Wal-Mart Inspires Entrepreneur

by Hal on September 18, 2006

in PM practice, commentary

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Wal-Mart gets a bad rep for a lot of their actions, particularly their influence on small businesses. Might that be changing? FCNow reports one company joining WalMart's CFL campaign.
How many companies does it take to change a light bulb? One. A few weeks back I wrote of Walmart's initiative to sell 100,000,000 compact fluorescent lightbulbs, Will Wal-Mart Change the World Selling CFLs? Let’s Wonder…. It's an ambitious goal even for a firm the size of WalMart. However, to the extent they attract other players, 100,000,000 bulbs just might be a low hurdle.

Kristina Runciman, president of Lifeforce Glass, got inspired:

I was so inspired by the article by Charles Fishman on CFLs that my company is now sending one compact fluorescent lightbulb with every order. We are counting on each customer to try their free CFL and then replace their incandescent bulbs in their homes and businesses.

Great projects are invitiations for participation.

As a wholesaler of giftware, Kristina doesn't have a direct opportunity to benefit from her actions. She won't be making big sales of CFLs. She "signed on" to the larger project of taking care of our environment while taking care of our pocketbooks. Funny thing, Wal-Mart is part of the process. Kristina buys the give-away CFLs at Sam's Club. I can't imagine this was part of the WalMart plan, but what a nice by-product.

I'm liking Wal-Mart's project more and more. Great projects are invitiations for participation. They attract people to join. I'm so curious about how the project is going. Last week I visited the local Wal-Mart to just take a look at the lightbulb section. As reported in the Fast Company article, CFLs are prominently displayed at eye-level along with shelf cards detailing the savings these bulbs generate. Kudos to Wal-Mart and to Kristina for joining in!

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