As did many of his contemporaries in the 1960s and early 1970s, John Schaeffer, founder of Real Goods, experimented with an alternative lifestyle. After protracted exposure to nearly every strand of the lunatic fringe, he graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1971 and moved to a commune called “Rainbow” outside of Boonville, California. There, in an isolated 290-acre mountain community, John pursued a picturesque life of enlightened self-sufficiency.
Despite the idyllic surroundings, John soon found that certain key elements of life were missing. After several years of reading bedtime stories to his children by the flickering light of a kerosene lamp, John began to squint. He grew tired of melted ice cream and lukewarm beer. He began to miss the creature comforts his family was lacking due to their “off-the-grid” lifestyle. He yearned for just a tiny amount of energy to strike a balance between the lifestyle he had grown up with and complete deprivation. In other words, John came to the realization that self-sufficiency was much more appealing as a concept than a reality.
Then he discovered 12-volt power. John hooked up an extra battery to his car that he charged while commuting to work, with just enough juice to power lights, a radio, and the occasional television broadcast. Despite his departure from a pure ascetic lifestyle, each and every time that Saturday Night Live aired, John’s home became the most popular place on the commune. Eventually, when the 12-hour community work days began to take their toll, John took a job as a computer operator in Ukiah, some 35 twisty miles from Boonville.
Once the word got out that John would be making the trek over the mountain to the “big city” daily, he became a one-man pick-up and delivery service, procuring the wood stoves, fertilizer, chicken wire, bone meal, gardening seeds, tools, and supplies needed for the commune. As a conscientious and naturally frugal person, John spent hours scrutinizing the hardware stores and home centers of Ukiah, searching for the best deals on the real goods needed for the communards’ close-to-the-earth lifestyle.
One day, while driving his VW bug back to the commune after a particularly vexing shopping trip, a thought occurred to John. “Wouldn’t it be great,” he mused, “if there was one store that sold all the products needed for independent, off-the-grid living, and sold them at fair prices?” The idea of Real Goods was born. The company thrived opening up retail stores and eventually morphed into a mail-order company.
Real Goods in the New Millennium
From its humble beginnings in 1978, Real Goods became a Real Business, with Real Employees serving Real Customers. In the 1990s, Real Goods pioneered the “direct public offering” process, whereby it raised investment capital from its customers without the need for investment bankers or other financial middlemen. Before the Internet had really caught on, Real Goods was selling stock electronically and allowing its customers to print virtual stock certificates in the privacy of their own homes. The company now can lay claim to the title of the Oldest and Largest catalog firm devoted to the sale and service of renewable energy products in the world. Real Goods, now Gaiam Real Goods since its January 2001 merger with Gaiam, Inc., of Colorado, is still devoted to the same principles that guided its founding—quality, innovative, well-made products for fair prices, and unsurpassed customer service with courtesy and dignity.
Early on, John managed to turn his personal commitment to right livelihood into company policy, pioneering the concept of a socially conscious and environmentally responsible business. The company consistently has been honored and awarded for its ethical and environmental business standards. Plaudits include Corporate Conscience Awards (from the Council on Economic Priorities); inclusion in Inc. magazine’s 1993 list of America’s 500 Fastest- Growing Companies; three consecutive Robert Rodale Awards for Environmental Education; Northern California Small Business of the Year Winner for 1994; finalist for Entrepreneur of the year two years running; news coverage in Time, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, and Mother Earth News; numerous TV appearances, countless Japanese magazines; and many thick scrapbooks full of press clippings.
Five Principles to Live By
Gaiam Real Goods is considered newsworthy not because our methods reflect the latest trends in corporate or business-school thinking, but because we unwittingly have helped to birth an astonishingly healthy “baby”—an ethical corporate culture based on environmental and social responsibility. Led by a certain naiveté and affection for simplicity, Gaiam Real Goods has discovered some simple principles that, by comparison to the “straight” business world, are wildly innovative. This has not been the work of commercial gurus or public relations mavens, but rather the result of realizing that business need not be so complicated that the average person cannot understand its workings. Our business is built around five simple principles.
Principle #1: This Is a Business
A business is, first and foremost, a financial institution. You can have the most noble social mission on the planet, but if you can’t maintain financial viability, you cease to exist. And so does your mission. The survival instinct is very strong at Gaiam Real Goods, and that reality governs many decisions. To say it another way, you can’t be truly sustainable if your business isn’t economically sustainable (read profitable). To ensure the continued flourishing of our mission, we pursue profitability through our catalogs, retail store, residential solar sales and installation business, internet presence, and our design and consulting business. We learned long ago that nonprofits aren’t driven by profit. That’s why we spun off the Solar Living Institute in 1998. The SLI furthers the original educational mission of Real Goods without the constraints of the profit motive. Both organizations have a symbiotic relationship and help each other out immensely but there are no financial or legal ties between them.
Principle #2: Know Your Stuff
Knowledge seldom turns a profit, yet our social and environmental missions cannot be achieved without it. The independent lifestyle we advocate relies largely on technologies that often require a high degree of understanding, and a level of interaction that has been largely forgotten during our nation’s half-century binge on cheap power. We aren’t interested in selling things to people that they aren’t well-informed enough about to live with comfortably and happily with. We want people to understand not only what we are selling and how it is used, but how a particular piece of hardware contributes to the larger goal of a sustainable lifestyle. It goes against the grain of mainstream business to give anything away. Even a “loss leader” is designed to suck you into the store to buy other, higher-profit items. At Gaiam Real Goods, knowledge is our most important product, yet we give it away daily, through our catalogs (there’s a lot in there to learn, even if you never buy a thing); through our Solar Living Center (free self-guided and group tours), now run by the nonprofit Solar Living Institute; through free workshops at our Hopland store, and through workshops we support through the SLI’s annual SolFest renewable energy celebration. Our website acts as a launching pad for renewable energy research, leading you to fascinating information on sustainability topics of all kinds. We believe that as our collective knowledge of sustainability principles and renewable energy technology increases, the chance of achieving the Gaiam Real Goods mission increases, too.
Principle #3: Give Folks a Way to Get Involved
Just about all of our employees are also our customers and more than half of them live with solar—many live completely off-the-grid. Our parking lot looks like an advertisement for biodiesel with all the VW diesel vehicles driven by our employees. Our Lifetime Membership program honors our community of customers with financial and educational benefits, and interns and volunteers are welcomed warmly by the SLI staff. Gaiam Real Goods has become a real community, acting in concert toward the common goal of a sustainable future. With the knowledge that the age of oil is likely soon coming to an end, it’s comforting to know that we are all in this together.
Principle #4: Walk the Walk
At Gaiam Real Goods, we conduct our business in a way that is consistent with our social and environmental mission. We use the renewable energy systems we sell, and we sell what works. Our merchandising team makes absolutely sure the merchandise we sell performs as expected, is safe and nontoxic when used as directed, and is made from the highest quality sustainable materials. In 1990, we challenged our customers to help us rid the atmosphere of one billion pounds of CO2 by the year 2000, and we achieved our goal three years ahead of schedule. Again in 2007 we set an ambitious goal with all of Gaiam to offset the production of another one billion pounds of CO2—this time even more quickly. We think we can achieve this new billion pound goal before 2010. Real Goods was recognized by being awarded the Rodale Award, as the business making the most positive contribution to the environment in America, for three years running. We don’t just talk the talk at Gaiam Real Goods, we walk the walk. Come visit us at the Solar Living Center in Hopland, California, and see some of our innovative practices. Fill up your biodiesel vehicle on site, see water pumped from the sun, learn from hydrogen fuel cell demonstrations, and see 150kW of solar powering the site and much more.
Principle #5: Have Fun!
We strongly support the best party of the year for 10,000 of our closest friends every summer in August on the grounds of our Solar Living Center in Hopland. We look forward to the Solar Living Institute’s annual SolFest renewable energy celebration all year. If we’ve learned anything since 1978, it’s that all work and no inspiration makes Jack and Jill a couple of burnt-out zombies. SolFest is our little reminder to take care of ourselves with some good, clean fun, so we’ll be rejuvenated and reinvested in the hard work of creating a sustainable future.
Real Goods Technical Staff
The Real Goods Technical staff are experts at designing, procuring, and installing residential renewable energy systems—both off-the-grid and line intertie systems to your utility. You don’t want your project to be a test bed for unproved technology or experimental system design. You want information, products, and service that are of the highest quality. You want to leave the details to a company with the capability to do the job right the first time. We welcome the opportunity to design and plan entire systems.
Here’s how the Real Goods technical services work:
- To assess your needs, capabilities, limitations, and working budget, we ask you to complete a specially created worksheet (see page xxx [SLS12, pp. 431-432]). The information required includes a list of your energy needs, an inventory of desired appliances, site information, and potential for hydroelectric and wind development. Note that we only need this detailed energy use information for off-the-grid systems.
- A member of our technical staff will determine your wattage requirements, and design an appropriate system with you. Or, for intertie systems, we will determine either how much you want to spend or how much utility power you wish to offset, and then design an appropriate system.
- At this point, we will begin tracking the time we spend in helping you plan the details of your installation. Your personal tech rep will work with you on an unlimited time basis until your system has been completely designed and refined. He/she will order parts and talk you through assembly, assuring you that you get precisely what you need. He will also consult and work with your licensed contractor, if need be. The first hour is free and part of our service. Beyond this initial consultation, time will be billed in 10-minute intervals at the rate of $75 per hour. If the recommended parts and equipment are purchased from Gaiam Real Goods, however, this time will be provided at no charge.
Real Goods has been providing clean, reliable, renewable energy to people all over the planet for 30 years and has provided solar energy systems for over 60,000 homes and businesses in that time. With the creation of our separate residential solar installation division, our catalog renewables technicians now have a tighter focus on off-the-grid residential and farm systems; this specialization means we are better prepared than ever to design either a utility intertie or independent (off-grid) home system that meets your unique needs.
You will leave your Real Goods technical consultation with the information you need to make informed decisions on which technologies are best suited for your particular application. You’ll learn how to utilize proven technologies and techniques to reap the best environmental advantages for the lowest possible cost. And we won’t leave you hanging once your system is installed; our technicians will help you with troubleshooting, ongoing maintenance, and future upgrades.
The Real Goods commitment to custom design, proven technology, and ongoing support has resulted in more than two decades of exceptionally high customer satisfaction.
Real Goods specializes in residential and commercial systems of 100 watts to 100 kilowatts output, including:
- Utility Intertie with Renewable Energy
- Off-the-Grid Renewable Energy Systems Design and Installation (solar, wind, hydro)
- Large-Scale Uninterruptible Back-up Power
- High-Efficiency Appliances
- Biological Waste Treatment Systems
- Power Quality Enhancement
- Whole Systems Integration
- Water Quality and Management
Real Goods technical services and sales for residential and commercial renewable energy systems are available by phone 800-919-2400, from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., Pacific Time, Monday through Friday, and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday. We endeavor to answer technical email within 48 hours, and snail mail (USPS) within one week.