2009 bGreen Year in Review

Back when we were young whippersnapeprs spending summers in Brookline, NH, Barry used to do a Week in Review for all the staff.  Well, it seems fitting that we do a quick Year in Review for bGreen.  Without further adieu...

• Just under a year ago bGreen was nothing more than a figment of our imagination.  Over a few beers and a few burgers, we hatched the idea for a company made it easy to go green.



• We actually had a name before the company even existed.  bGreen.  Be Green.  Barry GREENstein.  It seemed to work.  Now we just had to build a business around what we thought to be a clever name.



• Again, before the company even existed, we took a trip to LA to see what the green movement was like out there.  It really blew us away, we met a ton of cool people, like the guys from The Green Hive and The Green Life. Aside from making us totally pissed about living in Boston and not California, the trip made us shift gears and come up with the bGreen online store.



• In June, we hired a team of lawyers from the VC Ready Law Group to hammer out our business details.  What they (and we) thought we be a straight forward agreement turned into a month long ordeal.  I think it worked out well for everyone.



• In July, we officially became bGreen Group LLC.  We had our funding in place, our legal details hammered out, and now we just had to do something.



• We spent the next several months developing a website, developing an online store, scrapping a business plan or two, tweeting our little hearts out, and trying to spread the word about bGreen.  We learned some valuable lessons during this time, and make our fair share of mistakes.  But as the great Bob Ross used to say, "We don't make mistakes, we just have happy accidents."



• The Fall months brought us quite a bit of good times.  We launched our website, lined up all our inventory, launched our online store, made our first sales (thanks moms!), networked like crazy, had a few people tell us our idea was lousy, and had a few more people tell us our idea was awesome.  We're leaning towards the awesome side.



• We took a trip to Arizona in Novemeber to attend GreenBuild.  Again, we met a bunch of people, saw that there's really something behind the green movement, and solidified our plans for moving bGreen to the next level.



• December's been interesting.  We launched the bGreen Weekly Deal.  Each week we're selling one green & eco friendly product at a deep discount, with the hope of helping people go green quickly.  We love the models setup by companies like Woot and Steep & Cheap, so we figured why not have a green one of those.



• But the biggest thing December brought us was our entry into 2010.  We have the most exciting aspect of bGreen in place.  In the tech and VC world there's a term a lot of people use for crazy new stuff.  Disruptive.  Changing the way people thing about certain things and changing the way we do business.  We think the next phase of bGreen is disruptive, and we look forward to sharing that with you in the near future.

Thanks for all your support, Happy New Year, and we wish you continued success in 2010.



-Barry & Lee

The bGreen Weekly Deal

One of our goals with bGreen is to make "going green" easy, affordable, and accessible.  So with that in mind, we're happy to bring you the bGreen Weekly Deal.  Each week, we'll hand pick one item from our store, and sell it to you for a really low price, until we're sold out.  How low of a price, you ask?  Well, basically at our cost.  "Well bGreen, if you sell something to us at your cost, doesn't that mean you don't make any money on it?"  Yes, indeed it does.  But sometimes that's ok!



We really think our weekly deal products need to be in your home, so we want to make it easy and affordable.  We know you'll love the products, so we trust that we'll become your one-stop-shop for green and eco-friendly products.  So head on over to our Weekly Deal site, and take a look for yourself.  New deals launch every Monday at noon, so be sure to check back often.



Got a product you'd love to see as a weekly deal?  Just let us know!  Tweet us, Facebook us, or email us.  Your choice!

Klean Kanteen Wine Karafe

Admittedly, this is one of our favorite products we sell over at the bGreen online shop.  While it's not every day that we are hiking through the woods and want to get after a nice bottle of Cabernet, it's really nice having the option.  The Klean Kanteen Wine Karafe is deceptively large, and easily fits a full bottle of wine.  Check out the video below.







Turns out that the Klean Kanteen Wine Karafe is also the bGreen Weekly Deal product for this week.  You can find our brand spanking new Weekly Deal site at http://bit.ly/bgreendeal.  Enjoy!



P.S. Not our finest video shoot, but with bad lighting, no script, and an iPhone, this ought to win an Oscar for Best Short Film.

The Latest Klean Kanteen Products

We received a sample package today that had a few of the latest Klean Kanteen products.  We really love what Klean Kanteen is producing of late, and it's the only water bottle we take with us these days.



The first product is the new Klean Kanteen Insulated bottle.  We opted for the 20 ounce size.  It's certainly not like an old school thermos.  It's sleek and light-weight, although it's somewhat larger than we expected.  It's more along the size of a standard 27 ounce Klean Kanteen.  We opted to add the Café cap, as I think it'll be mostly used for hot drinks., especially up here in Boston in the middle of winter.



The second product is the new Klean Kanteen Sport Cap 2.0.  Our two biggest complaints about the original sport cap were 1) no loop to hold it, and 2) the god awful noise that it makes when you're sucking down your drink.  We're happy to report the Sport Cap 2.0 has a loop, and the noise appears to be diminished slightly, although it's still there.



Both of these products are in stock over at the bGreen online shop.  The Klean Kanteen Insulated Bottles start at $21 and the Sport Cap 2.0 is $4.  You can use the code BLOG10 at checkout to receive a nice 10% discount, now through 12/31/09.



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Top 5 Sellers Through 12/21/2009

We wanted to share with you our top selling products. We figure if some people like these, maybe even more people will like these.  We're all about sharing and spreading the love.  We'll be publishing this list every two weeks.  If you'd like to see it more frequently, please let us know in the comments.  You can buy any of these products in our store and get 10% off your order for being a loyal blog reader with coupon code BLOG10 at checkout.

1. Klean Kanteen Wide Insulated Bottles



2. Free Charge 12 Volt (currently out of stock)



3. Solar Hybrid Flashlight



4. EPIC All Purpose Cleaner



5. Zogoflex Dog Toys

Thanks, and bGreen!



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Quick Thoughts on Google AdWords

As part of our marketing plan we've been experimenting with Google AdWords. While we've only been at this for about two weeks, I would classify the results thus far as "crash & burn."



Some quick statistics, since 11/23/09:



Clicks: 428 - good

Impressions: 190,000 - awesome

Click Through Rate: 0.23% - poor

Cost Per Click (CPC): $1.04 - seems average for a hot industry

Cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM): $2.35 - seems high

TOTAL SALES: $0 - Crash & Burn



[caption id="attachment_257" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="bGreen Google AdWords Statistics"][/caption]



We've slowly scaled down our daily cost, from $40 to $25 to $5. We're at $5/day now, while we try and learn about what we can do to increase our Click Through Rate, and most importantly, our Conversion to Sales rate. It's a shame that our initial campaign hasn't worked, but we're determined to make our PPC and SEO strategies work.  Suggestions?