Sharon Rowe is an entrepreneur and mother of two grown children from Westchester County, New York. I spent two minutes talking to her and realized who she was. “I was just in SoHo,” she told me. SoHo is the New York City neighborhood where The Story Exchange has its offices. The entire neighborhood, perhaps due to the easing of pandemic restrictions or perhaps because New York City just legalized recreational marijuana, is “weed-soaked.”
I waited for her to complain, but Roy just chuckled. She was born in the 1960s, after all. Some people on street corners look at her like, “I’m a middle-aged woman,” but she continues, “I’m tempted to say, ‘Hey, I have five plants in my house.’”
Roy always seems to be keeping up with the times, with an uncanny ability to stay several steps ahead. More than 30 years ago, she was disgusted by the plastic bags she saw on city streets and even hanging from tree branches, so she founded Eco-Bags Products Inc. (motto: “Cleaning up the planet, one bag at a time”). Her goal is to produce eco-friendly fabric shopping bags that consumers can reuse.
The Challenge: It was 1989, and George H. W. Bush had just been elected. Bottled water (another environmental hazard) wasn’t even a thing yet. It would be another 15 years before the reusable shopping bag trend really took off, and eco-friendly bags would become a multi-million dollar business with wholesale clients like Whole Foods Market, Estee Lauder, and King Arthur Flour.
I asked Rowe what it was like to be so ahead of the movement. Her answer was honest, but oddly modest. As one of the few makers of plastic bag alternatives on the market at the time, Eco-Bags had been involved in high-profile plastic bag bans of the time, including campaigns in Ireland and Modbury, U.K., in the early 2000s, and then back in the United States, where laws to reduce plastic bag use were just taking effect (New York state, for example, banned plastic bags in 2020). “We’ve been involved in a lot of those,” she said simply.
Roy didn’t set out to become a visionary CEO — in fact, she had no formal business training. In 1981, she moved from her native Connecticut to New York City to become an actress. She trained in improv. “It was a long, hard road,” she said. “I learned to deal with a lot of rejection.”
Between auditions, Lowe worked part-time in an office to make ends meet. “I remember wearing suits with shoulder pads,” she says. “I looked terrible.” After marrying in 1986 and having her first child, she decided to work from home—again, something few people did at the time. But when her boss questioned her commitment, she quit. “It wasn’t that we didn’t have the financial resources,” says Lowe, whose husband is a musician and part-time teacher. “I thought, ‘I’ve had enough.’”
Around the same time, she noticed the trash in Washington Heights, a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan. “My sense of smell was so heightened right after I gave birth,” she said. What’s more, supermarkets had just switched from traditional paper shopping bags to plastic ones — they were now everywhere, even “clogged up the drains,” she recalls. Since there was no other way to get groceries home, “I thought, ‘There’s got to be another way.’”
Roy traveled to Europe as a child and remembers customers using mesh bags called “fillets.” She took a chance on a German supplier willing to ship to the U.S., signed her first major order for $1,000, and set up a booth at a New York City street fair in 1990, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Earth Day. “We sold out in about four hours,” she said. “It was a huge success.”
“After that, I went to all the natural product shows and just sold and sold,” Lo said. “People were ordering directly from us.” Soon, the Eco-Bags were being sold to a wholesale distributor, UNFI. The company grew slowly, adding different styles of bags (cotton, canvas, etc.) to its line, and by the late 2000s, its annual revenue was about $800,000.
Ultimately, consumer sentiment prevailed. In fact, Rowe worked with a publicist to get her bags featured on Oprah Winfrey in 2008. “Our sales almost tripled overnight,” Rowe said, to about $3 million a year. “We learned to answer the phone and say, ‘We’re having a little bit of a backlog right now.’”
Ultimately, however, Eco-Bags faced stiff competition, and its ambitions extended far beyond shopping bags, though they were the company’s core product. “Our goal was never to be the Walmart of shopping bags — our goal was to spark a conversation,” Roy said. In 1989, “there was no research, no education about the plastic problem. There was no discussion about sustainable manufacturing with fair pay and fair labor. None of those conversations had happened yet.”
Roy said she used scene-study techniques she learned in acting to connect the concept of caring for the environment to physical objects like shopping bags. “If you, as an actor, can connect movement to an action, you can understand it more deeply,” she said. For example, an actor might insert a key into a door or vigorously wash dishes to express anger during a scene. Likewise, “we choose consumer products because they’re literally something you can touch with your hands.”
Now, in the wake of the pandemic, Rowe is back to running her company, which is a certified B corporation. Revenue fell 70% last year, and she had to take out a Personal Payroll Program (PPP) loan to stay afloat. Although she has a small staff — just five people plus a team of consultants — she had to lay off one employee. “I’ve been in business for 30 years, and the pandemic has completely devastated me,” she said.
She keeps busy (and stress-relieving) by hiking, walking her dog, and painting — “things that every middle-aged woman does,” she laughs. “I haven’t started taking a pottery class yet, but I’d like to.” But orders are slowly picking up — in fact, King Arthur Flour’s baking business has seen a surge in sales during the pandemic, and the company recently ordered 40,000 drawstring bags for its Bake for Good student program. Rowe hopes that Washington’s Green New Deal proposals will further raise environmental awareness. She hopes to be able to hand over the keys to a partner or customer in the future. “Everything I set out to do, I did,” she said. “I sparked a conversation. That’s my legacy.”
Sharon: Everyone should be able to breathe clean air and water, be able to go to a park without litter, be able to go to a beach without litter, and be able to breathe fresh air.
Sharon: When I started Recycled Bags, there was no research or understanding of the plastic issue. There was no discussion of sustainability either. We just want to give people a choice so they don’t have to create so much waste. We want to create products that actually make a difference and change culture.
Sharon: There are fish fillet bags, canvas bags, certified organic bags, recycled bags, bread bags, and zip and button bags. There are also different types of shoulder bags, whatever you need.
Sharon: I’ve learned to deal with a lot of “no’s.” I’ve done a lot of what I would call “part-time work.” I’ve gotten a taste of what it’s like to be a woman looking for work in New York City. I feel bad.
Sharon: There is too much litter on the streets. What I particularly noticed was plastic bags. Plastic bags were lying on the streets, clogging the gutters and hanging on the trees; but I had no choice but to take my shopping home. I thought, “There must be another way.”
Sharon: I searched all over the US for factories that made what I needed, particularly mesh bags and fish fillet bags. But I got nothing.
Sharon: I heard about Earth Day 1990. I set up a booth on Sixth Avenue with every bag I had and sold out in four hours. It sold really well.
Sharon: It was a pleasure working with India. We found really good, honest, hard-working people who are truly committed to their communities and serving people.
Sharon: Our eco-bags are on the table. Oprah came over and said, “That’s a great idea. Bring your own shopping bags to the store. Why use disposable bags and throw them away?” Our sales almost tripled overnight, and the phone hasn’t stopped ringing. We don’t even have enough stock.
Sharon: We left the office on March 13th and that was it. When I got home, I was freezing. My heart, everything hurts.
Sharon: I lived through a recession, so I know you have to act fast and think hard to find a solution. But the orders weren’t coming in. What do we do? I started taking care of all the financial stuff and getting it in order.
Sharon: I think the first month… “What’s going to happen?” We just started hiking a lot. Every time I leave the house, my dog ​​looks at me like, “Another hike?”
Sharon: People bring their own shopping bags. They think. People think. It’s not just about the shopping bag itself, it’s about the bag itself and everything you put in it. It’s about making an informed decision. What I set out to do, I did; I provoked a conversation. That’s my legacy.
Story Exchange is an award-winning nonprofit media organization that inspires and informs women entrepreneurs.
Story Exchange is an award-winning nonprofit media organization that inspires and informs women entrepreneurs.