We've talked at length about social change, how we'll create a revolution in the retail marketplace through a green-from-the-ground-up national brand. What's been lacking, however, is a glimpse of our dreams.
A store that enables change in the way Americans live must look the part. Our vision is to realize this dream in the village of workingwonders, a sustainably built campus that does more than stock products on shelves, but also serves as an eco-tourism destination.
Our Village features integrated contemporary smart home design similar to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, filled with the materials and features of clean, sustainable living, beautiful arts from the best fair-trade and local craftsman, and a central structure as iconic to the future of American design as Disney's castle is to the Magic Kingdom.
'The Disneyland of Sustainability' is an idea we've nurtured from the early stages of brand planning, in part as a means to completely wipe clean the dull realities of impure, mega-box retailers, (we simply can't have a look that embodies the blind supply chain model our competitors embrace), but also to really grab people's attention and put the village of workingwonders on their weekend itineraries.
In short, the village of workingwonders is an attraction worth visiting on its own merits because it's fun and exciting.
We're driven with purpose, of course, so visitors will take advantage of our recycling center, snack at our delicious café, and join us on busy weekends when we host farmers markets and art shows.
For parents, we'll offer constructive childrens playtime through dedicated earth-awareness programs so they can shop with the knowledge that their kids are having fun and learning through interactive resources.
And behind the scenes we'll promote sustainability through our own practices, whether in the way our interior design office is constructed, or in the promotional materials that support the meeting space we’ll make available for civic and private events.
There are so many ways workingwonders can influence American lives, providing goods and services that are cleaner, healthier options than those found on today's home and lifestyle retail landscape. This brings us to the second Disneyland corollary, that the time to do so is now.
With nothing else like it on the map, workingwonders fills an immediate void in the American marketplace.
There is no Whole Foods for the things that fill our homes—no place where people can sample naturally made perfume, feel that a set of recycled glass dinnerware can be of higher quality than a set made from virgin materials, sit in weather-proof, toxin-free chairs, pull the drawers open on sustainable, American-made kitchen cabinetry, or test out a luxurious organic cotton mattress.
We have a dream to build this place—a retail destination of incomparable intrinsic value and lasting positive influence—and we know the void in the marketplace is so massive that, by now, a huge number of Americans have queued up outside a door that doesn't yet exist.
By creating the village of workingwonders, we're finally building that door and opening it, presenting a world of sustainable goods that a lot of people have heard about, and maybe even looked for, but as yet haven't actually seen.
By the seventh week of operation, Disneyland welcomed its one-millionth visitor. Disney presented an exciting world built on the iconography of fantasy. workingwonders will do the same thing for sustainability, making it easy and fun for people to embrace a future that’s cleaner, healthier, and best for the earth.
(originally posted 11.29.2011)
