Meet the Small-Business Antipreneurs

Tag : Small Size Shoes


By Jeremy Quittner
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Bill Goldsmith has always been a maverick. As a radio disc jockeyand program director in the 1970s and '80s, he loved creating hisown mixes of modern rock and introducing listeners to cutting-edgemusicians. But in the '90s, as large corporations bought up thestations he worked for, Goldsmith began to feel increasingly chokedby the demands of commercial radio. Programming was becoming tooformulaic; he was given less leeway. Working in radio just wasn'tfun anymore.
In 2000, with the rise of the Internet and streaming media,Goldsmith had an idea: Why not start his own station, one thatwould buck the constraints of corporate radio with innovativeprogramming and no ads? Today, Radioparadise.com, which broadcastsan eclectic mix of modern, classic, and alternative rock, iscommercial-free. It's supported entirely by donations from itslisteners, 15,000 of whom are logged onto the site at any giventime.
Goldsmith's company, based in Paradise, Calif., has three employeesand about $1 million in annual revenues. Rebecca Goldsmith, Bill'swife, is the CFO and new music reviewer. Says Bill: "I hateadvertising. There is this kind of organic sense of community thatdevelops here that could not happen if this radio station's solereason for existence was to increase shareholder value for a largecorporation."
Meet the antipreneurs. Goldsmith is one of perhaps a few thousandbusiness owners who have won both notice and profits by beingovertly or covertly anti-big business and anti-advertising.
Antipreneurs frequently choose each other as suppliers because theyshare similar philosophies. Their marketing strategy is targetedtoward consumers who have grown cynical about buying products andservices from larger companies, whose methods they deemirresponsible.
"Cynical consumers perceive that most of the marketplace is bad,lacking in integrity, or not trustworthy, except for a few [oftensmall or local] companies," says Amanda Helm, a professor ofmarketing at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. "But once theyfind a company they can trust, they are very motivated to stickwith [it]."
Antipreneurs are quick to differentiate their efforts to reformcapitalism from social entrepreneurs' attempts to harness businessfor philanthropic ends.
"What appeals to people about us is that this is a positive visionof how the marketplace can and should work," says Adam Neiman,president and CEO of No Sweat Apparel, a five- employee, $1 millionBoston company that sells clothes produced in union factories.Neiman says the company's mission is to improve conditions forworkers in the garment industry, in part by paying them a livingwage and ensuring that they have union representation.
Antipreneurs walk a fine ideological line: They are pro-businessand want their companies to grow, but they're against big business.They engage in global commerce while disdaining the machinations ofglobalization. They profit from the free market, but they criticizeit, too.
So how do they get away with it? They wear their contrarianpolitics on their sleeves and seek customers who do the same. Oftenthose are the so-called dark greens and very dark greens, whomarketing experts say are borderline obsessed with environmentalissues and feel the need to preach about their lifestyle. Inaddition, some 37% of people age 18 to 30 prefer to use brands thatare socially conscious, with more than three-quarters of that groupciting fair labor practices and two-thirds listing environmentalfactors as chief concerns, according to New York youth marketingcompany Alloy Media & Marketing Alloy says the youth market hasnearly $200 billion in buying power.
Antipreneurs attempt to reach their potential customers withouttraditional advertising. What advertising they do is likely to beironic, in-your-face, or highly political. In all cases, itreinforces the importance of buying from small companies thatproduce with sustainability in mind and use ethical laborpractices. One consequence of this highly charged political stanceis that antipreneurs face the wrath of passionate customers if theyunderdeliver or merely appear to.
ANTI-BRANDS
Although some credit The New York Times media columnist Rob Walker with coining the term "antipreneur,"Vancouver-based Kalle Lasn gives the movement much of itsideological weight. Lasn is co-founder of the magazine Adbusters , which analyzes the effects and pervasiveness of advertising bylarge corporations. He advocates "culture jamming," which hedescribes as the interruption of unconscious consumer behavior thatfavors buying over producing. One of culture jamming's techniquesis the deconstruction of large companies' ad campaigns to exposewhat antipreneurs believe is their hypocrisy.
Lasn doesn't stop with advertising. "If you want to change theworld, you have to change capitalism into a more grassrootsphenomenon, and that means pulling down the megacorporations," hesays, speaking with hints of his native Estonian. In the pastdecade, he says, "A whole new wave of small business is reallystrutting its stuff in a powerful way around the world, and itincludes everything from ethical principles in running business tofair trade to a large and growing movement of people who just wantto buy local." Lasn says this movement is gaining strength aspeople become exasperated with what he calls the traditional"complaint-based" politics of the left-whining lots and doinglittle. Antipreneurs, he says, actually make a difference bypromoting products that have a low impact on the environment or arefairly produced.
Lasn is himself an antipreneur. In 2003 he took on sneakermanufacturer Nike and its labor practices in Asia by launchingBlackspot Shoes. One shoe is even called the "Unswoosher," adeliberate swipe at the Nike logo. Blackspot's logo is, naturally,a large white spot. "This is in the spirit of playful resistancethat culture jamming is all about," Lasn says. "Why not befuddle afew people and force them, through cognitive dissonance, to figureout the contradiction? It's good for them."
Marketing experts see things a bit differently. "No logo is still alogo, and one your social-cultural tribe will recognize," saysMichal Strahilevitz, a professor of marketing at Golden GateUniversity in San Francisco. "It has the same effect of the NikeSwoosh, but it is the logo of a different tribe." This alsoexplains why apparel is such fertile territory for antipreneurs:Antipreneurs appeal to consumers who want to buy products with akind of reverse conspicuous consumption in mind. "It works betterif it is publicly consumed, as that way others know you are anethical consumer," she says. "You get points for being seen."
To date, Lasn's 13-person company has sold about 30,000 pairs ofthe $100 shoes, which are made in a union factory in Portugal. Lasnadvertises only in his own magazine, although he says he's planningto run an MTV spot with the tagline "Rethink Capitalism" within thenext year or so.
Lasn has certainly made an impact on other antipreneurs, such asDavid Wampler, founder and sole proprietor of Simple Living Networkin Trout Lake, Wash. The Web company, with $200,000 in annualrevenues, is an online bazaar of products and services-informationon green living, T-shirts, CDs-offered by small, anticorporatebusinesses. "I found inspiration in [Lasn's] work and appreciatethe approach he is taking and the message he is trying to deliver,"Wampler says. His goal is not to get rich so much as to run abusiness that supports an "outwardly simple and inwardly rich"life. Wampler says he has "purposely chosen to operate as afor-profit corporation in order to model sustainable small businesspractices."
Antipreneurs do pay careful attention to how their products arepresented. Moo Shoes, a $1.2 million New York vegan shoe store withfive employees, has made its shop a community hub for informationabout the vegan lifestyle and about animal cruelty. This spring,Moo Shoes hosted Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, a national agencyfor stray and abused pets. Best Friends set up pens and cages inthe store with about 20 homeless dogs and cats. Customers learnedabout the agency and the strays, and two cats were placed in cityhomes. "We care about animals, and getting animals homes isimportant to us, though not directly related to the shoes," saysMoo Shoes co-founder Sara Kubersky.
The store sells footwear that is produced by a tiny universe ofmanufacturers that use vegan materials and adhere to fair laborpractices. Moo Shoes also manufactures its own vegan shoes, calledNovaca (Spanish for "no cow"), in Portugal. The company does dosome advertising, primarily in publications such as VegNews and Vegetarian Times . One ad depicts a lone cow sitting near a barn saying "Save MySkin: Buying leather directly supports factory farms andslaughterhouses, where, every year, millions of animals are killedfor their skins. Think. Before you buy."
Of course, antipreneurs aren't the only ones to have figured outthat appearing not to advertise, or running nontraditional ads, canbe just as effective as more conventional campaigns. Big companieshave caught on, too. "The hot trend within promotions is to try tocreate an impression that your product is more countercultural,"says the University of Wisconsin's Helm. Nissan ran billboardspainted by graffiti artist JCDecaux to launch its new Qashqaimini-sport-utility vehicle last winter. Nissan and Blackspot, saysSamantha Skey, executive vice-president of strategic marketing atAlloy, "are going after the same customer."
Here, antipreneurs have an inherent advantage. "When you have asmaller company committed to a certain type of socialresponsibility [from its] inception, one that is really and trulyfounded on building business around sustainability or fair labor,that [philosophy] is inherent in the DNA of the company," saysSkey. "Consumers pick up on it."
Or as Erica Kubersky, co-founder of Moo Shoes, says: "Consumersknow more these days than they used to. If you are not doing thisfrom personal conviction, you will never convey the same message."
The other approach, taken by No Sweat Apparel, is to do noadvertising. Like Goldsmith, Neiman, president and CEO of theeight-year-old company, depends on word of mouth to spread thegospel of his goods. Using ads to sell a product "really puts ahuge amount of pressure on wages," says Neiman, estimating thatadvertising would add about 20% to his costs. He says his workersin the seven union factories that supply him, located in places asfar-flung as Argentina, South Africa, and the West Bank, all getpaid a living wage.
No Sweat makes the most of its logo, which features the World WarII icon Rosie the Riveter. The brand has a following among theindie music crowd, so Neiman gives emerging bands a banner withRosie tricked out as a punk rocker, complete with piercings, metalbracelets, and tattoos. The bands often display the banner atconcerts. "We call her the dominatrix of labor," says Neiman, witha laugh. "What we are doing is a little tongue-in-cheek, trying toprovoke a reaction."
UNION DUES
still, since image is crucial to their ability to sell, thesecompanies must deliver on their message in ways other businessesmay not have to. In 2006, another union was trying to take over thealready-unionized factory Neiman used in Indonesia. This unioneventually audited Neiman's factory, and Lasn posted someunflattering details from the audit on Adbusters ' Web site this April. It didn't help that Neiman and Lasn weremaking similar shoes. But the audit wasn't news to Neiman, who sayshe posted the same details on his own company's Web site beforeLasn got involved. "We got blindsided by a segment of theanti-sweatshop community that objects to market-based solutionsaltogether," he says. In the end, he had to sever ties with thefactory he'd been using.
No matter how countercultural he might sound, Neiman still wants togrow his business, like most other entrepreneurs. "This model isscalable," he says. "We can source from as many union shops as areout there, and we can keep growing and expanding rapidly." SaraKubersky wants to open Moo Shoes stores in San Francisco andWashington, D.C., in the next two to three years. "It would begreat to have one in every city," she says. Goldsmith doesn't thinkhis noncommercial ethos means he's sacrificing revenue-quite thecontrary. "I firmly believe we are making more money with ouranti-advertising stance than we would if we solicited as muchadvertising as possible," he says. He wouldn't mind ifRadioparadise.com grew to four to five times its current size. Aslong as he can set the playlist, and the priorities, himself.
Jeremy Quittner is a staff writer for BusinessWeek in New York.