Why send someone a greeting card when they’re just going to throw it away? That’s what Tina Menzie thought when she stopped making Christmas cards for her friends. But they protested, challenging her to create a card they would keep.
Menzie complied, and then took it with Future Oxygen Ecowear, a company that she founded with her husband, Shawn. The company makes seed-impregnated greeting cards that, when planted, become a bed of Michigan wildflowers, or grasses, or even a tree.
Using the basement of their Grand Ledge home as a giant mixing room and their backyard for research and development, they have grown a company that already this year has sold 15,000 boxes of cards and 10,000 pendants that can also be planted.
Tina is an attorney specializing in dispute resolution. Shawn is a senior buyer for Dart Container. But always they are entrepreneurs. Every penny they have has gone into growing their business.
“We’re paying as we go, using our vacation money, buying no new car,” she says.
Tina is reticent to discuss specific numbers but says they might have been able to start the business with $10,000 but they needed patents that can cost that much alone. They do have a detailed business plan and expect to soon cover their start-up costs.
Woven throughout the plan are sustainable values, like using local suppliers whenever possible and giving five percent of proceeds to charities such as Save the Reef, breast cancer research, or Samaritan’s Purse, an international group that helps people get out of poverty. Peckham Industries is used for assembling the cards.
Small pendants strung on a cord around the neck are their own creation. They contain soil and seeds, and may be worn up to two years, then soaked and planted. Varying designs include those with Spartan logos, crosses, flowers and more.
When the Menzie’s dog died, they turned their attentions to memory products. Now the pendants may be filled with a pet’s ashes. After a period of grieving, the pendant can be planted and grown into flowers.
They are just getting into wedding invitations that can be ordered with specific seeds, and developing promotions with student garden projects.
Source: Tina Menzie, Future Oxygen Ecowear
Gretchen Cochran, Innovation & Jobs editor, may be reached here.
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