GreenPrint shares paper profits

GreenPrint, the Portland-based developer of software that helps eliminate printing-related paper waste in offices, created a media blitz recently when it announced a unique change to its business model: The company now gives its product away to Fortune 500 companies.

More than a marketing gimmick or PR scam, the company’s “Get Paid to Go Green” campaign is essentially a profit-sharing program. GreenPrint gives Fortune 500 companies its software with a built-in reporting tool that calculates how much the company is saving in paper and ink costs. GreenPrint and its customer then split the savings.

As GreenPrint CEO Hayden Hamilton puts it, “If it doesn’t work, you don’t pay, so why not?” While he expected large companies to be slow to change, Hamilton says he hadn’t realized quite how long it would be before they’d sign off on a product like GreenPrint.

“When this idea came to me, it seemed like a good way to reduce barriers to entry,” he says. “Eliminate all costs, and put money in their pocket even before any comes to us.”

The “Get Paid to Go Green” campaign is set to end by Sept. 1, but if all goes well GreenPrint says it may extend the campaign.

The company says it plans to expand the software to include reporting tools for individual packages in order to extend the same savings-sharing deal to residential customers in the future.