Woodland goes eco-friendly and green!

With the growing awareness and initiatives for a greener planet, a brand that strongly believes in making our planet green and healthy has successfully taken the necessary steps in that direction.  Woodland realized the importance of eco-consciousness and has embraced it as one of their key objectives. In other words, they are a Proplanet and they constantly work towards keeping our environment safe. Proplanet is a community that is committed to make our planet a better place to live in. Woodland wishes to share with the community their passion for social causes which defines them as a company. The ultimate goal is to inspire the next generation and increase their participation in the conservation of nature.

In keeping with their eco-conscious philosophy, they have always tried to make eco-friendly products which are made through processes that cause minimal harm to the environment.
We at Adgully caught up with Harkirat Singh, Managing Director, Woodland and Amol Dhillon, Vice President Strategy & Planning, Woodland to learn  more about their initiatives. This is what they had to say:

Adgully (AG): Could you shed some light on the eco-friendly initiatives that have been taken by Woodland as of now?

Amol Dhillon (AD): We started an initiative called pro planet in 2007-2008. It was a sustainable initiative from Woodland, that focused on products that we made and also on communication and interaction that is required to  be environment friendly. We did our first campaign with MTV in 2008 called ‘Eco-Lution’, that was the time digitization was getting popular and it was India’s first digital campaign done with MTV. We encouraged youngsters to plant virtual trees and this competition went across several cities.  It was an award winning campaign. We planted 60,000 trees through this campaign which was one of the best ways to engage everyone in the campaign.

The second campaign, that we did last year, was the world’s first retail campaign which Linkedin did. Within 48 hours we had almost 1000 hits for the campaign, we got a good response in terms of engagements with these products. The campaign went live on June 5th, the world environment day and it went well. Woodland’s  stores in Delhi NCR and Karnataka  are carbon neutral so we went in for carbon accounting to calculate the  carbon footprints of each store through its retail operations and a baseline established while devising methods to negating them in due course since  our target is to be carbon neutral brand by 2015. The  process was started during the end of 2010  and it took 8 months to calculate carbon footprints.

AG: In your  view how has the response to your campaigns been till date?

Harikirat Singh (HS) : The response has been quite interesting as of now. We collected carbon footprints of all the employees from everywhere, Delhi NCR had 2000 tons of carbon emission before one year and Karnataka had 1000 tons. Karnataka is the only state in the country where you can buy soldered water heater since they don’t allow regular water heaters. What we did was we started giving incentives to people who shared their carbon credits with Woodland.  We had a great response. We launched bio-degrade able shoes, organic cottons, 15-20% of our range is eco –friendly, though it’s expensive but we are offering it to consumers to make them aware about products which can help in making our environment better.

We are working with several NGO’s and organisations such as UNICEF. We are a green partner for Lufthansa, whereby we help Lufthansa to offset their carbon prints by planting trees. We contributed 1 crore towards the UNICEF campaign last year. We are tying up with WWF for the green hiker program. Woodland is doing outdoor adventures too. We want people to go out explore and connect with nature but explore with responsibilities, don’t just go litter and spoil the place. 

AG: Woodland has always encouraged outdoor and adventurous activities. Could you elaborate and shed some light on some of those activities? 

HS: We have always supported outdoor and adventure sports in the country: be it an expedition to Arctic, Antarctic or Mt. Everest. Last year, we sent Love Raj Singh Dharmshaktu to Mt. Everest under our project ‘ProPlanet Climbs Everest’ which made him the country’s first Indian to climb Mt. Everest for the fourth time.  The project ‘Teens Tame Everest’ is a step ahead towards our aim to promote outdoors in the country though this one is very special to us since we intend to send our youngest ambassadors on an expedition to Mt. Everest for a World Record. We are very delighted to back this historic project, which will help the world of adventure and inspire more youngsters to connect with outdoor spaces. We also acknowledge the efforts of expedition leader Col. Rana who geared the boys up for the expedition. 

AG : Woodland has also initiated a ‘Leave No Trace’ campaign. Could you share more about this?

AD: The 'Leave No Trace' campaign, an initiative under the ProPlanet umbrella of Woodland, motivated Sunburn participants not to leave behind any garbage thus culminating into a post event clean-up and ensured that the party zone was clear of any litter. 

Woodland’s Pro-Planeteers ensured recycling of waste materials through different eco-friendly processes. Over 300 kilograms of discarded plastic drinking bottles were collected to build a ‘ProPlanet Pod’ booth from Woodland at the festival. We collected tons of recyclable material and used recycled polyesters. We have a plant in Sonipat where we make soles for shoes out of them. We are working on Eco Index labels where on all the products carbon footprints would be mentioned which informs about the impact of a product towards environment and it would be like calorie calculator label that we have on food products. These are the campaigns we are working on.

Adgully: Share some key marketing and promotional strategies that have always worked for Woodland?

AD: It’s all about communication, reaching out to the right audience and at the right places. We did this with Sunburn fest, Noida, Goa. We also had E-rick in various malls in Delhi. E-rick is basically an electric rickshaw.  It was a campaign where people were given free rides.

In the digital space we have 200 million plus strong fans base in India where we get loads of ideas from our audience. Our focus is re-shifting from traditional media and  we are focusing more on outdoor campaigns.

AG: Please elaborate on the strategies you have undertaken in connection with your tie-up with different channels.

AD: We are very much present on youth channels like MTV, Channel V, Bindass, Discovery, and NGC.  It’s not just advertising but a focused approach. We believe in engaging in a 360 degree interactive communication with channels . I strongly believe that it’s about choosing the right media. We started with digital in 2008-09 and we are using it to engage with people as e-commerce plays an important part.

AG: How are you looking at 2013 in terms of growth? Shed some light on your growth strategies? Would we be seeing any new initiatives this year?

HS: We added 60 stores this year and next year we plan  to add another 60-80 stores. We are hiring best talents from the industry be it marketing or store managing. We are looking at 1000 crores organic growth in the next financial year. We see this market growing rapidly and with our events we see a lot of youth getting associated with it. We have plans to run programs and initiatives for schools as well. We’ll be actively seen doing digital and outdoor campaigns. Print and electronics will definitely be complementing as they have a large audience but our TG’s are mostly on digital.

ProPlanet, the brand’s CSR initiative constantly strives to keep the environment safe. The captive facilities of Woodland allow it to produce aesthetically designed, sturdy and durable shoes and contemporary yet futuristic apparels. Woodland products are available through its wide network of over 380 exclusive stores and 4000 plus multi brand outlets across the country.