About Us

After nine years on the board of a non-profit promoting sustainability, and serving two terms as an elected official on a board of supervisors helping spend close to half a billion dollars of taxpayers' money, our founder came to realize that creating win-win relationships works better than picking winners and losers — or being continually underfunded while trying to promote the common good.

Where It Started

Around the time of the Iraq War, our founder was making signs for a local peace group. It didn't take long to discover that protest signs were a great way to lose money. Twenty years ago you could print a nice sign for a couple of dollars — but you were more likely to give them away or take a donation than put a price on one, so you'd be lucky to break even.

The Problem — and the Solution

Fast forward to today: for a sign we'd like to sell for $10, materials with printing could run $7–8 before overhead or labor — and when you add shipping on a heavy paper sign, the cost climbs to around $20. Protest signs are still a great way to lose money.

The problem is we were making signs like it was the last century. By switching to plastic bags, we've lowered both the shipping cost and the material cost. And it doesn't get any easier to make a sign than to attach a piece of cardboard to a stick and slide a bag over it.

Our Long-Term Mission

Our long-term mission is to get the economy working for everyone — by making living-wage job creation self-funding, while simultaneously creating new revenue streams for our communities.

Our business plan includes paying a living wage with good benefits, and fifty percent profit sharing for all employees and owners based on hours worked. Another ten percent of profits goes to public schools, a non-profit, or a government agency such as a Parks Department — creating a new, reliable revenue stream for the community.

To make job creation self-funding: ten percent of profits are given to others as venture capital with no strings attached — to start their own business, on the condition they adopt a similar structure. Over time, this is intended to create a growing network of businesses where employees are the primary beneficiaries of their work, communities gain new revenue, and living-wage job creation becomes self-sustaining.