MONEY OCT/NOV 2013 ISSUE 21 by BE.COMMUNICATIONS

BUSINESS | LIFESTYLE | DESIGN

The CREATIVITY & DESIGN issue

Issue 21 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013

kEVIN LOBO ON FASHION THE NEW CREATIVES

SCANDINAVIAN SIMPLICITY ALBERT MARSHALL

The best way to predict the future is to create it

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Welcome

Contents Creativity is key to everything we do. You might have the skill, the budget, the patience and perseverance to do something – but if you are not creative in your approach, then you will be stuck in a rut.

There is an increasing – and timely, given that we’re in the run-up to Valletta assuming the status of European Capital of Culture in 2018 – acknowledgement that not only is creativity an important ingredient in all industries, but that the creative industry itself can be a significant contributor to the local economy. In this issue of Money, we meet the new Chairman of the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts, Albert Marshall. He believes that the MCCA can use culture as a catalyst for creativity and innovation, inspired by the knowledge that a creative nation is also a productive nation. Of course, to strengthen our creative economy, we need to adopt a professional approach. In this issue, we meet four young creatives who, apart from being talented, have pursued their studies in creativity and are now leading a fulfilling career. Creativity also plays an important role in technology and social media. For Richard Muscat Azzopardi, an online marketing campaign is not just an art but also a science that combines stunning visuals, ease of use and a clear message. When Stephen Johnson and the other three founders of eunèv started investigating the state of play of the MICE industry, little did they know that they were about to change the industry through their innovative approach to social commerce. And it all started with one brilliant idea. In this issue of Money, we also highlight the dangers of over-design, review the latest edition of the London Design Festival, celebrate Scandinavian simplicity in design, and travel to Oslo. Read on and enjoy.

OCTOBER/ NOVEMBER 2013 14 All Malta is a stage

MCCA Chairman Albert Marshall tells Veronica Stivala that his primary aim is guiding the setting up of an entity that is informed and inspired by the belief that a creative nation is a productive nation.

18 Lines, curves, and everything in between This year, the London Design Festival showcased capital design.

23 We sell ideas Money meets Malta’s young hopes for a creative future.

30 Designs for life

Different spaces require various design solutions. Andrew Vinci and Simon Grech highlight two properties from their portfolio.

37 MICE? It’s not a trap any more Editor Anthony P. Bernard anthony@moneymag.me Consulting Editor Stanley Borg stanley@moneymag.me Advertising Matilde Melo matilde@becommunications.com Design Hello Jon jon@hellojon.com Printing Gutenberg Distribution Mailbox Direct Marketing Group

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Eunèv is set to change the MICE industry. Money meets the people who make it click.

41 Everything new is old again

A plethora of pundits are offering systems and methods for improving corporate design, creativity, and innovation. But can these 21st century musthaves actually be taught? Sean Patrick Sullivan thinks not.

46 Carried away by the current

Having the largest current account surplus isn’t good news for Germany, says Chris Grech and Calvin Bartolo.

50 From region to nation?

Hong Kong is where East meets West – however, is it still a happy marriage, asks Money.

52 Suits you sir

Everything around me can be an inspiration, says Kevin Lobo, Brand and Creative Director Menswear for Hugo Boss.

60 Scandinavian simplicity Design efficiency is what makes Scandinavian design functional and sustainable, says Violet Kulewska.

67 A country at leisure

Mona Farrugia finally discovers the city which puts a complete halt to shopaholicism: Oslo, where cake and coffee cost as much as a main course in Paris and where every shop is barricaded by pushchairs.

70 The Bluesman’s blog The US shutdown allows the Bluesman to make some observations.

Money is published by BE Communications Ltd, 37, Amery Street, Sliema, SLM 1702 All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part is strictly prohibited without written permission. Opinions expressed in Money are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher. All reasonable care is taken to ensure truth and accuracy, but the editor and publishers cannot be held responsible for errors or omissions in articles, advertising, photographs or illustrations. Unsolicited manuscripts are welcome but cannot be returned without a stamped, self-addressed envelope. The editor is not responsible for material submitted for consideration.

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Interview

All Malta is a stage Malta must assume the role of a creative nation that spurs innovation, creates jobs and shapes a future of prosperity and shared opportunity. Malta Council for Culture and the Arts Chairman Albert Marshall tells Veronica Stivala that his primary aim is guiding the setting up of an entity that is informed and inspired by the belief that a creative nation is a productive nation. Photos by Marc Casolani

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“Including the A arts in the Maltese curriculum is an important step in building this creative capacity.”

lbert Marshall is not one to mince his words and has no qualms about stating, in a very matter of fact manner, that the Malta Council for Culture and the Arts needs an overhaul. “Malta has a national cultural policy in place. Now we also have an electoral manifesto that stipulates the way forward in the cultural sector,” he comments. Marshall, also Deputy Chair of V.18 and Vice-Chair of PBS

explains how perhaps more than ever before, the sector needs to hone in on a broader remit that should include the creation of excellence, jobs, prosperity, and opportunity – all vital to an outward looking, competitive and confident nation. To tune in to these levels of awareness, the MCCA has to be reconceived as an entity with a more wide-ranging approach to the cultural sector including the domains of language, cultural and

archival heritage, design, music, performance and celebration, embracing community cultural development, screen arts, broadcasting and interactive media, visual arts and crafts, writing and publishing. This new awareness has to translate into an entity that strives to use culture as a catalyst for creativity and innovation and to eradicate misconceived barriers between contemporary and historical practices, arts and creative industries, professional and amateur, commercial and non-profit activities.

entity that is informed and inspired by the belief that a creative nation is a productive nation in the fullest sense of the word – imaginative, industrious, adaptive, open and successful. “In the process of rolling out this radical evolvement, I feel responsible to contribute in bringing about a cultureshift in the mindset of our artistic community, in that our artists should stop relying so heavily on public monies to move on. Public funding is a national obligation but it shouldn’t be perceived as the be-all and end-all of a career in the arts.”

The framework of this revamped remit should be underpinned by a total commitment to the belief that when we think of these key areas, we recognise the reality that cultural industries and creative arts skills are central to the entire edifice – through the implementation of its cultural policy, Malta must assume the role of a creative nation that spurs innovation, creates jobs and shapes a future of prosperity and shared opportunity.

What does Marshall think he can contribute to the local, and international, arts scene?

Including the arts in the Maltese curriculum is an important step in building this creative capacity.

“It’s by serendipity that I find myself in this position at a moment when an upheaval in the cultural sector is in the air. These are exciting times for the sector: what with 2014 earmarked for celebrations of important national anniversaries, Malta’s Presidency in 2017 building up to a climax with Valletta 2018.

“The conditions that characterise the beginning of the 21st century make this wide-ranging approach to the cultural sector, including its economic output, more important than ever. A tall order, I know, but doable, I believe,” he says. “So the primary aims and plans in my role as MCCA’s chair is to facilitate this vision – this mission – to lead the present structures towards the setting up of an

Some will remember how, when, during the 1990s, Marshall managed PBS as CEO, he reinvented the programming scene at the national broadcaster. “Innovative urges and creative impulses have always been a trademark of my approach to cultural production,” he states.

“The moment can’t be more opportune for me to do my best to synergise as best I can my natural qualities as seasoned practitioner and cutting-edge administrator with the evolvement of an organisational force designed to set the dynamics in motion

for a cosy fit. The latter will last at least for over the next decade when the partnerships between different levels of government, of public and private entities, and the social sector, are likely to become richer and deeper as the cultural sector becomes more entwined in all aspects of life and the economy.” These dynamics are set to extend into the international arts scene through structured networking with art councils from overseas, the facilitation of an aggressive artistsin-residence programme with a strong exchange component and, perhaps more importantly, the establishment of a new division within the MCCA Mark 2 for the promotion of Maltese culture abroad. The main task of this division will be to facilitate and consolidate all government efforts in the areas such as artists/culture exchange programmes, participation at international arts festivals, book fairs, and more. One of the MCCA’s main events is its annual arts festival. Where does Marshall want to take the festival? Marshall underlines the fact that the Malta Arts

Festival is a member of the European Festivals Association. This means that the festival is recognised internationally as a major European festival. This fact, he points out, had been forcefully acknowledged by the London Sunday Times Travel Supplement (June 2011) where the festival was listed among the major European festival. Since then, the festival has grown in international stature and importance: the festival has now, more than ever before, become an inviting proposition for the tourism authority to market the event aggressively as a cultural tourism product. Marshall acknowledges the misconception that the festival does not feature enough local talent. “This innuendo is harmful and misleading. It smacks of parochialism and isolationist ranting. What happened this year will be retained as a model for future festivals and the statistics for this year’s edition show that 10 out of 14 performances were local productions. Going beyond this will seriously stymie the project’s essential qualities of cultural cross-fertilisation, international outreach and the

Money / Issue 21 - 15

Interview

prestigious contextualisation of the Maltese product.”

a long way to remedy the existent problem.

The project is moving on nicely, comments Marshall.

Marshall reveals how he wants to take the festival to fringe out of the capital.

As regards performance space, Marshall doesn’t think we should be whingeing about this – in Valletta alone we have no less than five playhouses with the Catholic Institute a stone’s throw away.

“The Foundation is coming to terms with its shortcomings and as Deputy Chair of V.18, the Board of Governors under the aggressive leadership of Jason Micallef, in conjunction with all the artistic directors and artists involved, is addressing these issues head-on.”

“I dream of the festival to be truly national and branch out into towns and villages around Malta and Gozo.” One of the issues many local artists face is the lack of performance and rehearsal space. What are Marshall’s views on this and how does he think the issue can be resolved? There are some brilliant ideas in the offing, he notes, including the creation of a culture hub. This project, together with the space that will be opened up when the plan to refurbish various vacant government properties is implemented, should go

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“Alternative performance spaces are mushrooming along Strait Street – typical examples of how private concerns can develop into a creative performance industry and employ artists from different walks of life,” he adds. Malta will be Capital of Culture in 2018. What are Marshall’s views on where we stand in our preparations for this big event and what does he think needs to yet be done?

“The creative forces spread out among a myriad of cultural entities and government bodies are being harnessed towards a repository of vibrating energies that are being channelled into streams of focused action according to comprehensive strategic, business and communication plans drawn up on a five-year span.”

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Design

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Lines, curves, and everything in between

This year, the London Design Festival showcased capital design. Photos by London Design Festival, www.londondesignfestival.com

he 11th edition of the London Design Festival, held from September 14-22, brought together over 250 partners in 300 events celebrating the best in design. Across the capital, galleries, museums, retailers and studios opened their doors to greet the many visitors interested in seeing design processes at work and visiting creative spaces. The Festival started with a Graphics Weekend, packed with workshops, debates and installations focused on print, paper, web, typography and more. The last weekend of the Festival was Digital Design Weekend at the V&A and celebrated digital art, design and science.

As the central hub location for the London Design Festival for the fifth year, the V&A housed a broad range of commissioned activity spread throughout the Museum and including installations, events, talks and workshops. Highlights included an impressive eight-storey lighting installation in the main entrance by Canadian designer Omer Arbel and a trail of Swarovski lenses focused on the design details of objects across the V&Aâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s collections. Alessi provided an insight into their production processes with a display which examined the making skills

of its factory in Crusinallo. Dutch Designers Scholten and Baijings took a theatrical approach to design with their installation The Dinner Party which was installed in the opulent Norfolk House Music Room. Martin Roth, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum said that, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The V&A has always been at the forefront of the design world, collecting and displaying the best in contemporary design, while also providing inspiration for our visitors. Today, this is truer than ever, as the V&A not only displays and celebrates great design, but also, through our relationship with the creative industries,

Money / Issue 21 - 19

Design

inspires our audience. The London Design Festival at the V&A is a beacon of this relationship with the design industry, and a symbol of its success.” The London Design Festival doesn’t sit still – in fact, a packed programme of lunchtime talks, gallery talks, hands-on workshops and provocative debate focused in the Museum’s Sackler Centre. Talks varied from creative showcases and project presentations to panel discussions and debates. Simultaneously, challenging workshops and demonstrations gave visitors the opportunity to learn new skills from expert practitioners. “The London Design Festival is a magnificent convocation of designers from around the world, reinforcing our city’s status as one of the world’s greatest centres for creativity and

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innovation,” said the Mayor of London Boris Johnson. “It’s a terrific and wide-ranging showcase of a sector that generates around £15 billion a year for our economy and is critically important to our future prosperity.” The Festival also awarded the London Design Medal, British design’s most coveted accolade, awarded each year by a panel of judges to an individual who has made an immense contribution to design and London. This year, the winner was graphic designer Peter Saville. This year, the London Design Medal was headline supported by luxury watch brand Panerai with Wallpaper* as media partner. Other category medals and their sponsors included Coutts Lifetime Achievement Award, Veuve Clicquot Design Entrepreneur Award and Swarovski Emerging Talent Award.

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1. Sustainable kitchen design in collaboration with Fino 2013. Project by Mateusz Rostkowski and Emma Hickey / 2. Toly retail exhibition stand for Monaco International exhibition 2011. Project by Mateusz Rostkowski and Christine Ellul.

We sell ideas

Money meets Malta’s young hopes for a creative future.

The creative

Name: Mateusz Rostkowski Age: 24 Education: BA (Hons.) in 3D Design and Interiors, MCAST Art and Design Institute. Inspiration: Simplicity and functionality.

What or who inspired you to pursue interior design as a profession? Art has always been a part of me throughout my life. Since my childhood, I’ve always loved to be creative and imaginative in drawing. As I grew up, I became more passionate about the beauty of designing an idea and bringing it to life. My inspiration to pursue interior design as a profession was from when I started my first course at MCAST seven years ago. History of art was one of our main subjects and so we used to have lectures on famous artists and designers who created such amazing work which is still a benchmark till this day. Learning from all these artists and designers gave me inspiration and determination to pursue my own creativity and to express my talent as an interior designer. How does good design enhance our quality of life? Good design plays a major role in our lives – it enhances our everyday needs whether

it’s just a simple product that we use or a space we live in. The more thought is put into good design, the more efficient our products and surroundings will be. As designer Dieter Ram said, “Good design cannot be measured in a finite way.” How do you marry form and function? To marry form and function, every designer faces three main challenges. First is to discover the true essence of an object or a space and what really defines it. Second is to discover its function and how to be able to improve it. And third is to search its beauty. What role does a client play in transforming a space? The client is the most important element. When assigned to design a space, it’s vital to get a good and clear brief of the client’s requirements and needs. You have to build a relationship with your client in order to understand their needs before making any decisions to design a space.

What are the main elements in designing a space? The main elements are to see the space as a volume in a 3D dimension. Different materials and furniture can change an entire space while colour schemes can influence the mood of the user. Lighting is another important factor as it improves the atmosphere of a space. Once you have included all these elements, you will have the right design for a space. What have been your most challenging projects to date? My most challenging project was to convert my school into a new use for my thesis. This was an interior and landscaping design project where I confronted many obstacles and requirements that had to be taken into consideration. My objective was to transform a school into a general rehabilitation centre. Therefore I had to employ all of my skills, knowledge and experience in order to achieve a successful design.

Money / Issue 21 - 23

Careers

it makes you feel like you are part of a community. For me adding value to a brand means carefully examining and embracing the purpose of what the brand is all about and consequently making your client feel part of it.

The creative

Name: Shawn Grima Age: 22 Education: BA (Hons.) in Graphic Design and Interactive Media. Inspiration: Solving problems. What or who inspired you to pursue design as a profession? I was always keen about the idea of having the ability to solve someone else’s problems through visual communication – but this was still an idea before I pursued my diploma and later degree in graphical communication. In addition, what surely kick-started my desire to reach a good creative knowledge was when I was exposed to the idea that graphic design is so powerful that it creeps on you and before you know it you’ve got the message just from just a visual perspective. Being a graphic designer is just having the power to decide how people think or act and I must admit I kind of like that. But it was surely the great opportunity of working as a creative with Brnd Wgn that got me to pursue graphic design on a professional level. Design isn’t just about form – how do you marry it with function? David Carson said, “Don’t confuse legibility with communication.” As designers we are translators – you take whatever content there is, give it form and then put it in a context which suggests how the user reacts with the product. A product can only function if you understand your target audience. A successful product is a blend of form and function. How do you enhance and add value to a brand through design? The first thing that I keep in mind when working on a brand is sensibility. For me a brand is not just the logo or colour scheme, product or service but is all that matters in a whole experience. You buy a product by a recognised brand because

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What role does the client play in the final product? It’s important to have a good relationship with your client and maintain constant communication on every job for best results. However, clients have to acknowledge that they hire us because we do something that they cannot do. In a way we are creatives with an attitude of knowing what works or not. In your profile, you say that you are inspired by the German mindset – in what way? I am hugely inspired by everything German and it all started from the very intellectual, self-taught Professor Erik Spiekermann. To me the German design mindset is the backbone of my design attitude. I am a designer of rules – I just love working with grids and margins to extract what is considered to me as the best out of clarity. What have been your most challenging projects to date? I keep pushing until I get the most out of something. I think that the most challenging projects that I had to do are the ones that are self-motivated. Being your own client is kind of difficult.

Careers

The creative

Name: Jeremy Debattista Age: 25 Education: Degrees in Creative Computing and Graphic Communications, University of Creative Arts. Inspiration: Movies and friends.

What memories do you have of your first camera? Six years ago, I was one of the last from my group of friends to buy a point and shoot camera. It was a Casio Exilim and I only bought it because my girlfriend at the time noticed we hardly had any photos together – so we just walked into a shop and bought one to take selfies. From that moment, I got hooked on photography and eventually bought another Casio camera that took slow motion shots. Three years ago, I bought a GoPro, which I’ve since broke. The truth is that I’ve never owned an SLR – I just borrow my father’s. That’s a bit stupid considering that my profession is making videos.

Best and that led to another job, which then led to another three and I was lucky enough to start supporting myself through doing what I love. Eventually, I started working with Brnd Wgn.

What is the first project that inspired you to pursue this medium professionally? I can’t pinpoint a project or one particular moment. My first video was with my Casio camera and was a oneminute soppy video I made an old love of mine for our one-year anniversary. I enjoyed it so I started documenting a lot of things and made videos every summer of me and my friends.

I went through a period where I only enjoyed filming empty spaces because I found it extremely peaceful. There are endless possibilities with video which adds to the challenge of making something different.

Then last summer a friend of mine asked me to make a small advert for New York

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Video is not just about capturing moments – what other elements does it capture? Whatever you want it to capture I guess. Sometimes I try and produce abstract videos – they might not have a clear story and they might not even make sense to some, but they make sense to me. My own documented videos are always personal and the ones that mean the most to me.

How trustworthy is the eye behind the camera? Not at all. Well, mine isn’t. I wear contacts and my eyesight is terrible. Even though sunlight produces the best shots for video, it’s a nightmare when it comes to focusing your lens on a subject.

Some people sometime think it’s my style but I’d say it’s just my deteriorating eyesight. What inspires you? Movies is an obvious one – not big budget blockbusters that have been butchered by Hollywood, but films such as Like Crazy, which was shot entirely on a Canon 7D SLR and won countless awards. Another inspiration is a group of friends who are all graphic designers and so they help inspire me daily. Ed Dingli, Matthew Demarco, Nigel Anastasi, Neil Martin, Kane O Flaherty are constantly blowing me away. Last and not least is my mother – she’s my rock. Cheap and available technology has made video more accessible – yet has the quality improved as well? Yes and no. I can’t deny that if it wasn’t so cheap, I wouldn’t have started producing small videos in the first place. However everyone is always trying to find the product that makes video clearer, smoother, brighter. It’s not always about the quality of the video. Things that impress me are normally videos that were shot on basic equipment but still make your jaw drop.

Careers

The creative

Name: Rebecca Bonaci Age: 21 Education: BA (Hons.) Fine Arts, MCAST Institute of Art and Design. Inspiration: Living and meeting interesting people.

What or who inspired you to pursue drawing and illustration? I’ve always had a passion for drawing. My family always encouraged me and this motivated me to continue drawing. What is your medium of choice? I don’t limit myself to a specific medium – the media I choose mainly depend on the concept I am working on. I am always driven to create something new, to experiment and find new ways of expressing myself. Is your work an attempt to capture life, or to make your mark on life? Most of the time my attempt is to capture life. What role does art play in life? I guess art makes life so much more interesting. Life without art would be dull and boring. How does your mood influence your works? My mood mainly influences the amount of work I produce. I can’t work when I’m mad. Being mad about something or frustrated about certain aspects of life just helps me in my concepts but I have to calm down before I manage to produce any work. Does a work of art need a title? That depends on what the artist’s intentions are. A work of art does not have to have a title. In fact a lot of artists title their work ‘untitled’. However, sometimes a title helps in making the viewer understand the whole concept. Other times the title is the only thing that gives meaning to a painting. Kazimir Malevich’s work Red Square: Painterly Realism of a Peasant Woman in Two Dimensions (1915) is a clear example of this.

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Architecture

Designs for life

Different spaces require various design solutions. Andrew Vinci and Simon Grech highlight two properties from their portfolio.

Helena’s villa A 400m² space, this villa was designed with privacy and protection in mind – this sense is enhanced by the angular, modernist geometry which interprets a castle’s sense of safety. The exterior monumental stance provides shelter for internal courtyards and living spaces filled with light. What were the clients’ main design requirements? Andrew Vinci: The clients love to entertain and wanted all their living space, including their bedroom suite, on one level, with the main garden, pool and guest bedrooms upstairs. They adore their dogs too and a lot of the design process revolved around the dogs’ access to various internal and external areas via slit windows. A main concern was to maximise internal privacy from the surrounding apartments in the area without compromising light and volume – this was achieved through internal yards on the first floor and the double height and skylight traversing the main living area. Simon Grech: The site was earmarked by the local planning authorities for a low-lying villa development surrounded by apartment block development. The starting point of this project was

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to design a private villa for comfortable living and entertaining within the challenging context of its surroundings. We managed to achieve privacy by creating what looks like a monolithic block from the outside – however, through the use of skylights, courtyards, double height and wide low-lying apertures screened by a high boundary wall at ground floor, we managed to create a building that feels spacious, private and flooded with light on the inside. It’s an introverted building sharing the qualities of a Maltese vernacular farmhouse. The villa is also designed for the clients’ dogs, which are so dear to them. The dogs influenced design decisions at every stage – for instance, we included small doors in the external apertures to allow them free movement around the villa. Were you responsible for both structure and interior architectural design? Andrew Vinci: We were responsible for all aspects of the villa, from excavation to the choice of curtains. Part of the joy of being a small office is that such projects can be a joint effort involving all members of the team, according to individual expertise. We practically camped on site to make sure that every detail of the villa was executed properly. Simon Grech: We believe that design should be treated holistically and that

the interior of a space should be given as much importance as its exterior. What materials did you make use of and what structural and aesthetic benefits do these offer? Andrew Vinci: I love white internal and external surfaces that maximise light, raw materials such as exposed concrete, and timber solutions such as plywood and oriented strand boards, both for aesthetic and cost-effectiveness. Simon Grech: We tried to keep a minimal material palette by using a simple concrete frame construction system for the skeleton and in-filled block work – this was all rendered white with external plaster giving the building a modernist and monolithic aesthetic. A modulated cast in-situ concrete wall that runs against the organic perimeter of the site was left exposed, celebrating the beauty and plasticity of concrete. Perforated steel sheeting allowed us to create necessary functional elements within the building such as railings, gates and a staircase, creating very little visual obstruction and allowing light to continue flowing through the space. Internally, concrete slabs were left exposed and walls were plastered white. Polished and brushed concrete floors were used internally and externally. I believe that our limited palette of materials helped us achieve a calm and humble building.

Robert’s apartment Set in the historic cityscape of Valletta, this 60m² apartment is designed around a central glass box, which asserts a contemporary and flexible feel. The frosted glass cube contains the master bedroom, and around it, the apartment layout can be pivoted using custom folding partitions – this transforms a one-bedroom floor plan into a twobedroom property with ease if required. The glass cube can be lit with different colours to create different moods for relaxing or entertaining. Whereas for Helena’s villa, you had 400m² at your disposal, for Robert’s apartment, you only had 60m² . What design constraints did this present? Andrew Vinci: I may sound paradoxical in stating that some small spaces are actually easier to plan out than larger ones – it is tougher to find a fitting solution when no problem exists in the first place. Once we split the square plan into four quadrants providing the spaces needed – kitchen, main bedroom, dining and living spaces – we could further subdivide to allow for a guest bedroom and shower. Simon Grech: The challenge was how to turn a small existing apartment into an open, light, modern and flexible space that would satisfy the client’s brief to

adapt to the different number of people it would have to accommodate at different times, while not compromising space he can enjoy when alone. Did the location, Valletta, influence your design? Andrew Vinci: I would say that more than Valletta itself, it was the setting of an old urban apartment that influenced the design. We did not want to strip the apartment of its identity and even though we inserted a very slick glass box into the volume, we held back when it came to the other finishes and fittings, not bothering too much about having perfectly straight walls. We also used oil-based paint instead of tiles in the bathroom, and restored the existing traditional timber apertures, installing new ones as required. Simon Grech: We wished to treat this intervention as a modern installation that contrasts subtly with its surroundings. I believe that this approach does not only apply to the interiors of historic buildings but is also successful when carried out on an urban scale. Such modern interventions that respect and work within existing historical contexts can be simultaneously pleasant, fitting and functional.

The architects Grech & Vinci Architecture and Design Andrew Vinci, 39, is inclined towards structural engineering and loves finding practical solutions for smaller spaces. Simon Grech, 31, specialised in design. He likes to be challenged by different contexts and parameters which allow for the design of interesting spaces through the manipulation of space, light, programme and people. Money / Issue 21 - 31

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Marketing

Capturing people’s imagination Maybe coming up with the next big thing is not that hard after all. It’s making the crucial step from concept to profit that is the nutcracker, says George Larry Zammit

o you have this great idea. You have come up with this fantastic product or concept. You are full of belief that what you possess is your big break to profitable avenues. But then again many have been there before and failed. History is full of examples where innovations didn’t take off as expected. Why you? What makes your idea the special one? From sliced bread to tablets, having a good idea is only the first step of a long journey. There is much more than meets the eye to make the desired success.

Serve a purpose

Many product and business innovations have failed in the past due to a lack of purpose. Make sure your business idea focuses on a customer need. We sometimes get lost into the nitty gritty of product attributes and functionality. But in reality the consumer will only engage with you if you can fulfill their needs. Consumers are not queuing up to spend money just for the sake of it. They expect a return on their investment. They have expectations and by fulfilling their needs you can only make a sustainable transaction.

Capture their imagination

Even though consumers have specific needs, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they know what they are. Henry Ford was famous for creating the automobile industry while consumers probably just thought that they needed a faster horse. Steve Jobs brought music and internet access to the iPhone while consumers just considered mobile phones as an alternative device to make a phone call. Whatever you create, it has to capture the imagination of your customers.

Be remarkable

Certainly there is nothing new nowadays in being different as many try to differentiate themselves from others. Therefore forget about being different and focus on being remarkable. Your idea needs to astonish customers. We are full of choice and options to fulfill our day-to-day needs. Why should someone buy into your big idea? What is so exciting about what you have to offer? Where’s the beef ?

Ideas that spread

We are now living in a digital age where the internet and social networking facilitate the distribution of knowledge and content. Those ideas that swiftly spread are those that succeed. Remember PSY’s Gangnam Style? At times it might seem fascinating how certain things become a viral hit. It’s also true that bad ideas spread too. But today we are operating in a global community. Barriers of trade continue to come down as business flourishes from one region to another. Ideas that spread win the battle if not even the war.

Think like a guerrilla commando

Don’t be intimidated by being the underdog. There are many business success stories of Davids beating Goliaths. Apple was a fraction of what Microsoft was at the time. Companies like Taiwanbased HTC were initially subcontractors for mobile carriers such as O2 and Vodafone. And who would have expected back then that weaving machine makers Toyota would emerge as a global player in the automobile industry?

Money / Issue 21 - 33

Marketing

All new businesses have their own humble beginnings. All newcomers are underdogs. But they too have their own capability of undermining the competition and taking over the market. Think of Sun-tzu and The Art of War or Che Geuvera and his Guerrilla Warfare Manifesto. They too were underdogs that stamped their impact on history. Each guerrilla fighter is ready to die not just to defend an idea, but to make that idea a reality. Are you ready to become a guerrilla commando?

Treat your first customers like partners

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Your first customers are your most important ones. They are the ones who had the guts and will to engage in what you have to offer. Do not underestimate their value to your cause. Therefore make sure they are treated like partners. Early adopters want to be associated with success. They want to be credited for betting on the winning team. They want to be considered as innovators who bought into the next big thing. Nobody wants to be associated with a loser. Make sure your first customers become advocates of your idea. From then onwards the product adoption life cycle might just take off faster than you think.

The awakening

Be ready to change the world

It might be quick to conclude that commercialising your idea is mainly about achieving a profit. True, any business is not a charity and it is for profit that they exist. But also ensure that your idea is a force of good. Something that makes our dear planet a sustainable one. Something that brings peace, progress and integration to the global community. We have a responsibility to our own children and future generations to come. Therefore be ready to change the world; for the better and not for the worse. Customers love heroes not villains.

Nina L’Eau is a white swirl – it’s the breath of youth, sharp, light and sensual. The perfume is for that moment of awakening when girl becomes woman. It’s of course fresh, very fresh, with frosted neroli, but also has the gentle femininity of apple blossom, the voluptuousness of gardenia, and the rounded notes of white musk. Nina L’Eau is a fresh, fruity floral fragrance created by Olivier Cresp, Master Perfumer for Nina. This new opus of the delectable fragrance is enclosed in a soft pink frosted glass apple with silver leaves.

Unparalleled lifestyle Q1, Tigné Point’s new block of 38 seafront apartments will be released to the market in October, following the completion of a show flat being designed by Martin Xuereb & Associates. This is the latest phase of this award-winning project by MIDI plc where all previously released properties are now sold. The latest offering captures the essence of what makes Tigné Point so successful: stunning views, an unparalleled lifestyle and the dramatic beauty of the Mediterranean, so close you can almost touch it. To capitalise on the exceptional views, the project lead architects, aoM partnership have created apartments with frontages of up to 34 metres and layouts which allow for practically every room to enjoy the open views. Terraces are also designed with this in mind and were created for lazy sundowners and long drawn out dinner parties. This block will be followed by the Tigné Point Business Centre which will provide some 14,000 sqm of high-grade office space and underlying catering outlets overlooking Pjazza Tigné and the open sea. Tigné Point provides all the convenience and practicality of Sliema life with the added advantage of a car-free environment as the entire development was designed to eliminate car traffic. Ample parking has been built underground and all amenities are situated within walking distance. Amenities include a shopping mall, supermarket, health and leisure amenities and excellent restaurants and cafeterias overlooking fabulous Valletta views or the central Pjazza Tigné, which is rapidly becoming the vibrant heart of the development. For more information visit www.Q1.com.mt

34 - Money / Issue 21

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Technology

MICE? It’s not a trap any more

Eunèv is set to change the MICE industry. Money meets the people who make it click.

Stephen Johnson Founder and CEO How did you determine the feasibility of eunèv? There’s a glut of online advertising-based venue directories out there competing for the same audience. Yet none address the reputation and leadgeneration problems at the heart of the meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions industry procurement process. We started by conducting a comprehensive worldwide feasibility of the MICE industry. Our focus was to identify brands innovating in digital and mobile contexts. There are some brilliant applications out there, particularly those targeting corporate travel management and conference registration. It was at this point we realised the opportunity to create a transactional social commerce platform, aimed at narrowing the relationship gap between buyers and sellers of business event services. Every major industry has had this paradigm shift except the MICE industry. We saw a gap in the market, realised that nothing like eunèv existed and decided to build it. How does eunèv stand apart from other similar brands?

Eunèv stands alone as being the world’s first online destination that brings together buyers and sellers of business event services, to search, network and transact. We often state that if Expedia, LinkedIn and Instagram had a love child, they would have called it eunèv. Hence, we’ve taken best practice from what is already out there and have built something truly unique.

Nanette Johnson Founder and Director of Platform Socialisation What does the eunèv community think and want? Individuals and businesses get incredibly frustrated when their expression, communication and activity online are quashed, as is the current practice across certain social and professional networks. For example, groups on LinkedIn tend to be being heavily regulated and group discussions tend to be micromoderated in an attempt to circumvent the flurry of selfpromotion. The MICE industry has been hit hard by the GFC and businesses are desperate to use any avenue available to them to muster up business. So when this level of dampening happens across online communities, who in turn pride themselves as being professional networks, individuals and businesses are left wondering why they should

continue to invest time and money across these networks. The beauty of eunèv is that it is a marketplace and a social network all at once. Hence, members join our community and are encouraged from the outset to claim or create a business and can commence promoting and transacting immediately. Our members’ success. An online community grows through recommendations and referrals – how do you manage authentic growth? We’re happy for Facebook to have their billions of users. Eunèv was built with a definite purpose – to fulfil a specific task, at a given time. Hence, we have deliberately focused our language and messaging specifically towards our target audience, that being the business events industry. Our desire is to, over time, build a niche community that is centred around this specific sector, that being the MICE industry. The processes and features we have built and put in place make it easy for existing eunèv members to invite their given networks onto the platform thus keeping the community pure.

Corrie Stathis Founder, Director of Sales

How urgent was the need for change in the MICE industry? The MICE industry is stuck in a time warp and in very real danger of being left behind. Despite being a trillion-dollar global sector, it isn’t perceived to be innovative and is constantly trying to catch up with other industries. History tells us that change only occurs when the right leaders are in place. For this reason we continue to focus our efforts on eunèv being the solution to problems currently experienced by MICE professionals. Ultimately, our goal is to lead the industry into the digital age and beyond. What needed boost of efficiency do you think eunèv will give the industry? Eunèv streamlines the whole event planning process from start to finish. Typically, an event organiser wastes hundreds of hours trawling the internet for venues and suppliers, only to find these searches prove futile and frustrating. Eunèv changes this by enabling event organisers to discover reputable venues and talent in one place, while at the same time research the reputation of businesses and confidently transact, knowing they’ve done due diligence. Importantly, eunèv only lists reputable venues and talent. Businesses who appear more prominently in venue and talent search are those with awesome reviews and the most followers. And, there isn’t an advertisement in sight. Money / Issue 21 - 37

Technology

John Stathis Founder and Chief Operations Officer

Venessa Paech Community Goddess

Ashley Howden Chairman

What are the logistical efforts to manage a 24/7 operation? We have essential staff in several time zones ensuring that the platform never sleeps. Our engineering team is currently based out of San Francisco and our customer helpdesk will be based in Malta by early 2014. We also have a local team operating in Australia. That said, we have built a robust, self-fulfilling platform that is hosted on Amazon’s elastic cloud, enabling us to rapidly scale to meet user demand.

How does eunèv narrow the gap between buyers and sellers? Eunèv empowers members with social and commercial transactional tools, which simplify the process of finding and booking venues and talent for business events. Eunèv’s cloud-based procurement process narrows the relationship gap between buyers and sellers, making it easier to discover and engage venues and suppliers, promote business event services and build professional reputation through authentic endorsement, all in one place.

You have all worked hard and are reaping the results. But did you ever think that eunèv would be such an immediate hit? We were always confident that we were building a platform that would make a positive noise when it hit the market. Much of the product development was informed by senior industry players so we felt that our customers were really involved in helping us select the most crucial features to launch with. That said, you’re never sure until you’re in market and asking people to spend their time with your product, so it’s really pleasing to see people organising business events and venues winning those event tenders through our platform in the way we envisaged.

The operation that straddles multiple time zones – what are the challenges, and opportunities, this presents? There are obvious challenges, like management and timing, language and cultural barriers – however these are not all that different to multi-national companies in trade. In e-commerce contexts there’s greater expectation placed on response time, the challenge being to resolve customer issues in as close to real-time as possible. We love our members and learn so much from their participation on our platform. Their validation that eunèv solves major MICE workflow problems, increasing productivity and provides greater transparency around operational activity, is what motivates us to continually strive to improve eunèv features and tools. Regardless of where our members are located in the world, assuming they have an internet connection, they will be able to leverage the social and commercial features of our platform.

And how does eunèv generate trust in this form of social commerce and guarantee authentic exchange? Most online venue directories rely heavily on advertising and sponsorship revenue, and typically do not facilitate socialisation between buyers and sellers. In these contexts, preferential and sponsored placement of vendor profiles is gamified to outweigh naturally occurring synergies that might occur. With lead generation unqualified, vendors become desensitised and trust collapses. It is also extremely difficult for event planners to determine the organic reputation of suppliers. When members feel a true sense of influence that is borne out in transactions, trust increases and they feel a sense of ownership over the process.

Where do you see eunèv in a year’s time? It’s still early days for us so our focus will be to continue refining the eunèv platform and adding new features – however, our real focus will be getting more businesses and venues on to the platform. Our hope is that we’ll further develop our customer footprint across EMEA while beginning to make inroads to the US. Our mission is still very much to offer the best global software platform for businesses to book venues for their events; if we achieve that, our success will continue.

James Pollard Lead Engineer What is eunèv’s technology backbone? Eunèv is a Ruby on Rails application. Ruby on Rails is an extraordinarily robust platform. A few years ago, it was still less common programming language and platform. Today Ruby on Rails powers some of the largest and fastest websites in the world, ranging from Groupon to Zendesk. How do you successfully marry a platform’s worldwide reach with flexibility? Eunèv is hosted on Amazon’s AWS servers. Hosting eunèv in the cloud allows us to quickly scale or even to temporarily scale if we experience abnormal increases in activity. Spotify, Pinterest, Netflix, and other leading sites rely on Amazon’s AWS to help deal with large fluctuations in traffic. For example, if we knew a major event was occurring in a specific region, we could temporarily add servers in that region within a matter of minutes.

38 - Money / Issue 21

Money / Issue 21 - 39

Creativity

Sean Patrick Sullivan is a creative director, content producer, and communication strategist. As our North American correspondent, he writes about design, culture, business, technology, innovation, and sustainability.

Everything new is old again

A plethora of pundits are offering systems and methods for improving corporate design, creativity, and innovation. But can these 21st century must-haves actually be taught? Sean Patrick Sullivan thinks not.

ay I be candid? As someone who’s constitutionally intuitive and imaginative, I’m appalled (though not terribly surprised) by the way my territories – design, creativity, and innovation – have been co-opted and corrupted into meaninglessness (or, even worse, destructiveness) by the mainstream business press. While reviewing the day’s blogs, magazines, newspapers, and television reports, I’m increasingly assaulted by cynical, fatuous, self-promoting hucksters armed with an assortment of non-ideas like: “design thinking” (in which executives are trained to “think like designers” even though evidence mounts that’s neurologically impossible); “innovation engineering” (even though New Coke should’ve been all anyone needed to recognise that newer isn’t always better); and “creative brainstorming” (despite the fact that most truly creative people are introverted and therefore do their best work alone). I think I know what’s happening here. And I want to share it with you because, as executives and entrepreneurs, it’s in our best interest to shut down the fetishisation (and, by definition, paraphilic reduction) of design, creativity, and innovation. These phenomena – along with that other one, the one whose name we dare not speak in board rooms or C-class suites (art) – are, after all, the primary drivers of the human experience. When we dumb them down, we dumb down our entire civilisation. And whereas you may not be as driven as I am by morality nor spirituality, you may note that when civilisations crumble, so do markets, channels, and possibilities. In other words – good luck selling your €1,000 jeans in Malawi right now. Sadly, if you have any idea what I meant by that quip, you’re about two steps ahead of

North American retailer Walmart, whose executive management seems incapable of understanding its parasitic impact upon its own economic milieu. Let’s start to crack this open with a quote by Marshall McLuhan. As an enigmatic and aphoristic media and communication scholar, McLuhan is best known for having stated that “the medium is the message”. But one of his lesser-known maxims may provide the key to what design, creativity, and innovation mean in our current social/ cultural/technological moment: “Faced with information overload, our only option is pattern recognition.” Clearly, we’re in a pattern-recognition mode. By this, I mean that (for the most part) marketers cling to campaigns whose constellation types are already known to work. Consumers depend upon certain types of systems, packages, and languages to make an overwhelming number of decisions each and every day – the same number most human beings made in an entire year just a millennium ago. Worst of all, bottom-shelf artistic and intellectual talent is rewarded for its nothingness – its addiction to “clean and simple”, the existential hell of Helvetica, set against expansive plainwhite backgrounds that may be easy to understand but are impossible to ever really, truly love. On top of mindsets and mentalities that are stuck in pattern-recognition mode, epic design, free-flowing creativity, and game-changing innovation are all impossible. Yet our conversations on these subjects are actually occurring inside of these patterns. For example, there’s currently a belief, a thought, perhaps most accurately a meme that any old project manager can be shipped off to a university or institution for a weekend seminar, then come back to work the next Monday more inventive and imaginative.

Why anyone would want to do this in the first place boggles the imagination. After all, creativity and innovation have potential not just productive but disruptive as well – this is why Hindu deity Ishtar represents both war and fertility, why Greek goddess Athena embodies both the hunter and the thinker. Plus I would argue that the fascinations under discussion have less to do with any sort of actual intention to do anything better, to raise the bar a single millimetre in terms of contribution to or perception of the world. Instead, they seem to emerge from our internalisation of beliefs we don’t even realise are there, such as the teleological view of history and the Protestant opinion that growth and progress bring one closer to God. Of course, most people never notice this about themselves. It takes up too much time and is too threatening to individual homeostasis and organisational equilibrium. Which brings me to this, my gift to you, a recipe for success you’ll most certainly find nauseating, if for no other reason than that it’s the hardest assignment you’ll ever receive. And nurturing it in your clients, vendors, suppliers, and employees will be even more daunting. But still, here goes. Faced with pattern overload, our only option is information recognition. In other words, if you really want your business you be better, different, special, think twice before you commit to these goals by the way – there’s an awful lot to be said for normal, average, and predictable. You’re going to have to ditch your entire shelf of Malcom Gladwell books. And you may have to detox from all those TED Talks for a while. Because information recognition requires a certain detachment from ingrained patterns and systems, even fauxrevolutionary ones – a state of naked,

Money / Issue 21 - 41

Creativity

courageous, nothingness, all of which will enable you to free yourself of most of your conditions and circumstances, your assumptions and superstitions, so you can actually see, feel, and think for yourself once again. Paradoxically, this will work best if you already come with a working knowledge of both history (not just politics but art and economy as well) and psychology (Freud is quite useful but terribly unpopular nowadays, while neuro-linguistic branches are more favoured right now but can be somewhat reductive). If not, you can still pursue your de-matrix-ification, but your detachment (and the depth of your revelations) will be someone less profound. Lest this all sound much too overwhelming, I have some deliciously, deliriously good news for you: you can outsource all of this.

Believe it or not, there’s a certain type of information-economy worker who has already done, and in fact loves to do, what I’m prescribing for you. For this sort of labour, unconstrained thinking is as automatic as breathing, and just as essential to life. These people are called artists and intellectuals. Perhaps you’ve heard of them? They’re the ones who don’t accept, much less respect, most of what you do. Perhaps you’ve been led to believe that’s because of a certain contrarian personality type, or perhaps a defeatist, anti-capitalist stance that stands in contradiction and defiance of your quarterly objectives. All of that’s quite ridiculous. For artists and intellectuals have rarely outright rejected the worlds of commerce and productivity. Rather, the worlds of commerce and productivity (that means you) have rejected them because they threaten your systems, institutions, and guarantees. But when you buy a book on

design, or attend a seminar on creativity, or hire a consultant to accelerate innovation, isn’t that what you’re paying for? Here’s my advice to you: if design, creativity, and innovation are important to you, and yet you or your organisation have no natural flair for them, stop wasting your time trying to make “fetch” happen. Instead, however haltingly and haphazardly you do it, radically transform your talent-recruitment and human resources practices. Seek multifaceted, interdisciplinary superstars, preferably ones with zero direct experience in the diverse roles they’ll be filling. Then pay them well, train them relentless, and give them a little bit of free time to pursue their private artistic and intellectual passions. If you have the courage to do this – to break the pattern of personnel inter-changeability, itself a neurotic defence protecting executives from fear of loss and recovery – the rest will most certainly take care of itself.

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42 - Money / Issue 21

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Silver service

Michele O’Reilly celebrates the heritage of Georg Jensen

n the globalised consumer world of the 21st century Georg Jensen is an international luxury brand with a reputation for excellence in design and quality. Founded in 1904 when silversmith and sculptor Georg Jensen (1866-1935) started his workshop in Copenhagen. The success of his product was initially due to a combination of fashionable design (in the style associated with the ideas of the time) and the sort of quality only handwork could achieve. This was the era of the Arts and Crafts, of Jungestil, Rennie Macintosh, of the social projects of men such as Charles Robert Ashbee and his Guild of Handicrafts. Jensen however, did not share the lofty ideals of Ashbee and friends. Neither did he invent the style he worked in. His legacy is that, where the idealists failed, he succeeded. He is famous because he alone managed to handcraft silverware in a long-term, commercially viable manner, and continued to do so long after his peers had gone bankrupt. He did this, in fact, through compromise. Just like the silver and plate produced in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, before fully mechanised production had taken hold, Jensen’s workshop used labour saving technology where possible, and hand working where it was needed. This way the full benefit of handcraft was put to use, but not wasted where it was not. The genius of Jensen the man, and later the firm, was that

this approach to quality was rarely compromised. Another reason for the success of his firm was the use of designers. Very early on Jensen’s workshop produced pieces designed by others, and this tendency was a tradition within the firm long before it became a necessity in 1935, when Jensen passed away. The quality of these designers did much for the reputation of the firm, and ensured its survivability long after the death of its creator. Three designers that encapsulate the philosophy behind Georg Jensen himself, to create designs possessing both functionality and beauty, are Henning Koppel, Vivianna Torun Bülow-Hübe and Arne Jacobsen.

The Koppel Story Designer Henning Koppel’s masterful eye dared to envisage the future by challenging convention. His visionary sensibilities lifted the commonplace to the sublime through a fundamentally Scandinavian approach to design. Pioneering what is today regarded as Danish design functionalism – making everyday objects practical as well as beautiful – Koppel’s pared-down simplicity showcases the very essence

Michele O’Reilly is Director, The House Shop.

of elegance and his purist approach to his medium. His assured brush strokes and creative genius, coupled with the skilled craftsmanship of Georg Jensen’s renowned silversmiths, led to the creation of what was later to become some of the most iconic and timeless designs from the hand of Koppel.

Vivianna The life of a legend Master silversmith Vivianna Torun Bülow-Hübe pioneered a design language that embodied simple expressiveness and purity of form. Perhaps best known for her iconic and eponymous wristwatch, she sought to defy time by creating a watch without numbers, with a mirror face – to perpetually show the face of the wearer and serve as a constant reminder of the Here and Now – and an open-ended bangle, symbolising freedom from time. Designing for Georg Jensen from 1969 until her demise in 2004, her legacy lives on in her products.

Arne Jacobsen Less is more Arne Jacobsen was one of the leading Scandinavian architects and industrial designers of the 20th century. His less is more approach ranks him among other architectural greats of the era including Le Corbusier, Mies Van der Rohe and Gunnar Asplund. What differentiates Jacobsen from his illustrious contemporaries was that his designs were at the forefront of a specifically Scandinavian design movement. Arne Jacobsen’s cutlery design for Georg Jensen was revolutionary. With extremely simple and bold lines, it was unlike anything that existed at the time. It was a departure from Georg Jensen’s earlier styles and made a huge impact in the design world at its debut. His functionalist approach went on to dominate much of design in subsequent years making lasting contributions to Georg Jensen as well as international Modernist design. With a history that spans more than 100 years, the Georg Jensen brand represents quality craftsmanship and timeless aesthetic design, brought together in distinct lifestyle products ranging from hollowware to watches, jewellery and home products.

You may view the collection at The House Shop on Abate Rigord Street in Ta’ Xbiex or visit www.thehouseshop.com.mt

Money / Issue 21 - 45

Market Report

Carried away by the current Having the largest current account surplus isn’t good news for Germany, say Chris Grech and Calvin Bartolo.

ecently published data by the World Bank may take you by surprise. The country with the largest current account surplus in absolute terms is not emerging China or export-or-you die Japan. It is not even the oil rich Saudi Arabia. Surprisingly, in 2012, Germany was the country with the largest current account surplus in absolute terms. In relative terms, Germany’s current account surplus in 2012 accounts for seven per cent of GDP – higher than the 2.3 per cent surplus registered by China. More worryingly, Germany’s current account surplus exceeds the six per cent threshold that the European Commission considers as excessive. At face value, a healthy account surplus may appear beneficial to Germany and essential for the survival of the euro. Instead it creates a dangerous imbalance.

Secondly, an economy that consistently runs large current account surpluses becomes a big lender. In the same way China finances a substantial portion of the US current account

Current Account position of Euro Area countries Country 2008

2009 2010

2011

2012

$ billions

Austria

20.13

10.29

13.15

5.52

7.08

Belgium

(7.11)

(6.56)

8.42

(5.66)

(6.65)

Cyprus

(3.88)

(2.48)

(2.31)

(0.81)

(1.51)

Estonia

(2.22)

0.56

0.54

0.41

(0.40)

Finland

8.94

6.68

5.90

(1.78)

France

(49.88)

(35.44)

(33.73)

(49.22)

(57.25)

Germany

226.27

199.48

207.73

223.32

238.45

Greece

(51.31)

(35.91)

(30.27)

(28.58)

(8.62)

Ireland

(15.30)

(5.00)

2.32

2.51

10.35

Italy

(65.38)

(40.87)

(72.87)

(67.14)

(15.21)

Luxembourg

3.04

3.50

4.42

4.20

3.27

Malta

(0.42)

(0.73)

(0.47)

(0.08)

0.09

Netherlands

38.04

41.57

60.96

84.59

77.93

Portugal

(31.91)

(25.65)

(24.19)

(16.76)

(3.37)

Slovakia

(6.19)

(3.16)

(3.24)

(2.03)

2.04

Slovenia

(3.35)

(0.33)

(0.27)

0.00

1.04

Spain

(154.53)

(69.77)

(62.50)

(55.07)

(15.14)

(3.68)

Source: Worldbank

Contrary to the prevailing cultural stereotype, Germany’s large account surplus has little to do with the desire of its people to live within their means. Conversely, the current account surplus is largely the result of policies aimed at generating rapid employment growth by restraining consumption and subsidising exports. This approach was perhaps justified in the late 1990s when Germany was uncompetitive and burdened by its Eastern counterpart after the reunification. Now, however, its policies are dysfunctional.

deficit, Germany financed the current account deficits of a number of weak European nations. Indeed, the German banking system is heavily loaded with the debt claims of its trade partners. Eventually, Germany’s trading partners will become so indebted that they will no longer be able to support their level of imports. Policies that decrease imports would have to be introduced in such countries and this will result in a sharp deterioration of Germany’s trade balance.

The first problem with a consistent and large account surplus is the heavy reliance on exports which exposes Germany to economic slowdowns of other countries. With the recent currency crises across emerging markets, caused by expectations of QE tapering in September, hot money may leave emerging markets when the Fed eventually decides to reduce the rate of asset purchases.

The third problem with Germany’s current account surplus is that it is endangering the survival of the euro by creating an imbalance within the eurozone. A level playing field is important when countries join a common currency because those countries cannot depreciate their currencies if they become less competitive than their partners.

46 - Money / Issue 20 21

There is good news though. Imbalances within the eurozone have improved over the past five years. The first table reproduced here shows that in 2008, the German current account surplus was 140

per cent the combined current account deficits of the other eurozone countries and this illustrates our point about eurozone imbalances. On a very positive note however, this imbalance has largely been corrected – indeed, the mentioned ratio has improved from 140 per cent in 2008 to merely five per cent in 2012. In other words, the combined current account deficit of eurozone countries, excluding Germany in 2012, amounted to the equivalent of US$12 billion while Germany’s current account surplus in 2012 amounted to US$ 238 billion. The first table gives us good and bad news. The good news is that austerity is working because the weak eurozone countries have adjusted their current account deficits. Countries such as Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal have substantially decreased their current account deficits and Ireland turned its deficit into a surplus. The bad news is that

Chris Grech and Calvin Bartolo are co-founders of blackdigits.com.mt, a financial website which allows users to analyse the financial statements of local listed companies. Data is available for free. The aim of blackdigits. com.mt is to create a community-based website where users may share their views and knowledge on companies listed on the local market.

Germany is now reliant on growth prospects in the markets to which it exports – if these markets slow down, Germany will sneeze and Europe will catch a cold. The long-term solution for Germany is to undertake fiscal reforms by removing hidden subsidies to manufacturers and increase domestic consumption and local investment. Taking this approach would also decrease demand for the euro which would make the common currency cheaper – a boost most euro-periphery countries need. However, this policy change is unlikely to happen for a number of reasons. First it would require a cultural change, secondly, it will most likely put upward pressure on prices, and thirdly it is not easy to implement consumption-led policies at the same time when Chancellor Angela Merkel is preaching austerity to other EU member states.

most of the growth was financed by hot money chasing higher yields during the QE years – if this happens, capital expenditure will decline sharply and demand for Germany’s equipment will be the first to go down. The only hope would then rest on the possibility of Germany being able to return back to its ‘old’ US and European customers if at the time the emerging markets start pulling back, the developed world is on track for an economic recovery.

If the eurozone has retrenched and the US current account deficit improved substantially (see second table), German exports are going one way – emerging markets. Germany sells loads of capital goods which emerging markets need to be able to improve their infrastructure in order to grow. A correction in emerging markets is on the cards especially because

“If these markets slow down, Germany will sneeze and Europe will

Employees today bring their own smartphones, iPads, and Android devices to work and use them for business purposes. While that may be great for productivity, they can also pose a significant risk to your organisation’s security if you don’t have an appropriate strategy in place. Data leakage or exposure to viruses may be the first security threat that comes to mind but simple device updates and maintenance is also often overlooked. Bring Your Own Device initiatives are a reality today and mobile device management solutions provide security, reporting, and management for mobile devices that access your network. Kinetix IT Solutions and Microsoft are holding an event to explore the issues and discuss solutions available on November 13, 2013 at Hilton Malta. For more information or to receive an invitation contact Kinetix. Follow Kinetix on Facebook www.facebook.com/KinetixMalta

catch a cold.”

Your name is Bond

Top 10 Surplus and Deficit Countries as at December 2012 Country

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012

$ billions

Safety at work

$ billions

Germany

249

226

199

208

223

238

China

353

421

243

238

136

193

Saudi Arabia

132

159

165

Switzerland

Netherlands

Russian Federation

104

Qatar

Singapore

Korea, Rep.

Sweden

Spain

(145)

(155)

(70)

(62)

(55)

(15)

Italy

(52)

(65)

(41)

(73)

(67)

(15)

Poland

(26)

(35)

(17)

(24)

(25)

(17)

Indonesia

(24)

Turkey

(38)

(40)

(12)

(45)

(75)

(48)

Brazil

(28)

(24)

(47)

(52)

(54)

France

(27)

(50)

(35)

(40)

(54)

(60)

Canada

(41)

(58)

(53)

(67)

United Kingdom

(71)

(41)

(37)

(75)

(33)

(90)

United States

(710)

(677)

(382)

(442)

(466)

(475)

Source: Worldbank

Quantum, the third and most explosive instalment to the dangerously sophisticated James Bond 007 fragrance line has just been launched. This James Bond 007 fragrance comprises a truly masculine and invigorating array of ingredients. Just as 007’s senses are awakened as he rises to every challenge, this intensely masculine fragrance invigorates body and mind, allowing every man to harness fast-thinking and cool calm to accomplish the mission ahead with Bond-like confidence. The deep woods of this accord are consistently masculine in their scent character, with the influence of sandalwood in particular being associated with spiritual calm and focus. Get your cool James Bond 007 coasters when purchasing James Bond Quantum 125 ml. For local trade enquiries, call VJ Salomone (Marketing) on 8007 2387.

Table 2

Money Money//Issue Issue20 21 - 47

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Online

Richard Muscat Azzopardi is co-founder and director of online marketing at Switch Digital, which specialises in building long-term relationships and increasing return on investment for clients online. In a previous life, Richard was a marketing manager in a US software company. His writing has been quoted in Forbes and appeared on Wired.com.

Only connect

Richard Muscat Azzopardi designs the ultimate online marketing campaign.

nline marketing is a strange beast. Every creative wishes they were Don Draper and Peggy Olson, the magical duo in Mad Men who can sit back and come up with an amazing line out of thin air and then stand behind it with conviction until the client realises that it will change their business forever.

Stunning visuals

First impressions count wherever you are, but online they make or break campaigns. It is so easy to dismiss a mailer that you don’t like – unless the design is immediately captivating, there is a very high chance that it will be closed away and forgotten in seconds.

Online creatives don’t do this – the perfect online campaign is never created in an instant. You can have great ideas, you can run with them, but the only thing that will prove you right or wrong is data, and online marketing offers bucketloads of the stuff.

With online designs, you can’t rely on the physical aspect of your design – there is no expensive paper to woo prospects, no fancy cutter to intrigue them. It all boils down to the quality of the artwork you (or your agency) can come up with.

This should be a direct consequence of your campaign planning process, during which you should have decided what it is you want your online effort to achieve. If you set out to increase the sales of tablets, don’t confuse your customers by telling them that you also sell computers, laptops, keyboards, mice, printers, consumables – oh, and we also sell mice mats.

Does this mean there’s no room for creativity and skill? On the contrary, driving online sales and leads is pretty far from marketing by numbers.

Clear message

Ease of use

Show your product or service’s benefits. Make it seem like an obvious choice for punters. Do not lose them in long and winding descriptions and long words. This is not a literary competition – if you like long and complicated words, keep them for when you play scrabble with your friends.

You’re asking them to give you their ID card number. You want to know what their grandmother earned in 1936. Once you’ve convinced people to take action you have to make it as easy as possible, so keep forms and steps needed to an absolute minimum. You can always gather more data after you’ve converted the client.

Fewer calls to action

At the end of the day, the perfect online campaign boils down to one thing – how compelling you make it for people out there to take the action you want them to. Put yourself in their shoes and see what they’d want, not what you’d like to flaunt.

Each campaign needs new creative, new copy, new design and new coding. Every time you wish to test, you need to come up with two (or more) variants of one of the elements and test it accordingly, and you have to go through thousands of iterations before you arrive where you need to. The different iterations are usually slight tweaks to a great and well-thought out campaign: change the colour of a button here, add a word there or remove a field in this form here. Then test, measure, change and move on to the next element. Any decent online marketer should be obsessed with one thing: conversions. How many people out there can we convert into relationships? How many relationships can we convert into leads? How many leads are we converting into sales? So what goes into the perfect online campaign? What are the elements top web designers look out for when building a campaign that will convert?

Beautiful design is nothing without strong copy, and with such a short attention span at your disposal, you can’t afford to have copy that is not aimed at converting. The only way to convert is to have a message that is clear, concise and to the point.

Even if you nail the copy, things can still go wrong. Keep it simple and do not try to sell all your products and services at once. It is good to show people that you have variety, but you have to make their next step a no-brainer. In order to achieve this you should minimise the number of calls to action you have in any online campaign.

You have a perfect campaign, people like it as soon as they land on the page or open the e-mail. They read the copy and seem interested in your product. They click through the strong call to action to buy your product but then boom, they are faced with a form that has 30 fields in it.

Online marketing can be scary at first, but get in there, aim at converting well and you will see your return on investment soar.

Money / Issue 21 - 49

Country profile

From region to nation? Hong Kong is where East meets West – however, is it still a happy marriage, asks Money.

t may have a land mass of just over 1,000 square kilometres and has a population which, compared to China, is a mere handful of people – seven million. And yet, Hong Kong bites off more than it can chew. But wait – it bites big and chews big, because what it lacks in stature, this little region makes up with ambition. Behind the awe-inspiring, recognisable sight of the glittering Victoria Harbour and the skyline behind it is a pumping economic heart. Market stalls shift their stock in record time, restaurants are busy dishing out snake soup and noodles, everyone wheels and deals. A lot of business is conducted outdoors, but also indoors, behind closed doors. It’s confusing at first. After all, this is where the world’s tallest seated Buddha rubs shoulders with huge malls, capitalist temples in honour of top designer labels. And so it should be because while Hong Kong has the status of a special administrative region of China, Western influences are still strong.

50 - Money / Issue 21

Until the early 19th century, Hong Kong was largely ignored by the Qing dynasty – it was a small village inhabited by pirates, fishermen and farmers. But not for long because when the emperor banned the import of opium, the British decided to occupy Hong Kong. One year later, in 1842, China signed the Treaty of Nanking, which gave Hong Kong and the adjacent islands in perpetuity to Britain. In 1856, the British gained more land on the Kowloon Peninsula until in 1898, Hong Kong and the New Territories were given to the British for a 99-year lease. Under British rule, Hong Kong’s growth was rapid. Strategically placed between Singapore and Japan, Hong Kong became a manufacturing hub. Hordes of Chinese immigrants fled to the region. The harbour became one of the busiest in the world and Hong Kong’s financial services credentials became even stronger. So fast was Hong Kong’s growth that between 1961 and 1997, its GDP grew by 180 times and rose by 87 times per

capita. And while many thought that, upon the expiration of Britain’s lease in 1997, Hong Kong would flounder, it didn’t. And that’s because even China has allowed Hong Kong a large degree of autonomy. While it is a special administrative region under China’s control, Hong Kong is governed under a one country, two systems policy advocated by Beijing – this assures Hong Kong autonomy and complete financial freedom, including its own currency and customs status. Thanks to this economic freedom, Hong Kong has continued to flourish. It changed its economic focus from manufacturing to services and is nowadays a major corporate and banking centre. It also acts as a conduit for China’s exports. There’s just one issue though – when China agreed to give Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy and preserve its economic and social systems from the

HONG KONG in numbers 93.6%

The population of Hong Kong is made up of 93.6 per cent Chinese, 1.9 per cent Filipino and Indonesian each, and a remaining 2.6 per cent mixed.

date of Britain’s handover, it did so for 50 years. Moreover, Beijing can veto changes to the political system. Hong Kong doesn’t like any interference, both from the West and from China. When, some weeks ago, British Foreign Office minister Hugo Swire wrote, in the South China Morning Post, that Hong Kong’s progress in adopting universal suffrage is “vital to its future stability”, Leung Chunying, the Chief Executive and President of the Executive Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, fired back, saying that Hong Kong doesn’t need the British or any other foreign government’s support.

Snowden of being a spy for the Chinese government. However, Snowden said he chose Hong Kong because, “I believe the Hong Kong government is actually independent in relation to a lot of other leading Western governments.” And that may be true. Hong Kong refused to give up its freedom – rights to due process, freedom of speech and assembly, and the right to refuse to extradite individuals prosecuted for their political views – even when the 1997 handover put it back under Chinese sovereignty.

Hong Kong’s love of freedom was best showcased last June 9, when Edward Snowden came forward as the whistleblower in one of the biggest internal leaks in US intelligence history – he did so from his hotel in Kowloon.

Hong Kongers show their strong freedom credentials by their frequent protests. Whenever they see any sign that Beijing might be making a move to take over their government, they gather in the streets to protest. Last year, for instance, a 10-day hunger strike prevented the implementation of a mandatory civic education curriculum, which many Hong Kongers saw as pro-Beijing propaganda. And while Snowden was in Hong Kong, protesters marched from the US Consulate General to the Hong Kong government headquarters to denounce big brother surveillance.

Now why would Snowden choose Hong Kong as the stage for his drama? Washington officials were quick to accuse

Will Hong Kong ever be an independent nation? Let’s just say that the mentality is already there.

On the other hand, Hong Kong doesn’t favour any interference from Beijing either. And while Hong Kong autonomy is protected until 2047, it is well known that Beijing is already discussing Hong Kong’s democratic transition.

$317.4bn

Hong Kong’s foreign exchange and gold reserves amount to $317.4bn.

Hong Kong is the 11th largest trader in the world and the largest source of foreign direct investment among Asian economies.

$58.15bn

Revenues stand at $58.15bn, while expenditures amount to $49.49bn.

3.2%

The budget surplus is of 3.2 per cent of GDP.

Money / Issue 21 - 51

Fashion

Suits yo u sir Everything around me can be an inspiration, says Kevin Lobo, Brand and Creative Director Menswear for Hugo Boss.

52 - Money / Issue 21

Money How many and which suits should a man own? KEVIN LOBO A man should own at least four suits – a dark blue, a grey, a dark grey and a black suit. These four suits are the basic building blocks for any wardrobe. Important is the fit of the suit – with a perfectly tailored suit, all combinations are possible.

M Kl

How many suits do you own? I own 30 suits, all from Hugo Boss.

M Do you have a favorite suit or jacket, and why? Kl My favorite would have to be the three piece suit, as it is modern while still being classic. Additionally, you can be creative with accessories, while still maintaining the polished, classical look.

Favorite tie knot? For a classic look, I prefer the single Windsor knot. If I like to wear a more modern look, I prefer the four-in-hand knot. M

M How do you develop your collection mood boards? Kl Actually the brand itself is the best inspiration one can have. Boss in general has a very strong tradition and heritage, which we can build on in every single collection. Complemented by trends and inspirations gathered during my travels, from art, music and architecture, this is the most important source of creativity for me. M Any cultural, artistic or social scene you particularly follow for inspiration? Magazines you frequently read? Kl Everything around me can be an inspiration. Art, travel, architecture and music play the most important role. While working on a new collection I spend a lot of time in the archives. In the past, you can always find something for the future. Mainly my journeys are throughout the world. I particularly love to stroll around cities and observe the people around me and their lifestyle. In addition I find my inspiration in art, in all its forms.

How would you define the Boss man? The Boss man is a person who is very ambitious, valuing the high quality of luxury suits. Especially valued by the Boss man is the excellence craftsmanship, the perfect fit of each and every suit and lastly all personal touches that are incorporated in the making of such a suit. He is modern, sophisticated, elegant and classic. M

Any styling tips for this season? Kl A styling tip for all seasons is having a properly tailored suit. When a suit fits perfectly, it not only sets the basis for an amazing look, but it also provides confidence, which is always important in all aspects of life. M

M Your favorite item from the Boss AW13/14 collection? Kl At the moment I love my perfectly tailored “comfort fit” jacket from Boss, in new elegant blended wool with silk. M What inspired you to become a menswear designer? Kl Since I was a student I was very interested in music. Music and fashion are closely connected, which is why I wanted to be a fashion designer. I’m an educated gentlemen’s tailor. Before joining Hugo Boss I worked for Windsor, Joop, Regent and Van Laack. M Any particular fashion designer – living or dead – you particularly admire? Kl There are so many, but to name one, Werner Baldessarini.

M Which elements of the pattern design gives a Boss suit that slim fit versus more classic and regular fitting suits? Kl The Boss suit is the definition of the modern slim fit suit. The pattern design focuses on emphasising the silhouette. M How do you see men’s fashion evolving in the years to come? Kl Men’s fashion has been evolving and will continue to grow in the future. Individualisation is one of the areas that are tremendously improving. Being able to personalise specific pieces in one’s wardrobe is important – to be able to be noticed as an individual. In addition to personalisation, the use of accessories is also growing. The use of items, such as belts, watches and bags is forming a new way to complete everyday looks.

Money / Issue 21 - 53

B E T W E E N A R O C K & A M A N Photographer - Kris Micallef - www.krismicallef.com / Stylist - Luke Engerer - www.personalshopper.com.mt Model - Macram at SO Management

French Connection shirt @ District - €73.00 / French Connection jumper @ District - €93.00 Tom Tailor trousers - €59.95

Tom Tailor shirt - €39.95 / Tom Tailor jacket - €129.95 / Boss Orange tie @ District - €66.00 / Tom Tailor trousers - €55.95 / Ecco Shoes - €134.90

G-star blazer @ District - €225.00 / Esprit jumper - €69.99 / French Connection trousers @ District - €73.00

Boss Orange shirt @ District - €144.00 / Boss Orange waistcoat - €214.00 / Esprit jeans - €59.99

Tom Tailor shirt - €39.95 / French Connection jumper - €93.00 / Tom Tailor jacket - €39.95 / Esprit trousers - €59.99

Esprit jacket - €129.95 / Boss Orange jeans - €140.00 / Carpisa bag - €19.90

Design

Scandinavian simplicity Design efficiency is what makes Scandinavian design functional and sustainable, says Violet Kulewska.

60 - Money / Issue 21

Violet Kulewska studied Interior Architectural Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw and London Metropolitan University. She collaborated with and worked for several design and architecture practices, both in London and Malta. Violet offers interior design services under the brand VK studio, www.violetkulewska.com

A Swedish friend of mine, Erik Nordlander, recently wrote how signature Swedish furniture design was established by designers like Josef Frank, Carl Malmsten, Bruno Mathsson, Mats Theselius and Yngve Ekström. “More recently many small Swedish firms have made their mark in the global arena, with a trademark style that can be summed up as functional without sacrificing visual appearance, production within sustainable conditions and punctual delivery.

ust last month, I bought a beautiful mahogany wood and black leather desk from a bazaar sale. It’s from the G-Plan collection and was manufactured by a furniture company in Malta in late 1950s. G-Plan, which came to prominence in the 1950s golden era of British design, represents simplicity, elegance and a natural poise. More than half a century later, it also carries an air of nostalgia. It’s not just the nostalgia that accompanies the experience of buying design items from the 1950s – rather, it’s a kind of longing for high-quality design and craftsmanship that is affordable. G-Plan furniture is no longer in production. Instead we can buy a wide range of imported furniture from all over the world. Unfortunately most items are hardly original, follow repetitive forms and are finished cheaply. And that’s to be expected because, as

in other countries, Malta’s inability to import materials, high production costs, and economic hardships create numerous limitations. At the other end of the spectrum are Scandinavian design methods, with their rich tradition of craftsmanship and efficient use of limited material resources.

“In Stockholm, Jonas Bohlin has done a good job in many fashionable Stockholm restaurants, mixing modern and classical design language. A hot material at the moment is wood – Daniel Franzén’s work with pine is very interesting. It is not only a cheap and easy material to work with – it is actualising something that

was fashionable in the 1970s and 80s but then died out. Now it feels really fresh and is a current trend in the city.” I find Scandinavian design highly inspiring. A new project that I’m working on nods at our designer friends up north while keeping an eye on project location and its Maltese characteristics. For this project, I introduced a lot of raw materials like plywood, metal, recyclable marble, exposed concrete ceiling with existing and recessed Maltese tiles and industrial type of lighting. This helped me create an interior with simple undertones of grey and blue and various and unique tones of marble, which provide relief from the concrete surfaces. I also wanted Maltese finishes and materials to be exposed so that they can create a certain awareness of their beauty, while also acknowledging the Maltese heritage of 1950s furniture.

Scandinavian design emerged in the 1950s in Denmark, Norway and Sweden and has managed to associate itself with qualities such as excellent design, ergonomics, functionality and sustainability. You can immediately tell that a design is Scandinavian by virtue of its simple and minimalistic design balanced with geometric motifs and gentle curves. Colours are dominated by a light, warm and natural palette with the occasional bright burst – white and grey tones and gradations frequently let out an exclamation mark of bold, primary colours.

Money / Issue 21 - 61

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Golf

Go greens

There’s a lot going on at the Royal Malta Golf Club.

Danny Holland, winner of the IIG Bank Handicap Challenge.

Overall winners Yvonne van Beek and Nicky Beck with Lady Captain Michelle Allsopp.

IIG Bank Handicap Challenge This two-day competition is one of the highlights of the season and has been played for every year (except the war years) since 1891. However it does somewhat even out the field because the individual’s handicap comes into play. These vary from +1 in the case of Andrew Borg all the way to 18.

off strong competition to win the Steuler KCH Trophy. Players competed for the trophy over three days, with two rounds of 18 holes and a final third of nine holes before the playoffs.

After the first day, Andy Borg, J.J. Micallef (3 handicap) and Stephen Jones were the leading group closely followed by Peter Coleman, Danny Holland (2 handicap) and Adin Bundic. Borg achieved a net 65 (gross 64) and Bundic a net 69. Going into the second day, it was generally recognised that the low handicappers were most likely to succeed. The rain didn’t appear to mar the competitors’ play. Micallef was neck and neck with Borg as he achieved a birdie 2 on the 13th but then promptly followed it with bogey on the 14th and lost his way over the final holes. In the second flight, Holland was quietly inching his way forward – he holed a monster putt on the 10th but shortly after spoilt this by 3 putting the 13th. From then on he collected himself and pared or birdied the last five holes. In the third flight, two 18 handicappers were playing the game of their lives – Adin Bundic and Mike Hall both scored a net 66. Holland won the competition with an aggregate net score of 133 followed by Bundic and Hall with 135 and 136 respectively and in fourth place Borg with a net 137. Nigel Stibbs, IIG Bank CEO, competed on both days and was at hand to present the prizes and the beautiful trophy. Steuler KCH Trophy Yvonne van Beek and Nicky Beck fought

The tournament culminated in an exciting three-hole shootout between the group winners resulting in a four-way tie on the first hole forcing an elimination shot over the hedge to determine the second pairing to leave. To their credit all four played onto the green, but Erik Akkerhuis and Francis Busuttil were eliminated joining Andy and Danny Holland. On the second hole (the 16th) all four pairings tied so another elimination shot was used, this time over the bunker. Felicity Dix and Laurens von Canal, together with Ken Micallef and Nigel Stibbs were eliminated. That left Joanne Cassar and Tony Vella going into the final hole (the second), losing by one shot to victors Yvonne van Beek and Nicky Beck. Nearest the pin was won by Eileen O’Brien and the longest drive by Andy Borg. The Royal Malta Golf Club gives special thanks to Julie Stevenson, representing Steuler KCH, who presented the trophies. The Rest finally break Malta’s grip on the sword The Malta v The Rest tournament, sponsored by BOV, is one of the highlights of the calendar. The RMGC Captain, John Fletcher, led his team which included Ian Macpherson, Paul Gray, Keith Woodward, Andy Holland, Danny Holland, Gernot Schmid, Quint Van Beek, David Allsopp and Richard Crossley as qualifiers. Ingo Sausmekat and Simon Rattray were the Captain’s wild cards while Nigel Hall was appointed non-playing Vice Captain.

The Malta v The Rest tournament.

Andy Borg, Victor Denaro, Stephan Borg Manduca, Bernard Bugeja, Bernhard Abele, Kim Borg, Michael Balzan, Alain Guillamier, Ruud Critien and J J Micallef qualified for the Malta team. Non-playing Captain William Beck added David Debono and Chris Lewis as his wild cards plus Kenneth Micallef as Vice Captain. Having won the match for the last 11 years, the Malta team were determined to hold on to the Sword. Malta edged ahead in the first day’s foursomes by seven points to five points. The second day’s fourballs were won by The Rest, again seven points to five points. This meant that all was to play for on the final day. On Sunday the first match out – Andy Borg against Ian Macpherson – was highly competitive and ended as a halved match. This was followed by Chris Lewis, playing for Malta for the first time, who recorded a win. However, in the following six matches, all but one were won by The Rest with victories for Paul Gray, Andy Holland, Richard Crossley, John Fletcher and Gernot Schmid. Bernard Bugeja recorded a win for Malta. Danny Holland halved his match with Kim Borg. Quint Van Beek recorded his third win of the tournament for The Rest. Ruud Critien was the only other winner for Malta. By this stage the result was decided so the final match between J.J. Micallef and Simon Rattray was called to a halt on the 15th green and declared a half as their game was level. Thus with the points being 15 to nine in favour of The Rest on the final day, The Rest were victorious by 27 points to 21 points. In accordance with the tradition of the competition, the winning Captain, John Fletcher, invited the Captain of the losing side, William Beck, to fall on the Sword. A lively celebration, enjoyed by both teams, brought the event to a close. Money / Issue 21 - 63

Luxury

Make the mark

Curves and lines come together to create form and function. Money invests in design.

The race is on

The Chopard Mille Miglia 2013 is a tribute to motor sports and to the classic race itself. Entirely redesigned, this self-winding chronograph testifies to the extreme concern for detail that Chopard displays in each of its timepieces. The 42.8 mm-diameter case of the Mille Miglia 2013 is topped by a generous 44 mm bezel, an ingenious association that preserves the imposing presence of the watch. This quest for optimal ergonomics had also led to revamping the lugs while the mushroom-shaped chronograph pushers enable smooth handling thanks to the nonslip knurled grid pattern. The rubber strap with the 1960s Dunlop racing-tyre motif is integrated with the case for a more flowing look and feel.

Truly American

We all harbour the stereotype of Americans being big and loud. Well, even if it were true, it’s not all bad, especially when it comes to this baby – the Mcintosh Mcaire stereo. This one-box stereo is compact yet houses two four-inch woofers, two two-inch midrange drivers and two 0.75-inch dome tweeters. That’s a lot of sound.

64 - Money / Issue 21

Look here

The Sony DEV-50V aren’t your typical binoculars – they allow you to record while you watch, in full HD. Cool.

See the light

It’s a model

A former engineer and enthusiastic racer and restorers of cars, aircraft and motorcycle, John Elwell nowadays spends his days crafting these models of perfection. Each model is a one-off and can take up to 1,000 hours to make.

Beautifully designed, the Iittala Leimu lamp successfully marries glass and concrete in one stylish design.

Drink up

This impressive decanter box by Louise Bradley includes two bottles in Italian crystal, sleeping in a luxurious suede lining. Cheers.

Head on

The Optrix XD is the perfect gadget for cycling enthusiasts. This iPhone case allows you to clip your phone to your helmet and record your every adventure. Rugged and water-resistant, this is one tough gadget.

I spy

No, you’re not allowed to launch an all-out spy war against a neighbouring country. However, the Sky Hawk FPV plane will certainly give you hours of endless fun. This boys’ toy comes with a first person view system that sends a live feed to an LCD screen on the transmitter and records in-flight video. Neighbours, beware.

Money / Issue 21 - 65

Travel

Food and travel writer Mona Farrugia edits www.planetmona.com and runs Angelica in Valletta. www.angelicamalta.com

A country at leisure Mona Farrugia finally discovers the city which puts a complete halt to shopaholicism: Oslo, where cake and coffee cost as much as a main course in Paris and where every shop is barricaded by pushchairs. Photos of The Munch Museum: The Munch Museum/Munch-Ellingsen-Gruppen/ BONO 2013.

A Gill says that you should never write about a country while you’re still visiting. He suggests that you should depart, let time and distance simmer an impression, and then put pen to paper. Since I returned from Oslo there is one thing, one scene and one sound that I cannot clear my mind of – babies crying. While there, I had much fun walking around the parks, marvelling at the cleanliness and organisation, wallowing in visual wealth. Yet here, my recollections cannot be older than three. And there are many of them. I ended up in the Norwegian capital like most people travel these days – I needed a small break and I had five minutes for a spot of online trawling. The Malta-Oslo flight with Ryanair seemed like good value at €150. I bought the ticket on the same morning of the flight, by which time it had gone up by another €120, as I now understand Ryanair flights do (I was a Ryanair virgin until this). It was too late to check in online but the system took my €14 for online check-in anyway. So at the additional extra cost of €70, I checked in at the airport. My cheap little getaway had already cost €340 and I hadn’t even left. I could only take one piece of hand luggage and no handbag, so, envisaging a less-than-comfortable airborne experience, I took a little airline pillow with me. It occupied too much space in my hand luggage, so I stuffed it into my trousers. I had to wear my coat. And my huge pashmina. By the time I got onto the plane I looked like a pregnant yeti.

Which apparently was fine for Oslo. Women are slim and tall yet most of those between 25 and 40 are either pregnant or trailing little blonde ducklings behind them. The amount of children and babies is relentless. Both mothers and fathers can take up to 48 weeks of parental leave each. And they do. While they are at it, disciplining these beautiful blonde offspring does not seem to feature in their repertoire of parenting skills. “We’ve had to create a crèche,” my friend, a maître d’ at one of Oslo’s most famous restaurants, told me over a glass of bubbly and a huge sigh. “Believe me, we have to enforce the no babies rule as most new parents won’t take no for an answer. When it started, we had no idea how to handle it. Now there is no choice.” Norway has an 11 per cent budget surplus. At the last count that’s €50bn worth of money which they haven’t decided what to do with yet. Save it or spend it? Their social services are out of this world. The rich have become richer – seemingly there are no poor, only immigrants to do the jobs that the Norwegians have no intention of doing. While all this is going on people are having beautiful blonde babies. Lots of them. All around Oslo, babies screech and scream. Nobody dares stop them, least of all their parents. For such a quiet and respectful nation, the new generation wants attention and the old one can do nothing but give it. “We also introduced a no breastfeeding policy’ my maître d’ friend adds. “Here,

breastfeeding is a competitive sport. Do you want to be surrounded by naked boobs while eating your sustainable salmon? It was tough in the beginning and we had a backlash. But what do you do? Now they are getting used to it.” My Norwegian friends were meant to meet me for supper. They cancelled once, postponed to lunch another day, downgraded to a quick coffee and then bailed out completely because, you guessed it, their baby was acting up. In the beautiful parks, maintained wonderfully by the state, as are the outstanding smooth roads upon which bendy buses have absolutely no issues, children are cute and feral in turns. I witnessed them running and screaming while their parents looked on proudly. Bizarrely, a group of 10, three-year olds attacked and decimated an obviously manicured bush for no reason whatsoever. I was staying at the outstanding The Thief, a hotel which has taken Oslo by storm by its very chicness (difficult in a city so chic to begin with, but they have managed), high standards, incredible location and views. Their breakfast was a treat to look forward to, marred only, twice, by a four-year old girl who pouted, bounced off the table and shouted at her dim-witted father for a full 45 minutes. Nothing pleased her and both he and the staff were helpless. Parents don’t shout or lose control but the children don’t seem to be emulating them. It’s the blonde Lord of the Flies Norwegian generation.

Money / Issue 21 - 67

Fact box

What is happening in Norway at the moment, and for the past 10 years, is the result of discovering oil. Guess which country is at the top of The Economist Big Mac Index, overvalued by 50 per cent? Well, Norway of course, where the value burger costs €15. The capital is so clean that even at night it was obvious that building sites did not have a speck of dust remaining after the workers had closed up for the night. Oddly, after a couple of days, the city made me tired. It was so perfect it was too much. Minimum wage in Norway is €20 an hour. A waiter earns, on average, €30 an hour. One particular restaurant had to revise its collective agreement as it had given a 17.5 per cent commission on sales, over and above base salary, to its staff for long years without seemingly realising. The staff went on strike. I had supper with a friend at a restaurant. The bill came to €250 for what was to me average food, cocktails and wine. I left a €60 tip. The waitress looked daggers at me and made sure I understood that this was way less than she was used to. Unlike New York, Oslo’s choice of food and where to eat out is bizarre and limited in scope although not in quantity. There are no homely restaurants or home food. For a cold country, it is odd that there is no comfort food to speak of. Everything is extremely high-end and very commercial. Most restaurant owners don’t open one place: they flood the city with 10, but the restaurants still look ‘unique’, which, from a marketing perspective, is surely a one-off. The Norwegians like exotic foods like Spanish, Japanese, pizza. Lunch for one of 10, one-millimetre slices of iberico lomo at the cute Paradiso in the hip area of Grunerløkka, a small bowl of green beans and a glass of jerez was €50. Paradiso was packed to the gills. Service in general is professional, superficially friendly and extremely detached. You know that the smile, although not fake, forms part of the collective agreement. Shopping in general was the last thing I could think of. The combination of no check-in luggage on Ryanair and ridiculous prices for Swedish clothing I could buy online meant that I hardly bothered to go into the shops. I did manage to find the Acne Archive though, where the infamous Pistol boots (in electric blue suede no less) and which would have cost £400 in London were quickly snapped up for €150. Norway is a country that has detached itself from the world and from Europe in the way only economic royalty possibly can. It produces, when it feels like, only for itself. Furniture, a restaurant industry, hotels, media (I did not notice an English-language newspaper anywhere and all signage is in Norwegian even though almost everybody speaks perfect English as a second language) clothing, food and children are created for itself. Tourism does not feature. And everybody is rich and relaxed. Except the children. They are just rich.

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Stay

If you have to stay anywhere, make it The Thief. Surprisingly for such a city and its brilliant location, rates compare well to four- and five-star hotels in London and Paris, although the level of hospitality and front office expertise is generally higher. Breakfast is a delight with organic yoghurts, beautifully poached eggs, freshly smoked salmon and the FT every day. The rooms are outstandingly beautiful, fabrics lush. If you want a bath you have to specifically ask for it and, oddly, you have to pay for the bath salts. They have a fabulous little shop in a drawer where you can buy anything from socks and tights to a smart tie, organic toothbrushes and tooth whiteners. The fact that their Tripadvisor rating is 3.5 is spot on: their regular and very highend customers are not the kind to post bilious reviews on lowend websites. It says five stars and it is five stars: I absolutely loved everything about it and still have the beautiful Marthe at front-desk to thank for sending me everything I forgot in the safe.

Eat

The Palace Grill is one of those places where it is impossible to get a table because everybody wants one. Home food is impossible in Norway so this

tiny restaurant seating very few in a backyard and inside space is even more wanted. You can book, apparently, via e-mail but obviously their website is in Norwegian and there is no English translation. Ask the hotel to book for you but even they are lost. Ten courses with wine. No choice. Fabulous.

Shop

At the Acne Archive, service is hipster but very good. The jeans are stupendously light, soft and the range of sizes and shapes excellent. Boots are to die for. Prices are half those of Harrods and Selfridges and regular Acne stores in London.

Visit

The Vigelandsparken Sculpture Park is an absolutely must-see. First of all for the feel of its open space, the bright green lawns and the beautifully manicured trees and shrubs. But mostly for its sculpture, of course, which Gustav Vigeland spent years creating. The life studies are all human-sized, sometimes bigger and the attention to detail is incredible. The Munch Museum, a bus ride away from the centre, is this year celebrating its 150-year anniversary. The Scream is Munch’s most famous painting but the rest of his disturbing paintings are a wonder for both their detail and the sheer quantity.

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The Bluesman’s blog The US shutdown allows the Bluesman to make some observations.

eeing as summer is officially over and the weather is becoming more autumnal, I thought I’d open with a seasonal fashion note. There are a number of looks which, to my mind, are less than attractive. Those skirts with the low hanging hemline at the back, for instance, or rubber wellingtons in the summer – I wouldn’t want to be around when those puppies are pulled off. But surely, the hoodie ranks as supremely unflattering. I can understand, if caught out in a chilly light rain, it can provide a temporary solution until it becomes a soggy thing slapping your cheeks every time you try to check the traffic before crossing the road, putting your life at risk. But to flip it over your head, or worse, cap, on a warm day defies reason. What’s the look you’re going for bud? Man of mystery? Lonely monk? On with the show. Anthony Weiner – didn’t I say he had the chutzpah to stay in the race? Stay he did, until it became obvious that Bill De Blasio was going to win the Democrat nomination for mayoral candidate. Big Bill ran a solid race hitting all the hot buttons of those fed up with Michael Bloomberg and his micromanaging of everybody’s lives. Bloomberg even had the gall to accuse De Blasio of playing the race card because his son was featured in an ad supporting his dad’s run (Mrs De Blasio is black). Really Mike! His daughter, a very attractive and eloquent young lady, back from college for the occasion introduced him at the victory speech completing the family togetherness in this triumph. Whining Mike has become so toxic that Christine Quinn, first female and openly gay Speaker of the NYC Council and at one time considered the front runner by many, was seen to be too close to Bloomberg’s policies and came in a distant third. She has since endorsed De Blasio.

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The Bluesman is a Maltese sound engineer working in New York.

Phew! Who would have thought that Comrade Vlad would pick up on an idle remark by Kerry and help the Prez wiggle out of the corner he found himself in. An overwhelming majority of Americans opposed any form of war in Syria. Naturally the Republicans trumpeted that this was a sign of weakness on Obama’s part and that ‘the enemy’ would now know that we have no stomach for making good a threat. I don’t think it’s that at all – after all, isn’t a martial arts expert trained to restrain himself until he has no option but to use his power. It’s what you can do if necessary that counts, not hot air. Speaking of the GOP and the man they love to hate. All kinds of shenanigans are being perpetuated in the House, where they have a majority right now. Bad enough nothing is being done, Boehner has lost his grip to new kid Ted Cruz, who is eyeing a run for the White House in 2016. Teddy has a more than decent pedigree – Texas Solicitor General, attendance at multiple Ivy Leagues, adjunct professor at UT Austin Law School. Even though he’s only been in the Senate since last January, he’s considered the hero of all who would rather obfuscate issues and run interference against anything Obama proposes. Therefore they prefer to bring the government to a halt than get on with the business they are being paid to do. The Republicans are doing this by including legislation in the Bill to curtail the funding of Obamacare, legislation which will not make it past the Senate, get sent back to the house and you get the picture.

The last time the GOP tried this shutting down stunt during the Clinton administration, the electorate made sure they paid the price at the following election. You’d think they would be a little cautious. Instead they’re hoping that by keeping their distance between themselves and Ted Cruz, happy to let him do the obstructing, he’d be seen as the culprit. So with the vote coming up they let him do his non-filibuster (the vote was happening as scheduled anyway) and let him speak for 21 hours. Fascinating stuff. A bleary eyed Cruz reading Green Eggs and Ham! Cruz hopes that the hard Right will see him as the only possible hope against the Democrats in 2016. There’s more. Remember the fake fuss about Obama’s birth and whether he was born in the US or not? Per the constitution, the POTUS has to be a natural born citizen. Well, Cruz was born in Calgary, Canada. His mother was a citizen so it can be claimed that he was born a citizen – still plenty of fodder for the negative ads though. His father is Cuban and fought on Castro’s side (he didn’t know he was a communist, he claimed). The question arises – what are the Tea Partiers going to do with this information about their hero come the run up to the election? These are the people who still persist in their belief and allegations that Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate is a fake and that he is a Muslim. Stones and glasshouses, pots and kettles.

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