Branch Records strives to take care of our faithful mascot ?The Tree?. In doing so we plant a tree for every CD sold by our artists in partnership with you, the supporter, and Sustainable Harvest International. Long after that piece of plastic and printing disappears, every one of our supporters (some say fans) can know they have made a huge impact in the world for years to come.
As some people have heard, and yes it is true, our offices are quite an environmental feat. You may be expecting that we spent 10?s of thousands of dollars on the latest in energy conservation. Actually, it is quite the contrary; we do not consider ourselves environmental fanatics spending every dollar we have on reducing our carbon footprint. More times than not the simple art of recycling can be much more cost effective. Even when you buy recycled there still has been countless amounts of pollutants generated to recreate a new product. In our offices, here are a few things that we did that caused the environment and our bank account little to no damage.
Instead of renovating and renting the office space in downtown. We opted for the open warehouse in a prime central location. What is walled? The bathroom and the studio. Thats it! Less materials used, less waste!
We need AC in our offices. We live in Florida. So, instead of allowing yet another piece of metal to make it to the scrap heap, we rescued a five ton AC from a closed down restaurant and put it to work for us.
Instead of wasting loads of synthetic carpet, we opted to stain the concrete floors. Green of course and it looks fabulous.
We are almost a completely paperless office. As a matter of fact, our first 3 months in business we didn?t even have a printer. Unfortunately, there are some things that are still required to do business. For those tasks we typically enlist a recycled product. Our business cards are organic ink and recycled paper as well as our letterhead. Honestly we don?t use recycled on everything. It is not because of the cost (which is fairly the same), but because as of right now it causes more pollution to produce certain recycled paper products than others. We use recycled paper products in hopes to create awareness of the environment impact in paper products.
What is different about Branch MERCH is its quality and uniqueness? We have actually searched out the latest in fabrics and have been known to ship in fabric samples from all over the world. We definitely believe that our products will one day be as well known as Hollister or American Eagle. One thing you can rest assured it that there is some organic element in every one of our shirts. Most of the time, you will find them to be 100% organic cotton. Organic Fact: The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that approximately 20,000 people die each year in developing countries as a result of the chemicals sprayed on non-organic cotton. Branch Fact: Every organic shirt purchased helps support developing countries, save lives, and reduces harmful chemicals leaking into the worlds water supply. As an added bonus, organic cotton has an overall better feel, look, and quality.
We have gotten some flack about our artists absence in retail stores. Keep this in mind, it is not because we cannot or that we will never but it is a last resort in our minds. The digital age has caused us to change our mindset on music delivery. The recording industry fought tooth and nail against it for a solid decade. We are not only going full steam ahead, we are pioneering new heights being the first label to provide direct ipod downloads at our merch tables and jump drive albums. All of these innovations use reusable technology. We include album art, videos, pictures , and any other goodies we can fit. Question: What about people stealing songs? Answer: When people buy our stuff it is more than music lining the pockets of a label and its artists. It is about demanding more for music and we honestly believe people will support that. When you buy music from a Branch Artist you are giving, receiving, inspiring, and being inspired. We honestly just do not think about that stuff because we can?t do anything about it. More than that is we stay too busy developing ideas.