What do you mean, "Hippies aren't big shoppers?"

So I was doing research for tomorrow's SFGate.com post on daily deals websites (yes, I'm still blogging semi-regularly over there), and I ran across a three-year-old blog post detailing the environmentally conscious deal a day sites out there. Would you like to know what they're up to?

EcoSteal, which promised to save the planet "one steal at a time," is busy restructuring their business model.

Guffly --"If eco-friendly & style made a lovechild, they'd call it Guffly. A new product every weekday!" -- quietly stopped updating its Twitter feed nearly a year ago; its site is MIA.

Ecobunga is now a Facebook-only concern.

I checked some other green deals sites: Go Green Deals has not been updated since January of this year, Green Deals Daily has a terse shut-down message, the Big Green Deal is the Big Green 404 and Hip Green Deals went dark in December 2009. And in a little bit of Rage Diaries history, Ideal Bite -- which used to be a source for some of my links -- went dark in 2009 and the domain is now for sale.

(Note that Ideal Bite is one exception to the success that Bob Pittman's had building businesses in the newsletter space; this is possibly because, unlike Thrillist, Daily Candy or Tasting Table audiences, the Ideal Bite audience may not have been avid shoppers.)

Naturally, I wanted to know why the green deals market collapsed. Here are my theories, in no particular order:

1. The recession happened and many of the people who loved feeling good about buying green decided they loved not being broke a whole lot more -- and curbed their "ethical" spending practices.

2. Hippies are not exactly impulse shoppers.

3. The investor money went to social networking and social commerce sites -- which is now we now see "do gooder" social shopping sites like Ethical Deal, Green Box Top, Blissmo and Dealgooder.

I haven't seen a lot of press looking at this. I am happy to be the press to look at this story (hint, hint, any business editors out there looking for an enterprise reporter with a flair for features). Or, you know, I could just blog my theories until they become the accepted wisdom per search engine results.

In the meantime, I'll be over here quietly persisting in reducing, reusing, recycling --and seeing where eco- and e-commerce go next.

Comments

[Glenn Fleishman]

You miss co-opted. When Safeway started its horrible "O" brand, which reminds me of Oprah and "O face," I knew that organics had a hard battle ahead. A lot of green buyers are easily pleased. And the mainstream adoption of green, sustainable, and organic language co-opts the desire for people to seek out honest versions of the same. (In some cases, the mainstream thing is the honest thing, too.)

But don't you recall how Lullulemon's "our shirts have sustaining seaweed" claim was just entirely false? And it seemingly had no impact whatsoever on its success.

[Polly]

As I've become a more eco-savvy shopper, I feel like I've become harder to market to. I buy a lot more in thrift shops--with clothing in particular, it's like you can buy really expensive organic stuff, or you can buy really cheap used stuff. Switching to reusable cloth hankies and napkins means I buy less disposables, even eco-friendly recycled disposables. I make more of my own food, which means I buy less processed food, and I buy from the bulk bins to reduce packaging, so coupons aren't that useful, etc., etc.

I think maybe there's a moment when people first decide to go green where they just swap in eco-friendly versions of their old products, and that may be a good time to market to them. But I think that the more you do it, the more you alter your buying habits in a way that makes you harder to reach.

[Shop Louis Vuitton]

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