Solution Groups’ Success Story: Winning Clients by Gifting Forests

Who is Solution Group?

Solution Group is a company based in Italy. They distribute merchandise and promotional products and they have been working with over 48 countries in the world.

They have also been working on creating a new strategy where some of their profits will be devoted to good causes. Fortunately, we were able to provide a solution for a part of their sustainability journey

How Growing Forests Is Helping Them Win Clients

They started their journey to combat climate crises  and give back to the community with ForestNation in early 2021

For each sale of more than 5000€ from their own customers, they plant 100 trees. This amazing initiative has created a great impact on the environment as a result of the company’s success. They have also managed to create an image of the brand from which customers want to buy.

In a way, this has created a positive cycle during which the company develops and increases sales because of giving back to the community and the planet.

Impacts Keep Brands Top of Mind – and Their Clients Love It

According to a Global Trends Report by IPSOS in 2021, an average of 63.4% of adults (ages 16 to 75) care more about companies doing as much as they can to reduce harm to the environment, rather than companies paying the correct amount of tax. And it seems like customers of Solution Group belong to that percentage.

Henkel featured Solution Group from a long list of other partners because this campaign is definitely something unique that they can create conversation from. This also shows that customers believe in the brand.

In addition to their main initiative, some really interesting features have been added to their products, where the customers can see the impact that they are making. This makes them engage even more with the company.

Showing Impact on Packaging

Their product packaging includes a display of impact stats. The display has a QR code that you can scan to view the brands or suppliers’ forest.

As life-changing sustainable impacts are made, brand loyalty grows.

They want to show their customer’s real numbers of their impact in real time. There is nothing that makes a statement better than facts and figures. Besides that, these impact statistics prove the sustainable authenticity of the brand and the product and create a more trustworthy image.

Personalized Impact Reports

They provide ‘Impact Certificates’ for every order, with annual sustainability reports that show the percentage of orders responsible for trees planted. These reports, but especially the latter, encourage larger spending from customers.

Involving sustainable actions in your business processes has become a necessity for most companies and some of them are struggling to showcase all of the work they do in that direction. This kind of reporting is very much needed from brands that are required to show their environmental advocacy. In addition to that, Sustainability Reports are USPs that can be used when pitching for new business.

“The initiative we launched with ForestNation in 2021 along with others, are now showing the first results. What we are perceiving the most is the positioning of the Solution Group brand as a supplier amongst our customers. We are stuck in their minds as the company that does things differently and that will make their purchasing more meaningful.

It has also helped our sales force concentrate on the philosophy of the company when trying to create lead generation rather than proposing products that any supplier is able to provide. We do exactly the same things but with an added value and we now represent something and have a strong identity.”

– Manuel Xueref, Marketing/CSR Director, Solution Group

Additional Impact of Their Initiative

They have been planting trees in Tanzania, in the Usambara Mountains. These mountains have suffered deforestation due to many activities such as forest fires and even illegal logging, but also due to urbanization and the growth of population.

Besides the obvious benefits of planting, their initiative has been the reason that there have been almost 4000 hours of work created, and more than 93 hectares of land planted. All these trees will help to mitigate climate change as well as provide food and other agricultural products for the people living there.

This information can be found in their forest profile, or you can take a look for a very thorough explanation on the YouTube video, Solution Group in collaboration with Forest Nation.

A forward-thinking company such as Solution Group is pioneering sustainability movements for the promotional merchandise industry, and the results are very clear – customers AND the planet absolutely love it. We are looking forward to seeing even more results from their strategy.

More companies should focus on creating an “give back” strategy for their communities, and planting trees happens to not only do that but also increase sales and customer satisfaction, and trust.

Do you want to be one of these companies? You can get started right now.