ECO-Preneuring
Earth-friendly
promotional products grow to $200,000 a year.
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| CEO Lesley Sattin of Monkey Joe Speak—in a bamboo hat that she sells and with an eco-button designed to put a PC to sleep and conserve energy without having to reboot when the user leaves it. She is also holding a chip clip made from recycled tires. Lesley also sells biodegradable bags. Bags like these are used at the Irvine Certified Farmer’s Market in Irvine, California. They are easily absorbed by the earth. |
Lesley Sattin’s motto is: SOON RECYCLING WILL BE AS COMMON AS PUTTING ON YOUR SEATBELT. The CEO and owner of Monkey Joe Speak (www.monkeyjoespeak.com) promotes events, products, teams and companies with eco-friendly, custom imprinted merchandise.
“Eco-friendly products send a better message for your organization and are much easier on the environment,” Lesley states.
Monkey Joe Speak offers organic, recycled and environmentally kind fabrics, paper and plastics clearly marked to show that a company is environmentally conscious. Bamboo baseball hats and golf shirts, pens from recycled tires, totes from jute and more earth-friendly choices convey targeted and lasting marketing messages.
Four years ago, owner and CEO Lesley Sattin was working at night and trying to juggle the duties of mothering her two boys during the day. In her words, “The wheels were starting to fall off.”
At a trade show she saw a home-based business model and couldn’t move away. “They offered training and equipment to imprint promotional products and silkscreen shirts. I went to the training and came home and started promoting my business to moms at the school playground. I have slowly built up the business and last year moved into a commercial office and began working to become an expert in eco-friendly promotions. I no longer print my own products but have a network of reliable suppliers,” Lesley says.
She decided on the name Monkey Joe Speak because MJS is her late father’s initials. She worked with an ad agency, Honest Mechanics, to come up with a name and logo that would incorporate those initials. “It is a name that is never forgotten,” Lesley says.
Her first client was her cousin’s bowling league. “We printed mugs for a bowling tournament!” Lesley says. At one time she printed an organization’s logo on a walnut. “If it exists, we can find it and print on it!” Lesley states. Now her interesting and bio-friendly product list includes small trees and seed kits, recycled denim, biodegradable balloons and an eco-button for conserving energy on PCs.
Today Lesley has one employee and hundreds of clients. “Some buy once a year, others all the time,” she says. Currently the business makes about $120,000 a year. Since 2005 that number has steadily increased and she expects it to gross more than $200,000 this year.
With more than 400,000 promotional items offered, Monkey Joe Speak’s client list includes Fortune 500 companies and well-known non-profits. She recently sent 93,000 biodegradable bags to The Irvine Certified Farmers’ Market. In addition, she adds, “We still love to service ball teams and small organizations too.”
In 2007 Lesley decided for Monkey Joe Speak to mainly emphasize green products. “I noticed a trend in the industry to go ‘green’ and LOVED that there are so many products out there that are cool—eco-friendly does not have to be UGLY. Last year I decided that I wanted to be a part of that.”
Besides using her merchandise to promote Monkey Joe Speak to other companies, Lesley has found a lot of value from her lead-generating Le Tip group. “I have just completed my third year of being president of Le Tip. I love my group and get 60% of my business from there,” Lesley says. (www.letip.com) •
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