New Balance helps Runners’ Retreat
fund box handles
By Lorraine Halsted
The Winchester Star
Winchester — Runners’ Retreat has formed a partnership with a national
athletic wear products company to create an ecologically friendly alternative
to plastic bags.
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Mark Stickley, owner of Runners’ Retreat on the Loudoun
Street Mall, has formed a partnership with New Balance to create an adhesive
handle that attaches to shoe boxes. The handle is an ecologically friendly
alternative to plastic bags. |
New Balance helped the Loudoun
Street Mall retailer of running shoes and apparel to finance the creation of
adhesive handles that allow customers to carry shoe boxes home without the use
of plastic bags.
The handles, made by Decker Tape in
Fairfield, N.J., have tape-like ends that adhere to the sides of a shoe box.
The handles have Runners’ Retreat and New Balance logos.
Runners’ Retreat owner Mark Stickley
first saw a similar type of handle when he and his wife visited a shoe store in
Michigan. After asking the store owner about the handles, he contacted Decker
Tape to determine the cost of an investment.
Stickley said he had to order a
minimum of 10,000 handles at a cost of $1,200 — a big expense for a small store
such as his.
To help defray some of the cost, he
asked New Balance if it would assist in the project.
Stickley said the company was eager
to help: “For a little guy like me, having someone big go in on this really
does help.”
Ashely DelFavero, a
dealer-advertising coordinator for New Balance’s southeast region, said the
handles fit with some of the company’s other eco-friendly initiatives.
“While New Balance’s primary shoe
boxes are made from 100 percent recycled materials and are 100 percent
recycled, this initiative with Runner’s Retreat was an opportunity to take that
one step further, implementing a more sustainable alternative to using plastic
bags,” she said in an e-mailed statement.
Stickley said he was aware of New
Balance’s commitment to the environment and thought it would be open to the
partnership.
“That’s why I approached them
first,” he said, adding that the company had not been previously aware of such
a product.
In addition to reducing the use of
plastic bags, Stickley said, the handles are also less expensive. He pays 12
cents per handle, but plastic bags cost him 50 cents each.
Stickley still uses the bags for
other types of purchases, such as clothing and running accessories.
But customers who buy running shoes
at the store have been receptive to the handles and like the idea of going
without the plastic bags.
“Runners in general, we like to be
gentle on the environment if possible,” he said.
Jan. 9, 2010