Local Spiderweb Effect

At eco-kids Design and development are other words for art and production.  The art of the design is a form of freedom of expression and community brainstorming.  Our entire team is involved with new product development.  It’s a chance to remove yourself from your title and to step out of the daily routine of shipping and receiving, calls with reps and distributors, and constant problem solving that comes with owning your own business.

Designing is an exciting part of our business, watching a product go from our brainstorm board, to design and development, to walking into a store and seeing your “idea” make it to the marketplace. 

At eco-kids, thinking outside the box inspires our designs. Being innovators for others to follow.  Designing products and lines that follow the way we as owners live our lives.  With an environmental responsibility to make a change to the way products are made and packaged.  

Being a company based in Portland Maine, what excites me most is talking about our local contribution.  What I call the local spider web affect.  By keeping our production and manufacturing in the US, and Portland Maine in particular, we can track the effects that our business has on the local community and the state of Maine.  We can take moneys that we funnel into our community and we can start connecting the web of jobs that we help create, jobs that we help sustain, and commerce that we help build.

One example is Tyler, who runs our production.  His generated salary each year is distributed through out the local community.  He pays rent to a local family for the house he rents, he pays his car payment to the local car dealer that he bought his car from, he goes out to eat at locally owned establishments.  Tyler then becomes a cross joint in the local spider web for the community.  The family that owns his house uses that money to put thier daughter through school at University of Southern Maine, the dealership continues to provide sustainable jobs through sales force and maintenance, and the restaurants he chooses continue to employ chefs, waiters, and buying there food seasonally from local farmers around New England.  This local spider web effect is infinite, and amazing.  Someone’s small contribution to local living can help contribute to millions of dollars of local support.  If we start thinking on a scale of where are we spending our money and where does it go from there, we can start seeing the possibility of economical change and being a part of that change.  To put this challenge in our own hands, that is EXCITING!

My prediction for the future is that we get back to the farm, start learning new skills, bringing environmentally sound manufacturing back to the United States.  By taking the best and worst that we learned from the industrial revolution, and going 2.0.  eco-kids is proud to part of this new revolution and proud to “IN SOURCE MAINE”!