Rise, the Fredericton B-Corp specializing in sustainable home renovation materials, has signed what CEO Matt Daigle hopes will be a series of marketing partnerships with the stars of home improvement TV shows.

In an interview Monday, Daigle said a recently announced deal with HGTV host Bryan Baeumler — who is also now a shareholder — is the first salvo in a new strategy of marketing Rise via reciprocal promotion deals. Daigle’s plan is for spokespeople like Baeumler to promote Rise, and in turn for Rise to sweeten the pot by promoting Baeumler.

The new marketing strategy comes as Rise, which curates and sells a range of eco-friendly products via its e-commerce shop, is also expanding its target market to include property developers and manufactured home builders.

“We’re a direct-to-manufacturer retailer, so we have the opportunity to be that single source for thousands of products, and offer volume pricing to those bigger players,” said Daigle, who added the company is in talks with several manufactured home companies. 

“It makes it appetizing for several of these builders and or property developers who are used to sometimes dealing with dozens of different people for different product lines. For us, it’s one product line, and you have the comfort of knowing that all these products have been vetted.”

Last June, the company hit break-even after recording $3 million of revenue in its second year of sales.The growth came in the wake of a pivot by Rise from offering an online database of information about sustainable building materials to a model whereby the company curates and sells a range of eco-friendly products via its e-commerce shop.

Since that strong second year, Daigle said a general softening in the home improvement market has had some effect on sales growth, However, he added Rise’s relatively specialized target market of environmentally-conscious consumers means its customers are often willing to spend money even in tighter economic times.

“We tend to deal with, not quite a premium customer, but a customer who’s after specific features and benefits from products,” said Daigle, adding he recently added another employee to his now four-person team. “Price does matter to them, but maybe not as much as making sure I have non-toxic paint in my house."