The next in our series of seller interviews is with Erica Wisner, proprietor of the Scubbly store named “Ernie and Erica“. Ernie and Erica are a well-traveled, forward-thinking couple who bring their immense knowledge of sustainable living to the public, in the form of lectures, workshops, and designing & innovating DIY projects. Their store, “Ernie and Erica” offers downloadable plans that show you how to build the innovative products they have designed.
An interesting aspect of their products is that the purchase of the plans include in-person consultation time! That kind of add-on value means that the purchase doesn’t end with a file dropped onto your hard drive. The buyer is invited to engage with the designers of the product, forming a relationship – a personal connection that can only further their success.
Scubbly:
What is “DIY Ecology”?
Erica:
We mainly work with people who want a more hands-on relationship with the world, who want to be good stewards and not just expect someone else to solve their problems. Ecology originally (Oecology) meant ‘the science of right living’ or ‘good living’.
We teach a lot of different subjects where you can gain skills and confidence, learn to be more effective in your daily activities, and at the same time have more fun both during and after the class. Things like how to burn a cleaner fire (a more efficient fire saves wood and air quality, and makes wood heat a more sustainable alternative to fossil fuels). Or how to turn invasive plants and waste materials (ladder fuels) into something useful.
Our most popular workshops right now are our rocket mass heater and earthen oven courses, and general demonstrations with fire. Maybe next most popular right now is English Ivy baskets and holiday art. We also do boat-building, outdoor skills, even cooking workshops. DIY Ecology (do-it-yourself ecology) seemed a little more descriptive (and search friendly) than ‘hands-on education.’
Scubbly:
Why do you suppose there has been a renaissance of homesteading, urban farming, permaculture, urban naturalism etc. in the past decade?
Erica:
I see two general themes. One is the same thing that was going on in the 1970′s, where people identify more with a historic trend than with the previous decade’s commercialism. It’s relaxing, satisfying, and trendy to bring aspects of the handmade life into your hobbies and parties. Homesteading embodies a lot of classic, relaxing, anti-stress activities like baking your own pie, or working in the garden. Whether or not a person wants to get fully off the grid, being able to retreat to a backyard paradise is a nice antidote to most day jobs.
(There’s also a proven connection where getting your hands dirty boosts serotonin levels, natural mood elevators and sleep-cycle stabilizers. A little garden puttering, and you can sleep like a log. If you look at history, this love of gardening gets ‘rediscovered’ periodically, whether it’s a craze for tulips, dahlias, or homegrown tomatoes.)
The other factor is living at a pivotal moment in history. Whether you are for or against it, there’s a general sense that the age of fossil fuels is accelerating toward its end-game. People are starting to look at 20th-century ‘economics’ with skepticism. The Miracle of Compound Interest is looking a lot like Better Living through Chemistry – nice when it works, but we’re paying the piper after the party’s over. I don’t feel like my generation can count on a pension, retirement account, or even getting a ‘permanent’ job; at least, not many of them. Our parents and grandparents are also somewhat nervous about their retirement, whether public or private.
While most people are happy to keep their day job and a nice car, there’s this sense that we don’t know what the future may bring. It may mean a return to something more like our great-grandparents knew, with more local food supplies and personal independence. It may become a scary police state, or some kind of magical bio-engineered high tech future. It doesn’t hurt to hedge our bets, to maintain some of the skills that are available now, in case our kids might need them. And it’s a comforting and positive connection with history: with the idea that seasons are predictable, our food supply is safe, and we have this lovely intimate relationship with our food and landscape. It’s a reassuring, calming, and healthy hobby – whether you’re in Northern California impressing your friends on vacation, or surviving in Detroit when all the grocery stores have pulled out of your neighborhood.
Scubbly:
What are your most popular workshops? What DIY and Ecology topics are trending this year?
Erica:
We’ve definitely had the most interest in our DIY wood-fired heating options. The most popular items we sell are detailed as-built drawings of Rocket Mass Heaters, a super-efficient DIY project that combines earthen masonry and scrap metal to make something that performs like a European masonry heater. They’re cleaner, save a ton of fuel (literally), and also a great way to practice handyman or natural building skills in case you want to do a larger project like a home later on.
Scubbly:
How practical is a rocket heating oven for an urban home? Is it a safe replacement for the typical basement gas furnace?
Erica:
We have a number of rocket heaters that have been installed in an urban or conventional ‘stick frame’ home. They can be run on coppiced wood or shop scrap; we lived on 1.7 acres in Portland and never purchased fuel for four years, there was enough deadfall from existing trees on the site that we didn’t even need to tap into the available free pallets, arborists’ trimmings, or other local fuel sources.
But no, I would not say it’s a quick replacement for a basement furnace. Heating with wood means sitting by the stove for a few hours in the evening. Unless you like to hang out in your basement, you will not want the heater running down there unattended. We have worked on designs for basements with a few clients, for example if they have a home office or rec room down there and it’s already in use as a hangout space.
Scubbly:
What 5 things should I do to make my lifestyle & home more natural?
Erica:
Well, that’s a broad question. I did a series of articles on this on HubPages a few years ago.
The biggest answer I have is, everybody’s life is different. If you don’t love it, you won’t do it. So take a good look around, and see what inspires you. There’s a lot of hype; don’t let them guilt-trip you into buying the latest eco-product (a lot of them are controversial anyway). If you can reduce your power bills, reduce your car mileage, or save money because you’re doing things yourself, you will have more energy for splurging on something fancy. Even leaving off the lawn chemicals saves money, as well as being a huge favor to anyone downstream who likes wild edible plants and fish. So I would start with things that save money, or give you a great sense of peace and well-being. Good food can be like that; taking an evening a week to turn off the TV and make something, even if it’s just a home-made pie, can be like that.
So:
- Do what you love. The biggest drivers of unhealthy habits are fear and insecurity. Find those activities that make you feel so peaceful, strong, and productive, you don’t care what other people think.
- Love where you are. No person nor place is perfect. Get in touch with the edible plants in your lawn, put a bouquet in a Mason jar, and learn to laugh at neighborhood drama. If you do feel like you need a change, try to find a place that you already have a healthy connection to support your transition. Locals with a strong sense of history can be some of the best-informed and most passionate protectors of essential local resources. Live as if your life (or posterity) depends on preserving what’s best about your local area.
- When you have a choice, vote with your dollars to support life on Earth. Don’t over-spend, but make choices that you can feel good about – re-usable canvas bags, or a locally-made ceramic mixing bowl instead of generic plastic. Invest in sustainable industries or a local farm, instead of abstract stocks. Deeper research will give you more ideas how to make the biggest difference within your budget.
- Save money by saving energy, mileage, or by giving a second life to old things. One of the ironies of our work is how much money we spend on gasoline, in order to teach about heaters that offer independence from fossil fuels. We are hoping that we will have a lot more people working locally in future, instead of traveling by car to help them get started.
- Keep learning. Don’t get fixated on ‘one right answer’ – there are as many answers as there are people, places, and generations. Cultivate all 5 senses plus curiosity, wonder, and humor. You may prefer to keep exploring new things, or to pick one sustainable tradition and spend a lifetime preserving it by diligent practice.
Scubbly:
How much time did it take to create your products?
Erica:
The building of the projects themselves aside, I probably spend about a week on each set of drawings and plans. We wait a full year before publishing them, to get any feedback from the owner/operators and make sure the original project is performing as intended, and is a reliable model for other people to copy. Then as we get the first questions from people who purchased the electronic documents, I may spend another day or two revising them, or adding more details, based on those responses.
Scubbly:
Taking into account the cost of production, is your store profitable?
Erica:
We get paid twice, once when we work on the project, and again when we are able to sell the results. We are currently offering 1/2 hour of consultation with each set of plans people purchase (partly to ensure that we get the feedback we need to improve the first editions). I’ve set the prices high enough that I can insist on a personal standard of quality, and have time for each customer to ensure that they’re satisfied.
The store definitely brings in enough money to justify the time I spend on the documents. And it’s a great compliment to our summer building season: people are more likely to buy plans in fall and winter, when they are researching wood heat. That helps balance our income cycle, and fund the research projects in our quiet season before we start building again in the spring.
Scubbly:
How long have you been an expert on ecology and natural building? What got you started?
Erica:
We are a team, and so there are a couple of answers to that question.
I started out in hands-on education, with a passion for sustainable living but limited expertise. I taught science, art, and gradually worked my way into more relevant jobs with outdoor camps, nature-based crafts, and sustainable building. My science background has been a big help in understanding the factors that affect a project’s sustainability, and the years working with the public honed my ability to explain something in regular language, and reach a lot of different people. The art background is actually more practical when it comes to understanding and processing natural materials, and creating something that other people can enjoy.
Ernie started out in high-risk work, a lot of maritime jobs and some with hazardous materials. I guess you could say he’s done the dirty work, and knows better than most people what it costs to keep this whole modern lifestyle going. He got serious about sustainability after a series of experiences with the North Pacific and Arctic fisheries, and with geophysical exploration. He was on one of the first boats ever to navigate to the North Pole through open water, and seeing his beloved ocean changing so drastically made him passionate about finding appropriate alternatives. He brought his can-do practical experience to Cob Cottage company for a 2-year apprenticeship in 2004-2006, and we met toward the end of that period.
Scubbly:
Where else do you sell your products?
Erica:
We sell plans in person at our workshops, and have an ‘online shop’ page with our stuff and links to other resources. We also get a lot of help from friends at Cob Cottage Company, www.permies.com, and www.richsoil.com, who refer business to us. We get a lot of the technical questions forwarded from other researchers and DIY-ers, and some of those referrals end up using our plans rather than reinvent the wheel.
Scubbly:
How much of your business happens at Scubbly, vs selling directly or via other means?
Erica:
We’ve recently changed to Scubbly, on the recommendation of a web-savvy friend. We sell probably twice or three times as much through Scubbly as we do in person. Some of those sales might result from people taking a workshop and buying later, but it’s incredibly convenient to have sales continue even while we’re on the road or at an off-grid job site.
Scubbly:
How do you market your products?
Erica:
We rely on people who’ve had good experiences spreading the word. We regularly participate in researchers’ gatherings, online forums, and teach workshops related to our work. We also have recently raised our affiliates’ fee, to support people who want to help sell our products. Hopefully this will be other people with relevant interests – I want to be showing up on places like Pantry Paretus or the Survival Podcast, not just as random spam.
Luckily, ‘relevant’ is pretty broad – we get a huge range of ages and backgrounds in our workshops on these heaters. Everyone from college students, ceramic artists, hippies, and back-to-the-land homesteaders, to fire marshalls and at least one active police officer, to building professionals (masons, engineers, contractors and HVAC guys). The market for the plans may even be broader, because you don’t have to be a DIYer to care about finding an efficient design. I don’t know too many people who want to spend more money on heating their home.
Scubbly:
Why did you choose to sell them at Scubbly, instead of setting up your own e-commerce store?
Erica:
Our current web hosting is as simple to run as possible. We needed a solution where the customers would have a good, timely experience regardless of our current workload or availability. Our work includes travelling to share appropriate technology, often in poor or rural areas where there is limited cell and Internet service. We needed a reliable online store where we would not need to micro-manage the sales or have any trouble uploading new items.
A friend recommended Scubbly, and we were impressed with its well-written and clear presentation. When we did have a concern a few weeks after signing up, it was addressed promptly and with personal attention. I can’t even remember what it was now, it was taken care of so quickly. All I remember is the pleasant feeling of a real person checking in, to make sure we were satisfied.
Scubbly:
What advice would you give to someone getting started with online sales?
Erica:
We were surprised how quickly the sales started to cover our initial costs. If I had known how easy it was going to be, I would have done it at least a couple years sooner.
I would say pick something you already know and care about. There’s no such thing as ‘get rich quick’ – make sure you really love doing what you do, and then you’re going to enjoy putting some time into selling it.
Marketing is way easier (and more fun) if you understand the audience: where they hang out, where they look for recommendations, what they care about, what constitutes a quality project. If you’ve been into something for a while, it’s easier to judge and deliver a quality product, and your friends also know your reputation and will feel confident recommending business your way.
It doesn’t hurt to have your own website or blog, either – some people love to get to know you, and your products, over time. It can be a value-added way to remind people your work is available, or rough out the next publication.
We’ve received more good advice than we can give at this point. Our friend Paul Wheaton has been a major booster, who has used his Internet-savvy to help us understand a little more about Internet search dynamics and what makes items popular online. He was the one who tipped us off to Scubbly, and has encouraged us to publish and keep publishing. It was also his idea to set our affiliate rates up higher – 20% of the sales – to encourage other people to help sell our work so we can focus on research and teaching. It’s a fraction of what we would be spending if we went through a conventional publisher, and there are not nearly so many up-front costs.
Thank you to Erica for participating in this interview. Watch the Scubbly blog for more seller interviews in the coming months!
