Companies are using hemp to make products that are better in all respects--including better value--than synthetic products. Although there are hundreds of companies manufacturing hemp products and thousands of retail stores carrying them, many consumers ask "Where Can I Get More Hemp?" The primary reason that HempStores.com was created was to help consumers find stores in their area that carry hemp products.

Hemp is being used in products by companies like Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, The Body Shop Adidas and Mercedes Benz. The hemp industry can take advantage of this fact by cooperating to produce a national marketing campaign. The consumers most receptive to hemp are a group demographers call "Cultural Creatives" and they get their information from print media and the internet.

Repetition is really powerful in advertising. If the same logo is everywhere the hemp industry can collectively make enough impressions on the entire country much more quickly and get consumers to at least decide whether or not they are interested in finding out more about hemp.

Where Can I Get More Hemp? was an idea that came out of a brainstorming session at the Hemp Expo intended to come up with an inexpensive way to conduct co-op marketing. A number of companies have tested it in New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and LA, and the results have been good.

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Every time you use this logo in an ad, you get the collective benefit of its nationwide use, and you also increase the value to everyone using this ad.

A successful workable model of this plan already exists. There is another industry where most of the retail stores are independent stores in downtown areas that have somehow held there own against gigantic manufacturers and superstores. That is the hardware industry, and the reason they have been able to do this is True Value. True Value is really a giant co-op marketing venture that relies on the repetition of a simple logo to keep small independent companies in business. There are even web sites put up by independent hardware stores promoting other True Value hardware stores. These stores are promoting each other because they know that co-opetition works.

Like it or not, the futures of all of the hemp companies are bound together. Different companies at the raw materials, manufacturing, and retail levels are competitors. However, they are also what is known as complementors. A competitor makes your company less valuable to your customers and suppliers. A complementor makes your product more valuable to your customers and suppliers. A perfect example of complementors are Microsoft and Intel. Companies who sell to the same market are complementors in developing the market, but competitors in dividing the market. They use collective energy to grow the industry, then competitive energy to divide the market.

At this stage in our industry, we are all complementors. The fact that a number of companies manufacture competing hemp products makes it worthwhile for people to go into and stay in the raw material business, the retail business, and the media business. No company can exist in a vacuum. It's the same principle that explains why the Eco Pavilion only works when a lot of companies participate: It becomes worthwhile for people to travel from Japan, Portugal, and Seattle to New York if they know they can order a season ahead from sixty companies in one quick weekend.

The easiest way to increase hemp industry sales is to get more consumers to go into stores that carry hemp products. Vehicles like trade publications and trade shows already serve as co-operative ventures for manufacturers to find more stores to carry products, but no co-ordinated campaign exists to get consumers into those stores.

Advertisements in widely read consumer publications like Rolling Stone or People or National Geographic can attract the attention of millions, but they are also very expensive. They are only worth it for companies confident that consumers know they can go to one of several local stores and find their products--Absolut, the Army, Phillip Morris, and Nike.

It's not worth it for most companies to advertise nationally if they don't do mail order and can't tell consumers where to buy their products without listing every independent store by name, which would be way too much information for a consumer ad. As a result, there is no consumer advertising of hemp products in national magazines, and thus these magazines give the hemp industry no coverage.

A full page ad in a national magazine can cost $50,000 per issue. However, we can place a small ad in the classified section that can be very cost effective. If we use the Where Can I Get More Hemp? logo in classified ads month after month in national publications we may be able to get across our message to a better part of the country.

It doesn't make sense for a retailer to advertise nationally. By the same token, it doesn't make sense for manufacturers to participate in local and regional advertising at this stage of our industry. If retailers use the Where Can I Get More Hemp? logo in their local ads, they are piggybacking on a national ad campaign and the repetition will directly benefit them.

With collective promotion of the hempstores.com site, it could become a snap for any potential hemp consumers to find a local hemp store, while those interested in the hemp business can contact the HIA, who does an incredible job of publishing leads.

A cost effective way to promote this site is to place the following 1" display ad in national magazines (insert actual logo):

This ad campaign is funded by a two-tiered sponsorship system--a sponsorship of $400 per month gets your company's icon and link on the front page and sponsors page, and $150 per month gets your company's link on the sponsors page. Candi Penn, at the HIA Office, will be collecting and disbursing the funds for this project.

If 6-8 companies sign up as Home Page Sponsors and 20-30 companies sign up as Sponsorship Page Sponsors the ad can be placed monthly in major magazines, such as Rolling Stone, Spin, Vibe, Wired, George, Utne Reader, Mother Jones, and E.

In addition, we can purchase a banner that will appear on Yahoo and other search engines every time the word "hemp" is searched. The marketing expenses will be prioritized based on a monthly e-mail poll of the sponsors basing decisions on lead generation information vis a vis costs.

Sponsors will be primarily manufacturers but can be anybody. Manufacturers will benefit from sponsorship because their icons will be seen by people interested in wholesale purchase, or their products will be viewed by consumers who know exactly where to buy them. The program in general benefits them because it brings more people into stores to buy their products, send cash and reorders back upstream.

Sponsorship will also be attractive to mail order companies who won't necessarily benefit from consumers who visit the retail stores. It will also appeal to food and beverage companies who sell to a different distribution channel than hemp stores.

As more companies sign up, hempstores.com can advertise in more magazines.

Also, retailers can use the program to reinforce national ads. Retailers are encouraged to use the logo in their local ads as much as possible.

All hemp companies should link to hempstores.com by putting the Where Can I Get More Hemp? logo on their home page, like the Netscape or Free Speech logo. Press releases announcing this will encourage the widespread proliferation of this logo.

The hemp media can include a Where Can I Get More Hemp? ad in their magazines and books, as they stand to benefit as much as anyone from the growth of the industry and they can pay for this advertising at a much better rate than their advertisers.

Finally, the New York City hemp community has some exciting guerilla stunts planned to promote this logo nationwide on television and radio. Several other marketing ideas are bouncing around the internet and they can be incorporated if someone is willing to do the leg work and deal with finding sponsors. Worthwhile marketing ideas can compete with print ads for hempstores.com sponsorship money.

Join us in making Hemp accessible to the world -- easy to find, easy to buy, and easy to pass on to others.