7/29/2019 Ford Dealer San Fernando Business Journal

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UP FRONTMARCH 4, 2013 SAN FERNANDO VALLEY BUSINESS JOURNAL 3

How can a carmaker bestknown for selling gas-guz-zling pickups make con-sumers feel a little less guiltyabout buying one in this ageof eco-awareness?

Try this: carbon offsets.Simi Valley Ford, in what

may be a first for a majordomestic auto dealership, is

Hitting BrakeOn Carbon

FootprintSimi Valley Ford looksto drive vehicle saleswith pollution offsets.

Ryan Kugler has made aliving selling movies at bot-tom-of-the-barrel prices. Hisnew book hopes to teach bud-ding filmmakers to sell theirwork at a better price point.

Kugler, 38, is president ofDVA Inc., a Burbank compa-ny that liquidates slow sell-ing DVDs and Blu-Ray discsat e-commerce sites and dis-count retailers.

People always come tome and say, Youdistribute moviesto Wal-Mart. Howdo I get my movieon the shelf? he

said. Also, I haveseen a lot ofbombs, so I knowwhat works andwhat doesnt.

The book,How to Plan,Produce and Distribute YourIndependent Film, was co-authored by Eric Sherman,who has written several otherHollywood how-to books.

The cover features a pictureof a VHS video cassette, thefirst medium that allowed film-makers to get their movies

offering to buy two years ofcarbon offsets for every truckand car purchased at its store

through April 22.It works like this: The

dealership is donating a vary-ing amount of cash depend-ing on the vehicles miles pergallon rating toCarbonfund.org , a Bethes-da, Md. environmental group.

The organization will thenuse the money for tree plantingprojects and other initiativesthat in some way cancel out theemissions of the new vehicle.

Its a way for our cus-tomers to buy green, saidMike Shell, the dealerships

directly to consumers without atheater screening. Chapters inthe book cover choosing a dis-tributor and how to get a movieinto stores. And in recognitionof industry changes, it also dis-

cusses digitaldownloads andself-distribution.

Kugler said apublisher gave

him an advanceand agreed topublish the bookbut then rejectedthe manuscript.So the authorsself-published it

both on paper and in electron-ic formats.

So far, though, it hasntexactly set publishing re-cords. It ranked No.1,215,514 this month on theAmazon where it retails forthe full price of $19.99.

Joel Russell

Eco Car Guy: Fleet Manager Mike Shell leans on a vehicle at Simi Valley Ford.

PHOTO BY DAVID SPRAGUE

Retro: Book cover.

NurturingIndie MoviesShelf LifeDVD vendors bookprovides filmmakersdistribution direction.

fleet manager, who devel-oped the program. And itseems to be making a differ-

ence to customers.Shell, who was hired by

the dealership in November,previously started two socialnetworking sites devoted topromoting green-friendlylifestyles and environmentalpolicy: GoGreenTube.comand PlanetDaddy.com.

The offsets vary from just$45 for a gas-sipping FordFusion hybrid, rated at 47mpg, to $142 for the huge Ex-pedition, an SUV that hasgenerated some bad publicityfor Ford in the past given its

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meager 14 miles to the gallon.Executives at Fords

Dearborn, Ill. headquartersdid not respond to calls forcomment, but Shell said theyloved the idea so much thatthey have agreed to pay forall marketing and advertising

as a test for a potentiallywider campaign.We proposed it to corpo-

rate Ford, and theyre back-ing it, Shell said. If its suc-cessful, then next year theyllroll it out to between 100 and500 other dealerships.

Jesse Toprak, vice presi-dent of industry trends at SantaMonica online car sales firmTrueCar Inc. wasnt sure thatthe campaign would convincethe truly eco-conscious intheir decision making, but saidthe campaign was original andwould cut little into the dealer-ships sales margins.

I dont know how many

people are trying to save theworld with their car purchas-es, he said. But its certain-ly creative. I cant imagineits an extremely expensivepromotion and it stands out.

But Shell says the rela-tively small amounts add up.

If every new car dealer-ship in America did this,annually wed have 150 mil-lion tons offset, said Shell.And $15 billion would begoing back to renewableenergy and other things.

Kelly Goff

Kugler