The Sustainable Scoop: Past, Present, and Future

In July of 2006 I started this site in order to share my knowledge, to help people make their consumerism decisions by empowering them with information. This was an exciting idea, and so the site felt fresh, full of life. I couldn’t stop writing posts, I felt bursting with ideas and information. The fact that my design business was slow certainly contributed, providing me with ample time to think up new posts.

After about a year, people started asking me, But what will you DO with the site? What is its purpose? The implication was that a site like this should have a greater plan, a means of supporting itself. Prompted by such questions, I hatched grand ideas of an online store in which I could sell the products that mattered to the people who cared. I polled, I announced the results, and I opened the store with one lone item: an organic cotton tote bag. This wasn’t meant to be the only product for sale, of course; I had been busy gathering wholesale prices from retailers, compiling a spreadsheet to help me figure out my margins, and finishing my business plan. As far as the site went, I decided that the design (and the content management system) needed an overhaul. I spent hours finding just the right solution, and hours more on its implementation and design. The result was a polished, commerce-ready site with a simple store, ready to serve the world. What I didn’t know at the time was that this new site would lose some of the soul that made the original inception of The Sustainable Scoop so full of life.

Now, two years after the site’s beginning, I’m feeling a little burned out, and a lot wiser. The reality of online retail is that the added shipping costs (and lower volumes) make it impossible to sell products to customers for a price anywhere near what can be found in stores like Whole Foods and Wegman’s. Even after switching my plan to include only those products that are hard to find in stores, the price points just weren’t lining up with what I thought customers would pay. So, the store idea slowly got put on the shelf, perhaps more slowly than it should have. But I wasn’t wiling to let go of the plan, so it took me a while to come to the realization that it just wasn’t going to be worth it.

Also, my design work began to pick up. The store was forgotten in order to pursue paying work. During this time, I realized that I had been trying to combine two distinct and separate ideas: in one hand, I wanted to continue sharing my knowledge of products and companies within the natural products industry and beyond; and in the other, I had wanted to sell products I believed in. I hadn’t given enough thought to the fact that it’s hard to be impartial about products you’re selling yourself, or those products’ competitors. How could my product reviews and recommendations be believed when I was supposed to be selling those goods?

All in all, I’m glad that the store never came to fruition for all of the reasons already listed. But now I have a site that has been designed and crafted for commercial viability, and I’m finding that to be incredibly limiting and uninspiring. Indeed, these last six months have been incredibly predictable here at The Scoop. For a while, it was a post every weekday, with the biggest stories on Monday, a tip on Tuesday, a review on Wednesday, a guest post on Thursday, and something different every Friday. For a site that began out of so much inspiration, this formula-based posting is disappointing, and I’ve become aware of how little I enjoy it.

I’m sure you’ve all noticed how infrequently I’ve been writing here this summer. My Scoop slump started because of burnout, but that ended shortly; I still believe that this site has a lot to offer both its readers and myself. I’ve had to take some time away, to figure out just exactly how I want to proceed with it, what it means to me and all of you. I’m currently on vacation, and I’ve had a lot of time to think about these things. Though I don’t have a concrete plan yet, I do have some ideas about how to return to a format that’s as exciting as it is fulfilling.

For one, I’d like to simplify. I wrote a post a while ago about how I want to return to simplicity in many ways, ad you guys were incredibly supportive. I believe that the way to rekindle my love for this site is to do the same here, though how I go about that is important to me. There are lots of things about this site’s second inception that I’ve grown to like, and there are a few things that I’d like to jettison. I’m still feeling out how I want to revise this site on the level of ideas, and once I have that sorted out I’ll be able to have a clearer vision about how to go about making those changes.

As always, if you guys have any thoughts on what this site has become and where it needs to go, I would love to hear them. I think I need a little while longer to think about and reflect upon the Scoop’s future, and I’ll be sure to keep you all updated on any progress I make. The most important thing for me to do right now is to refresh the part of me that this site nourishes and inspires. What is depleted can be replenished, and that’s what I’m going to work on for now.