Pictured from left to right: State Senator Michael Moore, State Rep. Harold Naughton’s chief of staff Susan Templeton, Nicole Goldman, owner/operator of ‘g’ Green Design Center corporate headquarters, John Tehan, franchise owner of the Northborough location (that’s me!), Northborough Selectperson Fran Bakstran, and Kate Donaghue, State Democratic Party Committee member from Westboro. Looking on in the background is my beautiful daughter, Jillian.
Our mission at ‘g’ Green Design Center is to provide you with everything needed to create green, sustainable environments that are both beautiful and responsible to our earth. Whether you’re building a new space or renovating an existing one, we have environmentally friendly choices to help our customers create beautiful and unique interiors that are healthier for the occupants and better for the planet.
Green is not a trend – it’s an acknowledgement of our responsibility to limit our impact on the earth or risk a process of deterioration that threatens our ability to survive on the planet. Green is not a threat, it’s a way of life.
Currently, our buildings contribute the majority of pollution and deleterious chemicals that produce global warming, deplete our natural resources as well as compromise our health through toxic materials and dangerous chemicals. At ‘g’ our intention is to provide materials and products that reduce or erase this impact on our daily lives, as well as giving you the knowledge and ability to implement new practices that will become a way of life now and into the future.
Here’s a few snaps of our product line:
Renewably made products – bamboo bowls, utensils, towels and pot holders, stainless steel water bottles and decorative shopping bags, and more…
Flooring samples from Eco Timber – bamboo flooring, and exotic South American woods harvested sustainably from FSC Certified forests.
A variety of eco-friendly paints and stains from AFM Safecoat, Bio-Shield, and Old Fashioned Milk Paint. You can learn more about our entire product line here: http://www.ggreendesign.com/gr…
Please stop by my store if you’re in the area – or stop by virtually if you’re not nearby! Here’s the details:
‘g’ Green Design Center
290 West Main St.
Northborough, MA 01532
Phone: 508-393-4111
Email: northboro@ggreendesign.com
Web site: http://www.ggreendesign.com and http://www.ggreendesign.com/no…
I’ll leave you with just a few more pictures – thanks for reading!
Discussing the store with State Rep. Carolyn Dykema
The Proclamation from the State House
Jillian mugging for the camera
It was a fun event yesterday! This is the only event that I have attended where a DSC member was invited to take part in a ribbon cutting. It must be my “street cred” from BMG that got me in there! John’s picture are focusing on highlighting his store and products, but I want to be sure that people know that it ws a very well attended event.
Your new venture looks great. I wish you every success.
Remember me for your next home renovation project! đŸ˜‰
Yes, it was very well attended, but I didn’t get releases for photos from anyone so I thought it best to just publish the photos that showed the products and the public people who were there. The first, second and third sales were recorded for posterity, and I have lots of other pictures to remember it by…
No problem of course with my picture, but LOL for including me in “Public People” !!!
Will you be in business in one year? Green is cool, but can you make money at the retail level selling green. How about a quarterly report back to BMG on your experience? A positive experience may inspire more of these types of shops.
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p>I have my doubts!
…and I’ll keep a positive attitude – we’ll see what the future brings!
and see if it meets your needs?
Good luck.
Make sure to mention your BMG handle – I’d love to show off the store!
report back and tell us that you’re just barely hanging on by a thread, without mentioning the massive profit stored in the back room full in the form of gold coins. There’s no sense in inviting competition to your trade, is there?
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p>JohnT001 going for a sustainable swim in the back room of his store, 1/1/2010
I’d be happy if I could have the full head of hair! Thanks for the well wishes!
I believe we are a generation away from seeing all this green stuff actually work. Our kids get it, but we don’t. At least not enough of us. Perhaps a test is in order. Count the # of gas guzzling SUVs in he lot and report back to us.
…and several other hybrids were parked there!
and it’s quite difficult to do it more often than that.
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p>People can change their habits every single day, and they certainly don’t have to make a complete change in that one day.
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p>What you’re not getting is that things don’t have to be feast or famine when it comes to “green”. Changing for the better and making an effort doesn’t require moving into a cave. Make a single improvement in your lifestyle, and make that change just “most” of the time. When you get comfortable, make another single change. Even if you drive an SUV, using milk paint instead of high VOC latex is an improvement and worth doing. Even if you live in a 3500 square foot single family house in the suburbs, replacing your damaged flooring with sustainable bamboo is still an improvement. Even if you’ve got three 32 bulb chandeliers in your two story entryway to your McMansion, using CFL bulbs instead of incandescent is better.
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p>Hey JohnT001: what sorts of products do you sell to help people reduce their consumption of electricity, heating oil, and natural gas? Methinks that this is a real opportunity, so long as you’re willing to help people learn how to get it done…
What I do get is that we have been down this road before. Thirty years ago we lived thru the Carter administration and lines at the gas pumps. Weather stripping doors and windows became the norm for a realively short period. There was even a tax credit in MA for such expenses. I hope the gentleman’s business thrives. My guess is that unless all you BMG’ers visit him three times a week, he will fail. I hope I am wrong. It is not a business I would invest in. Again, I hope I am wrong. Good luck to whoever you are.
Do you remember the solar hot water collector on the White House roof? Reagan took that down – had we followed Carter’s advice, we would’t be in the boat we find ourselves in today.
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p>When heating oil goes to $5 per gallon, watch for how many folks are suddenly more interested in conservation!
Carter did good things? Explain!
explain. That little text under the heading, beginning with “Do you remember…”? That’s an explanation.
Carter was a good President and Reagan did suck. You’ve changed my mind. Thanks.
He was senile before he even took office, and acted as little more than a figurehead for 8 years. The people around him – who really ran the government for those 8 years – they sucked! From illegally selling arms to Iran so they could fund wars in Central America in contravention of US law, to deregulating the savings and loan industry causing massive expenditures from the government as their cronies plundered the banking system, they sucked big-time. It’s a shame you have such a myopic view of history…
…we would not be in the mess we are in right now. Carter had us on the road to energy independence, through a combination of conservation and renewable technology, like the solar hot water collector on the White House roof. If you’re too young to remember the Carter administration, you might want to go do some research – the Iran hostage crisis wasn’t the only thing that happened during those four years.
I not only remember the Iranian hostage crisis, but double digit interest rates occurred under Jimmy C. All Reagan did was bring home Carter’s hostages and end the Cold War. I do, however, agree with you that Carter was a great President except for the fact that Reagan screwed up all his initiaties. Thanks for the history lesson and good luck with the store. Perhaps an address and phone # would be helpful in case I run out of light bulbs.
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p>Is it too late to carve Carter’s likeness into Mt. Rushmore or perhaps a monument similar to the Lincoln Memorial?
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p>Did I forget to mention runaway inflation under Carter’s watch?
When you ask for them in the comments, it says one thing: you didn’t bother to read the diary, and you’re just here to be a pain in the ass. Have a nice day…
Is that anyway to treat a customer?
…any way to treat people in general? Re-read your comments above – you were argumentative throughout, baiting people and spoiling for a fight. When it became clear that you hadn’t even bothered to read the post you were replying to, I called you on it. There are better ways to win friends and influence people than what you’ve displayed in this thread.
I will stop by and introduce myself.
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p>Any business startup (any industry) faces the following statistic: 2/3rd’s of them will fail in the first 36 months, mainly due to 2 reasons: the capital runs out (so watching your burn rate is critical) and 2) people just don’t realize the amount of work it takes to get a business going. Having said that, it’s more accurate to say that there’s no pattern to the success or failure of a business. It could very well be that the BMG crowd may be valuable, even critical for a period of time as the business journeys toward success and becoming established. A certain amount of luck is involved.
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p>[snark] Has John heard of This Old House? [/snark]
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p>Salespeople make the best entrepreneurs. They know how to network, and frequently, they start their businesses because of the failures of their previous employers (the, “I can do better than this” motivation). They also have a fat rolodex, and that, I’ve found, makes a huge difference.
You’re just trolling.
…as well as instant-on water heaters and other energy saving devices and tips and tricks. We also advise folks on how to do solar hot water and solar electricity, passing them off to qualified contractors who can do that type of work. The opportunity is certainly there, and we’ll do our best to educate our customers!
make sure you, and your customers, understand color temperature. They don’t have to know the math of color temperature, of course.
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p>Folks get frustrated with their CFLs for a number of reasons, all avoidable:
* They don’t fit the fixture. Measure twice, buy bulbs once.
* They’re unhappy with the color (see above).
* Generic CFLs don’t dim or three-way (CFLs that do are available).
* They don’t perform well in very cold (New England winter outdoor) temps, although I suspect specialty bulbs do.
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p>Making sure customers get the right CFL takes a few extra minutes, but it’s key to keeping customers happy — and it’s something that Home Depot, Lowe’s, Target, and Wal*Mart will never do right, so it’s an opportunity to gain an edge.
The dimmable CFLs I tried didn’t do it well at all. Until they get that straightened out, a couple of my fixtures are gong to keep wearing incandescents.
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p>I use regular CFLs in my outside fixtures. They don’t light up at full intensity when I flick the switch, but they do light up, and once they warm up, they seem to be as bright in winter as in summer.
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p>A suggestion: LED Xmas light strings. I have a couple, and they are great.
You need to crank them all the way up, let them warm up, and then dim, so folks have a tough time adjusting to that. Using incandescents on a low setting cuts way down on your usage anyhow – a 60 watt bulb at 1/4 power is only using 15 watts. But if you’re always using them on the highest setting, it’s worth using the dimmable CFL bulb.
in China home of mobile execution and organ extraction vans for dissidents of the political correctness that is the Chinese politically accepted party so fuck you and your green energy saving bullshit as I personally spent 22 years in the business.
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and before i get to it, best of luck sir with your new operation. Perhaps because I’m from “the dark side” I have almost all lights in my home on dimmers. I just somehow enjoy a shadowy environment, makes me comfortable. I’ve been told CFLs don’t dim well and that’s why I haven’t gone down that road. My question is, when I’ve dimmed my 60 watt down to a few candles worth of brightness, am I approaching the power use of a CFL? Anybody know?
Answer already given. Anyway, as a rabid capitalist and believer in “enlightened” self interest, I like the whole idea of your establishment. Please don’t force me to be green with laws and regulations, but make it easy for me to choose to be so. Let me find stores such as yours, which can answer my questions and provide me with alternatives. As a result, you reap the well deserved profits from providing me with those products and services. That’s the way some of us want it to work.
The answer is a bit more complicated than JohnT001 suggests. Old dimmers used to use a resistor to dim… so the dimmer switch itself got really warm. Of course, that heat is energy used, but for 100% heat instead of 99% heat/1% light.
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p>However, modern dimmers are solid state, and the way they work is that they actually just flicker the on/off setting really really fast… so if it’s dimmed at 50% you’re using 50% + epsilon* of electricity. Odds are high your dimmer is a modern one. It’s also worth noting that while turning bulbs on and off does put wear on the filament, the dimmer turns off and on so fast that there’s little or no impact on the filament because it’s temperature isn’t changing very much during the cycle.
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p>epsilon is “mathy” for strictly greater than zero, but really stinkin’ small.
We have a piece of track lighting where we demo the bulbs so that people get the light they want.
Congrats John!
without thinking of this:
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p>We’re gonna insulate, and then we’re gonna de-lamp, and then we’re gonna low-flow, and then we’re gonna reduce, we’ll reuse, we’ll recycle, we’ll re-purpose…. YEAHHHH!
I’m only a few towns over to the west, so I’ll take a ride by soon and say hi. Hope you do well! Place looks great!
Terrific pictures too. And some good suggestions in the comments đŸ™‚
John, You are just the guy to get this rolling. I wish you well in this endeavor. I’m headed over to the ggreen website now to look for instant on (tankless) water heaters. I’ll be in touch – good luck.
I have an instant-on water heater from one of our dealers, Stiebel Eltron – it’s great! Not only do you save money by heating water only when you need it, but in new construction, you save on copper pipe, since you only need a cold water line going to your sink – you just split the feed with a “T” fitting, sending one side to the heater and then to the hot water faucet and the other side directly to the cold water faucet.
I’m thinking the Stiebel Eltron was right for my application as well (an outdoor shower). BTW, There is a little bit of copper required for the flow of the amps. Soon I will know exactly what it costs to take a long hot shower: 9.6kW x 0.07351 $/kWh x 1hr/60min x 100cents/$ = 1 cent/minute.
well, if you don’t have a well that is. In my town, water+sewer is about $11.00 per 100 cubic feet (750 gals).
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p>If you’ve got a 2 gpm shower, then you’re also using 2 x $11.00/750 to pay for the water: that’s an extra 3 cents/minute.
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p>In this example, the total cost: 4 cents/minute variable cost, plus the cost of installation and maintenance.
may the relationship between the two be fantastic!
Come on out and see the store!
who has already done the bulk of a super-green house renovation but has a little still ahead of her.
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p>Good luck!