Nature's green isn't the only one Josh Knauer is seeing these days.
The founder of the Envirolink Network, a nonprofit organization formed in 1991 to provide online information about the environment, has launched a for-profit venture.
Green Marketplace Inc. is a World Wide Web site that sells environmentally friendly products (http://www.go-organic.com). It opened for business last month.
The Green Marketplace isn't Mr. Knauer's first attempt at launching a company. Since starting the Envirolink Network as a freshman at Carnegie Mellon University in 1991, he has created Planetvision Inc., a company that develops software to provide current geographic and atmospheric information, and Knauer Communications, a Web site development firm.
The impetus for forming Green Marketplace was simple, according to Mr. Knauer.
"One of the most frequently asked questions we got through Envirolink was, `Where can I buy environmentally friendly products?,'" he said. "We looked around the Internet and nobody was really doing it, so we decided to do it ourselves."
Given that it's based on the model that's been advanced by Amazon.com Inc., a successful online bookseller, some analysts think Green Marketplace has the potential to generate significant revenue.
The Amazon.com model enables consumers to purchase recently published and out-of-print books at a discount directly through the Web using a credit card. Amazon.com, which went public in 1996, is generating about $17 million in sales annually.
"The online marketplace is being promoted as the way of the future because people don't have time to go to shopping malls anymore," said Dan Lamont, branch manager of Waldron & Co., an investment research firm based in Westport, Conn., that covers Amazon.com.
Mr. Lamont believes the Green Marketplace can be successful in this arena if it offers products at a reasonable price.
"There is a move toward environmental products," he said. "But they have to be priced accordingly, because we're a dollar-and-cents society."
The Green Marketplace currently sells a line of organic cotton and hemp products by Tanglewood Inc., an Arizona-based apparel manufacturer; and Seventh Generation Inc., a clothing manufacturer located in Vermont. Hats sell for about $17.95, T-shirts for between $9.99 and $22.95 and blankets for $39.95.
Mr. Knauer hopes to expand this line by August to include pet care, home cleaning products, cosmetics and herbal supplements by lining up other vendors to sell their wares on the site, including Jade Mountain Inc. of Colorado, Real Goods Inc. of California, and Aveda of Minnesota.
"We're going to be announcing several other partnerships with other types of vendors soon," he said.
In creating the site, Mr. Knauer teamed with LinkShare Corp., a New York City-based firm that links merchants with products to Web sites that can sell them.
"We deal with people like FAO Schwartz, Avon and over 100 other merchants," said LinkShare co-founder Stephen Messer. "We were happy to be able to work with the Green Marketplace because they represent one of the great things about the Web, which is that you can do business at the same time you're doing good."
About 75 companies have already linked to the Green Marketplace site. Mr. Knauer hopes to have about 500 on board by July.
The company has signed affiliates to contracts for the fall and Christmas shopping seasons which should bring the company total revenue of more than $1 million.
"And we expect that number to grow," Mr. Knauer said. "So we're doing really well."