The Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) market is a $209 billion industry, and eBay—long known as a broker for consumers recycling unwanted possessions—has opened WorldofGood.com, a marketplace for ethically sourced and eco-friendly products. At the storefront, shoppers can look for goods in 15 product categories such as apparel, accessories, home decor, home and garden, art, jewelry, clothing and food. And they can search products by impact like whether a coffee is fair trade, whether a shampoo has been tested on animals or whether a purse is constructed of recycled materials. Vendors must meet a core set of ethical and environmental standards through WorldofGood.com's partnerships with organizations Co-op America and Aid to Artisans. To find out more about eBay's eco-friendly efforts, Brandweek's Becky Ebenkamp chatted with Robert Chatwani, general manager of WorldofGood.com.

BW: What drove the idea for WorldofGood.com?
Robert Chatwani: This has been in the works for almost three years. It originally started as a small employee-driven effort. I was traveling to India with my family and I observed jewelry makers handcrafting their products in an outdoor market. The idea was quite simple: What if this artisan in a remote part of a developing country could access a global marketplace? We took some supply, sold it on the site, generated some profit and were able to give back to that region from where the products were sourced. That caught the eye of eBay executives like Meg Whitman, which led to us exploring a bigger opportunity where we could create a marketplace around this concept.

BW: What kind of consumer research did you do prior to the launch? How did those findings shape the site?
RC: We took a fairly adventurous approach to the research. We launched our eBay WorldofGood.com community about six months before the marketplace to create a dialogue with the kind of consumer we wanted to attract. We called them 'social change consumers.' We were really able to connect to online shoppers who wanted to shop in a more informed way, and ask them questions about what they wanted to see. We used that input to shape the shopping experience. When we started speaking to consumers, what we heard was people really want to shop in a way that makes a strong social impact, and they want to discover products that align with their personal values. The second thing we heard is they want trusted shopping decisions.

BW: Which brings us to Goodprint and Trustology. What are they?
RC: Goodprint is kind of like what a nutrition label is for food. It's a guide that shows the social impact that gets generated when a consumer buys a [specific] product, and it really drills down deep into the detailed attributes of the impact it has on people, on the planet. We have about 40 different attributes. So they're not just shopping on traditional attributes like price and color or region the product comes from, but also on the impact you can have on the world. On the trust issue, we've partnered with third parties that we call trust providers. Every page has a box called Trustology. There, you see who the organizations are who have verified [these merchants].

BW: How important were environmental issues to consumers in these forums and discussions?
RC: A lot of what we heard was about understanding how [consumers] could make better choices about the products they buy and the claims associated with those products' environmental impact. I'll give you the most salient component of that: A lot of the customers we engaged with were saying, 'There's a lot of conversation about minimizing our carbon footprint, how do I create the least amount of harm?' And through our conversations we realized we could take an entirely different approach here and actually flip that model on its head. Change the question to 'How can I maximize my good?'

BW: How will you get the word out about WorldofGood.com?
RC: We're going to leverage two general paths for our marketing. One is to reach the core eBay consumer. There's tens of millions of them, and we're going to use all the traditional eBay marketing levers, whether it's advertising and online marketing, messaging—all the channels we have will be available to this business. The second path is creating a dialogue with social change consumers in a more direct way. One example I mentioned is that community. The most important thing for that consumer is to really not be marketed to, but be invited to participate in a dialogue and a new way to shop. We'll reach out through social networks and grassroots industry conferences.