Green Earth Market is a flourishing retailer of non-toxic products for home, garden, mother and baby. It started as an idea back in 1991 and due to the nurturing and faith of owner Pat Gibbons, that seed has germinated into a thriving online business serving a national base of customers. The secret to Pat’s success? Faith. Because Pat regards his business as a calling, quitting was never an option. He gets through the challenging times by seeing obstacles as growth opportunities. And he’s not afraid to give God the credit for the occasional miracle, either.
Pat remembers a convergence of coincidences happening in 1991 when he felt called to develop his idea for Green Earth Market. “My son had just been born and I remember reading an article about residual chemicals from pesticides and chemical fertilizers on our fruits and vegetables. I learned that our infants and toddlers get a disproportionate amount of these chemicals. Seeing organic baby foods on the shelves, it was a no-brainer. Looking into organics led me to looking into natural and recycled products and found there were lots of really cool unique products” says Pat. “Also, I had a friend who managed a landfill company and kept telling me about all the stuff that went into the landfill that should be recycled or reused.” Pat continues, “after reading my mother’s copy of C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity my faith grew to a point that everything needed to be about that, and this fit.”
Pat began by flipping through organic magazines for ideas of products he would carry in his store. “I found all these cool products that weren’t in the big stores. I discovered there was a better alternative for virtually everything we buy, but lots of the products were only in small eco-boutiques, if you could find them at all, and too expensive.” Pat looked for ways to make these greener products less expensive: lower overhead and buy in bulk. "The genesis of my idea was to pull them all together, buy them in bulk and get the prices down, then you are offering better stuff at about the same price as the big box stores.” Pat spent two years writing a business plan while he continued working in the film industry. He pitched his company some in 1993 with a big idea but little experience. “Everyone looked at me and said, ‘Gee, that sounds good, but how are you going to pull of this big retail idea with no retail experience?” he remembers. “Target operationally was what I wanted to emulate most, so I hired on at Target.”
Pat did not let his high-priced SMU degree or Highland Park address prevent him from getting the experience he needed. Like anyone else, he would have to start from the ground up if he was going to fulfill his mission. Taking a job as a day laborer at a new Target store, he found himself promptly promoted to supervisor in charge of merchandise presentation. “This was my first retail job and two weeks into it I’m in charge of all the merchandise presentation and price change in a brand-new 120,000 square-foot high-profile Target stores,” he laughs, “given a staff of 6 and injected into the system.” Pat stayed at Target for a year to get experience then found himself being nudged once again to go in a new direction.
After Target, Pat embarked ended up working for two of the highest-profile companies in the world. “While visiting Seattle I heard about this little coffee company that offered full benefits to even part-time employees,” says Pat. “I thought, ‘that’s what a company should do – take care of its people,” says Pat. “I swung by and picked up an annual report. When I got back to Dallas , what was opening up 3 blocks from my home? A new Starbucks.” Yes, the “little coffee company” happened to be Starbucks. Hiring on entry level again, (and moving up fairly rapidly) Pat helped open the first two Starbucks in Dallas , and then opened a training center and the first six stores in Austin . Pat left Starbucks in 2000. Pat continues, “It was dot-com boom time, and online retail was booming. It occurred to me that starting out online I could avoid some overhead.”
To learn the underlying layers of the internet Pat enrolled in a course in Unix system administration and network administration. This course led to a job at WorldCom. “I got the job without the requisite experience, without an interview, at more than I was making at Starbucks, and with the understanding that I would be gone on a mission trip the middle month of the 3 month contract job.” Pat says “Two weeks into it, two weeks before I leave for Hong Kong on the mission trip, I’m offered full time employment, and learn I’m in charge of two servers that were, of all places, in Hong Kong!” I told Pat his story sounds like Forrest Gump. To Pat, it’s just another miracle.
Finally in 2006, after weathering 7 rounds of layoffs, Pat’s was laid off, giving him the push out of the nest to start it. How did Pat feel about waiting 15 years to begin making his dream come true? "God is never early, he's never late, he's right on time," says Pat. His faith has been a key to his success, helping him clear some early stumbling blocks. "I thought I knew exactly what I needed to do, so I set up a website, jumped in, and started selling," he explains. "I did not have any business knowledge about financials. Entrepreneurs need to understand fundamental business principles.” Pat says he’s committed to filling in all the gaps. “What I’ve learned anyway is invaluable,” he continues. “It’s through trials that we are made stronger."
Pat says “What I created should have required 4-5 people.” Now that Pat has help with daily operations, he is freer to build the business. “I’ve been building my foundation for a while, and still am,” he says. “In some regards, this niche has been around for a while, but in other ways it’s just getting started. I’m poised to take off.”
Thinking about the future, Pat has his eyes on a century-old Victorian manor in a historic district of East Dallas. He thinks it would make the perfect store. He presently doesn’t have a plan for financing the building, but he’s taking the first step in working out zoning issues with the City. Over and over, Pat has stepped out on faith and taken chances. “We walk by faith, not by sight,” says Pat, who believes that divine guidance has taken him this far and will carry him the rest of the way.
Anna Clark is president of EarthPeople, a Dallas-based consulting firm. She is an author, a speaker, a columnist for Greenbiz.com, and a regular contributor to SustainLane. Anna lives in Dallas with her husband Michael, their toddlers Jordan and Ryan, and their pet Bullmastiff named Casper . Their home is the second LEED-certified Platinum residence in Dallas .
