Living Above the Store

Provides a roadmap for creating sustainable businesses that strive to restore the communities and environments in which they operate.

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The economic crash of late 2008 was just the latest evidence of the truth that many had known for so long: that too much of our modern economy is based on a house of cards. We need businesses that not only factor their impact on people and places into their equations for success but also strive to restore the communities and environments in which they operate. How can this be done?


In Living above the Store, Martin Melaver provides a roadmap for creating such a business. He challenges business owners and managers to move beyond business as usual and create real change.


Living above the Store brings us into the story of Melaver, Inc., an American third-generation, seventy-year-old family real-estate business, as it evolves toward becoming a thought and product leader in sustainable business practices. It is part business-management theory and part case study, showing readers where sustainable principles meet sustainable practices on a day-to-day basis.


Living above the Store demonstrates how to:




Adopt a business model that provides for economic success while contributing to society and the environment
Shape a business culture that is restorative to a workforce by helping employees realize their highest potential
Leverage an ethos within a business that 'ripples outwards' to foster restoration of both land and community
Embrace a notion of limits to growth
Reframe ideas about competition, proprietary knowledge and business success

Living above the Store is for readers who want to learn more about how a socially responsible business can first redefine, and then find, success.


"Martin Melaver has enlarged the vocabulary of commerce and restored it to a place of honor, a timely gift in an era of disillusionment. You may put it down to absorb what has been written, but you will not forget the stories of courage, the humility of reflection or the import of what has been said, and you will want to read it straight through to the end." - Paul Hawken, author of The Ecology of Commerce


"Living Above the Store is the right book for these difficult times, when business needs to regain trust. Melaver starts with specific stories of running a family business, sharing successes and failures, frustrations and joys, and then broadens out to illuminate general principles for running a sustainable business. These stories still stick in my mind, long after I have put the book away." - Marc Gunther, contributing editor, Fortune