Upstart | July 2015 by Upstart Magazine

JULY 2015

AC/Deep Sea

A musical approach to shark cage diving

Kid genius

Remarkable business owners under 18

London land grab

The fight for Tinderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s throne

UPSTART

Space tourist ISSUE ONE

Per Wimmer Entrepreneur of the year

WHO WE ARE

EDITOR

Gianluca Pezzuti DEPUTY EDITOR

Robert Van Egghen PRODUCTION EDITOR

Sara Meij NEWS EDITOR

Alex Longley ART DIRECTOR

Akhil Arora PICTURES EDITOR

Shebani Shah CHIEF SUB-EDITOR

Kaitlyn Mattson FEATURES EDITOR

Laura Gozzi DEPUTY FEATURES EDITOR

Marianna Giusti WEB EDITOR

Zoe Paskett DEPUTY WEB EDITOR

Teresa Villa Sánchez

CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER

Camille Ayral STAFF WRITERS

Radhika Bhatnagar Kate Johnson Claire Lancaster Teresa López Peter Lykke Lind Morgan Meaker James Nickerson Marianna Nicolaou So Nishitani Anne Pouzargues Fu Rao Lee Roberts Cate Schurz Yingchang Shi ONLINE

www.upstartmagazine.co.uk @UpstartOnline UpstartMagazineUK For article reprints or permission to use Upstart content including text, photos, illustrations, logos and video: email editorial@upstartmagazine.co.uk © 2015

Editor’s letter

mall businesses are important. I don’t mean that in a preachy, electioneering way. Not even in a financial way, though Federation of Small Businesses statistics show that small firms employ more than 25m people in the UK and make up 99.3 per cent of all private sector firms. They are important because of what they stand for – the idea that any one of us can be our own boss as long we have an ounce of courage and a good idea. That’s what Upstart is about – the brave entrepreneurs who take a risk and gamble on themselves even when the odds are stacked against them. Behind every small business, be it a too-cool, indie coffee shop or a backroom robotics company, is a person who took a chance. Upstart finds these people. We glimpse into the lives of the successful in the hope that someone reading this magazine, maybe someone with dreams of quitting their nine-to-five, might be inspired. From science & technology to arts & culture, life to international, Upstart leaves no corner of the world’s small businesses ignored and no sector undiscovered. In this issue we explore the startups paving out the future in the virtual reality sector, the gender-neutral designers who are taking the fashion industry by storm and the child prodigies who are revolutionising technology. Even in the face of some of life’s darkest moments, be it discrimination or even death, there are still small firms out there who have the courage and desire to launch a project that will brighten people’s lives. We’ve seen how these businesses can struggle to finance their projects but nonetheless continue on the road towards the dream of working only for themselves. We are a magazine about the human side of business, because even money has a face.

Gianluca Pezzuti

CONTENTS

NEWS

05 Queen’s Speech cuts red tape

PROFILE

10 Per Wimmer - the Danish milllionaire heading into space

LIFE

28 Cashing in on blogging 30 Tomorrow’s world child entrepreneurs 31 How to start a healthfoods business 32 The end of dairy farming? 34 The end of his and hers: blending genders in fashion

47 Small galleries staying alive 48 Sex, drugs and underground comics 50 Modern music in archaic spaces 52 Contemporary art at your fingertips 53 The musical data revolution 54 Small bookshops - a survival story 55 Crowdfunding a novel 56 Running an historic home 58 Reclaiming skateboard culture

INTERNATIONAL

60 Rock the boat: sharks attracted by AC/DC

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 14 Silicon drinkabout 16 The spa for babies 17 Graduates launching green firms 18 London’s dating app startups take on Tinder 20 The business of death 21 SpaceCot ready for launch 22 Humane pest control 23 From Silicon Valley to South Kensington - London’s synthetic biology startups 24 Virtual reality: how to leave your body behind 26 Outsourcing the home

38 Innovative ways of caring for the elderly 39 Microbreweries with big ambitions 40 Brick Lane - serving the community 42 Paulie and the chocolate factory 43 Flower power 62 A Pisa Italian hospitality Columbia Road fends off conglomerate threat 63 Floating a mattress on the market 64 Green fingered starting a marijuana ARTS & CULTURE business 44 Netflix for Muslims 45 Live vintage, dress DEBATE vintage, sell vintage 46 Cinema for the 66 Does your business community need social media? 03

Q A

Ask Upstart Alex Longley explains the concept of crowdfunding, the best places to secure investment and how to get your business up and running

Everyone is talking about crowdfunding. What are the options for funding my business? Tom, Gillingham

Rocío Lara

Unless you’re lucky enough to have an illustrious career in the City behind you, it’s unlikely you’re going to be able to fund your project through savings alone. Crowdfunding is an increasingly popular option. This enables you to put your business idea on a website and give internet users from across the world the option to invest in it. Some will only ask for a gift in exchange for investment (such as on Kickstarter and Indiegogo) whereas other sites will allow investors to buy equity in your business

(Crowdcube, Seedrs). Those aren’t the only ones though. If you’re looking for something more conventional, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) offers startup loans of up to £25,000 at an interest rate of six per cent a year. You will be able to get more information on these from enterprise and small business groups such as Virgin Startup. Should you choose the latter path, the good news is that the most recent Bank of England figures show that banks are now lending more money than at any point in the last two and a half years. Whichever source you choose, there is a world of options out there.

Q A

I’ve got a great idea but don’t know much about business. What are the first steps I need to take to get myself going? Jackie, Cheltenham The government’s website has a range of advice for this. There are two key things that you need to think about – protecting your idea and starting the company itself. If you have created an innovative product then it is vital that you register the idea with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) in order to ensure that no one can steal it further down the line. This can cost between £250 and £280 but will prove invaluable in the long run. Cursor Creative House

ADVICE

Have a look at:

Q A

kickstarter.com indiegogo.com crowdcube.com seedrs.com startuploans.co.uk

Business events are full of web gurus and expensive accountants. Are they really necessary? Ahmed, Manchester

Another important piece of financial advice is never to use your friends – they can be hard to chase up and you could see money ruin a perfectly good friendship. Unless you have been going for a while you’re unlikely to need a web guru or an accountant, so it is going to be up to you to decide which of the services you need most as you look to scale up. Be careful though; not choosing within your means could see years of hard work wasted. Oliver Mallich

Depending on the nature of your firm, one or all of these may be useful, but by no means essential. One of the biggest problems for small firms and startups is knowing when and how quickly to scale up. Take web presence. You may well have a minimalist, but functioning website and be looking to boost your social media standing. That’s a sensible decision but don’t leap into paying the rates of a large firm. There’s no use being the first cupcake shop on Google if you can’t afford the fees that put you there in the first place. Of course one way of helping with this is a good accountant. Any business of any size can benefit from an accountant to ensure that you’re paying the right amount of tax and doing so on time. Once again, though, if you have only recently launched, your books are likely to be fairly easy to manage.

Once you have done this you will also need to work out the legal structure of your business. The most common is to become a limited company; meaning that your company is a legally recognised body with its finances separated from any personal accounts you hold. To do this it is necessary to register with Companies House. If you have a business partner, you may want to consider spreading the risk between you by launching a business partnership instead. Once you have secured your idea with the IPO and registered with HMRC or Companies House, you’re ready to go.

Have a look at: Legal structures for a business - gov.uk/ business-legal-structures/overview IPO - gov.uk/government/organisations/ intellectual-property-office Companies house - gov.uk/government/ organisations/companies-house HMRC registration - online.hmrc.gov.uk/ registration/newbusiness/introduction

NEWS

Queen’s speech cuts red tape T

Govern your local MP words by Peter Lykke Lind A new service allows people to tell their MP how to vote. It’s called Whip. The founder, Jonny Bottomley, 24, a politics, philosophy and economics graduate from Manchester University wants to engage people in politics. “The internet has ignited a passion for politics but I believe it has failed to direct our opinions and views to politicians in a constructive way. I created Whip to try to revolutionise the way we interact with and influence parliament,” he said. Whip provides three basic services for the public: understanding the bills going through Westminster, letting the MP know how you feel they should vote and then seeing how they voted. For the MPs, it provides

opinion polls from their constituency, a calendar with events to attend and a platform to explain voting habits. Bottomley took to social media in March to create a buzz around the service, and has managed to Whip

House of Lords 2013/Roger Harris

h e Q u e e n’s S p e e c h announced the government would prioritise “helping working people” last month. The first all-Conservative Speech since 1996 saw a new Enterprise Bill announced, which promises to save smaller firms £10bn in red tape. As part of the bill, the government said it will establish a Small Business

of the people who run and work for them.” Acting Labour leader Harriet Harman promised to support the measures for small businesses but sharply criticised proposed changes to strike balloting. “The Queen’s Speech talks of working people, yet [the Prime Minister] threatens basic rights at work,” she said. Reacting to the announcement, t h e Fe d e r a t i o n o f Sm a l l Businesses (FSB) said that it was “pleased the government is maintaining focus on small businesses” and legislating against bureaucracy and late payments. FSB chairman, John Allan described the Enterprise Bill as “a real opportunity to make progress on these issues”. The news follows the government’s appointment of Anna Soubry as Small Business and Enterprise Minister.

Conciliation Service to tackle late payments from larger businesses totalling over £32bn. The Queen said in the speech that the government will be “helping working people get on” and “supporting aspiration”. Announcing the bill in Bristol, business secretary Sajid Javid said: “Small businesses are Britain’s engine room and the success of our whole economy is built on the hard work and determination

Bobby Hidy

words by Alex Longley

Jonny Bottomley, Whip chief

generate interest: “It’s all been very exciting. We now have just under 1,000 followers. It has received nearly 14,000 views on Facebook and YouTube. We have been very encouraged by the response,” he said.

words by Alex Longley The European Union must listen more to small businesses, a major think tank has warned. Raoul Ruparel, head of Economic Research at Open Europe, said many smaller firms in the UK had little to do with the EU but were still subjected to its laws. “You have a lot of smaller businesses that are UK focused, they just trade locally, deal with local issues and yet have EU regulation put on top of them,” he said. Ruparel added EU business policy was too inflexible, a deficiency that costs some of Britain’s smallest businesses millions.

Profile: Anna Soubry MP words by Fu Rao

One of the new government’s first actions was to create a Minister of State for Small Business and Enterprise. Anna Soubry was appointed to the role four days after the election. Her responsibilities include business sectors and advanced manufacturing, export licensing, competitiveness and economic growth, among others. “It’s important government gets behind small businesses enabling them to get finance, get paid on time and get rid of red tape,” she said after taking up the role. Having been a journalist and a lawyer before going into politics, Soubry was elected as MP for Broxtowe, Nottinghamshire in 2010 and re-elected for in May. Throughout her years as an MP, she has voted for reducing the rate of corporation tax.

Think tank: EU ignoring small business “I think one thing the EU needs to do better in its reform push is to understand that business and industries aren’t homogenous,” he said. “There needs to be more differentiation between the various levels and some more exemptions for small business at the lower level.” The Federation of Small Businesses has recently said that it expects an improvement in the way the EU considers small business in its policy making. “We want the EU to ‘think small first’ in everything it does,” said the organisation’s chairman John Allan.

words by Kaitlyn Mattson

said Dudley-Williams. “But we had products we knew people liked.” The shop sells bowties, cufflinks, socks and beer. They hope to bring in more products as they continue to grow. The response they received from people was a surprise to Dudley-Williams. But Morrow wasn’t too worried. Dudley-Williams said: “Philip has an amazing ability to pretend everything will be alright. And he was right.” Knots & Socks campaigned on Indiegogo.com, a crowdfunding site, for the money to open their store in Leadenhall Market. Now they are open, they will be hosting a launch party, for those that helped them, on 11 June. “We want to say thank you to these people for putting their hands in their pockets for us,” said Dudley-Williams. “We will be in-debt to them forever.” In five years, Dudley-Williams and Morrow hope to have multiple shops in the city. Whatever the future holds for them they are sure to be a match made in accessory heaven.

Knots & Socks

oop up your ties and fold down your socks, Knots & Socks is here. A men’s accessory shop is saying thanks to the 182 backers who helped to crowdfund its storefront with nearly £21,000 worth of donations. “Our target was £20,000 and I was sceptical we would receive that much, but we wanted to push ourselves,” said Patrick Dudley-Williams, who ran a tie company in 2013 called ReefKnots. Philip Morrow, Dudley-Williams’ partner in Knots & Socks, began his sock company business, Morrows, online in 2011. He decided to re-establish the sock business his great-grandfather started in 1912. The two companies will remain separate, but will sell their items under the same roof. It all started when Patrick and Philip opened a pop-up shop in Putney last Christmas. After the response they received they decided to open a permanent location. “We found a great spot in the City, but it was very expensive,”

Patrick Dudley-Williams and Philip Morrow in front of Knots and Socks

Dog Cottage Company

Bow tied and crowdfunded In the doghouse – heated dog cottages range from £2,000 to £5,000

Time to move out your pet words by Camille Ayral

Dog cottages and £750 pet sofas topped the bill of quirky innovations on display at this year’s London Pet Show, held last month at the ExCel exhibition centre. “We have a dog who used to spend his life on our sofa. We wanted him out of it but could not find anything for him,” said Seldon Scott, director of Scott’s of London. Their luxury pet sofas range from £200 - £750 and accessories include fur throws. “We were looking for some-

thing that would fit in our lounge and look attractive and we couldn’t find it so I thought, let’s make it.” Also at the show were Simon and Hester Reece who have launched a business offering another form of canine luxury – The Dog Cottage Company. “No one in the UK is offering a fully insulated, well heated and beautiful dog house apart from us,” said Simon Reece. “We build everything from scratch and our customers can choose everything they want: size, colour and materials.”

Branson ‘biggest inspiration’ for SMEs words by Sara Meij

Richard Branson has topped a list of the most inspirational business leaders for small businesses in London according to a new survey by AXA Business Insurance. More than half of the 300 business owners questioned said that the Virgin boss was the person who had the greatest influence on their business careers. Lord Alan Sugar came second with 15 per cent of the votes, while Vivienne Westwood was third. “Sir Richard Branson tops polls such as this one time and again, and the business success he’s enjoyed in a range of different sectors and industries is clearly a key reason for his sustained profile,” said Darrell Sansom, managing director of Axa Business Insurance. Branson has long been a champion of small businesses. In 2012,

he called for the government to cut business rates and to force banks to lend to small businesses as they are “the engines of any healthy economy”. Viktor Ferenczi, co-owner of hair salon Figaro London in Clerkenwell said: “We find Richard Branson’s attitude towards business, business culture, business planning and general attitude to life an inspiration.”

Time to get rich words by Radhika Bhatnagar Innovative startups and small businesses across the UK get an opportunity to pitch to Richard Branson as part of Virgin Group’s annual competition ‘Pitch to Rich’. This year’s contest was launched in the last week of March and the finalists will pitch to a panel at a live finale on 26 June. The winners will share a total of £1m in prizes.

NEWS

Women staying away from tech businesses

he percentage of women in digital and technology leadership roles has remained static across the UK and Europe for over a decade, according to Nesta, the innovation charity. Nesta’s study indicates that between 2009 and 2013 women made up only 40 per cent of the students taking subjects essential for the study of computer sciences at university. In the more tech-orientated subjects, the percentage of women fell to below eight per cent, suggesting the problem of attracting women to the field can be traced back at least in part to divisions that begin early in the education system and carry through to the highest levels of the profession. Back in the 1960s the situation was far worse. “People laughed. Nobody could sell software at all, especially not a woman. And especially not a woman selling software for a women’s only company,” Dame Stephanie Shirley, the so-called First Lady of Tech, said at a conference. At the time, although many women gained good degrees, their appointment to technology firms, as with other sectors, remained stubbornly low. While progress has been made, the percentage of women leading digital companies is low for the 21st century. “Although women and men are now coming in to the creative tech industry in equal numbers,

Dame Stephanie Shirley’s business, FI, created more than 70 millionaires

very few women make it through to the top,” says Ali Hanan, freelance creative director who has worked at London’s top agencies . Hanan is supporting a series of initiatives in a scheme called Creative Equal, which aims to “get advertising agencies to commit to taking proactive steps towards equal representation in creative departments”. This is in order to encourage more female agency creative directors. Mitra Memarzia, knowledge transfer manager at KTN Creative, agrees the situation today is a complex one. It can be difficult to look at exact percentages of workers as many women are in the digital and tech industry that are involved in management of tech sectors, owing to their “strong leadership and communication skills”. Nevertheless, for change to take place, Memarzia feels that more needs to be done to

inspire young women to engage in STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics - subjects. Now, we see girls getting switched off at school from all the science subjects. “Until we get that right, we will not see a change. Being a scientist is not ‘sexy’ and the choice has to be made during teenage years, which is not a good time to make those long-term decisions,” Dame Shirley added. The issue is being addressed now with different ways of teaching; STEM subjects are being incorporated into other subjects, while girls only classes are emerging. However, as Dame Shirely, points out: “The controversial thing now is that women’s success in the digital world is now in our own hands; there is nothing holding women back now, except a lack of trying.”

programme will offer training, advice and skill-building exercises for first-time entrepreneurs of the older generation who want to grow their own business. According to Forbes’s 2014 study, The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur, research shows that out of 500 successful high-growth founders, twice as many are over 50 than

below 25 years old. The average age was 40. Sarah Drinkwater recently tweeted that one of the applicants had attended university in 1955. This is not the first time in its history that Campus London has targeted an “unconventional” group of entrepreneurs. Campus for Mums is a free,

words by Shebani Shah Children as young as five can now start learning coding and other tech skills for free, with the aim of eventually securing jobs, thanks to Connecting Tech City’s ‘wearedotdotdot’ programme. Launched in beta phase in May this year, this free educational platform provides digital learning courses for all ages and connects young people with employers in need of skilled employees. The online project was seed funded with support from Tech City UK, the Mayor’s Office and City University London. “From here we’ll assess how people use it, and build it up with extra features that we hope will make the platform more and more useful over time,” said Jess Tyrrell, director of wearedotdotdot. “Users can search for opportunities by location, by skill, by age and by level - whether they are just beginning or looking for something advanced,” she said. According to TechCity UK, the number of digital businesses in the capital increased from 50,000 to 88,000 from 2009-2012, with the biggest growth recorded in East London. Lisa Devaney

Lee Roberts

words by James Nickerson & Lee Roberts

Free coding opportunities for young people

Dreylis Brotha is one of the youngsters learning to code

Never too old: Google’s Campus London seeks over 50s programme

words by Shebani Shah

Who says being young is the key to entrepreneurial success? Campus London is hoping to develop the potential of the city’s older generation with the launch of its pilot programme Founders over 50. From 17 June to 22 July, the

baby-friendly programme for both mothers and fathers who have a business idea or are developing one. Sarah Drinkwater, head of Campus London, brought the project to the UK in 2013. It continues to flourish here and has spread to countries such as Spain and Poland.

Killian Broderick

Ockham Razor Co

Gay honeymoons boost British economy words by Morgan Meaker

Razor for a simpler man

Going against the grain words by Alex Longley Is the all mod-cons lifestyle drawing to an end? Rob Hallifax thinks so. The design of his simplistic Ockham Razor is little more than a handle with a plastic switch, but in five weeks he has drawn nearly £25,000 in crowdfunding for it. “It’s certainly not an invention,” Hallifax said. “It’s just a pretty version of something that already exists.”

Internet gets Inky words by Kaitlyn Mattson Tattoo enthusiasts can now check out a range of artists before they permanently mark their bodies. Inksider is an online platform launched at the end of May. The site allows people to find different tattooists by style and location, while providing a look into the artist’s previous work. “It’s a simple way to book the right artist,” said co-founder Loreley Bombis.

Death goes online words by Laura Gozzi

The first annual conference on digital legacies was held in London last month, asking the increasingly pressing question: what happens to our digital footprint once we die? Despite all the talk of deathbeds, the Digital Legacy conference was far from glum, with lively speakers reminding the audience not to leave their bereaved friends and family the burden of tracing their virtual footsteps after they’re gone.

s the two year anniversary for the 2013 Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act approaches, small businesses say they have benefitted from gay and lesbian couples coming to the UK for their honeymoons. The Act, which was passed in parliament, has created an entirely new sector in the British wedding market. The UK’s national tourism agency Visit Britain has been advertising small British businesses, including gay-friendly bed and breakfasts and hotels, to encourage same-sex couples from abroad to spend their honeymoon in Britain. Visit Britain’s Love is Great campaign was launched in 2014, just after the act came into effect. At first, the adverts targeted couples in the USA, but this year the campaign has expanded to Brazil and Germany. Simon Forrester is co-founder of the website Further Afield which handpicks gay-friendly hotels, bed and breakfasts and same-sex weddings venues. He said business has picked up since gay weddings were legalised. “We’ve seen an increase in interest particularly from Americans looking to holiday or honeymoon in Britain. The legalisation made them think

‘Love is Great’: equality in the law gives a lift to Britain’s economy

Britain was gay friendly. Britain is one of the most popular places for all honeymoons but gays and lesbians look for signals that identify a country as progressive and tolerant. I think the gay marriage act did that.” Gino Meriano, who founded the Gay Wedding Show, said there has been another boost to the economy in the form of same sex couples converting their civil partnerships to marriages. “Couples in civil partnerships who change to marriages want to have a mini wedding or party to celebrate it,” he said. Although the act has boosted the economy, it has not been as profitable as many expected. In the lead up to the 2013 decision, there were reports that gay marriages could deliver an extra £18m to Britain’s economy in

the first year. But many small businesses have not noticed any extra customers since the first legal same-sex weddings took place in March 2014. Wedding planner Matthew Oliver said: “Last year, I helped a female couple and this year I have a male couple but personally, I have not seen an increase in business.” Oliver believes this is down to the dynamics within same-sex relationships. With heterosexual couples, he said, he normally works with the bride and the groom is barely involved. “But same-sex couples are more hands-on and more together as a team – they don’t need a planner. I have gay friends doing it themselves and if I ever get married, my partner and I will do it ourselves.”

Lewis, who is the head of tenant representation at Deloitte. The City is the area of the capital with the highest proportion of temporary workspaces with 34 per cent (1.7m sq ft) of the market. Deloitte believes this is partly due to financial technology firms wanting their sales teams to be closer to clients. The West End has a 28 per cent share of the market. Other areas such as Docklands and E1 have fewer temporary workspaces but have seen sharp increases of 350 and 250 per cent in the past decade.

“The draw of serviced and flexible space is that companies have the ability to grow, downsize or exit space on short notice with little liability. No business can predict the future,” said Charlie Green, co-CEO of The Office Group. The rise in the number of temporary workspaces comes as office vacancy rates within the M25 area reached their lowest since 2001. Availability has fallen to 5.9 per cent across all types of office space in the first quarter of 2015, according to Knight Frank, the global real estate consultancy.

London temporary workspaces boom words by Robert Van Egghen

The number of temporary workspaces in London has increased dramatically over the past decade, according to research by Deloitte Real Estate. The serviced office market has grown by 67 per cent in the past decade, comprising five million square feet across central London as SME’s try to avoid costly leases. “This significant increase in coverage highlights how important serviced offices have become, not just to occupiers but the wider office market,” said Chris

‘Alice Made This’ wins fashion award words by Camille Ayral

Alice Made This

Founded in 2011, the cufflinks and pins company Alice Made This won the UK Fashion and Textile Association (UKFT) Rise Newcomer Award on 21 May.

Alice Made This was created when Alice Walsh (above) was looking for cufflinks for her wedding. “We couldn’t find any so I started to explore the market and realised that there was a gap in the market for a fresh take on cufflinks,” said Walsh. She started it as an activity in

tandem with her former job as a product designer, and then it started to grow. “When I was nominated to the UKFT Newcomer award, I was very pleased because they had a really nice set of judges, so it meant our brand will be exposed in front of them all,” Walsh said. “ To b e h o n e s t , t o b e nominated is almost as good as winning because you get the recognition within the industry,” she continued. “The event has been running for many years,” said John Miln, CEO of the UKFT. “It was created to celebrate textile exports from the UK to the European market but also to all the other international markets.” Nowadays, it celebrates new businesses, startups and men’s or women’s textiles and accessories companies whose items are made in the UK.

3D By Flow

NEWS

words by Kate Johnson

Five-course fine dining receives lukewarm reception

The first ever five-course 3D printed meal was served to guests, including Michelin-starred chefs, in London in May. All food on the menu was printed on-site with the Focus, a portable 3D printer that can print with multiple materials. The meal was served at the 3D Printshow in The Old Truman Brewery. Starters were dishes of hummus and guacamole, formed in the shape of cells from the human body. Octopus tentacles, a perfect square of potato and “molecular” caprese salad with spaghetti were

printed for the next courses. Dessert was a target, made from concentric circles of strawberry coulis and yoghurt, with a 3D chocolate arrow marking the bull’s eye. But chef Dan Cox, who runs the kitchen of Fera at luxury Mayfair hotel Claridge’s, was not convinced by the food’s taste and texture. “I don’t think we’ll have it in our kitchen any time soon, unless it’s free. Everyone’s focusing on very natural food at the moment, which contrasts with what this technology is doing. It’s pretty sci-fi but it certainly opened my mind up to the future.”

available. Screenings, supported by the British Film Institute, were held three times a day from 29 May - 2 June. The Underground Film Club is part of the Rooftop Film Club, which regularly screens new and classic films on rooftops across the capital throughout the summer months. The Club also has plans with John Lewis to screen films on top of their flagship store in Oxford Circus. The running of Tube services at night has been widely hailed as a boost for businesses across the capital. It is estimated that the new services, initally on the

Northern, Piccadilly, Central, Victoria and Jubilee lines, will boost the London economy by £360m, creating an extra 2,000 permanent jobs. “The introduction of the Night Tube is an historic step in our modernisation of the Underground. These screenings will engage London’s many film-lovers in the possibilities that the Night Tube will bring and highlight the role that the Underground plays in supporting the city’s cinema industry,” said Gareth Powell, the director of strategy and service development at London Underground.

Belt and Braces PR

Underground cinema promotes night tube

words by Robert Van Egghen

he upcoming introduction of London’s Night Tube in September was celebrated with the launch of a cinema deep in a disused part of Charing Cross Underground station. Run by Underground Film Club in conjunction with Transport for London, classic films from Strangers on a Train to Blade Runner were shown to packedout crowds. Popcorn stands and street food vendors were also made available. “Our aim has been to provide an even more unique experience

for the movie-going public – and there’s no more unique a setting than a genuine Tube station,” said Gerry Cottle Jnr, co-founder of the Underground Film Club. The section, closed since the extension of the Jubilee Line in 1999, is sometimes used for film productions but is not open to the public. “London Underground rarely allows this sort of access, so these screenings really are a once-ina-lifetime opportunity,” said Cottle Jnr. Tickets for all showings sold out within 30 minutes, though extra tickets were later made

ROCKET MAN From starting a one-man company to launching a space tourism business, for Per Wimmer it’s all about one thing: “Being an entrepreneur every single day” words by Peter Lykke Lind pictures by Zoe Paskett

e has swum with sharks off the islands of Fiji, lived with the native tribes in the Amazon, set a tandem skydiving record over Mount Everest and – if all of this wasn’t enough – he is also a founding astronaut of the spaceflight company Virgin Galactic, started by his friend and fellow businessman Sir Richard Branson. First and foremost, though, Per Wimmer is an entrepreneur. The 47-year-old’s fascination with space has left a profound mark on his career since his Harvard days in the late 1990s. A well-travelled Danish expat, the self-styled financier and astronaut worked at Goldman Sachs until 2007, when he founded the investment bank Wimmer Financials. Ever the astronaut, the firm launched on 10 April of that year – the 50th anniversary of Sputnik’s launch, the world’s first man-made satellite. Last month Wimmer received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the Better World Awards – a glitzy affair held in Monaco on the back of the F1 Grand Prix and the

Cannes Film Festival, both of which Wimmer attended alongside celebrities and royalty. He also recently released a book on the effective use of green energy, a topic Wimmer holds dear – his international corporate advisory firm specialises in natural resources. The Dane moved to London when working for Goldman Sachs and established his investment bank when he felt confident enough about his contacts. “I felt like I had enough contacts and potential business to leave the security of working for a company and jump into entrepreneurship. It was me, my laptop and my mobile phone in a shared office just down the street from where we’re sitting now.” He has come a long way – this office is in the grand Wimmer Financials headquarters, a 1,600 sq ft space overlooking Oxford Circus. And he’s planning to go even further.

The universe is a playground

The fantastic wealth Wimmer has accumulated through Wimmer Financials has enabled him to embark on the biggest adventure of all – the final frontier. “My interest in space comes from my travels. I felt like I’d been to most places on Earth. In 2000, a friend of mine – another adventurer – told me space was ‘opening up’.

I got incredibly excited about it and started researching how to get out there. I did training in Star City, an airbase in Russia, alongside Russian cosmonauts. It was a fantastic time.” Wimmer’s space fascination led to an inter-

“ If money is a means and not a goal, I’ve found that people end up happy

”

esting phone call from another entrepreneur. “In 2004 Sir Richard Branson’s team called me up. They had heard about my enthusiasm for all things space-related and gave me the chance to become a founding astronaut of Virgin Galactic.” Wimmer and Sir Richard Branson met soon after that. “When we talk, we often disagree on the potential risks,” he says of their relationship. The two men are very different in their approach to business – Branson being a risk-taker and Wimmer having always been more cautious.

PROFILE

Wall Street Wimmer: the Dane published a book about the ups and downs of working the markets in September 2011

Baby steps to success

This caution is evident when Wimmer talks about his career. He started out small and kept business simple and still believes that keeping costs down is key. “Some people think that everything has to be showy right from the beginning, RollsRoyce and all, to show that they mean business. That’s a bad idea,” he says. Specifically, Wimmer has what seems to be simple advice. With typical Scandinavian candour he outlines his basic tenets of business. “Three pieces of advice. One: low costs, two: control your cash flow – you need money in the bank right away, three: early revenues are gold. Hold onto all contacts from previous work. If you can, secure deals before you set up shop. Wimmer smiles. “We did that, which meant breaking even in 12 months and this was in the context of the Lehman crash and the global financial crisis.” Within two months, Wimmer had two employees. Business was good, but in 2009, he was ready to increase his efforts. “External circumstances actually pushed me a bit. The company providing us with a broker

licence were no longer able to, and the lease on our offices was up. An investment bank without a license or a roof over its head is no good.” The Dane says the hard times have taught him a valuable lesson. “If you are an entrepreneur, you will find alternative solutions. And those solutions are sometimes better.” He opens his arms, as if embracing the sleek office surroundings, and smiles. “I found a new umbrella company to provide a licence and moved into a bigger office. As it turned out, the new umbrella company is more stable and the new office works better for us. It’s about solving problems and turning them into strengths. With entrepreneurship you have to stay on the beat every day. It’s like riding a bike. If you stop moving, eventually you fall.” Self-financing is a personal priority for Wimmer, but he also believes in a similar model for startups in general. “When it’s your own pocket you have to take money out of, you think about it every time you have to reach for the wallet,” Wimmer says. “People who have investors tend to buy everything and it becomes “funny money”.

You are much more disciplined when it’s your own cash. And it makes the decision process easier, because I have the freedom to decide instantly whether I’m going to take a risk or not.”

Wimmer’s preferred mode of transport

PROFILE Freedom is the only currency

For many budding entrepreneurs, running a business from a swanky central London office is the very definition of success. But Wimmer saw it as a heavy burden. “It was a weighty chain around my neck. Costs went up and I was personally accountable. It meant that I was on the hook.”

“Aldrin says it is a truly

unique experience. You literally see the world from an outside perspective

”

The high-flying multi-millionaire dodges questions about his net worth, maintaining instead that he measures his success not in money, but in the freedom that comes with it. “I want to be happy and when I’m free I’m happy. Free to do what I want, in my professional life, my personal life, and my charity work. I find that people who just want

to make money are rarely happy.” Wimmer says many of his entrepreneur colleagues are of this particular breed – people whose work brings them true fulfillment. “People who enjoy what they do and want to be successful with what they are doing are often happy. Like my friend Elon Musk [founder of space transport services SpaceX and co-founder of online payments system PayPal] – he wants to make changes in the world, redefine the way it works. If money is a means and not a goal, I’ve found that people end up happy.” Wimmer has the same approach to charity as he does to business, because doing good is just like doing business to him. It has to be done effectively and efficiently. “I like making things work in the best possible way. Like when I did the TV show The Secret Millionaire.” Indeed, when he took part in the reality TV show, in which benefactors go incognito into impoverished communities and provide financial and professional help to struggling social enterprises, Wimmer was praised by the public for his total commitment to the cause. “I want to make charity operate as well as possible. To me, that involves much more than sending a cheque. When something

succeeds, it’s like getting a degree – it’s the work behind it that’s valuable and satisfying.”

Seeing the world from above

As his four Master’s degrees prove, Wimmer has always been interested in learning, both inside and outside of academic institutions. “That’s why I’ve lived with the natives in the Amazon. I enjoy meeting people and learning from them.” But why go to space? What exactly does Wimmer hope to experience that he doesn’t have access to on planet Earth? “I think it’s going to be a completely different experience, kind of an out-of-body one. Physically and mentally, it’s going to change me greatly. And, aside from his involvement in Virgin Galactic, Wimmer has good reason to believe that there is nothing quite like visiting space. “One of my good friends, Buzz Aldrin, who remains very excited about space, told me about looking down on Earth from the Moon. He says it is a truly unique experience. You literally see the world from an outside perspective,” he says. It seems unlikely that Wimmer will be sent to space before 2016. However, unlike most entrepreneurs he is getting ready for a very different kind of launch.

Cocktails, wine, beer and (maybe) the next Google Every Friday, people who work in East London’s Tech City get together to drink and network with fellow professionals. Upstart went to trendy Shoreditch and joined the IT crowd to see where funds are sought, deals are done, beers are drunk and dreams are made words by Robert Van Egghen pictures by Camille Ayral

nder fairy lights in an ivy-covered courtyard, around 200 members of London’s burgeoning technology scene - known colloquially as Silicon Roundabout - stand chatting intensely with cocktails in hand. This is Silicon Drinkabout – a weekly meet-up for startups and people in the technology industry. Started in 2011 by Mind Candy founder Michael Acton Smith, Silicon Drinkabout has blossomed into a global phenomenon with offshoots all over the world, from Lima to Copenhagen. But the original London meet-up, run by startup events company 3beards, remains the flagship. “We provide a platform that’s more interesting than your typical networking event with name badges and finger foods. We choose cool places around Shoreditch and get a

good mix of regular faces and newcomers,” says Kevin Plattret, London organiser and web developer at 3beards. It was five years ago that David Cameron vowed to transform the East End into one of the “world’s great technology centres”. It is estimated that around 5,000 technology-focused firms, many of them startups and small businesses, are now operating in the area. Facebook, Google, and Intel are among the larger companies to have invested there, while it is also where firms such as Transferwise and Moo.com started out. Indeed more businesses were created in the single London postcode of EC1V between 2012 and 2014 than in the whole of Newcastle and Manchester put together. But now those from outside the tech industry are looking to get involved. And for many, Silicon Drinkabout provides the perfect opportunity to do so. “People think that skills from the financial services don’t translate to the tech scene and I think that’s a misconception. I’m looking for something where I can add value to my company, meet interesting people and find out what’s going on,” says Doug Franklin,

who works for a FTSE 100 listed company. Franklin believes that the location of the Silicon Roundabout area close to The City London’s central business district - will lead to greater collaboration between financial services and the tech industry. “We need to see more of a crossover. Those traditional business skills add value. I can tell techies what to do and how to do it,” he says.

“The traditional business skills add value

”

Between 100 and 200 people join Silicon Drinkabout each week with techies, entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, civil servants and journalists all regularly in attendance. “There are people who may be bored with their regular job but are excited about these things and have an idea they want to get out there,” says Plattret. For those working in the industry, the opportunity Silicon Drinkabout

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY provides to mix with those from outside the industry is one of its key attractions. “We asked some guys who had been in the business a bit longer than us ‘where do we have to go to rub shoulders with the right people’ and they said ‘well the top one is Silicon Drinkabout. If you just go to one event, that’s the one to go to’,” says David Warren, commercial director at startup Loyalty Bay, a rewards-based online conversion platform. There is an obvious openness to the conversations taking place at Silicon Drinkabout. “You can see that there’s a real hub of entrepreneurial spirit, technological expertise and, most importantly, venture capitalists who are coming in and feeding that vibe,” says Warren. “People here have great ideas and great ambition,” adds his colleague Chris Samson. It is that ambition that enables many from the startup scene to progress through the industry. Jason Mayes, a web engineer with Google, is one example. Having worked for various startups in the past, including his own, Mayes likes to keep in touch with the startup community, as well as mentoring some at the Google Campus. “It’s good to keep up with the knowledge of who’s doing what, the technologies they’re

“

People here have great ideas and great ambition

”

using. Sometimes there might be some new kind of library or framework that could be useful to us,” he says. In an industry where a lot of communication naturally takes place on a screen, the face-to-face opportunities Silicon Drinkabout offers are deeply valuable. “You can get feedback from people over the internet but from a developer point of view seeing people actually interact with your product and your software is better. You can get their reactions in real time, hints about what the other person is feeling and thinking,” says Davide Coppola, founder of Vindicta Games. But what ultimately keeps hundreds of people working in one of London’s most successful industries flocking to a bar in Shoreditch every Friday night is the possibility of discovering something really big. “Everyone wants to help each other but sometimes people want more,” says Doug Hunter, junior account executive at Tech PR firm Dimoso. “Among the people in this bar tonight, there are some gems, people who don’t quite understand the full potential of what they’ve got. Somewhere in here someone will be the next Google.”

Enjoying a beer and making connections in the heart of East London’s Tech City at Silicon Drinkabout (from top to bottom): Doug Hunter and Iulia Tudor; Davide Coppola; Kevin Plattret

The spa for babies: much more than just a treat Laura Sevenus’s London Baby Spa is demonstrating the wide-ranging benefits of hydrotherapy words and picture by Teresa Villa Sánchez

s a competitive swimmer in the 1960s, Laura Sevenus experienced the multiple benefits of being constantly in water. With that in mind, she started a business in London that provides these benefits to babies from two days old. The success of the business, shown by the number of prams parked outside the spa on a Saturday morning, is the result of her

practice which provides babies with more than simple relaxation. According to occupational therapist Varsha Shah, babies need to exercise their muscles in any form. “When children move, they are building new neural connections and pathways that make them have more coordination,” she says. “Water is the best therapy because at that age the only thing

Fernando, aged five months, enjoys a hydrotherapy session for 15 minutes, followed by a massage

they know is their sensory system, their motor system is not developed yet so that enhances their motor skills.” The babies wear a flotation device around their necks to help them move more freely and feel safe. Some babies might feel a bit confused the first time they are left alone in the water, but it is not long before they start making movements and swimming around the pool. According to Shah, the pressure they feel when they are in the water benefits the body’s sense of awareness. “Once they know where their limbs are, their coordination improves and this enhances their fine motor dexterity, which helps with activities from sports to playing instruments.” After the hydrotherapy session the babies receive a gentle massage which, according to Sevenus, improves their circulatory and digestive system. “Any kind of deep pressure is good for them because in the womb they feel a lot of pressure. Feeling pressure makes them feel safe,” agrees Shah. The success of Baby Spa extends beyond providing physical benefits for the child. The relaxing and friendly atmosphere allows the baby to bond with their family. “Once we had a woman who brought along her baby, her mother and grandmother. It was beautiful to see four generations bonding,” Sevenus recalls. The effect of the session lasts all day long. Monica Levy, 30, finds that her baby rests better on the days when she or he goes to the spa. “Once their sleep is better, they are less cranky when they wake up and their behaviour improves,” says Varsha. Sevenus has expanded her aquatic business. She founded Laura Sevenus Swimming Tuition along with her daughter. Once babies are no longer able to enjoy the benefits of the spa at around eight months old, they are ready to learn how to swim while accompanied by their parents. Varsha believes this is a sensible method: “There is less trauma to the joints and muscles of children who practice swimming; the kids that grow up in water will not injure themselves easily.”

Baby Spa, 6 Lancer Square, London W8 4EH

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

New ideas on how to generate cleaner energy more efficiently have revitalised an industry. With the oldies out of ideas, who better to lead the green charge than university graduates?

ay energy business and most people will think oil giants or gas utilities, but in a few years we may think of something different altogether. Solar powered phone boxes and bus stops, recycled coffee for fuel - these are the green energy ideas of the future, transformed into profitable companies by university graduates. Some of the sources behind these sustainable energy projects, such as solar, have 60 years of research behind them. Yet it has taken a fresh batch of innovative entrepreneurs to harness their potential in exciting new ways. “It is in part due to the education we received and how climate change is pushing forward the green agenda in universities,” says Harold Cranston, CEO and co-founder of SolarBox. Their company has bought up old and unused telephone boxes around London and converted them into solar powered mobile phone charging booths, garnering revenue from advertising by firms such as dating app Tinder and ride-hailing service Uber. “I was struck how something as iconic as the red phone box was left unused and knew we could use this public space to confront a problem we all face, that of our mobile phone battery dying, in an energy neutral way. [Co-founder] Kirsty Kenny and I were geography graduates from the London School of Economics, and had learnt a lot about the green agenda in London from an academic angle, which helped us to create and market our proposition,” says Cranston. He believes graduates are able to enter the industry with new ideas as they are looking at “problems with a fresh set of eyes”. Like him, Arthur Kay also agrees. His company, Bio-Bean, recycles waste beans into two Advanced Biofuels to keep buildings heated and fuel buses around the capital, while reducing carbon emissions. As a graduate of architecture, Key says that his degree was central to building Bio-Bean, taking many of the skills he learned and transferring them to his green energy venture. His eco-friendly business has grown year on year, aided by securing €500,000 (£355,000) from the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge, an annual worldwide competition for sustainable start-ups. It has been endorsed and funded by institutions including Shell Oil and the Mayor of London. “We received funding from both grants and awards as well as private investors. This

The writer beside a “solarbox”: a solar powered telephone kiosk with charging points for phones

Young, green and keen

words by James Nickerson picture by Camille Ayral

is because Bio-Bean is a green enterprise, but it is first and foremost a commercial proposition. What we do is reduce waste management costs for companies producing vast amounts of waste coffee grounds. We then also provide locally sourced and cheap fuel. It is cheaper than conventional fuel,

“

What is on the horizon is exciting in our hands

”

which is critical to this offering,” says Kay. This, the young entrepreneur says, is driven by the environment in the UK: “It is one of the best, if not the best, environment for a company like this to operate in the world. The UK has that extra kick stemming from the desire to incubate and grow businesses rapidly in the country. Government and businesses are keen to foster innovation and growth, and London in particular is an amazing ecosystem for small businesses, especially those offering something new and exciting.” This view is shared by Oliver Andrew, who has created a new bus shelter for London to recycle rainwater and harness solar-power, resulting in cleaner air and energy while

improving the urban landscape. The project has garnered worldwide interest and Andrew is talking to the Mayor of London’s office and Transport for London to implement the idea. Andrew said: “Young people are making a name for themselves in this industry because London is one of the technology capitals of the world.” “In my generation technological advances in home computing and software are allowing many young people to be able to build, design and even fabricate products and projects using 3D printing or laser cutting technologies.” “This has opened up possibilities in society not possible to previous generations, which allows you to create and build businesses in the green sector of design, all run from your bedroom desk.” There has been a surge in the number of young people in the industry due to the relatively young age of the marketplace and the technology it utilises. “It is a matter of opportunity, seeing an idea and grasping it with these new technologies. We observe a huge move into the ‘internet of things’, basically products and ideas that use the internet to connect to other devices or products, which my project fits into,” says Andrew. He is enthusiastic about the opportunities available for young people: “I think it’s a very exciting time for young business entrepreneurs, as we really are building the future. What is on the horizon is exciting in our hands.”

London couples enjoying the summer sun in Clissold Park

words by Gianluca Pezzuti pictures by Camille Ayral

n April, Tinder, a location-based dating app where users flick through photos of the opposite sex to choose a partner (swipe right for yes and left for no), reported that it had 40m users worldwide. That is slightly more people hooking up using the free mobile app than the entire population of Canada. Since its inception in 2012, Tinder has become the Goliath of the online dating world, an industry now valued at $2bn. It’s not an understatement to say that the incredibly popular app has revolutionised online dating, not only in terms of users and revenue, but by removing much of the social stigma that’s surrounded online dating since match.com first popped up in 1995. A study done by Washington D.C.-based think tank Pew Research Center in 2013 found that 59 per cent of people surveyed thought “online dating was a good way to meet people”, compared with 44 per cent in 2005. But if Tinder is so fantastic, why are people likening its future to that of Myspace? It’s a comparison so ominous that its very mention is followed by an audible hiss from investors. The answer is simple. Much like Myspace was at the forefront of the social media explosion, Tinder is pioneering the new and lucrative mobile dating app industry. As

Brit apps try a Earlier this year Tinder was reported to have 40 million users. But with industry insiders already predicting its death, three London-based dating apps are learning from Tinder’s mistakes the crash test dummy of success, Tinder is riddled with all the problems that afflict the frontrunner in any unexplored market frontier.

The decline of Tinder

It’s tough to look past the knock-offs flooding the market and find the truly promising startups making a play for Tinder’s title. You need to find the chinks in the king’s armour and see which apps are exploiting them. A recent report by Global Web Index shows that 62 per cent of Tinder users are men. Tinder may have a number of flaws, but this is arguably the most troubling. The gender balance in terms of online dating is fairly equal, with men making up roughly 52 per cent of all users. Ipsos MRBI, a media market research agency, found male Tinder users are three times more likely (46 per cent) to swipe right on a profile than women (14 per cent). Gender disparity coupled with innate female selectivity means that men are much less likely to find a match than women. Ireland

is a sterling example of this, with only one per cent of users actually finding a match. But nearly half of Tinder users are doing something much worse than adding an extra zero to their paycheck. The same GWI investigation discovered that 42 per cent of Tinder users are in a relationship, and an astounding 30 per cent are married. Tinder is working frantically to stamp out spam bots and other unsavoury aspects of the app, like men who use the messaging service to send women unsolicited pictures of their genitals. Unfortunately, for every problem the app giant fixes, two new ones seem to crop up. Tinder’s future will depend on whether it can fix its debilitating problems before new apps steal its rapidly fleeting and tired user base.

The possible successors

New startup dating apps such as Antidate, Spark and Double, all of which are based in London, have learned from Tinder’s mistakes.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Apps from the inside words by Zoe Paskett

S park With no age restrictions or limitations beyond how many “sparks” you can afford, I’m starting to get sick of the constant nudges from 50-year-old “Gman”. I find it hard to believe that Bluetooth is going to make a miraculous comeback for the sake of one dating app. Confusion reigns supreme in almost all of my Spark conversations with “not really sure how this works” being a common phrase.

Antidate

While it’s a relief to be given the choice to make the first move, Antidate isn’t ideal for a busy woman. Conversations disappear after 24 hours, making it difficult to keep track. However, what isn’t hard to keep tabs on is the exact location of male users. Were I a man using this app I would be alarmed by the accuracy with which it pinpoints your location. I could appear outside your front door if I were so inclined. But luckily I’m not.

All three market themselves as either safer, more romantic or giving women more power in order to attract female users. “A third of online dating users don’t actually go on dates,” said Loren Gould, one of the founders of Double, a dating app identical to Tinder with one major difference – its sole use is for double dates. He and his co-founders came up with the idea when their friend, an attractive woman who uses Tinder, said though she had plenty of matches yet she never actually went on any dates because it felt unsafe. While Double is using safety to attract a female user base, Spark, a London-only app, is using proximity. Spark connects users who are within 30 metres of each other. The app’s advantage is it uses Bluetooth to connect users rather than the internet, meaning it can be used in the Tube, which plays into the missed connection fantasy that has plagued romantic commuters since the advent of underground transportation. Spark already has 10,000 users all across the capital and it only launched in March. “We intentionally branded ourselves as this love-finding app with the intention of getting female users on board. 52 per cent of our users are female,” said Dave Marsden, co-founder of the app.

Antidate, another app aimed at catering to female users, actually gives women all the control. Men cannot contact women or view profiles. They simply sign up, wait and hope a woman messages them. The female version of the app on the other hand has an interface that displays all the nearby men in radar form, only revealing the female user if she chooses to initiate conversation. “I do think it is a case of you do acquire female users, and the men seemingly just follow suit,” said Marsden. If Tinder’s fate is like that of Myspace and its reign truly is over, then what does that mean for the future of dating apps? As far as the creators of Double are concerned, the social media analogy doesn’t fit. “There’s not a lot of brand loyalty in dating apps,” said Ben Greenock, one of Double’s three founders.“I think you’ll have a couple major players [in the next five years],” said Gould, sitting on a leather couch at Double’s trendy Bank headquarters. “The essence of dating is inherently more niche. My needs as a 29-year-old are very different than a 22-year-old’s needs whose needs are different from a divorcee at 40. I don’t think you can create a Facebook-like product to accommodate all those needs.”

Introducing more variables into the equation inevitably makes something more complicated. With four people involved, it’s tricky to tell who likes whom. Having teamed up with a friend, we set about individually swiping other friend-couples. Out of the results, we both claim to have chosen none of the so-called “matches” that have appeared on our chat screen. I’m almost convinced she’s telling the truth, but I should like to know how many of the four people actually need to swipe right for it to qualify as a match. Central Spark

little Tinderness

Double

Spark app caused some confusion for users

The business of death Sex sells, and now death does too, as digital businesses seek to exploit a basic human desire Emily McGovern

words by Laura Gozzi

fter years of lagging behind far more visually appealing projects – mindfulness apps, pregnancy planners and virtual recipe books – death is rising to the forefront of the tech industry. Evan Carroll manages the US-based blog and database The Digital Beyond, and was one of the first computer technologists to become interested in the idea of digital legacies. His studies focus on the interaction between technology and people. “When you think about how our lives have been changed by technology, and that we change technology every day, you understand that we have a symbiotic relationship,” he says. Like many others in his industry, Carroll’s interest in the matters of death and virtual life was sparked by very personal experiences: “My co-worker John [Romano]’s grandfather died and his son was born in the same year. And he realised that the mementos of his grandfather and the ones he was storing up to keep for his son were completely different – the latter, namely, were all digital. So we thought: where will the digital memories go?” He also remembers being asked to be a “digital executor” by a family member: “He came to me and said: ‘If anything ever happens, I want you to take care of my computer.’”

“Death is rising to the forefront of the tech industry

”

Carroll and Romano knew they were onto something; a book followed a series of talks at SXSW (South By Southwest), an annual festival in Texas for music, films and interactive technology. Today, The Digital Beyond website is the most comprehensive source of afterlife information, listing dozens of services that tackle digital death and legacy. One of these is Knotify.me, an application created by Aristotelis Zournas that promises to solve the problem of the fate of one’s online accounts in the event of amnesia, Alzheimer’s or death. Knotify.me offers to send out notifications to either family members or to the user – in

Would you want to receive emails and messages from loved ones from beyond the grave?

case of memory-related illnesses – and to transfer one’s domain names, email and accounts to selected “digital heirs”. Stavros Korokithakis is an IT specialist who had a similar idea when he created Dead Man’s Switch (DMS) in 2006. His aim was to create a service that would provide users with an “electronic will”; they write a few emails, choose the recipients, and remain safe in the knowledge that the emails are stored securely. “Your ‘switch’ will email you every so often, asking you to show that you are fine by clicking a link. If something were to happen to you, your switch would then send the emails you wrote to the recipients you specified,”explains Korokithakis. To death services heathens, both Knotify. me and DMS have a vaguely creepy feel to them. But Zournas says: “Knotify.me and similar services are apps from the living and for the living. “A dead person doesn’t need his social media account or the domain name of his business in the same way he doesn’t need cash, a car or a house. For material stuff there already are services such as lawyers, notaries and safes but his digital property may be worth much more.” The strands of technology and death have come together in other instances, too. Sean and Leona McAllister co-founded Plotbox, a software that has been widely acclaimed as ‘Google Maps for cemeteries’. Plotbox is a tool for cemetery and crematoria managers to do everything they need to do in terms of records and organisation

with a neatly designed cloud-based system. Leona says Plotbox is also a solution for the “increasing genealogy inquiries – if your records are digitised it’ll take a few seconds to find information”. The obsolescence of the business of cemeteries is a feature of graveyards from Northern Ireland to the Silicon Valley, Leona says, but Plotbox aims at “facilitating the sharing of information for all stakeholders for crematoria and cemeteries.” Big tech companies, such as Google and Twitter, have only recently introduced policies to tackle the deaths of their users. Facebook’s approach is to give family or friends access to the deceased’s profile so that it can be turned into a “virtual memorial”, but even in that case issues of privacy remain. Carroll explains: “In the social media sphere you have all these ‘custodians of information.’ I look at this like a storage unit you might rent: you own the stuff, but not the container. But it’s when you stop logging into a Facebook that custodians can start doing what they want with that information.” The list of services pairing technology with mankind’s primal fear could go on. It would appear that the last taboo – digitising mankind’s primal fear – is almost broken. Korokithakis says: “People will always adopt technology at a pace they’re comfortable with, so the question of whether or not they’re ready isn’t a particularly useful one. People will always do as much as they’re ready for, and there will always, slowly, be progress.” It may have taken a while, but it looks like the future of death is here.

Camille Ayral

From race cars to baby cots

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Designing baby cots may not sound like rocket science, yet space technology is now being used to make them

Dr Maxime Boulet-Audet

r Fujia Chen first came up with the idea of the SpaceCot in 2012 when she participated in a business competition sponsored by the European Space Agency. Her career as an engineer meant she was often surrounded by male perspectives. She began to appreciate that her gender gave her a unique outlook in her field. While babysitting for her relatives, she observed first-hand the challenges of young parents, and she wondered: “What can I do with my knowledge to make their lives easier?” The SpaceCot, developed by Chen’s company Oxford Space Structures is lightweight and easy to unfold. It saves time and trouble for those who need to travel with their babies in tow. Chen is a 30-year-old business owner with an impressive CV and is based in London. Her company consists of two full-time staff: her business partner Julian Jantke and herself. After earning a Bachelor’s degree in Textile and Fashion Design and Engineering from Donghua University in Shanghai, Chen studied at Imperial College London, gaining a Master’s degree in Composite Materials and Aeronautical Engineering. She then became a DPhil student at Oxford, specialising in developing structural materials using spider

The SpaceCot folded up for transport

Dr Fujia Chen: An impressive CV and entrepreneurial flair

silk for aeronautical and leisure applications. Chen became the first Chinese female engineer to be employed by Williams F1 in May 2012. She was the only woman in the materials lab at the motor racing organisation while working there for two years. before leaving to build her own business.

“ The most important

thing is to find your passion and be happy

”

And in her industry, Chen sees her gender as an advantage. “It is easier for people to remember you as there are not many female engineers, and the natural bond between woman and child helped when I developed products for babies.” Chen says she’s too busy to have children now, but certainly wants to be a mother one day. This makes the process of developing baby products more personal. “When I was babysitting the little ones in my family, I knew I would become a mother myself one day.” The biggest challenge for Chen is handling the pressure. “The difference between starting my own business and working for a big company is that I have to be 100 per cent responsible for what I do.” The SpaceCot has reached the later stages of financing and the plan is to launch on a crowdfunding platform in July. The price of the cots will be less than £200 each. Chen chose to base the company’s research and development headquarters in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, as it is the centre of high-quality cot manufacturing. The cots produced here are targeted at European and US customers. “The SpaceCot is the first product of our

company. I’d rather compete in a niche area and make the product stand out instead of entering a big market like baby buggies. I cannot compete with the large-scale companies. I do not have that kind of money or experience. I’m still learning as a startup,” says Chen. How did a Formula One engineer end up running her own business? When Chen was pursuing her doctorate in specialist biomaterials at the University of Oxford, she completed an MBA at Said Business School. “Engineering is a very hands-on subject. It has a lot in common with doing business. They’re both about creating something from scratch. Both require a lot of cooperation and communication with others, too.” The SpaceCot has attracted wide attention, which Chen doesn’t take for granted: “I’m a very lucky person and many people have helped me along the way.” For those who want to start their businesses in the UK, Chen thinks the capital is a good place to be based. “London is very suitable for startups. It has got great resources and mature investors. It might be hard at first because of the high costs, but it can be really rewarding too,” she says. “The most important thing is to find your passion and be happy.” Dr Maxime Boulet-Audet

words by Yingchang Shi

The SpaceCot unfolded and ready for use

Wild thing you make my business sing

Handler Sarah of the English School of Falconry

How effective are conventional methods of pest control in our cities? Wildlife creeps into urban areas, creating problems for businesses and residential areas around the world words and pictures by Lee Roberts

or squirrels merely creates vacancies for replacement animals of the same species.” The Fox Project advocates methods that n London, we’re accustomed to seeing utilise the animals’ natural behaviour as a feral pigeons, seagulls, foxes, rabbits, rats deterrent rather than trapping or killing and mice – to name just a few. These them. Humane wildlife deterrence works by animals can wreak havoc so the removal understanding the behaviour of the problem of problem wildlife from urban areas is a animal and then introducing changes to the immediate environment to the disadvantage massive industry. Trapping or poisoning the offending of the animal. Bryant’s company devised human animals is the most common method of control, though some local councils have deterrence for foxes in 1990 and he began gone so far as to use snipers to control the to apply the same principles with squirrels fox population. The new Conservative and other species 10 years later. “Now there are a handful of us making government has suggested re-legalising the sport of fox hunting. But these solutions a living out of helping people resolve urban wildlife problems with non-lethal solutions result in a lethal outcome for the animal. This has left a gap in the market for on a case by case basis,” he says. In a similar vein, companies whose alternatives to conventional wildlife control. A variety of “environmentally friendly” or objective is to help people control pigeon “humane” small companies dealing with and seagull populations such as Peregrine, an animal control group located in Essex, wildlife deterrence has evolved. “Killing or removing foxes is pointless rely on the ancient practice of falconry to because new foxes move into the vacant move along flocks of birds. “One of the most effective birds for pigeon territory within days,” says John Bryant of The Fox Project and the soon-to-launch Humane and seagull control is the peregrine falcon,” says John Ackerman of the Birmingham Urban Wildlife Deterrence Association. “The same situation arises for other species. Falconry Centre. “They’re stooping birds, meaning Killing pigeons merely creates space for new pigeons. Trapping or killing rats, mice they will drop at 80 or 90 miles per

hour from above a flying pigeon and dispatch it with long talons and a powerful beak while still on the wing.” Professional falconers can be scheduled for regular flyovers. The presence of the predatory birds naturally encourages the pigeons and seagulls to go elsewhere. The birds are typically not used to injure or hunt the problem birds. A predator in the air is often enough to move flocks of pigeons and seagulls from city or landfill areas. A growing number of people appear interested in exploring environmentally responsible, poison-free and often humane ways in which to manage the presence of unwanted wild animals. As interest in alternatives grows and wildlife continues to creep in to our cities we can expect to see more people offering alternatives to this age-old problem. “I think that humane deterrence is the only viable long term solution to pest problems,” says Bryant. ”Most people would opt for that over a lethal method. The problem is that the conventional pest control industry is obsessed with killing the pests. Without changing the environment that is attracting the pests, it doesn’t matter how many you kill, others will be eager to take advantage of the vacancy.”

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

From Silicon Valley to South Kensington: London’s synthetic biology startups From medicines to toys, skincare to artificial organs, synthetic biology startups are sweeping across the capital. Can business and science work together? Bonnie-Kate Wolf

words by Zoe Paskett

tretching from the high street to the hospital, synthetic biology is taking over London’s universities, churning out a new generation of entrepreneurs who are bringing scientific research into the business arena. Using a combination of science and engineering, it is possible to design new systems that do not exist naturally, whether for cancer treatment, educational toys or a male stretch mark cream. Until recently, the greatest advances in synthetic biology were made by startups based in Silicon Valley, a hub for high tech startups in San Francisco. Based in the US for 22 years, Dr Stephen Chambers has started company after company, but recently decided to return to London. “The UK has become a lot more entrepreneurial in its thinking and what it wants to achieve,” he says. “It’s being driven by very young folks now.” Chambers is the CEO of SynbiCITE, a technology startup hub based in Imperial College London’s innovation incubator, which houses 20 small businesses. With a view to industrialising scientific technology, SynbiCITE helps to commercialise emerging research into sustainable businesses. “The typical model that you have with UK universities is that they do this great research but they want to keep it and license it to Shell or Microsoft or some multinational,” says Chambers. “They don’t want to try to start up companies.” But, by bridging the gap between science and entrepreneurship, synthetic biology changes all that. “All the activity is coming from startups. The big companies are sitting back and just watching what’s going on. The way you get innovation is through startups, not big licensing deals,” Chambers adds. London’s top universities are producing ever more scientists-cum-entrepreneurs looking to make use of their research. SynbiCITE’s Lean Launchpad is a crash course in entrepreneurship, taking scientists out of their labs and providing them with the skills and understanding to take their science to market. “All of these researchers come in and all they want to do is talk about their technology,” says Chambers. “No one’s interested in that.

From the laboratory to the boardroom, Etal’s founders are bringing science to the masses

All they’re interested in is what it will do for them. We take them in and on day one, slap them around the head and say ‘no, don’t talk about that’. Tell people why they need it.” The concept of the startup “launchpad” has been around in Silicon Valley for some time, but is new to the UK. Chambers is hoping that it will “go viral” across the country and encourage the creation of many startups, just like those he has advised at Imperial College. Nanocage Technologies is one of these companies. It has developed a technology that allows drugs to be transported to specific cells in the body. With the potential to deliver cancer therapies to exact locations, rather than affecting the whole body, reducing often debilitating side effects, the implications of such a treatment could be very significant. But some ideas have been more focused on the consumer-facing facets of synthetic biology. Cellibero, made up of Drs Richard Kelwick, James MacDonald and Lorna Ravenhill, has developed a molecular biology version of a child’s first chemistry set, in which children can play with real DNA. As academics, they found the transition from lab to boardroom tricky. “At first it was quite a stressful and unusual experience, but we got used to it,” says MacDonald. “We were out of our comfort zone. We had to do ten interviews a week. We would just walk into buildings and talk our way in.” ETAL, a performance skincare startup, founded by molecular biologist Gracie Oury, A&E doctor Kieran Latham and pharmaceutical scientist Pitchaya Rungsereechai, but now run by just Oury and Latham, found the challenge was the pressure they were

under to come up with the right product. But now having found their niche, they have confidence in their idea. “We found this molecule that we wanted to work with and went from there,” says Latham. “We had to make the product very niche because we can’t afford the massive marketing campaigns that skincare products usually have.“ They are focused on bringing the scientific rigour of academia to the skincare sector and are developing a male stretch mark cream, hoping it will be on the market in a few months. “Men represent around 33 per cent of product purchases in the UK. It’s a £5.3m market in the UK alone. So it’s niche but it’s not so niche that it’s uninteresting to go after from a business perspective,” says Oury. ETAL won a grant of £10,000 from UCL Bright Ideas 2015 competition and the London Entrepreneurs Challenge best presentation for their stretch mark cream, and have the interest of a business angel. The products currently being developed with synthetic biology in the UK are remarkably varied. And this is a market that is almost entirely driven by startups. A few years ago you had to travel to San Francisco to find this kind of innovation but today you just have to venture down the road in London. So what does the future hold for these companies? “It’s interesting how the UK looks to America and thinks it was always like it is now,” says Chambers. “It took Silicon Valley 25 years to reach this point. But in five or 10 years it’s going to look very similar here to those hubs in the US. I’m sure of it.”

Yifei Chai

Futures made of virtual reality: Yifei Chai’s product gives the illusion of an out-of-body experience by controlling someone else’s movement

Looking into the future

From controlling someone else’s body to virtual retail therapy: Upstart meets the firms pioneering virtual reality technologies words by Alex Longley

“I

magine you can download Tiger Woods’s golf swing or Michael Jordan’s last shot and replay that on your body,” says Yifei Chai. For him, the hope is that this will soon be a reality. Chai is the man behind a unique virtual reality (VR) system that enables one user to appear as if they are controlling the body of another. They mimic their movements and see through their eyes thanks to a muscle stimulating technology, some cameras and the Oculus Rift - Facebook’s pioneering VR headset, on sale to the public early next year. Chai says that being able to physically emulate your sporting idol is the second in a three-stage development process for his product, the Pretender Project. The first will see it used in video games. “If someone grabs your arm [in a game], your arm will be pulled [in reality].” The second is for sports training, and the third is what has seen the project draw a government grant for further funding. “The final stage would be medical,” Chai says. “One way would be to help people to rehabilitate. In recovery people are told they need to move their legs more but they can’t because they’ve forgotten how to.” Chai’s hope is that the physical response element of the kit will help speed up physical rehabilitation periods for those with severely

Imagine being able to see inside a room before it has even been built: now you can

Visual-Wise

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY His firm - which was founded in 2013 - has taken VR to the high street, working with high-end clothing brands such as Karen Millen and Jimmy Choo to create an immersive shopping experience. Customers can browse current store layouts from their own home and even have a shop assistant zoom in and give them further details about particular products. An Avenue Imperial store shoot can capture around 2500 square feet of space per hour. “We can have that store live and online by the same evening so that anyone can walk around the store that same evening,” Rossi says. So, from health to sport and retail to property, it seems that it won’t be long before VR is playing an even greater role in our lives. Does that give cause for concern?

Chai doesn’t think so. “Anything has a certain danger, but this is one of those things where it is easier to see. There are things that don’t look dangerous at all, say a fork and a knife, but a lot of people jam that into the toaster and they die.” He believes that if people are worried about our lives becoming virtual, they should consider society’s current reliance on technology. “If you think about how much information you get in real life versus how much you get digitally, the world around us is already very much virtual.” And if that thought concerns you, Chai’s longer term prognosis may not make for easy reading. He says: “The future interaction of man and man is not necessarily through words or behaviour, but through technology.” Luis Oliveira

debilitating injuries or disabilities. The initial creation of the product took place while he was completing a Masters at the Royal College of Art and he is now developing it further as an innovation architect at production studio Unit 9. And he is not alone as a young entrepreneur tapping into the emerging field of VR. Luis Oliveira was headhunted from Portugal by Dutch VR startup Dreamlake. “When I first tried the Oculus, I quit my job,” he says. “I had a job at a video game company and I decided to leave because this is what I wanted to do. When I first tried the Oculus I was mind-blown, and I still am.” At Dreamlake, Oliveira works primarily on architectural VR products – being able to put yourself inside a room (or even a neighbourhood) to see it before it is built.

“When I first tried the Oculus I was mindblown

”

The firm has also come up with virtual driving lessons in which users are able to practice a variety of simulations in order to gain an awareness of road safety. In spite of this, he maintains that the future of VR is not one of a civilisation glued to a headset, as many science fiction films would have us believe. “I don’t see families getting home and saying: ‘Hey honey, I’m going to the virtual world.’ I don’t see it being a mainstream thing.” This view is also shared by Reuben Carter and Megan Masterson whose firm VisualWise also provides virtual reality displays for architectural plans. “It has niche applications. I think there are examples where it can work really powerfully. In property it has an obvious use and I think equally for gaming,” says Masterson. Unlike many other firms, Visual-Wise have succeeded in creating a VR product that doesn’t require a costly and cumbersome headset such as the Oculus or Samsung’s Gear VR. Instead, they have designed a simple self-assembled cardboard headset that holds the VR device – a mobile phone. “It’s about finding practical uses for it now,” says Carter. “I didn’t like the fact that you do all your computer graphics algorithms and then just map it onto a 2D surface. I thought: ‘We can do better than this.’” But what if you’re not a gamer and don’t work in architecture? Are you ever likely to see the benefits of VR in your everyday life? Nicolas Rossi, CEO of Avenue Imperial, thinks you will.

Shebani Shah experiencing VR at Digital Shoreditch, a festival for London’s digital industries

From being run over by a train to floating inside a mother’s womb: my experience with virtual reality words by Shebani Shah At Digital Shoreditch, when developer Luis Oliveira first asked me if I wanted to experience virtual reality (VR), I hesitated. I can be a bit of a conservative when it comes to ‘futuristic sounding’ stuff. But as soon I put on the glasses, I found myself standing in a crystal blue lake surrounded by snowy mountains. Soothing music started playing, perfectly in sync with the scenery. Without sounding overly redundant, it felt real, which didn’t make sense because it was clearly computerised. My brain was beginning to give in. I jerked my body around, expecting a limited scope of vision. Left... right... up.. .spin. But the 360° display wouldn’t let me win. Whatever angle I was in, there was a different visual: clouds moving, birds fluttering.. and wait, is that a train? Coming through the water towards me? It’s going to run over me. Relax, I assured myself.. but I could sense my body flinching. As the train crashed into me, it transformed into thousands of butterflies. Fear turned into

exhilaration. I was one with the climactic moment. Nature faded and it was dark again. This time I was in some sort of liquid film... a bubble? I turned around. Just when I thought things could not get any more bizarre, I came face-to-face with a foetus. I had been transported into a mother’s womb. At this point, I told the logic in my brain to shut up because, real or not, I wanted to be a part of it. My heart was beating fast. I could actually witness one of Mother Nature’s wonders. After some seconds passed, the baby made eye contact with me and stretched its hand towards my face. And that was the end. My entire mood had shifted. I felt lighter and less sluggish. It was then I realised that the improved version of VR today does not have to just be a digital show-off as it is advertised. If developed in the right way, there is potential for the technology to become more than a new toy for advertisers or gamers. It could have a positive impact in ways we have yet to comprehend, but could without a doubt learn to love.

Hassle.com

Jules Coleman (right), chief product officer of Hassle.com along with her two co-founders Tom Nimmo (left) and Alex Depledge

Outsourcing the home

Upstart meets two London-based startups trying to shake the tag ‘Uber for cleaning’ words by Akhil Arora

“T

he home cleaning market is worth £4bn in the UK. Home services as a whole is a £40bn market. But 90 per cent of it is done by independent cleaners,” says Avin Rabheru, founder of Housekeep, a home cleaning service that sprang up early last year. The company secured £645,000 in funding within three months of launching and has grown sixfold since December. Business has always been in his blood. Rabheru’s grandparents had their own businesses in East Africa and his parents moved to the UK to build a new life for themselves in their own way. Young Rabheru had the same entrepreneurial spirit: a small magazine for children and a carwash were his proudest moments. He spent a decade after graduating from Oxford in management consulting and venture capital before deciding to “scratch the itch” and set up his own firm. “Housekeep was born out of the lessons I

learnt a decade or so ago. What I was looking for was a big fragmented market,” he says. For others, the journey into the world of on-demand services has been quite different. Jules Coleman, co-founder of Hassle.com, was looking for a piano teacher in 2011. “I went onto the internet expecting to find a really easy website where you could find a local piano teacher and book them. And I didn’t. I found really old directory-style listings,” she says. She brought up the idea of setting up a virtual school of music with her friend and colleague Alex Depledge. She wasn’t impressed. Six months later while talking with her dad, a driving instructor, it hit her. Coleman rang Alex and said: “What if we made an Amazon for local services?” But Coleman isn’t a developer, and hiring one was out of the question. “I started Teddle as it was known at the time by buying a book and teaching myself to code and building a really terrible version of the website in my bedroom,” she says.

Rebranded as Hassle.com in October 2013, the startup now employs 50 people and is present in eight cities across Europe. The startup recently picked up $6m in funding from Accel Partners, a venture firm behind companies such as Facebook and Dropbox. Coleman says: “It’s been four years since we first started and it’s a bit like watching a child grow. You don’t really notice the change day by day but then you look back on the four years and everything’s different.” Even though both models are successful in their own right, a lot is different. Hassle. com started off as a virtual labour space where individuals could market their services, from driving instructors to piano teachers. “What we learned during the seed funding round was that we need to focus on being really good at one thing, rather than just being average at 25 things. So we decided to focus just on cleaning, because one out of every four requests came from that end,” she says. But operating in the same arena leads to parallels as well in terms of business model.

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY follow that incentive by upping their hours, they’ll have even less of the flexibility that brought them to the on-demand economy in the first place.” Coleman believes that “you cannot succeed if you are greedy on an individual transaction basis”. Hassle.com has a projected turnover of £11.5m for 2015. On the other hand, Uber is expected to generate $10bn in revenue just five years after its launch, in spite of all the lawsuits riding in the back seat. At least the home cleaning industry is squeaky clean in that respect. Shebani Shah

them, is actually priceless,” he adds. While consumers on one hand benefit from competition in an industry, it can mean trouble for the workers. As companies grow bigger, they need to answer their investors and turn around bigger revenues every year. For Uber, this meant introducing a tiered fee structure that incentivises new drivers to drive more. Ellen Huet, reporting for Forbes, said this would hurt “part-time drivers the hardest”. Joe Pinsker, associate editor at The Atlantic, wrote last month: “As on-demand workers

Avin Rabheru, founder of Housekeep, says there are 152 other cleaning services in their postcode Uber

Both Rabheru and Coleman stress two points - customers in traditional models are spread across large distances which increases travel costs and the cleaners get paid more than they would anywhere else. Travel in London is expensive, all the more if you get paid £8.50-an-hour as a cleaner, which is below the current living wage in the capital. Another pattern in Coleman’s words is regarding work schedules. “If you’re looking for flexibility, then the advent of companies like ours has made that mode of work possible. For example, Uber drivers turn on the app as and when they want work, rather than do shifts,” he says. Mian Aamir Abbas was with the police in Haringey for two years. Tired of the long hours, he jumped ship to Uber and has been working for them for more than a year now. He says the option to set his own hours was really appealing. The San Francisco-based ride-hailing company has never been far from controversy though, least of all the backlash it faces from taxi unions around the world. In August last year, online tech publicationThe Verge revealed the company’s aggressive tactics to undermine its competitors. Three months later, BuzzFeed reported that a senior executive at Uber had brought up the idea of running smear campaigns against critics at a dinner in New York for which he later apologised. Despite all that, the company is valued at $50bn and the successful nature of its business model has given rise to the term ‘Uber for X’: a terminology for using mobile technology to coordinate delivery of on-demand services or products. One of its notable features is surge pricing that regulates supply and demand by increasing prices during peak hours. That encourages Uber drivers to work certain hours, affecting flexibility in an indirect manner. “Weekends are really important, you can’t afford to miss them,” said Abbas. The home cleaning market is still very much in the nascent stage – as Rabheru said 90 per cent of the work is carried out by individuals. “A huge number of cleaners on Hassle. com are women with children and commitments. The fact that they can fit jobs in between the hours of 10am and 2pm when their children are at school is incredibly attractive for them,” says Coleman. Friday is the busiest day in terms of bookings, but it is not that pronounced. As demand shifts away from traditional models though, the more lucrative slots will affect the flexibility that cleaners tend to desire. Lorenzo Franzi, co-founder of Zipjet, an on-demand laundry service, agrees that surge pricing is the answer to crowded hours and something they will consider if needed. “I think giving back free time to people to do the things they actually enjoy, and to spend time with the people who are important to

An Uber driver waits for a client. The service is now available in 58 countries and 300 cities

Can blogging bring home the Award-winning blogger Ché Dyer reveals how her online hobby became a lucrative career, offers inspiration and advice, and discusses what’s next for her budding brand words by Kate Johnson

following from South Africa to London and Germany and to the USA. Now living in London, Dyer’s career comprises of illustrating, owning an online stationery store, graphic designing, blogging and teaching yoga. She explains that all of these roles have sprung from her blog. “My business has grown organically alongside my unfolding life events. People who follow me started requesting things, as they wanted a little piece of the blog for themselves. So I developed a stationery range, including greeting cards and posters, when I moved to London in 2013. Then, after I got married two years ago [to Warren, referred to affectionately as ‘the husband’ throughout her blog], people began asking for wedding stationery and illustrated guestbooks. Now I’m into yoga and developing a product range that relates to that.” Dyer has difficulty explaining her compulsion to blog, and how frequently she updates it – up to five times a week. “I love sharing and connecting with people.” There’s something compelling about the idea of leaving a legacy too, she says. “A lot of people refer to things from my blog that I’ve forgotten. They remember my life more than I do. It’s strange.” Sometimes her online and offline world converge. “I was in Borough Market with my folks, who were visiting from South Africa, when someone came up to me saying ‘Ché, hi, I love your blog’ and wanted to take a picture with me. My parents thought it was the best thing ever.”

Ché Dyer

n typical London summer style, it’s pouring with rain. Ché Dyer seems unfazed as she bounds into the coffee shop, blonde hair scraped back and water streaming from an enviably beautiful, makeup free face. She orders hibiscus tea and laughs: “Obviously I forgot an umbrella. I didn’t even have my yoga mat to create a makeshift one!” As 29-year-old Dyer describes how she’s built a thriving business off the back of her personal blog, indieBerries, it is striking how similar she is to her virtual self-drawn cartoon persona – vivacious, witty and likeable. She started indieBerries five years ago, after leaving her South African home to work as an English teacher in South Korea. Her distinctive cartoon style captures hilariously astute observations of her daily personal experiences and she has amassed a devoted

Ché Dyer sells greeting cards, prints and bespoke illustrations at notonthehighstreet.com

Her parents have definitely influenced her choices, given that her mum is a teacher and her father is very entrepreneurial. “My dad’s always got a lot of different things on the go, such as owning storage units, a spa and a hardware store. I’m similar in having this multi-faceted package that fulfills and supports me financially. I came back from South Korea in tears, as I didn’t know where I was going with my life. He reassured me, saying ‘everything that you’re

“A lot of people refer

to things from my blog that I’ve forgotten. They remember my life more than I do

”

doing is leading towards something and has purpose and value, it’s coming. Don’t worry’. I feel like I’m reaching that point now.” IndieBerries gets up to 8,500 page views per day and Ché sells her products through the site as well as via online shops, Etsy and Not On The High Street. Although her bespoke wedding guest-books are her biggest revenue generators, her greeting cards are a particularly valuable marketing tool, as they have her details on the back and drive people to her website. She dabbled in sponsorship and affiliate advertising for 10 months with the help of a company called Passionfruit, which she recommends. She stopped though, as it began to feel like she was “spamming” people and that the essence of her blog was being diluted. It was also frustrating trying to manipulate posts to mention sponsored products or people and seemed silly to redirect readers away from her website with sidebar advertising. It is only in the last year that Dyer has been able to draw a full salary for herself on a monthly basis and there have been challenges in reaching this point. When she first arrived in London, she found herself struggling financially.

Spot the difference

“Sometimes people think I’m immune to failure as my online personality is so upbeat and fun. I’m not. I attended a market but I’d done no research and it was a massive flop. I was next to a kid’s tombola stand and only sold a couple of cards to my friends. It ripped me apart.” As a creative working from home, it’s difficult to trigger as many ideas as you would when you are engaging with people. It can be lonely. “I sit at my desk, blogging or designing the whole day. When Warren comes home he’s been talking to people non-stop and wants to switch off but I’ll be desperate to chat.” She has also had issues with people using her cartoons without asking or crediting her. “It’s difficult when I’m a one-man-band trying to build a business and someone with a 17,000-strong following uses my image without crediting me.” For avid bloggers looking for tips, Dyer recommends attending workshops like Blogcademy and tapping into blogging networks, for example Joe Blogs and Nuffnang. She believes in looking for blogs that inspire you. She regularly keeps an eye on blog site A Beautiful Mess and is also a fan of Yoga Girl. Being self-employed is stressful and Dyer has learnt to manage this by practising yoga. She recently completed a training course to become a teacher and her first “Bandhas & Bubbles” event in May, a morning of Prosecco, brunch and yoga, sold out in seven hours - purely because she mentioned it on her blog. “Fortunately, people are invested in me as a brand already. One girl is driving an hour and a half to get to my next yoga event. She

Kate Johnson

Ché Dyer illustrates her blog IndieBerries with cartoons based on her own experiences and observations. Below, a drawing of her in her home-office

Ché Dyer

cash?

LIFE

has been following my story online and wants to meet me.” Dyer is proud that she has created a life for herself that allows her to earn a living from the activities she most enjoys.

“I am so lucky. The things that fulfill me also provide me with an income.” Dyer has recently launched her new website for all things yoga-related, chedyer.com. You will still find her blogging at indieberries.com.

Young and savvy entrepreneurs A

s the youngest ever Microsoft Certified Professional, a qualification he achieved at Birmingham University at five, the now six-year-old Qureshi has high hopes for the future. The tech-savvy child doesn’t own a company yet, but has already set high goals for himself. “I want to be an IT entrepreneur. I want to launch ‘e-valley’ in UK, similar to Silicon Valley in the USA.” “I was keen to explore the features of the Microsoft operating system, computer hardware and basic networking. I found it so interesting that I decided to go for the Microsoft certification,” he says. Qureshi’s average day is much the same as that of any child his age. It consists of school, playdates, dinner and enjoying time with the family. But Qureshi is not your average sixyear-old. He studies in the evening and used to practice in the IT lab for two hours every night in preparation for the Microsoft exam. Qureshi is clear as to what he enjoys about computers. “I like to install and configure the operating system and to interconnect the computers. I like to transfer the data from one computer to another.” He also enjoys “playing games on the computer, doing maths, drawing or painting and talking over Skype”.

Ben Towers When most kids are anxiously waiting for the move to secondary school, Ben Towers decided at 11 years old it was the optimum time to start offering website design on a freelance basis to SMEs around the country. His first commission was a website he made for a family friend, after teaching himself coding from online videos and web tutorials. Five years later, 16-year-old Towers is the CEO of Towers Design, a digital media agency employing more than 15 people. One of the main challenges Towers faced when starting his company at 11 years old

Clockwise from top: Ayan Qureshi, Nina Devani and Ben Towers

was the fact that no one took him seriously. “Once I learnt to be open about my age when working with clients it meant I lost a lot of work but gained even more as some people are keen to see the next generation grow,” he says. The future looks bright for the young entrepreneur. “At the moment I’m also working on another company and I’m excited to see how both projects span out over the next few years.” His advice to adults wanting to start a business reads like Nike’s slogan. “Just do it. You can read as many business books as you want but they will not run your business. A good business has a good entrepreneur, someone who is willing to push the company to the next level.”

Nina Devani Meet the next Steve Jobs: 16-year-old Nina Devani. She started software company DevaniSoft at 14 by building an app to help people remember passwords. Her company now employs more than 10 people and offers

Everywoman Ltd

Ayan Qureshi

Ben Towers

words by Sara Meij

ayanqureshi.com

They have yet to turn 18 but already own thriving companies. Meet Ayan, Ben and Nina, the newest generation of entrepreneurs in the UK

two different software solutions to make internet use safer. “I’ve always believed in stretching yourself and acting upon your ideas, so when I came up with the idea, I knew I had to make it a reality. It didn’t matter to me that I was 14, because age doesn’t restrict ability,” she says. Initially, she struggled to be taken seriously. But money and her reputation were at stake, which only made her more determined. “I also wasn’t sure of all the processes involved in setting up a business, such as registering my company only to realise that to be the director, you have to be 18.” “Not many people start out that young. I had fresh insight and I also had encouragement and support from friends, school, and my parents.” A true entrepreneur, Devani doesn’t sit still. “I’m currently working on some new ventures, which will be launched in the coming year or so. I hope to see Devanisoft growing and expanding to become a well known company.”

Ponan with the Everywoman Artemis Award

words by Alex Longley

ulianne Ponan reflects on her initial assessment of Creative Nature: “I said: ‘Look, it’s not sellable, there’s nothing there, you’re never going to get your money back and you’re in losses.’” She had been asked to undertake due diligence on the firm by an investor, who to her surprise suggested a management buyout that would place Ponan at its helm aged just 22. But upon seeing the accounts, Ponan was reluctant to agree. The company was making losses of around £56,000 a year and had a scattergun policy as to what products it would sell. “You name it, they had it,” she says. As a result, the entire management team was let go and Ponan brought in her friend Matthew Ford to help her run the business as a team of two. The pair had met stacking shelves at Waitrose and were hoping to turn full circle by selling to a major supermarket. They agreed to narrow the company’s focus to health foods, and more specifically fruit bars. “I have allergies myself so wanted to create something that catered for that. All the health bars out there at the time contained nuts or some sort of seed that is in the nut family. I wanted to create something allergen-free,” says Ponan. Yet for all the slimming down of the business model, it took 12 months to leap from inception to finished product. “At first we mixed them all in our kitchen so when we went out onto the street to sell them the first batch wasn’t the tastiest.” Not perturbed by the truly homemade nature of the recipe, Ponan and Ford persevered and eventually had a sellable product to show for their efforts. And it wasn’t long before it gained interest from major stores. “The first pitch I did was to Holland and Barrett, which was really scary because they are a huge company and we were a two person company at the time.” However, nerves did little to hold Ponan back with the health retailer asking to sell

Julianne Ponan’s first look at health foods company Creative Nature told her it would never succeed. Three years on, she is the firm’s CEO and turnover has doubled, but it’s been a rocky journey four different bars in 300 stores across the country. Yet the move was to prove a false dawn as Ponan later pulled out of the deal because the margins were too thin. This led the business to a crossroads. “At the end of 2013 I wanted to give up completely,” Ponan reflects. “We were back into profit and stabilised but we had no cash flow, so I wanted to get investment,” she says. “I pitched to loads of investors thinking it would be really easy to secure investment, especially having been in investment banking. I thought I had all the contacts, but I was wrong.” Instead, Ponan was faced with a plethora of rejections that ranged from firms being overly cautious with their money to ageist and sexist discrimination. “Everyone said no. I would ask why and they said I was too young, some said I was a woman, some even laughed at my financial forecasts saying that they were too optimistic.” Creative Nature had arrived at crisis point. Ponan says that the only possible outcome for the business was to get involved with a major firm that would be able to stock large quantities of fruit bars. “We went to this trade show and spent the last of our marketing budget on it,” she recalls. “I said: ‘It’s all or nothing now. We’ve got to get something and if we don’t we’ll have to shut down or sell the business.’” “A week later we got a call from the Tesco buyer,” Ponan says. “She said: ‘I really love your product, I really love your team and I want to launch you. But I want to do it in three weeks.’” Most new brands launching with a major

retailer are given around 12 weeks to make all the necessary preparations to get the product to store. Ponan’s colleague, Ford, said that there was no way Creative Nature would be able to scale up in three weeks. But with the brand having travelled this far failure wasn’t a consideration. Instead the pair spent three sleepless weeks endlessly labelling products. “We had mums, dads, sisters, boyfriends, literally all extended family were dragged in to help.” The product made it to market, but not before one final slip-up. “The transport people said: ‘Where’s your forklift?’ We didn’t have one and they said we weren’t going to make the launch. I was nearly crying.” Fortunately Ponan and Ford found a forklift at the end of the road near their warehouse and with one final burst of energy the first batch of bars arrived in store. “That was one of the best feelings to have,” says Ponan of the first time she bought her product in Tesco. Since its launch in 2013 Creative Nature’s turnover has doubled. It now sells products in the UK, Germany, Sweden and the UAE. Ponan has won a variety of awards for her work in transforming the business, including the National Natwest Everywoman Artemis Award and a Young Person in Business award from the Federation of Small Businesses. Yet in spite of the ups and downs of Creative Nature’s journey, she says that the desire to keep going lies deep within her. “I’ve started a company now and that’s great. Once you’ve got that bug you kind of just carry on.” Creative Nature

Everywoman Ltd

How to create a company and keep going

LIFE

Tasty treats: (from L to R) Creative Nature’s Berry, Cacao, Seed and Tropical flavoured bars

Andrew and Jane Charlesworth, dairy farmers in Sheffield, say that their livelihood would be secure if consumers paid 10p more for their milk

Farms diversify to survive Suffering from low milk prices, farmers are being forced to consider new and inventive business models ranging from wind turbines and vodka made from milk to bed and breakfasts words and pictures by Morgan Meaker

very day, dairy farmers Andrew and Jane Charlesworth lose £130. They’re not even close to making a profit. “Milk has become a throwaway commodity,” says Andrew. “It’s cheaper than water.” The Charlesworth family’s story typifies how dairy farmers are struggling up and down the country. The situation is becoming desperate with two farms closing every day and local papers spattered with reports of farmer suicides. The Charlesworth’s farm is just outside Sheffield. Twenty years ago, there used to be about 19 dairy farmers in this valley. Now there are three. The value of milk has been volatile since Margaret Thatcher abolished the Milk Marketing Board, which guaranteed a minimum price. Now dairy farmers are at the mercy of processors – who, in turn, are under pressure from retailers, such as Tesco or Aldi, to keep prices low.

Andrew says dairy farmers have become ammunition in a price war between supermarkets. They use milk as a “loss leader” – selling it below the market-cost to entice customers into the store where they’re likely to buy other things. “But why should they use our product? Why can’t they use something else?” says Andrew, frustrated. “Sometimes I want to scream.” Experts say that small dairy farms should evolve into mega-dairies to make the industry more efficient. Mega-dairies are usually home to more than 1,000 cows and Andrew worries that industrial methods aren’t as kind: “It might be more efficient, but think about the poor animals.” The Charlesworths are attached to their herd of 100 cows; they know them all by name. They talk about “fiery Jess” and Melvin, who’s just had twins. They don’t want the process to become more anonymous. Andrew looks out across the rolling Sheffield landscape: “Look at them out in the field,” he says. “Don’t they look marvellous with the sun on their backs?” In mega-dairies, cows often never go outside.

The Charlesworths believe that if consumers paid just 10p more for their milk, the industry could survive the way it is. “Ten pence is nothing to them, but to us that would make a massive difference,” says Jane.

“ We’re seeing a slow

death of the industry

”

Yet Dr Steve Davies of the Institute of Economic Affairs argues that larger markets are more efficient and cheaper for consumers: “Why should people give up some of their income in higher prices or taxes in order to preserve a particular historic kind of agriculture? The goal of producing milk is so that people can consume it. Not so there will be jobs in the dairy industry.” Andrew and Jane have been picketing outside processors and leafleting at supermarkets. They also have links to Farmers for Action,

a grassroots organisation that fights against low milk prices. But while the couple campaign for better conditions in the industry’s future, they’re being forced to think of the present and diversify their business to stay afloat for now. “We sell fat cattle [for beef ] and our own corn, that’s why we’re still going,” says Jane. “I’ve no idea how people who rely only on dairy cows are still managing to survive.” Farmers who don’t like the idea of mega dairies are being forced to find new ways of making money to financially sustain their business. Dairy farms with B&Bs and farm shops attached have become common but Harold Woolgar from Farmers for Action is not optimistic about these opportunities. He thinks the sheer volume of struggling dairy farms means they can’t all diversify: “There’s only so many farm shops you can have in one area before the market is saturated.” Rhian Price, deputy livestock editor at Farmers Weekly, says: “Converting milk into manufactured products such as ice-cream and yoghurt is a way for farmers to add value to their basic commodity. One of the most unusual forms of dairy diversification I’ve heard of is someone who is turning milk into vodka, but renewable energy, farm tourism and ice-cream remain firm favourites.” Emyr Davis is yet another farmer struggling – last year he would get 36p per litre of milk but now that price has dropped to 23p. He says: “I’ve always been able to make a living from milking but now we’re seeing a slow death of the industry. We need a sustainable milk price.” Davis is slightly protected from this year’s crash in milk prices because he has installed two wind turbines on his farm in West Wales. He owns one and Canadian company, En-

Maria Keays

Life

The days of daily milk deliveries are long gone, making these glass bottles a rare sight nowadays

durance Wind Power owns the other, renting the land from him. “The turbines have made a big difference to my income,” he says. Endurance has 750 wind turbines installed in the UK, 90 per cent of them on farms. Brett Pingree, VP Commercial of Endurance, says: “Dairy farmers are barely making ends meet but wind turbines give them certainty over energy prices and diversify their income. For farmers, energy can be the biggest cost. They can use the turbines to cap this and protect themselves from the volatility of energy prices.”

Dairy farmers in the UK are under pressure to increase of size of their herds

Recently more dairy farmers than usual have been going to Endurance. If their location is windy enough, they have two options. They can either buy the turbine outright or they can lease the farmland to the developer. Once farmers have paid back any money they borrowed for the installation, they can earn up to £80,000 each year if they own the turbine outright. But Pingree says the land-rental option is becoming more and more popular because feed-in tariff rates – a scheme in which the government pays for the electricity generated - are declining. The annual fee for land rental varies depending on the farm’s access to wind but Pingree says farmers who lease their land can make £5,000-10,000 per year on average. But some dairy farmers take diversification one step further, transforming their business beyond recognition. Hannah and Bruce Deane have been running their Norfolk Bed and Breakfast, Dairy Barns, for the last 10 years. They were dairy farmers but struggled to make their business viable. Located close to the Norfolk coast, Hannah says they decided to use their obvious assets – the empty brick barns where the milking parlour used to be – to turn the farm into a tourist destination. She says: “We got out of milk production in November 2000. The reason was simple: we couldn’t make money at it anymore and were working seven days a week so something had to change. We either had to expand the dairy herd to gain economies of scale or sell up and start a new venture. The only practical thing we could do was sell the herd and change direction.”

Designer, Sara Weston dressed in her label SJW

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Defying his and hers Expectations of what sex should wear what are being overthrown. Upstart meets two entrepreneurial ‘gender blenders’ in London who are blurring the boundaries between conventional male and female clothing words by Kate Johnson pictures by Zoe Paskett

man in a skirt is an unusual sight, unless of course he’s of Scottish heritage, Kanye West circa 2012, or an actor trying to win back his children à la Mrs Doubtfire. Likewise, a woman dressed in a sharply-tailored masculine suit at a formal do might raise eyebrows. Thanks to the designers who dictate the styles we wear, this is changing. The business of fashion is in a state of sartorial flux and the inability to tell a wardrobe apart from that belonging to someone of the opposite sex is fast approaching. There were more outfits ignoring conventions

of gender in the 2015 Fashion Week collections this year than ever. Gucci adorned male models with pussybowed blouses and boat neck tops in red lace. Men wearing knitted skirts over their trousers strode down the Givenchy catwalk. A printed declaration of Prada’s inspiration was left on the seats, stating: “Gender is a context and context is often gendered.” pre-empting the gender blending trend

As expected, the retailers are in hot pursuit, capitalising on the contemporary mood. In April, Selfridges launched its pop-up concept store – Agender, a zone filled with unisex garments where customers shop with ‘me’, rather than ‘he’ or ‘she’ in mind. Advertising is rife with evidence of blended boundaries too. Cara Delevingne sports a matching suit alongside the men in DKNY’s latest campaign and a make-up free Julia

Roberts looks immaculate in masculine tailoring for Givenchy. Sara Weston is one of the young British designers who pre-empted this trend. Weston gave up her role as a creative executive in an ad agency six years ago to enter fashion territory. She had neither fashion training nor any experience in the industry, but did have a clear idea of what she wanted: “To create eccentric, tailored menswear inspired by colonialism and the British Raj.” Her label, Eastie Empire, was born. It fared well. Then a couple of things happened. The showroom stocking her clothes at the time, large menswear brand Oliver Spencer, started to put pressure on her to “simplify” her clothes to fit the more mainstream man. Simultaneously, more and more women started to show interest in her line. “I kept being asked if I could tailor garments down to fit them. They liked the three button blazers but couldn’t get them anywhere without a

feminine twist. If they could, it was Jil Sander and cost £4,000.” Weston shared their sentiments and realised she had been creating menswear for men when really she wanted to create it for women. “I intended to blend the detailing and the style from menswear, but cut it so it fit well. It’s not the lesbian at the wedding in the oversized suit.” And so, she launched her eponymous label SJW last year. Her designs are inspired by historical menswear but transcend the look of a woman in dress-up. Weston explains the importance of fit, while still capturing the subtleties of what makes something instantly look like menswear for example, the length of the fly. Things are already looking positive. “I had a really good Paris Fashion Week. Comme des Garçons came to look at and photograph my collection twice, which is brilliant. They didn’t place an order,

LIFE but that’s what happens in this game. People wait to watch you for two or three seasons to see if you’re still there.” Gender fluidity in fashion is nothing new. Oriole Cullen, Fashion in Motion curator at the V&A, describes the prevalence of the trend throughout history. She points out that despite experimentation in dressing styles from the androgyny of the 20s to glam rock in the 70s, fashion always seems to revert back to traditional conventions. This time around, a number of factors could lead to the trend tipping into mainstream adoption. According to Cullen, at the top of the list are the facts that menswear is finally being positioned on a par with womenswear, the growth of sportswear (traditionally gender neutral) in the world of high fashion and a global online audience conversing on societal and cultural issues. She adds: “[Transgender] models such as Lea T and Andreja Pejic have challenged stereotypical notions of gender and beauty. It seems inevitable that designers no longer feel

“ An individual should have the right to express themselves through the way that they dress

”

bound by traditional constraints of what constitutes dress for a woman and for a man.” In reality though, gender non-conformists and people who are trans or transitioning still face challenges in high street stores. Meera Amin, 29, came out three years ago and has since become increasingly visibly gender non-conforming. “A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to leave the women’s changing room because I don’t look female.” Not being able to get the clothes she wants in sizes that fit is further cause for (Clockwise from top left) Sara Weston and a model wearing SJW; Weston and model; Meera Amin, designer for Bull & Dagger

frustration. Putting to use her background in business analysis and research, Meera discovered she was not alone and decided to do something about it. She is in the process of developing Bull and Dagger, a gender-free fashion label catering to gender non-conformists and those who are trans or transitioning. Meera explains: “An individual should have the right to express themselves through the way that they dress. They deserve to wear fashionable clothing that suits not just their sense of style but their body type too.” jack of all trades

It will cost around £50,000 to get the website launched, samples produced and initial social media and marketing campaigns underway. She plans to get this done in time for a planned soft launch at London’s Nine Worlds Convention in August. If this financial target is not met through business grants and known investors, she will turn to crowdfunding website Kickstarter. Undoubtedly, challenges lie ahead and, as someone who has been there before, Weston provides great insight into how these might look. “If you’re a small bean like we are, you’re up against brands with hundreds of thousands of pounds invested in PR agencies. They’ve got people working around the clock to get their message out there.” She emphasises the importance of being a Jack-of-all-trades. “A new label should have funding and a PR agency on board, with a team doing your social marketing. Really, you need to get your brand out there and build a connection, hype and aspiration.” Weston also advocates the importance of focusing on one thing. “Nail it. Be known for it. Look at food on the high street now. It’s the ramen noodle shop, the chicken wing shop or the ultimate bone-marrow burger. Your product needs to be the gourmet equivalent in fashion.” Amin has high hopes for her unisex skirt/ kilt and feels it bridges a gap. “Most gender non-conforming women – myself included – feel uncomfortable wearing a skirt or a dress. This is an item that can be considered feminine, masculine or androgynous and gives both sexes the option to experiment with gender fluidity,” she says. So what then is Weston’s pièce de résistance? She replies without hesitation: “My white dress shirt, which is a typical men’s shirt with traditional marcella pique on the front bib. I’ve got three.” While society is still a way off from full disregard of binary gender fashion norms, Weston and Amin are creating the garments that might just encourage change. Sara’s White Dress Shirt retails for £135. See her full collection at sjw.clothing

Teresa Lopez

Innovative ways of caring for the elderly Several London-based startups are using physical activity and weight stabilisation to help patients with dementia words by Teresa Lopez

adapted the traditional exercise programmes used by elderly people in care centres to produce positive results in patients’ health and mood. So far more than 900 care homes have run Oomph! and 270,000 residents attended its classes in 2014 alone. Oomph! was set up in 2011 by entrepreneur Ben Allen, who has worked as a senior lecturer in exercise for older adults at the European and Australian Institutes of Fitness. He wanted to tackle what he found to be the “poor quality of life” of many care home residents in the UK. “Our classes are particularly tailored for residents with dementia, using sensory props, familiar music and reminiscence techniques and themed imagery for choreography to stimulate mind, body and soul,” explains Lehner. He insists the market is as ripe for new startups as it is large, growing and in need of interference. But Lehner also says: “It’s very important for anyone trying to disrupt the sector to first really understand how it works, the parameters and constraints that stakeholders work within.” One of the paramount challenges for enterprises targeting the dementia sector is to attract the interest of those who are not sufferers themselves. According to the Alzheimer’s Research UK report, five million people in the UK today

Simon Dewhurst

eeting the needs of a growing population of dementia sufferers has inspired a number of British creatives to come up with simple and innovative projects. Some 850,000 people in the UK are living with dementia, according to a recent report by Alzheimer’s Research UK. This number is forecast to grow to more than one million by 2025, exceeding two million by 2050. There are many innovative companies working in the field. For example, Ode is a device that diffuses the scent of food three times a day to stimulate the appetite of sufferers before mealtimes. Mindings is a private social network that shares content on any digital screen - from a normal computer to an interactive digital photo frame - to connect isolated people with their families and communities in a simple way. Despite its potential, however, the trend hasn’t really been exploited until recent years and it still presents some difficulties for those who dare to get involved. “The care sector is a very challenging one. It’s often underfunded and under-resourced. It is also a sector where trusted relationships and reputation really matter and innovation is often distrusted,” says Dan Lehner, chief product officer of Oomph!. Oomph! is a social enterprise that has

A qualified Oomph! trainer directs the physical activities for the elderly residents of a care home

Ben Atkinson-Willes, founder of Active Minds

have a relative or friend with dementia while three million consider it to be the biggest current medical challenge. Ben Atkinson-Willes is founder of Active Minds, a startup that designs entertaining activities for dementia sufferers to keep them mentally agile. When Atkinson-Willes launched the company in 2009, aged 23, he had had close experiences with the difficulties of Alzheimer’s because his grandfather had suffered from the condition. He realised that many people did not have that personal experience so he felt this was an obvious gap in the market. “It was hard to find something to do more than kids’ games or toddlers’ toys that were patronising and not designed for someone with dementia and ageing problems. My grandfather didn’t like that.” His startup uses the power of design to improve the quality of life for people in long-term care. Atkinson-Willes says his main customers are currently professional carers because they are easier to reach in terms of sales. “We are starting to see retailers getting involved in the dementia space, but up until now it’s been really hard to access them.” Another difficulty for many of these startups is overcoming a traditional monopoly within the industry of low-quality and non-specialised enterprises. “That is where a lot of problems come from at the moment,” says Atkinson-Willes. “Some people are taking kids’ products and saying it’s for dementia without doing any research, whereas it takes us 10-12 months from an original idea to put it on the shelf.” Both Active Minds and Oomph! have noticed some increase in new startups in the sector and are positive about fair competition. Many of them are so specialised that their offerings could complement one another. Atkinson-Willes says: “Because at the moment it’s a new market, one company cannot lift the whole sector by themselves. Waiting for the market to develop was quite frustrating so it’s good to see that’s changing now.”

Pub culture has changed over the last five years and local producers offering something unique are reaping the rewards

Michael Kelly

LIFE

words by James Nickerson

Camille Ayral

or us on the Eastern side of the pond, it is hard to swallow the fact that the craft beer revolution started in America. But that has not stopped us from guzzling it down; Britain now has more breweries per head than anywhere else in the world. “It began with the United States but it is happening intensively in Scandinavia, Australia and New Zealand. But the growth of breweries with what we call ‘non-traditional beers’ has been going on for a while now,” says Jonah Schultz, a brewer at the Kernel Brewery, which distributes across the country from its microbrewery south of the River Thames in Bermondsey. Microbreweries have spawned at an impressive rate; there are now 1,285 breweries in the UK despite British pubs declining. “There’s a strange dynamic where pubs are closing at the rate of 29 per week but each year there’s been a growth of breweries. Over the last two consecutive years, it’s been 10 per cent. That’s a lot of breweries,” says Neil Walker, spokesman for the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). “Variety is an important part of the modern beer and pub scene here; for a long time the same brands were everywhere. Looking back, in the 1970s CAMRA was set up because there was low quality, kegged ale taking over. It’s easy to see why beer drinkers are now getting excited about a greater choice. What they want is a better quality product and more choice” says Walker. The renewed interest in flavoursome, quality real ales has been driven by the boom in microbreweries in the UK. To understand the cause, one needs to look back to 2002 at the introduction of Small Breweries Relief, which introduced legislation to ensure smaller brewers pay less tax on the beer they produce.

Bottling success: Jens Lovius on the production line at the Kernel Brewery in Dockley Road

Microbreweries with big ambitions Since then, microbreweries have grown in a resounding fashion. “For me, the inspiration was the discovery of how different all the hops tasted. Being blown away by the craft beer in New York I never knew a hop could make a beer smell or taste of passion fruit. This was about eight years ago before it had properly took off

“ What they want is a

better quality product and more choice

”

here,” says William Southward, founder of Willy Good Ale, who brews a combination of American, English and Belgian recipes with his family on a farm near their home in Bradford-On-Avon. While Southward was inspired to brew his own beer, others were motivated by their adventures abroad. “I think a lot of people have gone on holiday, tasted things that they liked, come back here and found ‘oh there’s a brewery here now that’s making things along similar lines, or with the same approach,’” says Schultz. This has helped the Kernel Brewery grow hugely since its beginnings in 2009. Originally the team comprised only the founder, Evin O’Riordain. In 2012, the company moved its operation from near Tower Bridge, starting with four fermenters, brewing twice a week. The team of 12 now has 11 fermenters, producing 3,200-3,400 litres (5,600 - 6,000 pints) per batch.

“Locality is also important to consumers. Most of the really small breweries that are cropping up at such a rate will only distribute to their local area – local shops, local pubs. That’s why that boom is really happening,” says Walker. Willy Good Ale is a testament to that. Its brewery is in a small town and Southward believes in being environmentally friendly – by brewing on a farm where all the spent grain gets fed to the animals and spent hops get used as fertiliser – is a big selling point. “One of us did a talk at a Climate Friendly meeting recently in our town; it’s a big thing for some people here,” Southward says. Back in London, Andy Moffat, who started craft brewery Redemption London after growing bored of corporate life, agrees: “Microbreweries have done well because there has been a real demand for quality locally produced food and drink. Consumers have the opportunity to engage directly with smaller breweries like ourselves through social media channels such as Twitter and that helps to build a loyal following.” He believes microbreweries are still relatively small producers and as such can be nimble and respond to changing demand. “We have been lucky that the pub scene in London has really been transformed over the last five years as more and more pubs focus on locally brewed beers.” With the ability to harness new marketing avenues to a marketplace ready for more and more variety, the future looks positive for microbreweries, as Southward says: “The techniques are always changing and there are always new hops to try and I think that’s why microbreweries have been successful, and will remain so.”

Brick Lane – serving the community Despite the ubiquitous Starbucks and Costa, the number of independent coffee shops in East London is rocketing year by year. Upstart met the owners to find out how they stay afloat amidst fierce competition words and pictures by Zoe Paskett

T Full stop founder Rob Hurst knows the caffeine preferences of his clientele Speciality coffee shops thrive on Brick Lane, despite the spread of coffee conglomerates

he wave of independent coffee shops that has swept over London in the past few years is a unique phenomenon. London has the highest population of Starbucks stores in Europe and this is growing. But rather than putting them off, the increasing number of chain stores appears to be spurring people on to open up their own place. Allegra World Coffee Portal reported that the UK coffee market had achieved a £7.2bn turnover by the end of 2014, with 31 per cent and 32 per cent of the market owned by branded and independent coffee shops respectively. When we pass a Costa, a Starbucks or a Caffè Nero every 100 metres, how is it that independent cafés survive against the big dogs? For the most part, they don’t give it much thought – so they say. Melanie Denyer founded Suzzle at the southern end of Brick Lane after being diagnosed with coeliac disease. She thinks that they possess two distinct advantages over chains – they have character and the support of their community. Suzzle’s products are all gluten-free, lactosefree and soya-free. But Denyer believes it is about more than that. “You could sell anything at the north end of Brick Lane if it looks pretty because you’ve got tourists coming through,” says Denyer. “You don’t need to worry as much about repeat business. But at this end, you’ll only survive if you get a regular base of customers who keep on coming back. For us that is really important.” Rob Hurst, founder of Full Stop at the other end of the street, also strives to cater to his regulars, but has noticed the double-edged effect of the chain stores’ influx. “I think it’s had a positive effect in that it’s brought coffee culture to London and the UK

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but it’s also skewed people’s opinions of what coffee should be,” he says. “We offer a better product. But that’s not what the customer is used to which is a massive cup of milk with a tiny bit of coffee in it.” Perhaps more significant than the battle

“

The better they do, the better we do. When Cereal Killers opened two doors down our business actually went up

”

against the chains is competition on the street, or what Hurst calls “oversaturation”. He opened his café in late 2011 and has been there longer than many of the others, if only by a margin. “I wouldn’t say we’ve lost business since the other shops have opened up, but I would say that we’re at a bit of a tipping point. If any more were to open up, there aren’t really any more customers for anyone else to have a slice of.” But he appears to be alone in thinking this. For Kahaila, which sits just across the road from Full Stop, the increase in independent cafés in the surrounding area has been accompanied by even more customers. “The better they do, the better we do,” says Charis Belcher from Kahaila. “It makes it an area people come to because they know

there are good independent shops. When Cereal Killers opened two doors down our business actually went up.” Adel Defilaux opened The Antishop having lived in the Brick Lane area for a long time. He saw early on how much it was changing and wanted to be a part of its diverse makeup. This is helped by a good relationship and regular contact with many of the other coffee shops, Kahaila especially. “We need to be creative in terms of business,” says Defilaux. “The business approach we all have as independent owners is different. If you look at big chains everything is about profit. Of course we also have to make a profit but people like the idea of giving something back.”

Adel Defilaux, at his shop The Antishop on Brick Lane

Congregating

through coffee Kahaila cafe was founded by Baptist Minister Paul Unsworth, with an eye to building a congregation among young people in the Brick Lane area. The café is itself a charity, supporting three initiatives that aim to help vulnerable women in London: Luminary Bakery, Reflex and Ella’s Home. Luminar y Baker y gives employment opportunities to vulnerable women through training programmes, aiming to break cycles of poverty, prostitution, criminal activity and abuse. Reflex works with women in Holloway prison, equipping them with the skills and self-esteem to reach their full potential when they re-join their communities. Ella’s Home has not yet launched but aims to be a safe house for female victims of modern day slavery, offering respite from exploitation. Adel Defilaux opened The Antishop with a similar ambition.Working with Action Against Hunger, he gives people the opportunity to buy “suspended” products..When a customer purchases a drink or food, they can also buy something for the café to provide to homeless people in the area. “We also train homeless people to bake,” he says. “We train them to get barista jobs. That’s what helps us survive.”

Paulie and the chocolate factory Paul Sutherland believes the success of his chocolate comes from love and culture, not just a tasty product words and picture by Shebani Shah

he door is always open, the rhythms of soul music escaping onto Brick Lane. From the window, handmade chocolates balanced on a display of Ghanaian wood can be seen. Cocoa-dusted truffles, flavour-filled pipettes and stacked slabs the size of books all have their place. This is the world of Paul Sutherland. “Most chocolate shops have glass counters, no music. You wouldn’t get love from a bank. So why would a chocolate shop look like a bank? It’s about the experience, smell, taste, flavour,” he says. He rarely sits behind the till of his Dark Sugars shop. Sutherland fills the rustic space with his booming laughter, cheerful “hello,” and, on occasion, his groovy dance moves. “First thing we say when someone walks in: ‘Hello, how are you?’ That’s the most important thing because that person might not have been spoken to all day.” Operations manager is rather a mundane label for what 45-year-old Sutherland does. He prefers to call himself “the voice of happiness”. Working from 10am to 10pm seven days a week, Sutherland is always smiling, even on the busiest of days. “I love chocolate. I love people. What better way to meet people than with chocolate and big smiles. 99 per cent of the people who walk in are happy, we want it to be 110 per cent by the time we finish… No limit to love.” Making a name as a black entrepreneur in London was a challenge; however Sutherland was not to be defeated. “As I keep saying, it’s all about Gandhi: ‘Be the change you want to see in the world.’ Don’t get mad, just do it.” Purposely opening during Black History month in October 2013, this shop is Sutherland’s invitation to have a taste of cocoa along with African culture.

Chocolate in its purest form: Paul Sutherland’s shop uses cocoa beans from Ghana

“When we looked down this road, we didn’t see much black business. What we found is that everybody sells to the black community but no one buys from the black community. What better place to start than right here, right now?”

“ What better way to

meet people than chocolate and smiles

”

More of an idealist than a businessman, Sutherland believes that the power of cocoa, in its purest form, can melt barriers and connect people. He rarely calls chocolate by its name, preferring “food of love”. It may have no grand marketing strategy, but Dark Sugars still boasts high ratings. Many reviewers claim that it sells the best hot chocolate in London. Sutherland keeps this famous drink as machine-free as possible. “Cadbury and Hersheys are more of a business. These guys put sugar in chocolate and loads of milk, so they’re diluting it to make more money. When we do a hot chocolate, we do it how we want it. The quality sells itself. We give you that one to one and always create it with a smile.” From managing the only black-owned stall in Borough Market in London to what is now a popular corner shop, Sutherland has been part of this Ghanaian cocoa business

with friend, founder and owner Fatou Mandy since its inception 15 years ago. Downstairs in the basement, Mandy designs and rolls each chocolate by hand day and night. Every piece is then inspected the following morning. “A good woman, that’s all it takes,” he laughs. As well as creating an authentic experience for his guests, Sutherland also wants them to understand the origin of chocolate. It is an ethos he never hesitates to flaunt. “70 per cent of the world’s cocoa comes from West Africa. The idea was to open the shop and to tell the true story. Lots of people talk about Swiss chocolate, Belgian chocolate. Just like we say English tea. But where exactly does it grow? It doesn’t grow in these places.” Dark Sugars, 141 Brick Lane, London E1 6SB

Black-owned

businesses in the uk o Excluding the financial and insurance indstry, SMEs make up 47.7 per cent of business turnover, equivalent to £430 bn (2012) o Government research shows black-owned businesses in London had a total turnover of almost £4.5bn (2004) o Of the ethnic minorities in the UK, black Africans are repor ted to be the most entrepreneurial group (2013). (Sources: SMEs in London’s economy (GLA 2012);The Contribution of Black Businesses to London’s Economy (GLA 2004);The Contribution of Black Businesses to London’s Economy (GLA 2013);

Joel Suss

LIFE

Columbia Road fends off conglomerate threat

Above: On Sunday the street is full of flowers Below: Colourful Columbia Road

words by Claire Lancaster

n a warm Sunday afternoon, London’s Columbia Road, home to a weekend flower market since 1869, teems with shoppers, young families with prams and the smell of freshly brewed coffee and pollen from the thousands of flower stalls lining the street. From stationery shops to artisanal perfumeries, Columbia Road is lined with vibrant independent retailers and boutiques offering all manner of handmade and home-cooked goods. Notably missing from the colourful facades, however, are the big-business conglomerates normally found along London’s shopping roads; there is no sign of Pret, no hint of H&M, no green-hued Starbucks awning. Big businesses are not welcome and not one chain has set up shop here. For many conglomerates, Columbia Road’s retail spaces are simply too small to support the ready-made plans and high customer turnover necessary to earn a profit. Measuring an average of only 26 sq m (278 sq ft), the tiny spaces are just right for independent shops with smaller profits and tighter budgets, but unsuitable for larger ventures. “One of the only other things saving this street from having a Costa, or going the way of Portobello Market [another of London’s

street markets and victim of chain-ification] is that the majority of our customers only come by on Sundays,” says Tom Bloom. Tucked into number 61, Bloom is the owner of Milagros, a compact shop where he has sold handcraft Mexican tiles alongside partner Juliette Tuke for more than two decades. He says his business thrives with the help of online and wholesale orders, but ultimately, “all of the small businesses that are here physically are at the mercy of landlords.” There is no official or legal system protecting the independent merchants from unsustainable rent increase or the threat of being bought out by big business. If a chain store or large corporation makes an offer to a private owner, the street’s small retailers have no legal grounds to fight the sale, even though it could mean the end of their trade. “Small businesses and areas like Columbia Road are the backbone of the economy,” says founder of The East End Trades Guild, Krissie Nicolson. “but they’re at risk from landlords, their agents, big business and government”. Nicolson established the Guild in 2012 to help protect small retailers. Today, it functions as a co-operative of proprietor owned and run businesses working together in the

Kyle Taylor

For the entrepreneurs occupying the minuscule digs along Columbia Road, in Tower Hamlets, protecting their retail space has proven to be a tricky business

interests of all the small independent traders of the East End. “Basically, we work to address our members’ concerns,” says Nicolson.“Mostly it’s the issues of rent rates, business rate reforms and planning issues – the changes of leases, wider development planning, things like that.” The Guild is currently volunteer-run, but Nicolson says they’re in the process of restructuring, hoping to add paid staff in order to make their action more sustainable. In the past, the Guild has helped to broker meetings between MPs and stall owners and worked with local councils to bring temporary toilets to busy shopping areas. It has also worked to educate shop owners to be more aware of the laws affecting them, and worked with developers to reserve spaces for independent retailers at a set rate. “Small businesses are vital both to the local economy and to the life of the community,” says Nicolson. “It’s the variety of small traders that make the East End such an appealing destination. They add value to nearby property and attract other business. It’s vital the community works together to support them.”

Alchemiya

Netflix for Muslims A British startup aims to counter the negative portrayal of Islam in the media by providing high-quality on-demand content words by Radhika Bhatnagar

hen two gunmen opened fire at a ‘draw the Prophet Muhammad contest’ in Texas on 4 May, the shooting triggered a line of predictable reactions. The organisers of the event expressed outrage by calling for war. The American Muslim community openly condemned the attack. The media reignited the ‘Islamophobia’ debate by attempting to find a link between violence and Islam. Hoping to counter this grim portrayal of Muslims in the media by providing a platform for a more uplifting narrative is where Alchemiya comes in. The on-demand content streaming channel that is being touted as a ‘Netflix for Muslims’ was launched last month and has already generated buzz in the startup world. An online channel with a subscription-based model £100 for two years - Alchemiya showcases music videos, documentaries, feature films and lifestyle shows from the Muslim world. “Honestly, I would have launched something like this even if stereotypes about Muslims hadn’t become as mainstream as they have,” says founder and CEO Navid Akhtar, a former journalist with the BBC and Channel 4. “There is a distinct identity of the global urban Muslim who is educated, well-travelled and interested in arts and culture. This group is missing from the current narrative. They want high-quality content about Muslim life but have no access to it,” Akhtar explains, adding that most of the Islam-based channels that already exist adopt a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach or are instruction-based. “The idea is to provide content that is positive and uplifts the community and ultimately changes the larger narrative,” he says, explaining how Alchemiya would succeed in portraying Muslims in a different

light if its subscribers were mostly of this religion themselves. “From a business point of view, it makes sense to first be very clear about who our target audience is. There is a decent-sized market that exists across the globe for our kind of content and we want to make sure we have covered that first.” Currently its 700-odd subscribers can access about 37 hours of content available on the site, including a music video by Baraka Blue, a rapper and poet from Seattle who sings a modern interpretation of a traditional Islamic prayer, a documentary on skateboarders in Afghanistan and the Valley of Saints and a Sundance film festival winning documentary

“The idea is to provide

content that is positive and uplifts the community

”

set in Kashmir. At the moment, about 20 per cent of this content is in-house but as it expands, this number will rise too. And while most of this content is rooted in Islam, Akhtar is confident that this will not stop viewers of other faiths from subscribing. “For us, the context is the content. Once context is there, it appeals to a wider audience.” Out of the first 400 subscribers, 10 per cent were non-Muslim. Although just two months old, Alchemiya has had a dedicated team working on it for a couple of years. While the concept is Akhtar’s brainchild, he is supported by Ajmal Masroor who is the company’s chief communications

Alchemiya’s team at their Wood Green office

officer, financial officer David Horne and Iftikhar Khan who looks after the technology. According to Akhtar, it is the team’s meticulous planning and in-depth research that led to Alchemiya’s successful campaign on popular crowdfunding platform, Crowdcube. The team launched a campaign to raise £60,000 but managed to make £110,000, almost double the initial target. They attracted investors from across the globe including countries such as the UK, Norway, Bahrain and France, who contributed between £10 and £10,000. “We focused on market research and product engagement,” Akhtar says. “We offered crowdfunded equity which helped the investors feel like they had a part in shaping the overall product.” “From the start we were aware that our product was more complicated than the others vying for funds, but we managed to convince the investors that it was an opportunity not to be missed.” The team decided to stick to what is known as the ‘lean startup model’, a business development tool advocated by Eric Ries in 2011. According to this, a minimum viable product is created and is developed along the way, based on the feedback received from its consumers. “The main feedback that we have received is to increase the hours of content available and include a free trial period,” Akhtar reveals, adding that they are seriously considering both. Earlier this year, Alchemiya also received a certification stating that it was a Sharia compliant business, something that means a lot to the team. “We are a full-profit venture but also

Shebani Shah

Art is life and life is business

ARTS & CULTURE

words by Fu Rao

Rowlings made her lifestyle a real business

30 guests regularly attend, paying £40-£50 to sit around the long banquet table and use her antique tableware. It also now only opens on Sunday, the day of the weekly farmers’ market. This gives Rowlings more time to pursue other activities such as her online vintage shop - her biggest source of revenue. “I find expensive items are easier to sell online. People will buy an old ice cream maker for hundreds of pounds,” she says. Rowlings says some people ask her why she doesn’t expand her business even more. But she just wants “to make things simple”. Yet though her embrace of a vintage lifestyle makes Rowlings unusual, she still has some things in common with many other small business owners. Like everyone else, Rowlings knows that how much she earns depends on how much she wants to do and how much effort she wants to put in. Camille Ayral

Muna Ally

want to be seen as a social enterprise; this certification is an acknowledgement of our commitment to do ethical business,” Akhtar explains, pointing out that it will also give them access to the world of Islamic finance. Nesma Nowar, a journalist based in Egypt, agrees that while there are already a number of channels that produce Islam-based content, outlets such as Alchemiya will undoubtedly fill a gap that exists, without isolating the community even more. “But as long as young Muslims are exposed to other content and not only Islam-based shows, such platforms will serve their purpose. It is important for everybody, and not just Muslims to know more about the history and culture of Islam,” she reasons.

ania Rowlings has turned her vintage lifestyle into a successful business. Starting a business can be tough. The everyday tasks are naturally stressful. But some people avoid that pressure by building their business into their lifestyle. Rowlings is one such person. Rather than joining the rat race in pursuit of a fortune, she decided she wanted to live life her way. “I always work part-time. I like to take charge of my job otherwise I get bored,” says Rowlings. Despite describing herself as “laid back” for not pushing herself, Rowlings has transformed her shop Possessed N1, in Islington, into multiple revenue streams. The 1950s-style space is filled with clothing, antiques and ornaments - some made by Rowlings herself. Silk scarves themed on the landmarks of London drape from the ceiling. The dining table is laid for tea with a phonograph placed at the head of the seating area. It’s not so much a vintage shop as a showroom. Last year, Rowlings began renting her shop out per night on Airbnb. The convenient location and retro design have made it very popular. The store is also available for private events and film shoots. The shop’s vintage kitchen, with old tin cans lined up against the washed cream wall, is used for supper clubs where chefs cook Mediterranean and Japanese cuisine. Up to

CEO Navid Akhtar launched Alchemiya in March

The vintage store has become famed locally for its range of decorations and furniture

The ArtHouse

Richard Chivers

Challenging the community

words by Claire Lancaster

estled amid the artisanal cafés and boutiques of North London’s Crouch End sits The ArtHouse, a cinematic microcosm of the area’s self-aware, artistically designed world. Housed in a green-turretted former Salvation Army hall, the multi-use venue showcases live performances and film, screening both independent productions and big budget blockbusters. With distressed wood tables and a stock of locally brewed craft beer, The ArtHouse’s bespoke feel is a far cry from the gormless multiplexes lining London’s high streets. But the venue’s commitment to the locally sourced and carefully curated goes beyond snacks and high end tables. Since opening in May 2014, The Arthouse has committed itself to community-driven programming reflective of London’s diversity. It is free from the release commitments of chain-run cinemas, and just celebrated its one year anniversary with a support system of more than 1,000 annual members. “The idea of having an arts centre that adapted to and challenged its audience was our dream,” says George Georgiou, an actor-cum-businessman who founded ArtHouse together with cinema director Sam Neophytou. A North London native of Greek heritage, Georgiou found himself continually

sent into auditions for roles playing “either the shopkeeper or the terrorist”. He channeled his frustration into ArtHouse, establishing “a creative home for good work that explored and reflected the real stories and experiences of a community”. When it came time to set up ArtHouse, Georgiou and Neophytou knew that securing an arts grant could take years. Instead, they looked to the community for support in financing the project. When they were approached with a financing deal by the cinema chain Curzon, they opted to stay independent. “We just felt that we needed to create our own identity before teaming up with a major force in the world of cinema,” Georgiou says. Today, ArtHouse screens films from Curzon’s Claire Lancaster

Bringing intimacy and community-driven programming to North London, the visionary behind the independent cinema and creative venue The ArtHouse says it’s better to stay small

The ArtHouse is one of London’s finest cinemas

distribution strand Artificial Eye (behind 2013’s Academy Award winner Amour and this year’s The Cloud of Sils Maria), but Neophytou and Georgiou still choose all of ArtHouse’s material for themselves. “We programme with a culturally diverse objective,” explains Georgiou. On screens this month is Girlhood, a coming-of-age drama chronicling an all-girl gang in Paris’s banlieue estates that stars four female leads, Force Majeure, a psychodrama telling the story of a model Swedish family on a skiing holiday in the Alps, and a retrospective of Horace Ové, the first black British director of a feature-length film.

Art with a purpose

“Unless you can understand where your community are coming from, you’re not going to be able to programme the kind of things that are going to challenge them”, says Georgiou. “Our goal is to have audiences leaving the cinema feeling challenged, or moved, or - at the very least differently than they did before coming in”. Georgiou is committed to bringing the same human-driven approach into his managerial style. “The ArtHouse staff are the most important aspect of our business,” he explains. “They, after all, dictate what a customer’s experience will be outside of the darkness of the movie theatre and what separates us from the faceless organisations that currently house art. We pay all our staff the London Living Wage. It is staff and community loyalty that allow us to take risks and show projects that may have lower profit turnovers, so above all they’re the people we value. The ultimate goal of ArtHouse is to create an environment that helps cinemas to reclaim a place at the heart of their communities and be centres for meaningful social influence.” The ArtHouse, 159 Tottenham Lane, N8 9B1

Oskar Proctor

ARTS & CULTURE

From elaborate hobbies to profitable businesses, small art galleries are popping up across London. They’re beginning to thrive too words by Kaitlyn Mattson Viktor Wynd in the Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art and Natural History which the artist runs in East London

Small galleries staying alive

t’s a classic tale of a little guy versus a much larger beast. Bigger art galleries and museums such as Tate Modern attract tourists and public funding by the millions. But for some enthusiasts, creating a small venue has become a passion, and a business model. “Unlike the bigger galleries we have decided to only display emerging artists,” said Marine Tanguy, the artistic director and one of three partners at the Soho Revue Gallery. The venue opened in April, and was founded by three young professionals: India Rose James, William Pelham and Tanguy. “We wish to be the new breed of young British Artists and bring back artistic youth to Soho,” said Tanguy. “We love the idea of discovering talent and hopefully they will be the next major artist.” Young British Artists is a term that emerged during the 1980s to describe exhibitions by a group of artists that included Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and Marc Quinn. They gained media attention in the 1990s for their wild-living and shock tactics. While they wouldn’t say how much money they are bringing in, Tanguy said they did very well with their first exhibition and are looking forward to their next show, “Rubber Soul.” The museum sector in England, which includes art galleries, is worth £2.6bn. This includes grants, income from investments and earned income, according to an Arts Council report released in February. “As a commercial gallery I felt that we were

significantly outcompeted by bigger galleries with bigger budgets,” said Viktor Wynd, an artist and the founder of the Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art and Natural History. After eight years, Wynd decided to close the commercial gallery and reopen as a museum. The Museum of Curiosities hosts two exhibitions a year in the upper gallery while the basement is home to natural history items and oddities. The Museum of Curiosities, located in Hackney, now relies on admission fees to finance exhibitions and has to compete with galleries like the Tate and the National Gallery. The National Gallery received a grantin-aid of £25.5m from the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) in 2012/13, according to the gallery’s annual report for that year. Similarly, The Tate Gallery received about £24.4m from DCMS over the same period, according its own report. “I don’t feel in competition with the bigger galleries. I feel mentored and inspired by them,” said Tanguy. “Being advised and inspired is key in our business.” Some galleries are in it, not for the passion, but because the space wasn’t being used. Anne Noble-Partridge, the director of the Crypt Gallery, said the space at St Pancras Parish Church was originally designed in 1822 for coffin burials, then abandoned. And so in 2002, in the company of the 557 bodies still buried there, it was opened to artists to use as a gallery.

“It isn’t a huge money making venture,” said Noble-Partridge. “But the money earned goes to the upkeep of St Pancras Church.” The Crypt Gallery charges an artist about £600 for two weeks, or £35 a day. Last year, the gallery had 27 exhibitions with roughly 150 artists. “It’s more important that we have people and that the space is used,” said Noble-Partridge. “We aren’t trying to be in competition with bigger galleries. We try and be available to everyone.” While some galleries may not be making a lot of money from their work it is clear that there is a love of the lifestyle. Wynd would not comment on how much money he earns annually but he said: “We have two full-time employees and two parttime employees. And one day I’d like to be able to get a new car.” He doesn’t try and compete with the bigger galleries, but he said his refreshments are better. The admission fee for the Museum of Curiosities is £4, which includes a cup of tea or coffee and a biscuit. Wynd said: “I feel like I am a very small fish in a very large sea. But the difference is I’m quite happy to hang around the reef, enjoy all the pretty colours of the coral within my grasp, without the desire to wander off and grow into a whale.” Soho Revue, 14 Greek Street, W1D 4DP Museum of Curiosities, 11 Mare Street, E8 4RP

Sex, drugs and underground comics One legacy of the 1960s counterculture is a lucrative business that gives new opportunities to emerging artists words and pictures by Marianna Nicolaou

hat started as a reaction to the status quo is today an industry with millions of loyal fans that offers cartoonists a platform to create and publish. UK small press and self-published comic books, also known as ‘underground comics’, flourished in the late 1960s as a product of the counterculture. Since then, it has changed, developed and offered more opportunities

to young artists and cartoonists to promote their work. These days, the various small print comic brands and individual artists publish and exhibit their work online or in bookshops. Tony Bennett of Knockabout, which has been selling underground comics since 1968, points to the peak in sales of small print comic books and underground literature that dealt with sex, violence, rock music, feminism and challenged the social norms 40 years ago. “The late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were the best-selling years for underground literature in general. There were lots of underground newspapers and magazines in the 1970s, and there were lots of people producing their own self-produced comics and fanzines,” he says. “Most importantly, there was a large network of radical and alternative bookshops for

“

To Arms! is the first part of the novel project of Limehouse Comics, a small publishing company

Self-publishing in the UK has never been stronger

”

the underground comics to be sold through. The 1990s were the low point for sales but in this century interest in comics has grown enormously, with most high street bookshops and internet suppliers such as Amazon and others that sell them.” The UK’s small press and self-publishing industry is a field that has been enlarged and expanded by talented individuals. Gosh! Comics sales assistant, Tom Oldham, who has been selling comics for five years, says: “Self-publishing in the UK has never been stronger. There are huge amounts of work that make it impossible to list every genre, style or approach. “There are now publishers or people who are self-publishing at every rung of the ladder. The British and North American comic book scene are certainly really strong, and consist of a real space where people can even make a living.” However, in an era where technology and ebooks are in high demand, the question is whether the British small press industry and self-publishing artists have been affected negatively.

ARTS & CULTURE “The internet helps to encourage sales,” says Oldham. “Many artists also sell their work online and the internet allows them to promote themselves. People now come in asking for specific artists they have seen online and consequently this helps those artists to find work and collaborate with other publishers, who can see their work online and that they already have followers.”

“

Technology now allows independent comics to publish within their means

”

Above and below: Small press and magazines on the shelves of “Gosh! Comics”

British cartoonist Hunt Emerson has been drawing comics for 40 years. He has collaborated with Knockabout and Fiesta magazine and he too believes that the face of the underground comic business in Britain has changed with time and more specifically, with technology and the invention of new genres. “The British underground, as it was when I started working, no longer exists. Technology now brings the ability to create and publish independent comics within most artists’ means, and they are no longer what can be called underground,” says Emerson.

Something for everybody

“The comics business is always precarious, but independent comics aimed at an intelligent adult readership seem to have a better market nowadays, with the emergence of several higher profile, new publishing houses and also the involvement of some of the major traditional publishers,” continues Emerson. The various genres and design styles of comic books have also been enriched and embraced by the audience. “More recently, the growth of “graphic novels” has seen the readership and market for comics grow in a more significant and long-lasting way. I believe that the medium has hopefully crossed the barrier between being a minority, cult following to being an accepted genre of reading material,” Emerson says. The market demand for underground comics is currently at a high point. The audience is receptive and the available amount of work is so diverse that it allows people of any age or socioeconomic background to choose any genre, style or design they prefer. Small press and self-published cartoons carry what the mainstream cartoons are not free to have to any great extent: opinion, distinctive style, inspiration and, above all, individuality. The various artists carry their signature and unique elements that make them different,

aiding in the establishment of their audience. “The spirit of the revolutionary 1960s, in terms of ‘underground’ content, meaning the challenge to the system and the attempt to raise social awareness, still exists both in terms of published artists and self-publishing artists,” says Oldham. “You can see an underground spirit in cartoonists like Johnny Ryan and you can find it in self-published comics like Eyeball Comix too.” “At the moment it is something that keeps growing and there is a new generation of people becoming cartoonists. Small press and self-publishing comics is a growing sector within the contracting sphere of publishing.” More than 50 years after they first appeared, Britain’s underground comics are going strong. Calculus Cat was crowdfunded on Kickstarter last year

Francesco Fadda

A strange place for melody and bass Nicola Baronti, music producer and CEO of Italian recording studio and production company White Rabbit Hole

Imaginative music producers are finding acoustic potential in the most unlikely locations words by Marianna Giusti

ome of the best music is created in unexpected places. The Foo Fighters recorded their Grammy-winning album Wasting Light in frontman Dave Grohl’s own garage. There’s One in Every Crowd, Eric Clapton’s reggae-inspired album, was created on Jamaican shores. Radiohead’s OK Computer was recorded near Bath, in various rooms of a stately country mansion belonging to actress Jane Seymour. Musicians don’t have to haul their instruments far from conventional recording studios to find a quirky spot, where creativity flourishes and professional-sounding tracks can be laid down. Ben Phillips has created just such a space. The music producer and CEO of Lightship95 wanted to offer an environment where musicians can feel inspired and relaxed, enabling them to perform at their best. “When doing anything creative, if the artist feels comfortable, he will produce something better than if he feels tense,” he says.

His distinctive floating lighthouse cum recording studio bobs peacefully in its moored position at Trinity Buoy Wharf in East London and welcomes musicians from all over the world. The studio’s unusual location, with panoramic views of the Thames and London docklands, and impressive recording equipment attract artists who always return. The result is a creative hub, conducive to artistic collaborations and a widespread network of musicians who have recorded

“Nobody should think building a recording studio is the best investment - it isn’t

”

music in the nautical studio. Phillips says an appealing aspect of Lightship95 is the sense of tranquillity and isolation provided by the water that surrounds it. “Although it’s not far from the City, it gives

artists the necessary separation from what’s going on around them, allowing a deeper level of concentration and creativity.” Another unique feature of the studio is the sealed reverberation chamber above the drums in the live room (where musicians play during recording). Aside from providing acoustic advantages, this chamber replaces the ship’s original lower deck staircase and is made from glass, which allows natural light to stream into the room. For Phillips, shaping his studio wasn’t as easy as setting up a few padded sound-insulating panels and a drum kit. “Initially, I was looking for a cargo ship, because I believed it would be easier to convert. When I saw the Lightship95, I knew it would be a lot more work but I couldn’t resist such an eye-catcher.” The bright scarlet, 42-metre-long vessel underwent substantial structural reinterpretations - changes made at an expense of nearly £500,000. The equipment alone cost at least £200,000. Phillips makes the point that this amount is around a quarter of what a two-bedroom

Teresa Villa Sánchez

The Lightship95 Studio, anchored off Canary Wharf in East London

The inside of the Lightship95 Studio, renowned for its reverberation chambers Saiara Pedrazzi

flat in the same area would have set him back. Along with the studio’s live and control rooms below deck, the ship now also has two bedrooms. “Financially speaking, purchasing a boat was a much wiser choice than buying a property in London.” A kindred spirit to Phillips, who also recognised the musical potential of an unconventional place, is music producer and CEO of Italian recording studio White Rabbit Hole, Nicola Baronti. Baronti declined a city loft when choosing the location of his studio, instead settling on the derelict animal stalls of an abandoned medieval house in the picturesque Tuscan hills. “When I saw our horses stable, I thought ‘this is it, it’s perfect’.” On his decision to name his studio White Rabbit Hole, he says “Alice discovered the rabbit hole because of her curiosity. The studio is named after a similarly remote place, detached from society, where you can create and produce music in absolute peace.” Conveniently, the stable’s architectural features lent themselves perfectly to recording music. “The vaulted ceilings, designed to stable horses, are two and a half metres tall and perfect for containing high-pitched sounds. The antique ‘tufa’ (an Italian type of limestone) wall is ideal for absorbing the bass sounds. We took advantage of this, placing the drums in front of it to obtain a flawless aural experience,” Baronti says. In spite of these beneficial architectural circumstances, a significant amount of hard work was still required to achieve the studio’s optimal recording conditions. There was the arduous task of digging through the existing floor to the stone beneath, in an effort to restore the old building to modern, liveable standards. Baronti recalls the frustration of equipping the studio with microphones and speakers, only to discover that rainwater was seeping in and had soaked this expensive purchase. The property market sometimes overlooks premises such as churches, boats and derelict buildings, underestimating their commercial value. But with a little imagination and initial financial outlay, these spaces can be turned into lucrative studios capable of producing high-quality music. That said, Baronti cautions that profit must be a secondary goal when considering starting a recording studio. “Primarily,” he says, “White Rabbit Hole prides itself on the ability to turn dreams of independent musicians into reality, allowing them to produce professional quality music”. Phillips agrees that monetary gain shouldn’t be the key motivating factor. “Nobody should think building a recording studio is the best investment you can make with that amount of money, because it just isn’t. It is 100 per cent a labour of love for the music.”

Teresa Villa Sánchez

ARTS & CULTURE

The White Rabbit Hole studio, a converted old stall in the Tuscan hills

Artsper

Contemporary art at your fingertips Contemporary artisits François-Xavier Trancart and Hugo Mulliez, are co-founders of Artsper

With informative and easy-to-use websites, young entrepreneurs are making contemporary art available to everyone, hoping to trigger the interest of new collectors words by Anne Pouzargues

he time is long gone when contemporary art was only available to a rich, upper class and exclusive clientele. With new technologies available, it is now easy to flick through a gallery’s collection, choose a work of art, order it, and hang it in your living room within a couple of days. You don’t even need to be an art expert; help and advice is available 24/7. London entrepreneurs Marcos Steverlynck and Scott Phillips have been making works of art accessible to British – and now American – buyers since 2010. Their business Rise Art provides an easy way for first time collectors to find and buy contemporary pieces. “Our customers can use the filters, answer style questions or speak with a curator to discover what art they love,” explains co-founder Phillips. “We also offer an art rental option, so when you find the work you love, you can try it out, and see it in the flesh before you commit to buying.” The company works with hundreds of artists and anyone can independently submit their work. The pieces then go through a selection process, during which “The Insiders”, a team of knowledgeable art people – among them Anthony Fawcett, Chris Ingram and Amanda Lambert – will select the artists that will be featured on the site. A quality selection and strong customer support is a combination that seems to be

working well for the London startup. “We sold and rented hundreds of works in our first year of offering rentals and are now aiming to become the place where first time collectors go to discover great work online. This year will see even more growth as we expand to the USA,” says Phillips. But on the other side of the English Channel, in Paris, another startup is preparing to invade the British market.

“ A revolution within

the art, antiques and collectibles market

”

Created in 2013 by Hugo Mulliez and François-Xavier Trancart, Artsper also aims to bring contemporary art to a larger audience. It works with 280 European galleries, and its catalogue comprises 8,000 pieces. “For us, working with galleries is a guarantee of quality: firstly because we have chosen them and we like what they exhibit, secondly, because they filter what works of art go on our website. There is a real selection, to make sure that we offer a diverse, high quality collection,” says Trancart. The website can be searched by artist name or by gallery. Artsper promotes young and emerging artists as well as offering pieces by established artists like JR, Banksy and

Jeff Koons. Prices range from £100 to more than £10,000. Artsper works predominantly with French-speaking clients, but the small team of nine is already planning to expand. Since November, they have started to look for potential gallery partners in London – a first step to reaching a more international audience. But what are the effects of this change? In her book Risk and Uncertainty in the Art World, art business expert at Sotheby’s Anna M Dempster writes: “The Internet has contributed to what art dealers and collectors themselves called a revolution within the art, antiques and collectible market.” Indeed, both Rise Art and Artsper help to expand the customers’ base of galleries and independent artists. “Thanks to the internet, it is now easier to buy art,” says Trancart. “It is less timeconsuming, and also less intimidating, than physically going to a gallery.” However, the internet brings its own difficulties. “The internet is a great place to get lost in discovery, but I think people find it hard to cut through all the noise and find things they really like without relying on a trusted friend,” says Phillips from Rise Art. Steverlynck and Philipps, who like to refer to themselves as “personal art concierges but without the suits” want to be that “guide for new collectors”. For many it is a win-win situation. Small businesses have opened a new door to the art market, while the market benefits by reaching a new audience and potential clients.

ARTS & CULTURE

Startups and small businesses are re-energising the music industry with analytics words and picture by Morgan Meaker

he music industry is dense with complications. One song can be listened to on thousands of platforms in hundreds of countries, resulting in billions of transactions. Artists and songwriters are getting lost in a digital maze and losing money in the process. But a new wave of small and startup analytic companies have been revolutionising the way the music industry works, by streamlining and sorting the huge amounts of information floating online. Not only can this information make the whole industry more efficient for artists, but it also gives unparalleled insight into what people are listening to. Over the past year, major players have been buying up these businesses, hinting that data could be the future of music. In May, Pandora, the world’s biggest streaming service by users, bought the Next Big Sound, which analyses the way fans interact with music online. In January, tech-heavyweight Apple bought British data startup Semetric. Following that, in March 2014, Spotify bought The Echo Nest, a music intelligence company that uses metadata and algorithms to analyse the industry. The data revolution is being led by small businesses and startups and bigger companies are getting their wallets out, desperate to be involved.

“ There’s not a silver bullet to solve the music industry’s problems

”

Kobalt is a music publishing company that streamlines huge amounts of data, making it easier for artists to get paid. The company has invented a portal where creatives – people like artists and songwriters – can track exactly where their music is being played. Their mission is to try to make the industry more transparent. “The problem right now in the industry is that artists aren’t seeing that enormous amount of data,” says Ryan Wright, the company’s CMO. He believes data will help the music industry to become more democratic. “Data is empowering. If artists don’t have updated data about where their music is being consumed and by whom, then they don’t know what

The data revolution

works and what doesn’t.” It also makes the financial side impossibly difficult. At the moment, it can take a songwriter up to three years to get paid. The music industry is still recovering from the invention of the internet. Sites like Myspace changed the way music is consumed. Revenues fell and the doors were opened for problems like piracy on a massive scale. Jeremy Silver, former executive chairman of Semetric says: “There’s not a silver bullet to solve the music industry’s problems. I don’t think data holds the key but I think it holds a key. A smart use of data can help the industry become more efficient.” Alex White, CEO of the Next Big Sound, says that data from streaming sites is key to connecting artists with their fans. “The only way to grow an audience, engage a fan base and build a sustainable career is to measure what is resonating with the people listening to your music. It used to be very difficult to measure how people were reacting to the art and music that was being created, but technology now allows us to dive deeper into not only what people are consuming, but also how they are consuming it,” he says. Data can also make finding new talent much easier. In 2012, music app Shazam

used data to predict that A$AP Rocky and Lana Del Rey would be the “next big things”. Both went on to top the UK and US charts. To find this out, Shazam doesn’t analyse the music itself, it analyses how people online react to it. If the music creates a certain digital buzz, it’s going to be a hit. MusicPlay Analytics tracks the consumption of music in bars, nightclubs and music venues. Its founder Eron Bucciarelli-Tieger says: “Understanding the location of performances for a particular artist or genre, gives a user actionable information, down to the specific address, of where and when to route tours and plan tours or release promotions. The majority of money spent on music is spent in the real world, so it only makes sense to have data to drive revenue growth in this space.” Despite neighsayers’ warnings that there’s no money left in music, Bucciarelli-Tieger believes there’s ample opportunity for new small businesses to thrive. “Saying there is no money in music is like saying there’s no money in computers simply because PC sales are on the decline. CD sales are declining. Accept it and move on.” Instead, says Bucciarelli-Tieger, music’s money is in the data.

A place to linger - not pass by As the number of independent bookshops continues to decline, Upstart meets booksellers to find out what they are doing to preserve their cultural heritage words and pictures by Anne Pouzargues

he atmosphere is buzzing at the Calder Bookshop Theatre. People come and go, bringing in pieces of scenery and costumes while the sounds of hammers and drills echo from the back room. The new theatre season is starting. For three weeks, the bookshop will host 5 Days for the Queen, a play by Simon Bennett. Sitting behind the cashier desk, Louis Gayol watches over the chaos, keeping an attentive eye on the books that cover the shelves. “Of course, we do have a lot of plays and books on theatre,” he explains. “But we also have a politics and a philosophy section.” The Bookshop Theatre is one of the last of its kind. Opened in 2002 by Scottish and Canadian publisher John Calder, it is still in its original premises, in The Cut, on the South Bank of the River Thames. The selection of books is refined; foreign language essays, political philosophy, old editions and vintage covers stand alongside one another. But despite the idyllic look of the place, for anyone who likes old books and dusty libraries, Gayol says he is worried sometimes.

Outside the London Review Bookshop on Bury Place

“It’s difficult for small independent bookshops like ours to survive. I don’t want to be pessimistic, but the internet and online shopping are strong competitors.” The struggle is predominantly financial. “The revenue from the theatre and the plays is a great help. I think that it is what can save us: to be a hybrid place, both bookshop and theatre,” says Gayol. Physics and philosophy student, Arnold Brown, 19, who studies at King’s College London, discovered the Bookshop Theatre a year ago, quite by chance, and has frequented it ever since. “The main difference between such a place and other big bookshops such as Waterstones is that you can come here without knowing exactly what you’re looking for,” he says. “We want people to remember us both for our high quality selection, our specialisation in theatre, politics and philosophy, and for the closeness with our clients,” says Gayol. “That’s what will make the difference.” Last year, The Booksellers Association, the British trade body that brings together booksellers and bookshop owners, released a

Peace and serenity: Independent bookshops offer a quiet cultural sanctuary from busy city life

report that revealed a drop in the number of independent bookshops: 67 independent bookshops in the UK closed in 2013, bringing the total number of such shops to only 987. There are, by comparison, 3,796 bookshops in total. Ten years ago, there were still 1,535 independent booksellers in the UK. In parallel, the book market in the UK is booming: publishers’ sales have risen from £2.6bn in 2003 to £3.3bn in 2014. And British people still like bookshops: in 2014, 38 per cent of the books sold have been bought in shops, and 46 per cent from internet-only retailers. The London Review Bookshop has chosen another type of specialisation: it is both a book and a cake shop, bringing back to life the traditional London of literary coffee shops. John Clegg, a sales assistant at the London Review Bookshop, joined the team in 2013, after finishing his PhD on Eastern European poetry. “Our shop has the best poetry selection in the country,” he says. “And, well, the best overall selection. That’s why people come back to us.” Clegg is optimistic about the state of independent bookshops in the UK: “I believe it is going better for independent booksellers. In addition to our selection, we offer a more personalised assistance.” John knows that the cake shop also is an advantage. “Thanks to this, our shop is not a place where people pass by, but a place where people stay,” he says. But what could be done to improve the state of independent bookshops in Britain? For Clegg, the answer is clear. “Bring back the Net Book Agreement,” he says, referring to the fixed book price law that was abolished in 1997. “Without it, small bookshops can’t compete against big chains and the internet.” In the end, specialisation, high quality, and social dimensions are the three factors that define how independent booksellers could compete against the big dogs of the book market. Small independent bookshops like these are a visible reminder that bookselling is not all about money and the human side of the business is still very much alive.

ARTS & CULTURE

Remember the countless times you read a book and wished it had ended differently? With crowdfunding for authors, readers are involved in the editorial process words by Radhika Bhatnagar

ast month, a book by Paul Kingsnorth titled The Wake created a buzz in literary circles by winning the inaugural book of the year prize at the Bookseller Industry Awards. Nothing remarkable here, if it wasn’t for the fact that the book was completely crowdfunded via the publishing platform Unbound. “It was only a matter of time before crowdfunding became a viable option in the world of publishing,” says John Mitchinson, co-founder of Unbound. “Whenever there is a strong link between the producer and the consumer and a discretionary purchase is made, matching demand with supply is always challenging. Publishing is no exception,” he says. Mitchinson, who has worked as the marketing director of Waterstones and a publisher at Harvill Press and then Cassell & Co, explains that while the internet has enabled availability of books in digital formats: “There is a real problem in trying to sustain a diverse ecosystem of writers.” “In traditional publishing, there are about five slots that are the most popular. Authors are pressured to write something that fits into those moulds. In most cases, authors are lucky to earn 10 per cent of the price because retailers offer high discounts,” he says. The Unbound model puts authors and potential readers directly in touch. An author pitches an idea on the platform and if enough readers support it, he goes ahead with it. Based on the level of support they pledge, readers receive varying benefits ranging from getting their names printed on the book to being sent a limited edition when it is ready.

Unbound

On the write path

Justin Pollard, John Mitchinson and Dan Kieran, founders of Unbound - a new route to publishing

Unbound works as both a funding platform and a publisher, fulfilling all publishing functions but also splitting a book’s net profit with the author. Up until the project is 70 per cent funded, it acts as a funding platform. After that, Unbound functions as a publisher

“ It was only a matter

of time before crowdfunding became a viable option in the world of publishing

”

and plays an active role in promoting the project to raise the rest of the money needed. While Mitchinson agrees that the authors that have proven to be more successful are the ones that don’t traditionally fit into any category, he dismisses any danger in letting readers dictate what should be published. “In many ways, it’s similar to a reader going into a bookshop and choosing a book; we facilitate the decision at an earlier stage,” he reasons. Mitchinson admits that the concept has received criticism. Traditional establishments have been critical of how many takers such a platform would have and the so-called “digital evangelists” have asserted that there should be no curation in the process. Writing, like all forms of art, should be allowed to flow naturally, they reason. “We aim to build a community that liberates the writers and encourages readers´ involvement. Of course, we do some selection

at the author stage, but that is essential to build a distinct identity through the quality threshold we obtain,” Mitchinson sayss. Over the past three years, Unbound has published 80 books, including the widely successful Letters of Note with only one author (coincidentally Paul Kingsnorth) using the platform as a launchpad before moving to traditional publishers. “Given the nature of our business, we will remain vulnerable as a route that some authors might want to take before going the traditional way. But we are optimistic, as a community that engages writers and readers, crowdfunding will always be a viable option,” says Mitchinson.

Aspiring authors, take note

Author of Inside Hackney Helena Smith shares her advice for those considering the crowdfunded publishing route o Get people’s attention: an active presence on social media is vital o Engage with your investors and understand what they expect from you o Enjoy the community aspect, people will care about your project o Do your research so you are aware of all the costs involved o Maintain your control, don’t hand over the editorial reins to anyone

Running Hundreds of stately home owners in the UK face a dilemma: to convert into businesses or continue to let the property fall apart words and pictures by Lee Roberts

Above: The Grand Painted Hall of Chatsworth House, painted by Luigi Laguerre (1663-1721) Below: A view of the garden from the top of Layer Marney Tower, a Tudor palace in Essex

he dream of owning a castle or stately home is a reality for a surprising number of people. The United Kingdom is home to thousands of historic manors, castles and gardens, many of which remain in the hands of private families. While many would assume such an inheritance would be a blessing, for the owners it can be a huge financial burden. The upkeep of these centuries-old homes is a full-time job for the families responsible for their care. The cost of keeping a home that was built centuries ago habitable is enormous. According to the Historic Houses Association (HHA), the backlog of urgent repairs in their membersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; homes has doubled since 2009 and now sits at a cool ÂŁ764m. For even the wealthiest estate owners, such figures can

The exterior of Chatsworth House, which has featured in many films and period dramas, including the 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice as well as Chatsworth,

ARTS & CULTURE

an historic stately home become financially crippling, leaving them with the difficult decision of either selling the home or allowing it to fall into disrepair. Owners who have inherited the family manor can find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place. The option of selling a home that has been in a family for centuries is not an appealing one. This is the reason why so many owners of historic residences have transitioned into running their homes as small businesses that capitalise on the public’s interest in the country’s heritage to bolster the cost of maintaining them. The HHA is an organisation that promotes historic properties to potential visitors and customers. It offers advice, guidance and lobbying support to its members. Among its members’ homes are some of Britain’s most famous historic properties including Chatsworth House - the backdrop of the popular 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice - Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Winston Churchill, and Highclere Castle - now famous as the fictional Downton Abbey. The HHA also represents a vast number of less well known historic properties. “We have 1,600 members. Around 600 properties are open to visitors and this can range from being open every day to being open for one-off tours,” explains Charlotte Bossick of the HHA.

a three-part BBC documentary on the house in 2012

“Then there are others which offer wedThe reality of having your home appear dings, concerts and have opened businesses on screen is more complicated than one such as shops and restaurants. It’s probably might expect. safe to say that around 60 per cent of private “Film companies and television companies historic houses are open for commercial or are by nature very presumptuous. Where we charitable purposes.” can, we write a contract based on the HHA’s Among the HHA members alone, historic advice but they often have pre-written generic homes and gardens support 26,000 jobs and contracts,” explains Charrington. about 53,000 local businesses. However, “Often, with the television programmes, opening a home to the public is no small task. the timescale is extremely short between first The HHA handbook aims to guide owners enquiry and filming, which adds pressure who hope to turn their historic property into when trying to sort out what you are and a successful small business. From insuring are not happy to let them do. valuable artwork or furniture to providing “When they are here we try and stay close parking, toilets and access for the disabled, all the time, as they like to push boundaries the hopeful owner has many considerations as far as they can regardless of the areas you to take into account before opening their have agreed on paper that they can film. That private residence to the public. having been said we rather enjoy the buzz One such historic property, Layer Marney Tower in Colchester in Essex has been owned, operated and inhabited by the Charrington family since 1959. It remains a private residence but is open to the public for a variety of purposes that help the family maintain the cost of its upkeep. “The biggest challenge really is the cost. The art of balancing money - expected money in and money out,” says owner Sheila Charrington and daughter-in-law to the original they bring to everyone when they come.” owners Susan and Gerald Charrington. Layer Marney Tower employs two full“One hundred and twenty acres of land is time and 25 part-time and seasonal staff. The not an income generating amount. Public family is involved in the day-to-day running access, guided tours and school tours are not of the estate. Considering the cost and labour enough to raise money for major repairs. involved in maintaining an ancient home, “Weddings have given us amounts that what inspired the Charringtons to take on allow us to take up some of the larger chal- the enormous responsibility. lenges but competition has reduced the “The place had been empty for several income. We have so many things we would years and I think they saw it as a fun idea. like to do but we are used to having to pace It was a romantic whim against everyone’s ourselves now.” advice, says Charrington” The Charringtons have transformed a section of the estate’s stables into a small café and shop, and allow holidaymakers to rent cabins on the property in addition to hosting tours and events. Only the west wing of the home remains private for family use. Lord Marney built the house during the reign of King Henry VIII. A striking and extremely well maintained Tudor monolith surrounded by picturesque farmland and quaint British gardens, Layer Marney Tower has attracted the attention of a few film crews for period pieces. Gargoyle at Layer Marney Tower, built during Henry VIII’s reign

“The biggest challenge really is the cost. The art of balancing money

”

Re-claiming skateboard culture

Jason Caines from No Comply Network

ARTS & CULTURE

Skateboarding has been hijacked by advertising. It is being used to sell everything from art to paracetamol. Brands have latched on to the sport, using its image to make products appear embedded in the subculture words by Morgan Meaker pictures by Camille Ayral & Morgan Meaker

ason Caines sits for a long time in front of his bacon sandwich without touching it. He is completely distracted and mid-way through explaining what happens when advertising managers, who have never stepped on a skateboard in their lives, try to use skating culture to sell products. “Skating is an art form that is being portrayed incorrectly by a lot of brands. They’re creating a watered-down market of poor-quality content and poorly developed events which don’t engage people,” he says. Floundering attempts to mimic skating’s legitimacy spurred Caines to set up the No Comply Network, a new creative online agency which aims to cultivate skating’s image in the mainstream. The No Comply Network will help its members - who are mostly skaters - negotiate deals and partnerships that are representative of the real skating culture. Caines wants to create content that benefits skateboarding and gives back to that community. He’s reclaiming skateboarding for the people who made it cool in the first place. In 2010, retail sales in the skateboarding industry exceeded £4.5bn. It is so successful because the culture appeals to people who don’t skate as well as those who do. Soft goods are the driving force of the

industry. Successful brands such as Vans and Palace have made their money by selling shoes, hats and t-shirts. Other companies have noted this success, flirting with the culture to sell completely unrelated products, including everything from paracetamol to modern art. In a lilting Birmingham accent, Caines says he wanted to cultivate skating’s image in the mainstream; bringing the culture to a wider audience in a form it should be seen. “When brands partner with skaters, it’s kind of like a badlands, nobody really knows what to do and everybody’s throwing money at it. There needs to be something to control that and keep it as close to the core as possible.” Adam Watt skates at Stockwell Skatepark in South London. He marvels at how skating has boomed in the last 30 years. “When I was at school in the late 1980s skating was seen as immature, it was too marginal.” He talks with a level of detachment about brands’ relationship with skating. “Big brands with big budgets are not ignorant but their adverts are too slick – skateboarding is not that slick. It’s not representative. Skating is associated with things that are not readily marketable, like weed or street art. Companies such as Nike stay away from things like that.” Caines is keen to make sure skaters, such as Watt, feel more represented when brands dip into their culture. He believes skaters are becoming more hesitant to get involved in corporate projects. “If we get these guys involved, they’re just

going to ruin everything and take out what’s important to us.” The company is still new. “I’m not going to lie. At this point, the idea of how everything’s going to function is just quite abstract.” He wants to stay flexible. The No Comply Network will also help its members with networking; finding a creative space; media outreach; sponsorship for events; and setting up Kickstarter campaigns. The No Comply Network sets itself up in opposition to ‘urban creative’ agencies such as Jack, which describes itself as a pioneer in guerilla marketing. Jack owns a number of outdoor spaces, such as billboards, where it can bring advertising to the streets. But the agency executes the ideas of its clients, it has little input in making sure adverts are representative of urban culture. “The brands that work with us try their best to involve the urban culture community,” says Emma Clackson, executive director of Jack. “But the earlier we get involved in the process, the more confidence we have in the way things are executed. When things are more authentic, they have more success.” But the point of the No Comply Network is to guide and advise brands. Caines wants to protect skating’s image and look out for skaters themselves. “It’s less about how to monetise the skating industry itself and more about how best to consult, connect and negotiate deals so the output is of the highest quality and people are paid properly for the work they do. It’s about pushing things in the right direction.”

Skateboarders in Clissold Park in North London: for many young people, skateboarding has become not just a physical activity but an art to be celebrated

Port Lincoln, Australia is a paradise of great white sharks. When Matt Waller launched his cage-diving business, he began attracting tourists with his unique way of drawing sharks to the divers

AC/Deep Sea words by Lee Roberts

Robert Lang Photography

Adventure Bay owner and founder Matt Waller stands on the sub of the Adventure Bay boat, Shark Warrior

ropping off the bow of a ship, in a cage submerged in shark-infested water is a surreal experience, to say the least. The disorientation is brief but acute as the water absorbs the light and obscures the surrounding depths. Then everything sharpens around a sleek shape with a hooked-dorsal fin. A four-andhalf metre great white shark cruises within an arm’s reach of the diver, its eyes levelling with your own as it swims in an eerie silence. The shark is spectacular, and the moment is thrilling. An entire industry in Port Lincoln, South Australia, whose coastal waters play host to the world’s largest great white shark population, has been built on the demand for such exhilarating experiences. Numerous locations around the world offer the chance to dive with great whites, but Port Lincoln is home to Adventure Bay Charters, which have a fresh, more sustainable approach towards luring the magnificent fish. Owned by Matt Waller, the company claims to be the only cage-diving business in the world to abstain from attracting sharks with chum (blood and fish). Instead, it attracts the great whites by playing rock music through underwater speakers. Waller says he was surprised when he discovered the sharks responded best to heavy rock band AC/DC. Before he could say “Highway to Hell” he knew he had found an alternative to chumming. “I used to own a third of the shares in Calypso, our biggest competitor,” he explains. “A difference in approach to business caused a rift between the partners and I got out. The day I took a photo of a great white shark with no teeth left after it had been baited into continuously biting the cage, was the last day I used chum to attract a wild animal. When it looked like our business was succeeding at the expense of the sharks I started looking for alternatives.” Waller soon began to develop Adventure Bay’s use of sound to attract sharks. It has grown with great success and the company’s recorded shark sightings reveal it to

Robert Lang Photography

INTERNATIONAL

Divers on the Adventure Bay Charters boat. Marine biologists believe public interest in sharks is crucial for their conservation

Robert Lang Photography

reasons, says Marine biologist Lindsay Graff. “Baiting will always be necessary for scientific study, because it allows us to get close enough to tag sharks. We need to be really careful, however, using it for tourists. There is so much we don’t know about these animals so it’s difficult to determine if we’re changing their natural migratory and feeding behaviours by throwing blood in the water and encouraging them to linger in an area or behave aggressively around boats. The sad thing is if a shark gets too close to beaches or boats, people rush to have it destroyed. Close encounters are much more likely to result in the death of a shark than a person.” Marine biologists and cage-diving operations do agree on one thing, however: increased public interest in these animals will be crucial for their conservation. According to the wildlife conservation group WWF, great whites are a vulnerable species. They are caught as bycatch by commercial fisheries and

Ralph Alphonso

be just as effective at attracting the animals as chumming. “I picked up the idea from a photographer who had spent some time in Guadeloupe, Mexico,” he explains. “There the idea of playing music underwater was initially used to distract guests while they waited for sharks, but they began to notice that there was a different reaction in the sharks when the music was playing.” They had few details about how it worked, but gave it a try anyway. “We were on our own with just a simple story and an idea,” he said. The practice of chumming the water in order to attract sharks for tourists has long been controversial. In South Africa, diving and surfing clubs adamantly oppose the practice, claiming it has changed the great whites’ natural aversion to people and boats and it leads them to associate the two with aggression and frenzied feeding behaviour. The practice is troublesome but for different

Playing music underwater, especially hard rock, attracts sharks towards the cages

‘Adventure’ client resurfaces after shark dive

have been hunted aggressively for their fins and teeth. Waller hopes encounters with the animals will encourage the public to invest in protecting the species. “They’re amazing to see,” said Jessica Olsen, an Adventure Bay client. “They come out of nowhere. One minute you’re staring off into nothing, listening to AC/DC play through the water, and the next a four-metre shark appears. It was an amazing experience.”

“There was a different

reaction in the sharks when the music was playing

”

Demand for these experiences is increasing. The cage diving business has been growing at a steady rate of 35 per cent a year over the last three years, andWaller believes the biggest factors have been promotion and accessibility. Offers of day trips, regular air service and better accommodation in Port Lincoln have all played a role. “I’d like to see the end of baiting for tourism activities,” says Waller. “Shark protection is a very topical subject now, and I hope it will increase demand via awareness. I predict that the biggest growth going forward will be in sustainable travel, and increased desire for authentic wildlife encounters without the zoo mentality.” Many Adventure Bay clients walk away wanting to know more about shark biology and behaviour, but Waller confesses the most common question remains decidedly unscientific: which band do the sharks like best? “They really respond to AC/DC,” he says.

Hospitality: an Italian job After becoming jobless overnight, Claudio Terreni and his father saw a business opportunity in Italy’s substantial tourist industry by undercutting the hotels in Pisa

Saiara Pedrazzi

ave you ever lost your job on the same day as your father, in a country where one in three young people are unemployed? Villa Giulia Hostel Pisa’s CEO Claudio Terreni has. “At some point I realised I would simply have to invent a job for myself,” says Terreni about his job hunting in the wake of Europe’s economic crash. Father and son pulled together sources and skills, renovating an old Vatican-owned building in Pisa to turn it into a youth hostel for the summer season. Sustainable, smart and modern, the small hotel opened in 2013. For the rest of the year, it functions as an accommodation for local students. It was in December 2012 that Terreni originally lost his job at the Hotel Le Torri. Located on the coast of Pisa, the picturesque holiday facility was sponsored by the National Union of Blind and Sight-Impaired Persons. However, sponsorship didn’t spare it from the disastrous consequences of the European recession and, like many other businesses, the Hotel Le Torri folded with little notice. But just four months later, Terreni signed a rental contract commiting to Villa Giulia for 18 years, embarking on a loan of over €130,000 (£94,000). Terreni’s idea for the Villa Giulia came from his previous work in the hospitality industry. His father had been a high-profile hotel manager and their main goal was to recreate their own profession for themselves. After all, if nobody will hire you then why not hire yourself? The concept behind Villa Giulia was grounded in Terreni’s business strategy:

The common room at the hostel Villa Giulia

Claudio Terreni, 25, owner of the hostel

“During the winter, tourism in Pisa is scarce. Most hotels close at least for the season. But after the summer, student accommodation secures the rooms, which leaves me a lot of time for myself.” Now with 24/7 hospitality, 365 days a year, Villa Giulia provides an affordable, quality service around the clock, and has nailed some local records too. “As of today, we offer the cheapest price for a double room in the entire Pisa market,” says Terreni. A sound online presence has been crucial for the Villa’s success with good pictures, catchy descriptions, and fast booking software. Fortunately Terreni had a whole team of friends willing to help him. His mother was also on hand to do the laundry everyday at their private apartment for the hostel’s supply of clean sheets. Purchasing industrial machines was still not feasible. But the initial problems went far beyond the laundry: “When we were starting off, I was really swamped with problems,” he says. One problem was the faulty booking software: “Very often the hostel would be fully booked, but the software would overbook more than two beds a night.” Often Terreni was left having to stuff his little Punto with tourists and drive them right into the arms of competitors all around town. “A fully booked night invoices at 600 euros. Each overbooking costs 50 euros. Sometimes I would spend up to 500 euros in overbooking compensations. It was tremendously frustrating,” he says.

One day, a couple of lost tourists showed up at the wrong hostel, waving Villa Giulia Hostel Pisa’s booking reference. At a glance, the competitor realised who had been taking its clients away with lower prices, and decided to take them to court for stealing a part of their name: Hostel Pisa. Unsurprisingly, four hostels in Pisa have “Hostel Pisa” as part of their names, so Villa Giulia pleaded not guilty and won the case. Much has changed since those days. His mother is now spared from doing the laundry as Villa Giulia bought its own industrial equipment in 2014. New booking software was also acquired in 2014 and cleaning ladies were hired in collaboration with a local social cooperative earlier this year. Villa Giulia’s social commitment is also devoted to the integration program of a disabled boy from the local community. “Villa Giulia is like an oasis of peace, where students can live in harmony,” says engineering student and tenant Samuele Tarantino, 25. Students are happy to live at Villa Giulia, despite having to leave over the summer, due to its affordability and the convenience of its location. Terreni manages to mix the hostel business with his career as an amateur musician thanks to his father. “My father and I complement each other,” Terreni explains. “He was never an entrepreneur, but he is a great manager. I am a shit manager, but I have entrepreneurial skills. Our collaboration was probably our strongest point.” Terreni’s experience has prompted the realisation that his future might not meet the expectations that he grew up with. “Now when I watch the news and I hear the word unemployment I know what it truly means. When you’re unemployed nothing else really matters, even studying for university becomes a luxury.” Saiara Pedrazzi

Carolina Mazzeo

words by Marianna Giusti

Villa Giulia provides a quality, affordable service

INTERNATIONAL

How a mattress could save your life

Eiji Aoyama is the inventor of the Saving Floater

A floating mattress for disaster victims is saving lives in Japan words and pictures by So Nishitani

o one who witnessed the shocking scenes of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku, North East Japan, will ever forget the devastation they saw. A huge wave of water washing over the landscape, sweeping away all in its wake. For Eiji Aoyama, the disaster was the inspiration for an invention to help people living in disaster areas. It was the scenes of people in the Tohoku region attempting to cling to floating debris that gave Aoyama his idea. He left his job as the CEO of a local bedding company and founded a new company called NA Tech to invent the Saving Floater, a type of floatable futon mattress. “In a disaster, there are few items at home that you can cling to. The concept of the Saving Floater shows how everyday items can save people’s lives. People spend a quarter of their lives in bed so I think a floatable mattress is the best idea,” says Aoyama. Natural disasters are common in Japan. One in four earthquakes in the world occur in Japan, while there are more than 100 active volcanoes - some of which erupt almost every decade. In addition, around 10 typhoons hit the country every summer. Aoyama first became aware of Japan’s precarious existence two decades ago when he volunteered in Kobe after a massive earthquake rocked the city. “Seeing the city after the quake was a

shock. I felt my powerlessness and began to think about how I could save people’s lives,” he says. In 2013, the Japanese government announced it was 60-70 per cent certain that another earthquake will occur within the next 30 years. The Nankai megathrust earthquake is estimated to be magnitude 8-9 worse than the Tohoku earthquake, destroying vast areas of the Pacific, including large urban areas such as Tokyo and Osaka. How to reduce damage and save people’s lives is the most serious challenge for Japan’s future. Major Japanese housebuilding companies such as Sekisui and Mitsui have invented earthquake-resistant technologies, while local authorities are planning tsunami protection and anti-earthquake procedures. Aoyama and his colleague Yuka Tokunaga, assistant manager at NA Tech, visited many coastal regions to research the situation. “When I visited Shizuoka, I met the monk of a local temple. He said that this town was only metres above sea level and they needed some procedures. He was interested in our product. I saw that it has potential,” says Tokunaga. The mattress, which was launched in April, contains special beads that act as wadding and maintain its floatability even when

punctured. Supported by research at Kyoto University, the beads are manufactured from a special plastic called polyolefin (originally used as a shock absorber in cameras). The unique composition means that not only is the mattress buoyant but it is also durable enough to survive the difficult conditions of a natural disaster. According to Aoyama, the Saving Floater can support weights up to 100kg. He claims it can also be used as a shield as it is light enough for people to pull over themselves to protect their body from falling items during an earthquake. He also insists the mattress is strong enough to handle everyday use. “Bedding mattresses are the best way to save lives,” says Aoyama. “Tsunami and flood water is full of fragments of building materials which injure survivors. But the mattress has enough space so people can ride on it and protect their body.” Aoyama has also added handles to the mattress so it’s easy to cling to. He says that the handles are also useful for parents to carry children on when evacuating flooded areas. While the Saving Floater is pricy - 40,000 yen (£210) for a single-sized mattress - NA Tech also offers a smaller size for 25,000 yen (£130). Aoyama hopes to sell the mattress to local authorities and other organisations in coastal regions. He is also marketing the product to boat owners across the world as it can also be used in maritime accidents.

Safe and sound: The Saving Floater can be used as a buoyancy aid, shield, boat and a mattress

Cannabis - a truly legal high

High flying chief operating officer of Cannabis Commodities Exchange Sohum Shah smoking a medically-approved joint

New regulation in the USA is opening up untapped markets: the cannabis business is smoking words by Shebani Shah

t is high time for the cannabis industry in America. Marijuana is now legal for medical use in 23 states and for recreational use in four states. Yet so far, Colorado has been the only state to pass the legalisation of marijuana as a constitutional amendment. Legalisation brings momentous potential for new markets. A report from ArcView, the investment and research firm, says that since its legalisation, cannabis has become the fastest growing industry in America. In 2014, the legal cannabis market raked

in $2.7bn in revenue (£1.76bn) – a 74 per cent increase from 2013. The projection for this year is $3.5bn. In the past few years, attitudes towards marijuana in America seem to have shifted. President Obama has previously stated marijuana is less damaging than alcohol “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.” In January, Paypal founder Peter Thiel joined a $75 m (£49m) investment for Privateer Holdings, which owns many marijuana-related subsidies including Leafly.com

- a Yelp-like service for potheads looking for prices and reviews. This was the first time that a traditional investor openly backed the cannabis industry. “One of our conclusions four years ago when we started Privateer is that cannabis is a mainstream product for mainstream Americans and prohibition of cannabis had been lifted – it’s just as true now as it was then,” says Privateer CEO Brendan Kennedy. Now other startups are looking to get into this industry and redefine the image

“Golden Goat” grown in a Denver dispensary

MassRoots

of marijuana by introducing a standard of professionalism and quality to a formerly closed counterculture. One such startup is the Cannabis Commodities Exchange in Denver, Colorado, an online wholesale trading platform where state-licensed cannabis businesses can list products, contact vendors and complete transactions. “People who consume cannabis spend years of their life trying to change other people’s perception about it,” says founder and Chief Operating Officer Sohum Shah. Shah is part of the modern breed of ‘pot-repreneur’, less lazy stoner, more investment banker with smart suits and a degree in Finance and Information Systems. “When I saw that my home state was the first to recognise that cannabis wasn’t this dangerous drug that people made it out to be and they were willing to move forward with a state-regulated system, I knew immediately in my heart that it was what I wanted to be working on,” says Shah. Launched in April 2014, CCX has a fulltime team of five with a clientele list of 88-90 businesses. Starting his morning with a cup of black coffee and smoking a sativa strain, which is claimed to improve attention spans, Shah spends a huge chunk of his time finding ways to raise capital. “The fact we have been able to nullify federal law and implement a change in regulation really shows people that we’re not a group of lazy smokers,” says Shah. Those working in the cannabis industry complain they routinely encounter what they call “cannabias” (sic). Last month, a popular social media app for cannabis consumers called Sohum Shah

Dan Hunt

INTERNATIONAL

Sohum Shah at a marijuana plant nursery in Denver, Colorado

MassRoots was told it could not proceed in a prominent competition for tech startups because its technology and user community are “not significant”. Difficulties arise from the fact that state and federal law are not on a par. Under federal law, the drug is categorised as a Schedule I [the equivalent of Class A] narcotic along with heroin and ecstasy, which Shah feels is false advertising. The slightest suspicion of illegal activity could lead to the federal government shutting this business down. “Just because we have cannabis in the name of our company we get denied basic business services,” says Shah. So far, two of his banking and marketing accounts have been closed down. “The first day our first bank account shut down, we all smiled, smoked a joint, and said: ‘We’re officially part of the cannabis industry now,’” says Shah. But others claim the stigma is justified. A 2014 Harvard/Northwestern study found “young adults who used marijuana only recreationally showed significant abnormalities in two key brain regions that are important in emotion and motivation.” “People think a little recreational use shouldn’t cause a problem, if someone is doing OK with work or school. Our data directly says this is not the case,” says report co-author Hans Breiter. Others claim that legalisation will lead to more people smoking marijuana with a negative effect on the labour market. Kevin Sabet, former Obama White House drug advisor, told CNN that more employers in the state are reporting workplace incidents involving marijuana use. Meanwhile legalisation may not be the tax bonanza that some predicted. In 2014, Colorado collected about $44m in revenue from marijuana taxes – way below the $70m windfall that was initially estimated. But Shah believes that the stigma and legal grey area surrounding cannabis gives small businesses a unique opportunity to enter this unclaimed space without the fear of corporations swallowing them whole.

“If cannabis was legal federally, you would have Cisco Systems developing wholesale exchange very quickly because they’d have a ridiculous amount of resources. The risk puts the responsibility on startups. It is up to us that what we develop and what we sell and provide is really the best it can be,” says Shah. Were cannabis to be regulated in a structured and legal way, Shah claims it could be sold in a responsible way rather than traded on the black market. “CCX symbolises the building of a legitimate industry that has transparency and technology backing it up,” he says. Shah will continue to fight to against the status quo: “It’s the first example in showing how the war on drugs is wrong. It’s time to stop allowing ourselves to be lied to and CCX is one small piece of this puzzle.”

Pros of legalisation in the UK: o Significant reduction of crime related to cannabis supply, as it would be driven out of the market. o Chemotherapy patients would have access to a synthetic cannabinoid called nabilone, licensed for treatment of nausea and a cannabis extract called Sativex also licensed to help relieve pain and other symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

Cons of legalisation in the UK: o There is a clear statistical association between cannabis use and schizophrenia in the sense that average prevalence and intensity of cannabis use is significantly higher among people who suffer from the disease than among non-sufferers. o Smoked cannabis remains at least as damaging to the respirator y and cardiovascular systems as tobacco. This would mean a cost to the NHS. According to the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex

DEBATE

The great debate: social media v customer service

“With a relatively little cost you can open up your firm to whole new markets” words by Alex Longley

our product is great. Your people are charming. Your business is up and running but it’s still going nowhere. The problem? You’re not social media savvy. The fact is, more than half the world’s population now has access to the internet. With relatively little cost (or none if you really know your stuff) you can open up your firm to whole new markets in a way that would be totally inappropriate for a three-person business operating on a local high street. Thanks to social media, nearly 16 million people have discovered Chuck Testa’s taxidermy business in Ojai, California. If you haven’t, check it out. But there is so much more than market size to social media. In an age where society demands everything instantly, it is vital that your business keeps up. Look at the firms that didn’t survive the economic downturn – from Comet to Blockbuster the reality is that these companies were operating with business models belonging to a bygone era. Social media is the tool that will ensure that your customers still remember who you are months, and even years after you launch. Perhaps part of the fear of social media stems from the sheer number of firms promising great things in exchange for a small financial outlay. Last month’s Business Startup Show is a classic example of an environment in which anyone new to business could be thoroughly overwhelmed by the hordes of companies trying to impress upon you the need for their social media ‘revolution’. But it is best to think of such services in the same way you would any other aspect of your business. Shop around, find the best product for you and if you think you could do a better job yourself, go for it! Finally, as your business grows, social media is likely to become all the more vital. Taking on more employees and shipping more stock brings with it a whole new set of worries. How do the big firms deal with it? By being able to quickly and efficiently respond to customer concerns on social media. From the big four supermarkets to retail giants, customer complaints are usually dealt with immediately by someone skilled in customer relations. If you don’t have a solid social media footing, you risk inflicting a lengthy delay on your clientele, or even worse, them catching you on one of those days where just about everything goes wrong. That is why social media is now a necessity.

“Heaven help those firms who respond in anything less than an exemplary fashion”

words by Robert Van Egghen

f you Google “social media strategy”, a wealth of different sites, gurus and organisations appear. Stepby-step guides offering simple, fine-tuned plans to social media success. All you need to do is “develop your content strategy”, “use analytics to track your progress” and “select your success metrics”. For a small business or startup trying to get noticed in a crowded market it can be tempting to follow these apparent commandments for the digital age. But crafting witty tweets or honing your search engine optimisation is no substitute for good customer service and an excellent product. For many firms, social media looks like snake oil. Far from being an effective way to engage with customers, their Twitter pages end up being a dumping ground for customer complaints. Heaven help those firms who respond in anything less than an exemplary fashion. They will soon find themselves in a viral article on Buzzfeed - “You Won’t Believe What This Restaurant Said To This Woman Who Complained Her Meal Was Cold”. Even when firms do respond well customers are rarely satisfied. Take the Twitter page of the rail company Southeastern. Many commuters (myself included) moan about the firm on Twitter and, to be fair, they almost always respond with a polite apology - no hint of a refund, mind. Yet this display of personal communication does not endear the company to its belligerent consumers. Why? Because it charges sky-high prices for a poor service while employing people with the personal skills of a sack of mouldy potatoes. You need more than social media to keep customers coming back. Think about your favourite restaurant. What makes it so great? The excellent food, the top-notch service, the great atmosphere. Do you care whether it has a great Instagram page or witty and incisive Facebook posts? Of course not. Or imagine instead the perfect shop. When you walk in, the staff greet you warmly and enthusiastically. The shop is scrupulously clean and items are sensibly arranged and easy to find. They have exactly what you want. When you come to pay, they wrap it up for you without asking. Smiles all round. Perfect. Sure social media can be a good marketing tool but it’s no substitute for good service and an excellent product. Instead of wasting time listening to online gurus, firms should concentrate on providing the best customer experience they can. That’s the sort of thing that’s always attracted customers to a firm, not how many retweets they’ve got.

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