Monday, October 27, 2008

Laura's New Green Obsession


The "Forever Lawn", a fake grass product that has probably had it's website crash multiple times since it was featured in a photo spread of Jessica Alba's new green home is my wife, Laura's new obsession.

Neither one of us are lawn people. Aside from making our house look freakishly odd in the middle of winter and effecting the resale value of our house, I'm down.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Frank-

I post a lot about envirnonmental issues and artificial grass in general. I'm pretty knowledgeable about it.

Actually, the articles and blogs talking about the Jessica Alba project to be covered in In Style that I have seen so far seem to say that the product is "Waterless Grass" which, if true, is likely chinese grass marketed by a guy in Arizona.

ForeverLawn is a different brand that is marketed by a couple of guys in New Mexico who own the name and have the grass manufactured for them by a factory here in the US. They then re-sell it through "mom-and-pop" type installers / distributors who sell it to end users.

When this project was being shopped to some companies, it was being solicited for free or at an extremely reduced rate - in exchange for recognition- which some companies are willing to do.

However, that certainly is not necessarily the same thing as a product being chosen because it is best in class, or in this case, the most environmentally friendly product available. Sometimes in these tyes of projects - the owners don't get to have contact with the vendors and that hampers getting good information through to the decision makers.

I may be wrong on this but the photos shown of the Alba project appear to show large amounts of infill used in the product you can see the black rubber in the shot- a shame if that's the case- since it goes right up around a beautiful pool and landscape and infill is made of ground up tires!

I've researched it all- up and down the line 50 times-and theres something that is painfully obvious to me.

If you want to see the state of the art of synthetic landscape grass, it is clearly synlawn. The products are gorgoues, natural, not filled with tires, or other subsitute fills- and you can buy them and have them isntalled by the manufacturer- www.synlawn.com.

The product backing is particularly interesting on synlawn - as a green project, they missed the chance to have a product made with Enviroloq backing- which is made of renewable resources and post consumer waste mixed with the strongest materials available for a backing.

Anyway, thanks for being an enthusiast and advocate and please check out the details- you will find that artificial grass takes a lot of examination to understand completely.

Krissymo said...

Ahh, your lawn. Was it ever green?

Frank Robbins, LEED AP said...

No Kristine, it never was. Which is why I would prefer to just slap on a bunch of tiles made from old tires painted green and just call it a day. I can't tell you how happy I was to be given a pass by the most saught after actress on the planet (but not by me, have you seen the size of her head relative to her body?)

Anonymous said...

Hi everyone! I'm here to quickly comment on ForeverLawn. I'm the marketing director for ForeverLawn, and I personally worked on the Jessica Alba project. First I have a few quick corrections to Frank's post:

1) The grass installed at Jessica Alba's home was Select VR, ForeverLawn's absolute top of the line residential grass. If you saw this grass, you would be stunned at the beauty and lushness of the product. It is absolutely gorgeous. Our grass is made in the USA, and not in China.

2) ForeverLawn is a powerful national brand, and definitely not a mom and pop operation! We have corporate offices in New Mexico and Ohio, and a distribution network of 35+ independently-owned dealers throughout the US and Canada.

3) We did not provide our product for the Alba project for free! The truth is that celebrities often are able to leverage publicity in exchange for free product, but this was not our arrangement. In fact, when Jessica saw the sample of Select VR that we sent her, she agree to pay a significant amount for ForeverLawn's grass, because it was so much nicer than the grass she was offered for free! This is a strong testimonial to the quality and absolute beauty of our product!

4) The claims about large amounts of infill is absolutely false. One of the biggest benefits of ForeverLawn's Select VR product is that it is a very dense product with a unique thatch zone, which actually requires less infill than most synthetic grass products!

5) Hmmm. A link to Synlawn's website in the body of Anonymous' post. That seems odd, doesn't it?

6) ForeverLawn's Select VR features our premium backing made with BioCel technology. The backing is made from recycled plastic and is a green product that qualifies for LEED credits. The backing is dimensionally stable, and uses a superior micro-mechanical bonding for seaming, instead of glue.

7) Now for an apology. The timing of our web server changes was unfortunate! We were very sad to see our website go down a few times right after the Jessica Alba story hit InStyle Magazine. I guess that's Murphy's Law in action!

Thanks for your excitement and interest in synthetic grass. The best way to compare products is to order samples and view the products side by side. You can examine the quality of the products, feel the difference in density and backing, and see the beauty and realism for yourself. I promise you won't be disappointed with our Select VR product. It is truly a sight to behold!

To request a sample, simply visit our (now consistently available) website at http://www.foreverlawn.com and click on the contact link.

Also, feel free to contact me directly if you have any further questions.

Donna Kent
ForeverLawn Marketing Director
donna@foreverlawn.com

Krissymo said...

The comments on your post are longer than the post itself.

Marketing FAIL.

Someone needs a primer in e-marketing!

Anonymous said...

Sorry for the long post! There were a lot of inaccuracies to address in Anonymous' prior post. Thanks for reading.

Donna

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