From the beginning, I have thought of Greater>Than as a kind of laboratory. I’m interested in different ideas about how to structure a business, but I have never been in a position to implement them myself. Further, it seems unlikely that I will ever have license to be truly radical within the context of my day job.

As in most larger companies, greater responsibility seems to coincide with increasing conservatism. I’m not sure which side is causal, but they are definitely directly correlated. So, Greater>Than is a chance for us to try things out, and while it isn’t exactly risk-free since we have invested some significant effort into the project, it isn’t the basis of our livelihoods (at least not yet).

photo credit: shearforce

One of the most buzzed-about concepts in business today is sustainability. When oil companies are making commercials touting their environmental sensitivity, I think we can safely say the concept has reached a critical mass. Consumers are leading the charge. As the general public becomes more convinced of threats such as global warning, they start looking for ways to mitigate their contribution to the problem. More and more, consumers will choose “greener” products if given an opportunity.

Many companies have responded by flooding the marketplace with products that claim to be less harmful to produce, use or dispose of than their predecessors. While greater attention on the issue is a positive development on the whole, there are to my mind at least two major flaws with these early efforts to consume more sustainably.

First, given the American tendency to use “what we buy” as a proxy for “how we live” and even “who we are”, we may have found ourselves a path to getting the small things “right” at the expense of the larger picture. There is a peculiar symbiosis between American consumers and the products that we buy that allows us to construct our public and private personas in part through the products we choose. The ramifications of this relationship are far-reaching, but it’s most germane to this topic in that it explains why adjusting our consumer choices is the most efficient way to start to feel like we’re making a difference. Buy some recycled paper towels, some natural detergent, maybe even a Prius, and you become a full-fledged eco-warrior.

You might even begin to look down on people who haven’t made the same efforts that you have (here, as in many, many other areas, South Park provides the sharpest satire, showing us that despite reducing smog the Prius leads to dangerous levels of smug). My point here is not simply to point out that some people are a bit hypocritical in their greenness (I’m not free from guilt here myself), but to suggest that real change may require asking tougher questions of ourselves than whether we are willing to switch to CF bulbs. In fact, it’s not hard to imagine that a few years from now we’ll look back on our attempts to buy our way out of this mess and realize how stunningly hubristic it all was. We might even find that “sustainable consumption” is an oxymoron.

Second, the total environmental impact of a consumer product can be surprisingly difficult to determine, let alone mitigate. Many companies have garnered negative press for their “greenwashing” - the marketing of “green” products whose environmental claims are unsubstantiated or falsified - and these companies deserve all the blame they receive for their cynical and greedy response to what is so far the defining issue of the century.

However, the thornier and potentially more intractable problem may be the difficulty that even the most well-meaning companies have had as they have begun to unravel the complex web of factors that determines whether their products are part of the problem or part of the solution. Michael Specter’s recent New Yorker article, “Big Foot“, provides some great background on this issue, and is highly recommended.

photo credit: shearforce

So what’s the point of all this exposition? Well, this is the context in which we are launching a business, and in the midst of all this confusion we are trying to define what “sustainability” means to us. What are the characteristics of a sustainable t-shirt company? What makes a t-shirt itself “sustainable”? We need a theory cohesive enough to guide us as we lay the foundation of our little enterprise.

I’m going to use a few blog posts to try to get some of the specific issues facing us out in the open, if only as a starting point to the discussion. We hope to have an ongoing dialog with our customers on these topics in order to keep our business practices in line with their expectations. As a consumer, I don’t like the idea that the companies who produce the items I buy would take shortcuts or make other decisions I couldn’t live with myself, and I want to maintain that attitude as a producer of products.

If you want to start the feedback loop now, let us know what sustainability means to you in the comments.

Side note: I used a great new WordPress plug-in called Photo Dropper to find these cool vintage t-shirt photos on Flickr and pop them straight into this post. I think they capture the mood of t-shirt sustainability quite nicely. The tool even gives appropriate credit to the photographer, shearforce. Rockin’.

Another side note: You can now watch every episode of South Park ever online, including the “Smug Cloud” episode I referenced above. Enjoy.

This is another incremental step toward our goal of creating a seamless, one-stop site where members of our community can talk to us and to each other. I invite you to check them out and let us know what you think. I’m particularly interested in any comments you might have about the forum’s structure. Are there sections you’d like us to add?

Let’s see some chatter out there!

A while back, Ryan and I sat down and worked out a draft budget for phase one of the project. Essentially we were trying to figure out how much cash we would need to design, print and sell our first 300 shirts*. The good news was that we both felt the assumptions were reasonable, and having a budget made the whole enterprise seem more substantial. At our day jobs, the motivation comes from outside, but with Greater>Than we have to find ways to keep ourselves motivated. Simply having a plan goes a long way, even (maybe especially) when it illuminates the obstacles in our path. In this case, that’s exactly what it did, as we simply didn’t have the money our budget called for.

We had taken in some outside investment, if you’ll recall, but mostly we’re trying to bootstrap this operation. That meant that we needed some patience. I knew I could save the remainder of the money we needed, but it was going to take a little while. I didn’t know exactly how long, mostly because there were a couple of potential cash injections on the horizon that could shorten the timeline. First, I was looking for a new day job, and knew from a former coworker that I could cash out unused vacation if and when I left the old one. Also, I was in line for a bonus of indeterminate size.

My search for a new job went great once I got serious about it, and I’m really happy with the result. I ended up moving from a big software company headquartered in the pacific northwest to a big wireless company headquartered in the pacific northwest. I’m making a little more money and have a better commute, but the most significant differences are that I’m in a much better position to make a difference for customers, and that I’m not dreading going in to work any more.

In the short term, finding, getting and transitioning into my new day job took up a lot of my attention and I wasn’t able to make much time for G>T (Ryan’s employment is a bit unsettled at time of writing as well). Also, it means that I don’t work with Ryan any more, so we actually have to make an effort to get together to talk about our company. On the other hand, I cashed out my vacation and got the bonus I was waiting for (probably less than I would have gotten if I had stayed, but still decent). All in all, I think this works out to good news for Greater>Than, but in the midst of all this we lost some momentum.

One of the key benefits to our current operating strategy is that we have basically no overhead. Ryan and I can take the time we need and do things the way we want to without any financial pressure. So a break in the action isn’t a big deal. Psychologically, though, it helps to feel like we’re on a roll. Inevitably, obstacles present themselves, and it’s a lot easier to jump over a hurdle if you’re already running. If you’ve seen a 110 meter high-hurdles race, you’ll know that at a certain speed jumping over the hurdle is actually the path of least resistance.

We’re starting to get some of that momentum back. We’ve been in contact with more designers, and I still get pumped every time I get to tell an artist about what we’re trying to do here. Every single person I talk to has their own unique take on the concept, and since the whole point of this enterprise is to get people to engage creatively, that is tremendously encouraging. Plus, we’re just about where we need to be financially to start setting up our print shop, which will be a huge step forward for us on a lot of fronts. I love the internet, but there’s nothing like actually building something you can touch. We’ll be documenting that process quite thoroughly, believe me.

So, that’s where we are today. As always, we are committed to the idea that great ideas can come from anywhere, so if you have any suggestions or advice for us, contact us or leave a comment below.

*The 300 figure is a little bit arbitrary, but we thought 6 different designs seemed like a decent variety, and selling 50 shirts per design seemed like an aggressive but achievable initial goal.

I’ve been searching for something a little more descriptive of what I want my role in the company to be. Ideally, it should be fairly general, as I plan to have a presence in many of our operations, even long term. But, although I am and will continue to be an owner/leader, I never want to position myself as a “boss”. I’m not “bossy”.

So here’s my draft title: Chief Creativity Enabler

I like it because it clearly shows that our priority as a company is to give people an outlet to do the sort of work that they want to do. We are a platform for creative work, and my job as a leader is to make sure that the platform is as functional as possible. Of course, not all of my work is going to contribute directly to enabling the creativity of other people. I’m thinking here about development or sales activities, the more “businessy” stuff I have to do to make the company successful. I think the title covers this side of my role as well, reminding everyone (including especially myself) that building the business is necessary because it will allow us to enable more creativity, and not the other way around.

What do you think? Over-explained and hopelessly cheesy? Heavy handed compared to your more succinct idea? The perfect title for such a visionary genius? Let me know (or let me have it) in the comments.

Update: After some great discussion in the comments (thanks Sarah!), I’ve decided to revise my title. I think the revision still encompass the points above, but it adds an extra dimension. Here it is: Chief Creativity Catalyst. A catalyst assists in a chemical reaction by speeding it up or making it happen more efficiently, but the reaction can happen without it. I think that’s an apt metaphor, since one of our base assumptions is that there is a lot of latent creativity out there. We want to help people discover or re-awaken their creative sides, but the call to create is innate.