How to chill out and make millions

Ben & Jerry's ice-cream shows it can be done, writes Roger Trapp

Luxury ice-cream is about as good an example of what marketing people call "discretionary spending" as there is. Its success is usually highly dependent on the strength of the economy - and hence the public's spending power - and on warm weather. Moreover, its producers, with the exception of the heavily and raunchily advertised Haagen-Dazs, tend to be very localised.

Then there is Ben & Jerry's, a US company that was - as is now well-known - founded by two hippies who taught themselves to make ice-cream via a correspondence course. Next year will be the pair's twentieth in business. And, while they are still based in Vermont, a state that gets famously cold in winter, their products find their way all over the globe - to Britain, continental Europe and Israel and, from next year, Japan - as well as across the USA. As a result, annual sales now top $170m (pounds 100m), and there are several hundred employees, three plants and 13,000 stockholders.

But, as they relate in their newly-published book Ben & Jerry's Double- Dip (Simon & Schuster, pounds 16.99): "The best news is, the idea of using the power of business to address problems in society isn't quite as radical as it was when we first started putting our hearts, skills and resources into activities the 'experts' said would put us out of business." The sort of things they have done range from showing free films at the converted petrol station that was their first headquarters to using the space on the wrappers of Peace Pop frozen chocolate bars to advocate diverting 1 per cent of the US military budget to "peace-through-understanding" initiatives during the Cold War.

Much of the book is written in the same somewhat flippant, "aw-shucks" style that Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield affect in public. But behind the deadpan, self-deprecatory humour and Sixties mannerisms is a very serious message: if they can make millions out of selling ice-cream made from real ingredients by employees who are treated fairly, why can't all kinds of other businesses?

The book grew out of the many requests they received from would-be entrepreneurs for information on how they "did it". And, since it is written as a sort of manual, the authors have included other companies taking an approach that Anita Roddick, founder of Britain's Body Shop, calls "values-led business".

As well as Body Shop, they include the likes of Patagonia, a California- based supplier of outdoor equipment that makes garments from recycled plastic bottles and uses as many organic materials as possible, and mail- order tools supplier Smith & Hawken.

But, as Mr Greenfield said in London last week, there are still not many examples. For all the talk of values, most of business on both sides of the Atlantic is still focused on the bottom line, with short-term improvements in the share price influencing most decisions.

However, as the requests for tips and the invitations to speak to business groups attest, there is a growing interest in their way of doing things. Some of this, such as the increasing discussion within the marketing community of the need for brands to develop "reputations" and "integrity", is somewhat superficial, but Mr Greenfield and Mr Cohen believe that the success of themselves and the others they name - which have all been around for significant periods - owes much to customers consciously opting to deal with companies that are out to do something more than make a profit.

And, they argue, far from putting its earnings at risk, a company that adopts such an approach can actually build the foundations for a sustainable future. "A values-led company earns the kind of customer loyalty most corporations only dream of - because it appeals to its customers on the basis of more than a product," they write in the book, which - significantly - is subtitled "Lead With Your Values and make Money, Too".

They add: "It offers [customers] a way to connect with kindred spirits, to express their most deeply held values when they spend their money. Unlike most commercial transactions, buying a product from a company you believe in transcends the purchase. It touches your soul. Our customers don't just like our ice-cream - they like what our company stands for. They like how doing business with us makes them feel."

Now, of course, it is not every company and industry where the executives can wander about in tie-dye T-shirts and shorts, name their products after rock bands and go in for such apparently zany manoeuvres as raising capital via a Vermont-only public stock offering. But, as Mr Cohen and Mr Greenfield seek to demonstrate in pointing to the other examples of socially responsible companies, it is possible to bring a greater sense of purpose and even fun to just about any enterprise, so long as the willingness is there.

Nor does such a commitment mean that the organisations have to charge more for their products - and therefore rely on customers' consciences. Mr Cohen and Mr Greenfield point out that they charge no more than Haagen- Dazs, and that other socially-responsible companies are competitively- priced, albeit at the top end of the market.

In the book, they even introduce Take The Lead Apparel, which supplies organically-produced socks, to show that it is possible to introduce such thinking in the mainstream.

Appropriately for two men interested in sustainability, the pair have lately shifted their attention to ensuring that the values they stand for live on in the now-professionally managed corporation they have built for after what they call their "demise". The aim is to make them "institutionalised so they are not dependent on our being there," says Mr Greenfield.