As part of our mission to be a bridge to better brands, we are proud to announce the second annual Sustainable Brands Innovation Open -- an early stage business competition focused on connecting the existing global brands and socially responsible investor communities to the most innovative new product and service solutions being brought to market by today’s social and eco-entrepreneurs.
Now in its 2nd year!
Sustainable Brands Innovation Open (SB Innovation Open) is not another Clean Tech event. This new venture showcase is focused on identifying and promoting innovative new consumer brands, AND ventures that support existing corporations in achieving their sustainable brand innovation goals.
50 highly innovative entrepreneurial teams, proposing a wide range of consumer brand and B2B solutions, submitted to this year's Innovation Open. The culminating event where the winner will be selected will be held June 7th from 2:00-4:30pm in the Steinbeck Auditorium at the Monterey Conference Center in Monterey, CA, just before the Sustainable Brands '10 opening night program.
All SB'10 registered attendees, as well as SLM Associate Members are welcome and encouraged to attend, vote and support these budding sustainable brand entrepreneurs. Accredited investors interested in supporting dynamic new sustainable business ideas are also encouraged to attend, and are invited to participate as our guest. To apply for a complimentary pass, please email your credentials to nick@sustainablelifemedia.com and we will be happy to host you for the Innovation Open, as well as the SB'10 opening night program and reception.
Congratulations to the Finalists!
A huge applause from Sustainable Life Media and our judges to all who applied for the Innovation Open this year. Watch this page for more details on this year's finalists which are:
1. BioLite
2. Blue Avocado
3. Cityscape Farms
4. Gaia Metrics
5. KOR Water
6. Myoo Create
7. Open Data Registry
8. Source4Style
9. The Clarity Project
10. Tremont Electric
11. ZippGo
The SBIO Judges
This year's SB Innovation Open judges include: Steve Bishop, Sustainability Practice Lead, IDEO, Boyd Cohen, Serial Social Entrepreneur Jonathan Greenblatt, Co-Founder, Ethos Water, Faculty, Social Entrepreneurship at UCLA Anderson and Operating Partner, Satori Capital, R. Paul Herman, Founder, HIP Investor, Anya Kamenetz, Staff Writer, Fast Company, Lorrie Vogel, General Manager, Considered Design, Nike, Stuart Rudick Founding Partner, Mindful Investors, KoAnn Vikoren Skrzyniarz, Founder/CEO, Sustainable Life Media, Peter Salmon, Director, Fische Consulting and Andrew Winston, Author, "Green to Gold" and "Recovering Green".
Hosted by MC Jonathan Greenblatt, Founder of Ethos Water, eleven SBIO finalists will pitch off for the winning votes from our panel of judges and the audience. In addition, SBIO attendees will enjoy inspirational remarks from Neil Grimmer, Chief Innovation Officer and Co-founder of the Nest Collective. Prior to Nest, Neil served as VP of Strategy and Innovation at Clif Bar & Co., and before that, as a senior designer at IDEO. Neil will speak briefly about his experience as a sustainable brand entrepreneur, and provide some advice for others interested in launching their own sustainable brand.
The Finalists' Profiles
BioLite
(www.BioLiteStove.com)
Founders: Jonathan Cedar - Alec Drummond
3 billion people rely on wood and solid biomass fires each day for their cooking, causing more than 1.5 million smoke related deaths every year and exacerbating climate change through black carbon emissions. BioLite, an early stage technology development company, has created an affordable, user-friendly cookstove that addresses these problems by slashing both toxic smoke and black carbon emissions by 95%. Leveraging recent advances in thermoelectric technology, the BioLite stove harnesses waste heat from the fire to produce electrical power for its clean combustion system. In addition to the health benefits posed by smoke reduction, the stove also reduces family fuel expenditures by 50% and provides off-the-grid users with power for charging cellphones, lights, and other devices. Our product has been successfully tested in both India and Central America and we are currently working to establish larger scale pilot programs and strategic relationships to support our commercialization. Download the business summary.
BlueAvocado
(www.BlueAvocado.com)
Founders: Amy George - Melissa Nathan - Paige Davis
BlueAvocado™ is a mission-driven, lifestyle products company that makes it EASY to DO GOOD and GET IT DONE ™. A women-owned business started in November 2009, BlueAvocado offers lifestyle products that inspire people to easily reduce their environmental impact, look good and have fun doing it. The gro-pak(TM) reusable shopping system (which helps to eliminate 1,000 plastic bags annually), Lunch Tote, and Big Chil are just a few members of the BlueAvocado family of reusable and collapsible products that deliver value, avoid waste and invite people to take the first step on the green journey. After its first year of operation, BlueAvocado is available in more than 600 retailers throughout US and Canada including: Sur La Table, Whole Foods, The Container Store, Amazon, and Home Shopping Network. BlueAvocado customers have helped avoid 20 million plastic bags, more than 1 million pounds of CO2 emissions, and invested in over 32 micro-entrepreneurs via 1% partnership with Kiva.org. BlueAvocado is a C-Corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas. Download the business summary.
Cityscape Farms
(www.cityscapefarms.com)
Founder: Mike Yohay
Cityscape Farms creates urban greenhouse systems for year round production of sustainable and local fresh food. Our method of farming is aquaponics: a closed-loop system that combines aquaculture (fish cultivation) and hydroponics (soilless farming), whereby filtered fish effluent becomes the nutrient feed for the crops. By occupying underutilized sites within the urban landscape, such as rooftops and vacant lots, we seek to transform cities into net food producers, instead of merely consumers. Download the business summary.
Gaia Metrics
(www.gaia-metrics.com)
Founders: Erik Thomsen - John O'Connor
Gaia Metrics is a software and information company that helps customers discover and qualify the financial risk attached to their current environmental and social performance. Download the business summary.
KOR Water
(www.korwater.com)
Founders: J. Eric Barnes - Paul Shustak
KOR Water is a leading provider of “sustainable hydration”, an explosive new market composed of reusable water bottles, filtered water solutions, and water additives that are rapidly taking market share from the $50 billion bottled water market. KOR’s first product, the KOR ONE Hydration Vessel, launched in 2008 to world acclaim and has been featured everywhere from Business Week, The New York Times, Oprah and now Iron Man 2. Our mission is to celebrate and treasure water for the critical role it plays in all life. KOR is bringing design and innovation to create a lifestyle hydration brand that inspires and motivates consumers toward sustainable practices. Through our “Thirst for Giving” program, we embed cause and awareness of critical water issues throughout our products, consumer advocacy and marketing. Download the business summary.
Myoo Create
(www.myoocreate.com)
Founders: David de Rothschild - Charles O’Malley
Myoo Create is an online community that generates innovative ideas and solutions to organizations' social and environmental problems through prize driven challenges. Our competitions are an effective way for organizations to build their sustainability story and brand reputation and to solve genuine sustainability issues. We believe that innovation is enhanced through diversity and through collaboration – on the principle that “nobody is as smart as everybody”. Therefore our aim is to build a diverse community (kuh-Myoo-ni-tee) of inventors, designers, entrepreneurs, scientists and other creative individuals who share a passion for solving social and environmental issues. Download the business summary.
Open Data Registry
(www.opendataregistry.com)
Founders: Jeff Stein - Gil Friend
The Internet Product Code (IPC) innovates upon the identification protocol behind the barcode, the Universal Product Code (UPC), by embedding environmental and product life cycle semantics within web-based unique identifiers (URLs). Our patent-pending method for anonymous identification makes it safe for businesses to use the World Wide Web to share raw data for calculations, automation and collaboration while protecting proprietary information about the processes from which those data were measured. Internet Product Codes enable automation of green accounting and evaluation of compliance to standards, helping businesses reduce these costs by several orders of magnitude. IPCs also help businesses collaborate with their stakeholders to discover "unknown unknowns" that can reveal new opportunities for cost savings and innovation. Download the business summary.
Source4Style.com
(www.Source4Style.com)
Founders: Summer Rayne Oakes - Benita Singh
Source4Style is a business to business (B2B) online marketplace that allows designers and retail sourcing specialists to search, compare and purchase more sustainable materials from a network of global suppliers. Our mission is to make sustainable design possible by creating the world’s most innovative online marketing platform for designers and suppliers to showcase, connect and transact. Download the business summary.
The Clarity Project
(www.the-clarity-project.com)
Founders: Shane Rogers - Rachel Lichte - Jesse Finfrock
The Clarity Project is a fine jewelry social enterprise committed to improving the quality of life for miners and their families. We source only fair diamonds, gems, and precious metals, and invest all of our net profits back into mining communities. Download the business summary.
Tremont Electric
(www.nPowerPEG.com)
Founder: Aaron LeMieux
Tremont Electric is a sustainable company that is dedicated to providing renewable energy to consumers around the world through a revolutionary technology called nPower®. nPower’s® unique method of generating environmentally friendly electricity positions Tremont Electric as the technology leader in kinetic energy harvesting. nPower® technology is scalable and provides a range of product opportunities from small, implantable biomedical generators, to human-motion powered generators, to large commercial scale Wave Energy Converters. nPower® is not just a device-making technology, it is an industry-making technology. Download the business summary.
Zippgo
(www.zippgo.com)
Founder: Ash Sud
ZippGo rents and delivers a zero waste moving box solution for residential and office moves. Our sustainable pack and move solution consists of reusable moving boxes made from 100% recycled plastic, a custom made reusable and recyclable moving dolly, and sustainable packing supplies made from recycled post consumer paper. ZippGo delivers the boxes to clients on biodiesel powered delivery trucks, the client packs and moves their belongings, and ZippGo picks up the boxes from the client’s new location at their convenience. Unlike traditional cardboard moving boxes, ZippGo boxes can each be reused more than 500 times, come pre-assembled, don't require tape, are crush proof, tear proof, and water proof. Download the business summary.
