Green and organic products come in different forms and many different ways. One unique way I recently became aware of is the “affiliate marketer”, such as Erin Ely of Ely Organics who is a seller of ONEgroup products called miessence. I was intrigued by the dedication of Erin to the products she represents as well as this different “way to market” so I was pleased when she agreed to allow me to interview her.

DS: Erin, for those who are new to the term “affiliate marketer” can you please explain that to our readers? Also, please explain how it differs from traditional distributors or redistributors of product who buy and resell?

EE: An affiliate marketer is someone who does not manufacture their own product. I do not manufacture the miessence products, I sell them. I am like a conduit for people to find the products. I advertise and bring business to the ONEgroup as an affiliate and I am paid a percentage of my sales. I do not stock or ship the miessence products myself, that is all done by the manufacturer, ONEgroup.

DS: Please tell us about ONEgroup and your relationship with them.

EE: ONEgroup is a company that is called a multi-channel enterprise. Their business model includes network marketing, direct sales, and traditional retail. My website is like a portal to my “parent” site where orders are taken and processed. This is an affiliate marketing type of relationship.

DS: Does the fact that ONEgroup is Australian-based create any unique issues from an order process and fulfillment perspective?

EE: ONEgroup has a U.S. based warehouse and that is where the miessence products are shipped from in the US market. I have never had any issues with shipping and fulfillment. Even with the time difference, things always seem to happen in a timely manner.

DS: I know they have been around for some time but that organic personal care products space has become rather crowded. Please tell me how ONEgroup, and miessence products differ from other companies who make similar products.

EE: While there are many pretender “organic” products in the market place, ONEgroup is one of a limited number of companies that have food standard certified organic products. This is a large commitment on their part to maintain this level of organic integrity. Each botanical ingredient must have a paper trail back to the seed source to verify its organic origin. All this must be kept on file at the manufacturing plant so that when the certifier comes to the plant, they can verify the ingredients organic integrity from seed to manufacturing for each ingredient they use. This is time consuming and does cost more, that’s why certified organic skin and body care products are priced the way they are.

DS: Does ONEgroup place any special importance on their primary and secondary packaging?

EE: After an extensive environmental study and carbon foot print analysis they switched from glass to polypropylene (#5) on their miessence products because polypropylene does not use BPA and does not leech into the product.

They use all recycled cardboard boxes and wheat/corn starch shipping peanuts as fill for their shipping boxes. Since the products are filled with liquids and they do not want them to be crushed or have problems leaking they do use fairly large boxes with a lot of packing fill to keep them from being damaged during shipping.

DS: One of the things I noticed about you Erin is that you are extremely well read and spend considerable time studying organics. What do you think the long term future (five to ten years) is of organic personal care products as they become more “main stream”?

EE: While I think there are many people becoming aware of this issue, I personally do not think they will become entirely mainstream. Many large corporations are moving into the green arena. I am somewhat skeptical about this because of the current trends I see now. When a large corporation enters the “organic” marketplace they tend to cut corners and degrade the quality and integrity of ingredients. Large corporations tend to spend more money on advertising and less on quality of their ingredients. With the advertising they do, it’s very easy to green wash and many consumers think they are buying organic when they are not. I don’t expect this to change that much. I do not see them spending the dollar amount on ingredients that ONEgroup and other small organic body care producers do. If you want people to be able to afford to purchase your truly organic products, you must price them competitively and this means that your profit margins are much smaller. Even with the economies of scale, I do not expect large corporations to produce the same level of quality certified organic products that you see coming from small manufacturers like ONEgroup.

While I think the market will grow, I believe that in 5 to 10 years, certified organic personal care products will still be a niche market.

DS: Thank you Erin and I encourage our readers to spend some time on your web site www.elyorganics.com and blog. I know I started browsing through some of your blog posts and quickly became engrossed by some of the links and information I found there. Keep up the good work Erin and I hope you have a very successful 2010.
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