Whenever a business sets out its stall as even trying to ‘bring about change for the good’, human nature is such that it looks for any weakness rather than embracing the positive commitment that business is seeking to make. The inevitable weakness is often then used as justification for knocking it and ‘continuing business as usual’ with whichever company has kept its head down.
This is essentially an extract paragraph from an earlier blog I wrote about becoming a successful ethical business and it’s something that came back to me at the weekend when we were promoting Aquapax at the Horsham eco-fair in Horsham Park AND at the Lambeth Country Show in Brockwell Park. [Not bad going for a company with limited resources and not possible without the heroic efforts of a certain ‘friend called Hagar’ who a number of new Aquapax customers are meeting at events across the country this summer.]
By and large, the majority of people who we meet at these events are open minded and wanting to learn, after all, that’s why they presumably left their homes on any particular day to venture out to a fair.
Irrespective of whether these people ever buy an Aquapax from us or from one of our retail partners, the fact they enquire about our less carbon intensive production process, the recycling options, the reasons why we chose the very particular Fläming Felsenquelle source water, how we actually carbon balance our business and ensure the thinking is all joined up, is done with genuine interest and sometimes with humorous challenge and fun along the way.
Then there are the frustrated comedians who talk about water coming out of the sky and laugh heartily as they reference only drinking tap water while simultaneously carrying an overpriced (and well known) brand of flavoured tap water in their rucksacks (I don’t mind them – at least they’re cheerful) or the third type – the energy sappers…
These people wander around at shows without any apparent joy; they attack with energy and robust (loud) rebukes as if we were peddling something outrageously illegal and then walk off rapidly without giving any opportunity to engage at an intellectual or any other level.
I actually got accused of being an irresponsible cause of the well publicised credit crunch by one ‘gentleman’ and it’s sad that following a weekend of great positivity, the venomous comments of ‘a nutter (in my humble opinion) who wouldn’t engage’ hurt the most. I don’t feel in the slightest bit responsible for any crunch in the credit market, but it’s always sad to see someone growing old without learning anything…
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