By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Promotional Impact, a Grand Rapids-based company, recently launched a new division focused on 'green' marketing products and a line of promotional goods produced from clients' own scrap materials. Karen Scarpino, co-owner of the business, says that the sustainable story of the new division, Green Giftz, is unmatched in the industry.
"If a client has jumped through the hoops to build a LEED-certified building, they want to go to a tradeshow and give away promo items that show they're committed to the environment," Scarpino says.
The GRAM, the world's first LEED-certified art museum, hired Scarpino to create earth-friendly promo products for its gift shop.
"Their notebook covers are silver metallic, the pages are bright white, and the notebook is 100 percent post-consumer," Scarpino says.
To Scarpino, the exciting story is the use of client's scrap materials to produce unique gifts they can give to clients and employees.
"Why can a company make a fabulous sustainable chair, and yet the promotional products sitting on their clients' desks are so much trash?" she asks. "We're taking Greenguard-certified scrap leather and creating executive-quality business card cases, luggage tags, and key fobs."
Several clients have asked Scarpino to recycle their scrap materials, such as low VOC fabrics and metals, into gifts that their employees and clients will be proud to use.
"We've created a full line of one-of-a-kind pieces for Herman Miller using its Aeron chair fabric. The most recent is a duffle bag," Scarpino says. "We've taken the philosophy of being strategic solution providers and applied that to the sustainable market."
Source: Karen Scarpino, www.greengiftz.com; Chritine Hoek, Articulate Communications, LLC (courtesy photograph)
Deborah Johnson Wood is the development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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