© leysan via istockphoto.com

Last week, an exchange in an (as yet unpublished) podcast interview got me thinking about the thorny question: will people pay extra for a green product? When I wrote The Green Executive in 2010, my answer was “only in the green market niche”, otherwise you have to compete on “performance, price, planet.”

But is it that simple?

Let’s take EVs. The early modern EVs were tiny runarounds which I found practically undriveable due to the brutal acceleration and regenerative braking. I felt like I was driving a clown car – my passenger would no doubt put it more strongly. Then of course came the Tesla Model S and gave us what at the time was arguably the world’s best car, but at a premium price. The rich and virtuous rushed to buy them and this started to bring technology and infrastructure costs down. This in turn has opened the door to mid-range vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf or the multitude of BYD models. Would this surge in EV purchasing have happened at the same rate if Tesla hadn’t shown us just how sexy an EV can be?

In outdoor clothing, Patagonia will charge you up to £900 for a jacket and Paramo have products at £600. But by being pioneers in recycled materials and eliminating PFAS, these brands led the way for more middle-range brands such as Alpkit to deliver similar sustainability performance at a mainstream price.

When I was doing some work with Ramon Arratia at carpet giant Interface (he’s since moved on), he described this as the ‘car innovation model’. Any new innovation would be introduced at the premium end of the product range and then cascaded down a step through each refresh of the range. I’m old enough to remember when my Dad buying a car with electric windows was worth bragging about at school; now they’re ubiquitous. Similarly Interface would pitch innovative products with breakthrough Sustainability features, such as their NetWorks carpet made out of old fishing nets, at premium clients at a premium price. If these features can be scaled, then they would be cascaded down over time into mid-range products.

Notably you can buy Alpkit products made from the same ocean-bound plastic-derived fabric, Econyl, showing that this innovation model can work across sectors. The premium product has the economic heft to create the supply chain in the first place, the mid range products boost the volume of demand in that supply chain to bring prices down and quality up.

So, yes, I would argue, there is definitely a place for premium green products as they have an interesting way of forging new paths for the rest of the market to follow.