Green Scene

BY PHIL HAGEN

Colorado's GreenSpot

Here's a problem for an entrepreneur who's ahead of the curve: having to wait for customers to catch up.

Christopher Jacobson's bright business idea is GreenSpot, an "eco-friendly building and living materials center" that he opened a year ago in Carbondale, Colorado. With the green movement all the consumer rage, the energy crisis on every politician's lips and LEED the biggest buzzword in the building industry, the time certainly seems right for a one-stop sustainability shop for designers, builders and homeowners. Especially in a state with so many trees to hug.

And yet Jacobson's biggest surprise during the launch of what he hopes someday will be a nationwide chain of GreenSpots is that the professionals — unlike most residents — were on a different arc altogether. "I was really surprised that there was still such a huge learning curve for architects," says the longtime high-end contractor who has worked in New York, California and Colorado. "We had ads that said, 'We're your premier source for FSC wood,' only to realize that half the architects in town didn't know what that is. It's like, How did I miss that?"

In fact, when Jacobson, the company's CEO and chairman, met with the most cutting-edge design firm in nearby Aspen, "I would say 70 to 90 percent of the products that we brought out were new to them." When the area's largest firm sent about 15 associates for a store walkthrough, "They said, 'How come we don't know about this?' And that's just phenomenal to me."

While some of the inventory (including the sustainably harvested wood stamped by the Forest Stewardship Council) may not have moved off the 30,000-square-foot lot as fast as Jacobson would have liked, the activity in GreenSpot's 4,000-square-foot showroom has proved promising enough for him to be in a celebratory mood for the anniversary. "The support we've gotten as far as people's emotional reaction has been really great," he says. "Everybody is appreciative that we're here. They're excited that we're filling that niche."

What Jacobson has created is a "living lab" where professionals and amateurs alike can learn, plan and figure out things like what roofing materials might get LEED credit or how that ski chalet remodel can be formaldehyde-free. GreenSpot offers the "full spectrum" of sustainable materials and products needed to complete, transform and maintain a home or building — from insulated concrete forms to nontoxic paints. Someday soon he hopes to add the finishing touch to his idea: giving the showroom a bohemian bookstore/café feel, making it the spot where clients can saturate themselves in the green spirit while they read books, surf the Net and sip free espresso.

Customers can order from the new Web store or out of catalogs, too, but Jacobson encourages the uninitiated to spend some time in the two-level store "because architecture is such a material-based art, the touch and feel of products are important." And awareness of what exists — or what is coming soon — in the ever-expanding green marketplace is obviously important. Once a designer discovers PaperStone countertops or Marmoleum flooring, one of the five GreenSpot employees can provide safety data sheets, performance information, LEED ratings and photos of a product installed in actual built environments. Beyond that, GreenSpot offers plan reviews, consulting and on-site delivery via its biodiesel-fueled trucks, with installation a possible service in the near future.

GreenSpot is one of a few building-materials suppliers — if not the only one, Jacobson says — attempting to be thoroughly green, and he wants to continue driving his concept toward being the lumberyard for the next generation. "How can we retool this so that … a lot of technological advances that are available to us in the business sector, how can we get those into play? That's a lot of our agenda for the next several months."

Ultimately, in the next five to seven years, Jacobson would like to open 100 GreenSpots in locations similar to the first one — resort areas with communities that have a commitment to the environment, and where the scale and building activity would allow stores to have the most impact. Achieving a critical mass of stores would lead to more purchasing power and a larger inventory, which in turn would promote more competition and, in the end, more options and lower prices for green-minded architects and designers.

But that requires another thing a prescient entrepreneur can't go too far without: capital investment. "It's been a tough climate for that," Jacobson says. "We're just trying to keep everybody going and keep ourselves happy on our limited capital. Our short-term fantasy is to make it past the one-year mark and continue to generate enough revenue to keep ourselves on the map."

GreenSpot, 792 Highway 133, Carbondale, CO 81623; (970) 963-4206 or www.greenspot.com.