Share Email Print RSS

Renewable Richmond

Richmond is the capital of Virginia, the capital of big tobacco, and once was the capital of the Confederacy, but if Anthony Brozna has his way, our fair city could soon be the capital of green construction.

Sure, cities such as Portland, Ore., Seattle and Pittsburgh have more LEED certified buildings. So do Boston and New York. But those are lists of buildings. Brozna is after a different animal.

The New York native and owner of Eco Supply Center in Richmond's Manchester district moved his woodworking shop here from Brooklyn about four years ago. He made eco-friendly furniture from sustainable and storm-salvaged woods. But Brozna isn't one to dream small, and he soon saw a nascent market waiting to explode.

"When I realized there were none of these sheet-good, panel products and sustainable wood products available down here," he said, "I figured it might be a good thing to bring it to the local community."

In 2005, Brozna coaxed his father out of retirement, hired Greg Lohr -- at the time a woodworking student at VCU -- and started Eco Supply Center. The goal was to be a retailer of sustainable furniture and other building products – flooring, paints, plywood, countertops, etc. – as well as a supplier and distributor.

"There are plenty of green retailers out there," Lohr said. "They're popping up all over the place. They tend to be strictly retail. They don't fabricate. They bring in products as needed. The fact that we have the fabrication and distribution side with the warehouse – I think we're more of a true distribution and supply center."

Lohr hinted at where Brozna wants to take the business. He sees a real chance not just to corner a market, but to create one as well. If Brozna succeeds, he'll position Richmond as the hub of green building materials throughout the region.

"We'll always have a design and build operation because we can really help people and contractors and builders to guide them through materials just by working with them ourselves," Brozna said. "But where we really hope to take the company is being the pin in the map of the mid-Atlantic as a true distributor of these products."

Brozna said starting Jan. 1, ESC will start moving away from retail sales and furniture designing and building to being focused more heavily on supply and distribution. That's where the untapped market lies.

"With these materials becoming available and the technology catching up, I felt like I could make more of an impact dealing on the materials side than just building some furniture for somebody," he said.

The first step is getting in front of retailers – not just in Richmond, but North and South Carolina, Washington, D.C., and beyond – and selling them on green alternatives to more common products. When you walk into a local countertop retailer or you hire a contractor to revamp your kitchen, Brozna wants Paperstone -- compressed, recycled paper with a water-based resin surface -- as an option to compete with Corian or granite. The same goes for bamboo plywood, which he said costs about the same as standard plywood.

"That's the drive and the passion right now. It's to help to standardize these materials and take the myth out of them, so it's a just a choice like any other material out there."

Starting Jan. 1, Brozna will be traveling all over the region, selling retailers on these eco-friendly products. In a few months they'll move ESC into a larger warehouse north of Boulevard near The Diamond to accommodate a rapidly growing inventory. Once businesses begin carrying items such as paints and varnishes with low volatile oxygen contents, ESC will be ready to supply them. ESC has exclusivity agreements with many of these companies, which means they'll be positioned as the only licensed distributor regionally if sales take off.

But, in keeping with the pattern he's established, Brozna is always thinking past today's goal to the next one.

"Five years out what we're hoping to accomplish is to actually be the people that are manufacturing these [products] on the East Coast … But that's the real big deal. Right now we really want to build a market for them first."

Right now the companies that produce these sustainable products are scattered all over the world, each vying for a small sliver of market share in whatever they offer. Paperstone comes from Washington State. Bamboo arrives in Norfolk from China. Low VOC paints are shipped from New Jersey. Brozna is working with these manufacturers to make their products as universal as Corian, Dutch Boy or Glidden.

"I really believe in it," he said. "I believe there's a really good window of opportunity right now to help standardize these products."

Brozna knows the way to truly make sustainable building products ubiquitous is to have behemoths such as Lowe's and Home Depot carry them and have residential builders such as Ryan Homes and Centex offer them to home buyers.

"I think sooner or later it needs to go that way," he said. "If the products are true, then that's the whole point … The goal is there are no 'green' materials. There are just standard materials that are better, better for the environment, better in terms of a life cycle, better durability, better performing, which a lot of these products are."

Brozna has big goals and dreams. The path he's laid out is not an easy one. But if he succeeds, not only will he have built a market where none previously existed, he also will add "green materials" to the list of things Richmond is capital of.