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eyedia, design it again

Location
Louisville, Kentucky

Business Profile

Shop at eyedia, design it again and be a green shopper.Eyedia is a unique consignment store located at 1631 Mellwood Avenue, in the heart of the trendy Butchertown-Clifton neighborhood. Offering 7,000 square feet of retail space, you can roam in a relaxed atmosphere, as you search for extraordinary items to make your house a home.



Shoppers can find a dining room suite, a perfect pair of lamps, a fabulous imported rug, excellent cleaning supplies or an unusual gift. Items are displayed in room-like settings to help you picture how things will fit in your own home. Because these items require no manufacturing, there is no carbon footprint.  Consigned furniture can be yours at a fraction of the new cost and will provide many years of useful service, while keeping refuse out of land fills.

Eyedia consignors can enjoy the earnings from the sale of their items or they can re-direct the proceeds to benefit the charity of their choice.

Each month, on behalf of eyedia consignors, items that have not sold in 4 months are donated to Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore, which uses profits to support the building of affordable homes. Sales at ReStore between January and June 2008 have kept more than 370 tons of material out of Louisville’s land fills.

If you are concerned about Mother Earth, eyedia, design it again home furnishings consignment shop makes sense now more than ever.

Visit http://www.eyediashop.com

Contest Entry


Challenge:
eyedia, design it again is a home furnishing consignment store started on the principle of being environmentally responsible, leaving the smallest possible carbon footprint and embracing the concept of re-use. It is important to find effective ways to educate our customers on the value of being stewards of our resources and to be thoughtful about the way we dispose of items that are no longer wanted or needed.  To that end, we are always trying to find new ways to effectively communicate the seriousness of environmental negligence and the wisdom of buying gently used items.

Solution:
The store is located on Beargrass Creek in Louisville, Kentucky.  This stream is a community watershed of historical importance.  Embedded in the bank of the creek for 30 years, 30 feet below the store, was a 1970's era Volkswagen Beetle. It became the poster child for the deplorable condition of parts of the Beargrass and was the antithesis of everything that we represent in the business. The car in the water was the quintessential example of our "throwaway society." 

The City of Louisville committed to remove the vehicle and eyedia agreed to help facilitate the project by allowing access through our property.  It became very clear that the car's removal would provide the opportunity to show that the possible consequence of not being pro-active in efforts to care for our environment would be total disregard for our responsibilities as citizens.  We designed and implemented a media campaign to bring attention to the project and successfully attracted all area television stations as well as the city newspaper. 

We hosted a De-Bug the Beargrass party and invited the community to have refreshments, watch the dramatic removal of the VW Bug and have conversation about the significance of the event.  We will capitalize on the attention that we created by bringing the Volkswagen back to the store, re-inventing the wreckage as a bench (with the help of a metal worker), displaying it on our property and continuing to interpret its story for the public.

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