and bright on a ‘screaming’ supermarket shelf, but he settled for a ‘quiet’ black and white colour range, and it works.

There are other factors involved in selling sustainable products he says.

Even if people were keen to be green they still were cognisant of price, and that the products were as good as the ones they replaced.

“You have to make it easy and pleasurable to buy them, and of course they have to work,’’ he says.

Now his products are beating multi-national companies in product comparisons.

He has some advice for the students — “imagine the future and do it now.”

Organiser of the talk, and course lecturer Dr Michaela Balzarova, says presenting students with an example of an organisation that is successful “right in the middle of the sustainability domain is an extraordinary asset to have in any curriculum outlining the interface between business and the natural environment”.

She has been buying Ecostore products sporadically but became a loyal customer after reading Mr Rands’ book ‘Ecoman’.

“Hence I saw the importance of his personal story attached to his business, and that story provided me with trust and confidence in Ecostore products. So I guess I hoped his presence would resonate with the audience too.”

Dr Balzarova says her students appreciated the anti-marketing approach to business.

They appreciated how not going main stream and seeing that “sticking with Ecostore’s non-conventional product presentation” proved to be a successful approach.

And maybe the biggest compliment of all from a student — they wished the lecture was longer.

Images: Malcolm Rands tells Lincoln University students his story. Photo credit David Hollander.

You can see Ahi Rand’s Ecoman cartoon brought to life here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYw7JQq-_TA

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