The Triple Bottom Line
As I listened to the pitches this week from entrepreneurs across the state, one of the questions I asked was, “how will you measure your success?” The answers were interesting both because I never heard the answer “I want to get rich” and because many of these entrepreneurs had “multiple bottom lines.”
When Hapy and I started Small Dog Electronics, it was both because we had discovered that we could not work for anyone else (so we had to roll our own jobs), and that we wanted to demonstrate that a business can be more than simply a money machine.
We have described before how we measure success by using the triple bottom line of socially responsible businesses — People, Planet and Profit — in equal measures. Early in my business career, I learned that profit was the key to being able to make meaningful change and achieve our goals for People and Planet, however, even in the hardest times, we have maintained the commitment to be a different kind of business.
As you know, we speak out on issues that are important to us and our Charitable Contribution Program includes donation matching, where we match customer’s contributions to featured, diverse non-profit groups. We concentrate our efforts and funds in the following areas:
- Women’s rights
- Human rights
- Relieving Hunger
- Protecting the Environment
- Gay & Lesbian Rights
- Dog Welfare
We have also been leaders in recognizing the important task of keeping electronic waste out of our landfills. We have held numerous eWaste collection events and I am pretty sure we are still the only electronics retailer that can claim to have recycled more electronics than we have sold (is that a good thing?). Our solar array at our headquarters here in Waitsfield, Vermont provides 100% of the electricity for our S. Burlington store and about 80% for our offices and warehouse here. We have an electric truck to ferry goods from warehouse-to-store and have regular discussions on how we can further reduce our carbon footprint.
There is so much more that we would like to do both for the world we live in and for our employees, vendors and community. We are very proud to measure our success not solely on the number of dollar bills on the table but also upon who we are, what we do, and of course, how much fun we have!