About Us

Ethikus is the first online community of ethical consumers. These are people that care deeply about the ethical and sustainable aspects of a business - and will choose to reward local businesses that share the same values by "voting for them with their wallet."

Ethikus grew out of an unmet consumer need for this type of information and an evolving demand that businesses role in society shift to one that supports transparency, community, employee and environmental concerns.

Our premise is simple: combine the number one and two decision criteria for making a purchase. - price AND company values. Together, we create a tipping point for consumer loyalty.

We carefully identify ethical and sustainable local businesses through a screening process that evaluates the stores in 4 criteria:

1. How the store or restaurant engages with the community
2. How they support their employees
3. How the address environmental issues related to the store
4. How their products and services, and the sourcing of them, is ethical and sustainable

For those businesses that meet our criteria, we partner to develop a compelling offer to market the values of your brand.

We feature our merchants with a video on our website, which we happily film for you. These short videos are essential to highlighting the authenticity and sustainability of your business, which is key in the eyes of our ethical consumers.

Partnering With Us

Our staff will walk you through our ethikus survey to determine your eligibility

We'll provide insight on ways you can collaborate with partners to continue your sustainability efforts, such as free energy audits, group purchasing on compostable tableware, etc.

We will brainstorm your needs with you. Our goal is to create lasting relationships. We will partner with you to create a compelling offer that aligns with your business objectives. Need more loyal customers? Looking to host private parties? We'll help you strategize an offer that will best appeal to our members.

Our staff will organize a time to come to your store and film a values-focused video about you and your business. Our team is incredibly knowledgeable about the topics that are important to ethical consumers and will help craft a short video highlighting those aspects of your business - providing a face and authenticity to your sustainability efforts.

We write a feature highlighting your ethical and sustainable business practices. We will highlight the efforts you are making based on our survey and discussions with you. We also suggest highlighting efforts you plan to pursue in the coming year.

We email our ethical consumers. During our pilot we will email our members one or two times per week. Members can view the details of your business and click through to our site to view the video and make the purchase.

We send a voucher. After members make a purchase, they receive an email that includes a link to the voucher with a code that will be provided to the merchant. The member will print out the voucher and bring it to the store.

We will work with you to determine the length of time the offer is available. During the pilot, we want to be flexible in the number of days your offer is available as we grow our ethical customer base.

Payment is made to our merchants. We draft payment arrangements with you to ensure you are paid in full and on time.

Ethical consumers redeem and rejoice in their experience at your establishment.

You receive new, ethical and loyal customers, brand awareness, incremental spend and a reputation for ethical business practices.

What is an "Ethical" Consumer?

An ethical or "conscientious" consumer is a consumer that cares about the ethical and environmental impacts of the companies and stores he or she buys from. If given the opportunity, more than half of America's consumers are prepared to vote for change with their wallets. Even during the height of the financial crisis, green and ethics considerations were the second highest concern in buying decisions behind price.

Ethical consumers are, by definition, more loyal consumers since price is not their only motivator. Ethical consumers are found within all age and gender categories, although they are by far largest among millennials, or Generation Y, broadly defined as people born the late 1970's on.

This is not a fad. It is not driven merely by the financial and mortgage crisis, recession and unemployment, Madoff and tainted milk scandals. The incidents over the last several years have only heightened an evolving demand that businesses role in society shift to one that supports transparency, community and environmental concerns.

Frequently Asked Questions