North America. It seems like a lot, but that
only represents about 2 percent, roughly, of
the total technical potential for green roof
applications in North America. For green
walls, the opportunities are even greater and
the industry is also growing quickly.
BUSINESS WORLD:
There's a lot of
ground to cover.
PECK:
There's a lot of wasted roof and
wall space out there.
BUSINESS WORLD:
When you
propose membership, either to individuals
or corporate entities, what are your main
selling points? What are you telling them is
your value proposition? Or why they
shouldbe involved?
PECK:
Our value proposition has three
elements to it in terms of membership. One
is that by becoming a member of Green
Roofs for Healthy Cities, you support our
goal to grow the market. And, we grow the
market by doing communication work, like
this interview with you. We grow the
market by doing advocacy. So, we have a
program where we work with local
governments to develop policies that
support green roof and wall installation,
because there are a lot of public benefits that
come with green roofs and walls. By
becoming a member, you help us build our
capacity to grow the market and we all want
to grow markets, right? Everybody's
interested in that. Secondly, as a member,
you receive the promotional benefit that
comes with being a member of an
organization – the web promotion, the
leads, the networking, as well as the
opportunity to work on things like
standards development and so forth. And
finally, our members receive preferential
rates when we have a trade show or
conference, or we provide them with
discounted advertising in our Living
Architecture Monitor magazine, or
whatever it may be, they receive a discount.
So there's a big picture, grow the market,
branding and marketing and financial
incentives formembers.
BUSINESS WORLD:
Now, I talk to a
fair amount of associations in a number of
different businesses and most of them have
a fundamental core that they say, “this is
what we do well” – we're an educational
44 | BusinessWorld |
August-September 2014
