Northeast Wisconsin’s first totally “green” store sustaining itself in downtown Appleton

Story by Cheryl Hentz

The number of people trying to live a greener, more sustainable life is growing each day.

As a result, the first totally green retail store in the New North has managed to sustain itself and recently began its third year of operation in downtown Appleton. A passion many years in the making for owners J.C. and Dianne Paustian, Just Act Natural opened to a stream of delighted shoppers on Earth Day – April 22, 2009 – and the couple have kept the momentum going ever since.

The idea for the store started as a seedling back in 1996 when J.C. worked as a buyer for a small gift shop operated by the Dolphin Research Center in the Florida Keys. It was there that he was surrounded by true environmentalists and began seeing the cause and effect of how humans live and how everything is connected. It didn’t take long before he, too, became an advocate for the environment and our ecosystem. J.C. moved back to his native Wisconsin a couple years later and worked various jobs, but he was never completely satisfied and always maintained his passion for the outdoors.

When J.C. and Dianne married in 2003, they began looking at ways to convert their conventional products into green products, but had trouble finding all things green in one place. Their frustration grew over time, and in 2006 they decided since they couldn’t find what they were looking for all under one roof, other like-minded folks must have the same issue. So why not create such a place?

Turning idea into reality

The Paustians continued working fulltime during the day and growing their family while writing a business plan and laying other groundwork for the retail store at night and on weekends. By early 2009, the dream finally came to fruition.

“I kept hearing from people that you need to find something you’re passionate about in order to be satisfied in life,” J.C. said, adding that he’d always loved the downtown Appleton area, plus he had a desire to have a retail store, so the two dreams somewhat meshed together. “The idea of opening a green shop in downtown Appleton blended nicely and from concept to opening the doors it was almost three years. So it’s not like it was my idea of the month where it faded. It sunk in and settled. It was something I lost sleep over and we went through a lot of obstacles to get to this point.”

One of the first obstacles was getting financing. Paustian said he and his wife were turned down by about 15 different banks, but finally secured a loan necessary to open the doors.

The premise behind the store is to offer all green, eco-friendly products under one roof. They don’t sell food or vitamins or supplements, etc., but they do carry some organic clothing, kitchenware, natural bath and body products and make-up, natural sunscreen and bug repellants made from essential oils, eco-friendly cleaners and laundry soaps, recycled cards and stationery, reusable bags and reusable, stainless steel water bottles, and baby items – including apparel and toys – just to provide a list of examples. Their retail inventory includes much more, and many of their products are made in the U.S.A.

“While some of our baby products are made in China, most of our toys are made from either recycled plastic or sustainably harvested woods in Vermont,” Paustian said. “So the vast majority of our toys are American-made, which is very, very important to a lot of people, especially when it comes to their kids and babies.”

The Paustians spend a lot of time researching products before stocking them, making sure they are genuinely natural rather than “greenwashed” as many companies do. “Greenwashing,” Paustian explained, is the act of companies disingenuously labeling their products as being environmentally friendly or promoting themselves and their practices as environmentally friendly, even though they’re not, just to jump on the “green” bandwagon and gain market share. He proudly noted they only support manufacturers who create their goods in a sustainable and socially responsible manner, using natural, organic, non-toxic or recycled materials. They’re confident the products they sell benefit the well being of their customers’ bodies, homes, community and planet.

Beyond start up

The Earth Day Grand Opening exceeded their expectations, but J.C. said with only two years into the store so far, they have a long way to go yet and his “grand expectations” haven’t yet been met.

“It’s much tougher than we thought it was going to be. Granted, we know the Appleton/Fox Valley area does lean on the conservative side. But at the time I wasn’t too worried about it because the trend was, and continues, to go that way. But, coupled with the bad economy and green products being more expensive – just like organic food is – (this might have been expected.),” he said. “So it’s been very challenging and a tough sell in this particular market.”

The first six months were actually a little easier, J.C. admitted. The store was fresh, new and operating practically on autopilot. But activity tapered off some since then. Still, they’re doing enough business right now to get by and the store is catching on in recognition and popularity.

Besides traditional advertising, Paustian heavily uses Facebook and Twitter, which he said have been successful to a point. They have over 1,000 friends on Facebook so “there’s some degree of success there,” and those are free services that cost the store nothing. Being a member of the downtown business association, Appleton Downtown, Inc., has helped, he said.

“Because they promote the downtown very heavily in a lot of different avenues, I think we’ve been able to latch onto their promotions of downtown,” he said. “It’s still up to us to get people in the store, but at least they’re bringing people downtown, which I think is a huge plus rather than if we were a stand-alone store somewhere else and we had nothing but us.”

From June through October, the farmer’s market in downtown Appleton provides a built-in clientele of some 5,000 people to potentially draw from. Since College Avenue is closed off right in front of their store, they have a captive audience.

“This has been a boon for us each year. The clientele for the farmer’s market is our clientele, as well. So we have very good Saturdays during the Farmer’s Market, but the challenge is keeping them coming back when that’s done in the fall,” he said. Paustian acknowledges the economy has taken a bit of a toll on the spending habits of his regular customers.

“We have people coming in but the ‘per transaction’ amount just isn’t up there where it needs to be for us to be sustainable. So we haven’t really grown in the traditional sense. That’s another part of the challenge.”

Even though they’re still a new business, the Paustians have the same concerns any business has, no matter their size or length of time in business: How do they best invest their advertising dollars? How do they increase foot traffic? How do they engage existing customers to come back more frequently? How do they get those customers to spend more once they’re in the store?

“I also wonder about what that one item is when people come in off the street, that we have to sell that they cannot leave the store without,” J.C. said, adding that they found such an item once already – a T-shirt called “Hope for Japan.”

“It depicted a distressed Japanese flag with the word ‘hope’ in the middle. My wife, who’s a graphic designer, designed them and a friend printed them. All the proceeds went to the Salvation Army. But people stopped dead in their tracks on the street and they’d come in and buy one or two. That was a huge success for us but we didn’t make any money because it was all donated to charity.”

Still maturing market

The Paustians are proud to be one of the few retail establishments in the area totally focused on helping people be healthy and do things good for themselves and the environment, with all the necessities under one roof.

“I don’t know of anyone else in this area doing this. There’s some places in Madison similar to ours and there’s a couple in Milwaukee that are kind of close to what we do, but they’re more fair trade,” Paustian said, adding that he also has no idea how many stores nationally or globally there might be like this. But he said there are many such online stores, mainly because they’re relatively easy and inexpensive to set up since they don’t have the overhead of a physical store.

“The market is still relatively new – like in the last 10 years – for selling this type of goods. The big boon happened in the last five years, probably, with retailers setting up online, but there’s still not a lot of physical storefronts within the country,” he said.

As for the future of Just Act Natural, Paustian said evolution is the key to staying alive.

“We have to continue to evolve – we have no choice, because the big boxes are already creeping in. They’re bringing in some bedding, but the things that are the most evident are the cleaning products and the body care products. If we don’t evolve, we’re not going to last,” he said. “But we have to be careful. We have to find items that no other store, including the big box stores, carries. And that’s the challenge.”

It might be a case where they need to stay away from those types of commodity items, he said, because they’re often cheaper at the other stores.

“I can’t compete with a lot of their products, so I have to continually look to bring in items that people cannot find at places like Shopko or Wal-Mart. That’s the evolution we have to continually move towards,” he said.

Cheryl Hentz is a freelance writer from Oshkosh with more than 25 years experience. Her articles have appeared in several newspapers and magazines and cover topics including business and economic development, minority issues, family pets and animal rights, finance, politics and women’s issues. She can be reached at 920.426.4123 or via email at cheryl.hentz@gmail.com.