ELEVATOR PITCH

Hello there. We've given the Elevator Pitch section a makeover thanks to our friends at Flick Electric Co, so you get to read about three awesome entrepreneurs per issue instead of just one. And, in a new video series, we' re profiling one start-up in an

There once was a man called Makeshi, a Japanese industrialist. While exploring the Pacific, he met a Finnish designer called Thappen and, together, as Makeshi + Thappen, they made “ingenious and beautiful things”.

It’s an evocative origin story. But it’s all an elaborate, entertaining lie and the man responsible for it is Scott Kington, the ex-managing director of Blunt, who, together with a bunch of clever clogs he has met on his travels through the world of business, has created a new, quite-hard-todefine company called Makeshi + Thappen that’s somewhere between an innovation agency, a corporate skunkworks and a business incubator.

“The company name was initially Make Shit Happen,” he says. “Then it was MSH, and that's just a little bit boring, and then it just sort of dawned on me that we should spell it out and hyphenate it and have some fun with it.”

As the old line goes, whoever tells the stories rules the world. And a good brand needs a good story. Blunt’s success was based on an innovative product and a brand story well told across a range of different platforms. Kington loved that ride and thrived on coming up with ideas to keep the momentum going but, after almost ten years in the role – and after considerable growth – the types of challenges changed, and he was keen to put his and his collaborators’ skills across design, manufacturing, marketing and investment to use in other categories.

“Branding is all storytelling, really, but it needs to be linked to something quite genuine. Obviously Makeshi + Thappen as a name is not genuine, but the sentiment is, because it comes from a gut feel that we've just got to get up and go and make stuff happen.”

So how does the business work? And how is it different? Kington says it’s not like an incubator in the traditional sense because it’s not necessarily asking anyone to invest

in their businesses. It’s all their risk. He says this isn’t an entirely new concept, with companies like the Icehouse and corporates like Vodafone running innovation programmes and investing in the most promising companies. There are also a number of corporate innovation models where multiple brands operate under one banner, sometimes in a setting separate from the main business. But creating and growing the businesses themselves, Kington says, means they will be more invested in those ideas.

“What I've found being a business owner myself is that there's always a reluctance with other people’s ideas. You might get a good idea but you're busy doing other stuff, so you don't implement it. I find it's harder to take someone else's idea and try and infuse it with all your ways of doing it because there's always going to be what they think and what we think. So, we decided to get rid of that side of it and just do our own ideas, between a big group of us.”

And, in Kington’s mind, this will also increase the cadence of the business, something that’s becoming increasingly crucial.

“If you're ready you can just decide what you want to do with it and just keep going. So you're just speeding up the process, and that's the whole point about this idea, is that there's no one, at any point, to slow us down. It's entirely up to us how fast we can take this.”

And the first cab off the rank is the pet accessory market.

“The market for accessories with dogs is eight times bigger than umbrellas. So, I mean, the whole pet care industry is huge, and that's a growing market. It seems a little bit underserved for really nice, well-designed, well-thought-out, well-made products that are also good for the animal, so that's one whole side. You've got the feeding, sleeping, walking, grooming. There's a whole big segment and you could be designing for ages there … Everything can be done probably a little bit better.”

As such, they will be looking at what products are made from, how they function and, at the end of the product's life, how to deal with disposal.

Kington is a true ideas man. And to keep the enthusiasm flowing with Makeshi + Thappen, he says there will be plenty of variety, across a range of industries. In addition to pets, it’s also planning on becoming a mini publishing house and will be starting with architectural content; it’s getting into the brewing sector; it’s looking at commercial lighting; and it’s looking at the packaging industry, both for consumers and commercial use.

He says the areas it will move into won’t solely be the fastest-growing, just the ones that can be improved by tapping into the varied skills of the partners. When Greig Brebner, Blunt’s design director and inventor of the product, showed Kington the prototype, it was based on a gut feel. It was a market that didn't have much innovation, and it was an innovative product, so that’s the sweet spot.

“There are lots of industries that haven’t had a lot of thought put into them. It's just taking an outside perspective and just looking at it. It’s also looking at the skillsets in the context of the wider group because, again, it's all about people you know.”

He says the biggest risk with any new business is always cash flow. But there’s also a risk of being slow, “so we want to get it to market quick”.

“You've got to make decisions as you're designing… And that’s the whole nimble approach. That's probably where the bigger companies struggle because they need to know the whole pathway.”

Big companies want to be nimble, and the future's getting to the point where you have to be to survive, he says, “but the way bigger companies are set up is all about the de-risking things, and if you're de-risking things to the point of making no mistakes, you're going to miss out on a whole lot of really interesting directions you could have gone”.

He expects it will be able to have a lot of early stage ideas running. But as they grow, they’re going to take up more time.

“We’ve got to work out if we have the resource to keep them going. Or do we need to get the resource? So those decisions will be made in six months, 12 months, 18 months. That's when you might say, ‘We have incubated the idea to a point that we're happy with how it's come into the world, but we can't be bothered with the rest of the processes.'”

Another area he can’t be bothered with is the conventional approach to work. He read a book, Maverick by Ricardo Semler, recently and thought there had to be a better way to do business.

“I don't want to just make it for myself. I want the whole company to have that same feeling. It's not like, ‘Ugh, I've got to go to work.’ In my first jobs, I always hated that feeling on a Sunday afternoon where you’d start getting that feeling of Monday. Now we've got all these tools to do business in a different way, so why force people into the peak hour traffic? Why force people to miss out on picking up their kids after school? The flip side is you get way better retention. You get people willing to work in the weekends or at night if urgent things need to happen, and when things have to happen, people really step up, but when they don't need to, great.”

Makeshi + Thappen, who were both standing with Amelia Earhart in her last known photograph, wouldn’t have it any other way.

It may sound strange at first: what’s the point of sipping on an alcohol-free tipple? But despite humankind’s long-running tendency to indulge – and often overindulge – in alcohol, there is a steady and growing movement of people who no longer want to feel the less desirable effects of it.

An increasing level of health consciousness around the mental and physical effects of alcohol are being credited to a growing consumer taste for alcohol-free beverages. According to Beverage Daily, 84 percent of people who drink alcohol are looking to drink less, and a recent article in Business Insider noted that Generation Z (those born in the late 1990s to early 2000s) are planning on consuming a lot less alcohol than previous generations because of health and hangover-related concerns.

Meanwhile, online supermarket Ocado has reported that sales of non-alcoholic wine have increased by 42 percent so far this year, with sales of no-alcohol and lowalcohol spirits and beers soaring by 87 percent.

And perhaps no better representation of this movement hitting the mainstream is that brewing giant Heineken released 0.0, a beer with zero alcohol content, into the New Zealand market earlier this year, with NZ Alcohol Beverages Council executive director Nick Leggett applauding the move.

“Such good-tasting options will support the fact that fewer Kiwis, particularly young people, are choosing to drink and choosing to drink to harm. However, we are all social creatures at the end of the day and you can’t remove millennia of cultural history where we want to get together and enjoy company over a drink,” Leggett said.

But what about those who drink spirits? Enter Ecology + Co. The idea struck founder Diana Miller one day when her and husband Will wanted to continue having some more glasses of gin, but were out at lunch and had to drive an hour or so to get back home.

“I said to Will, ‘I really wish I could have more than just one gin’,” Miller says. “Will started tinkering about in the kitchen for a few days and eventually presented me with an alcohol-free gin he had made himself. Will was a hobby distiller, and had learned the basics of the craft and then done an advanced distilling course in Scotland.

“We fed it to as many friends as we could, then took it to a consumer show for feedback. It soon became clear the product could be commercial winner, and so Ecology + Co was born earlier this year.”

Miller says there’s a growing body of evidence that people’s drinking habits are changing – in particular, the younger generations. But she says it’s the feedback the company is getting directly through tastings and consumer shows that shows they’re onto something good.

“Seemingly, people are listening to their bodies more than ever, don’t have time for hangovers, and genuinely want to drink less alcohol. However, they still enjoy the ritual of a lovely drink, with a mature flavour profile that’s not packed with sugar.”

One particularly insightful experience was conducting some market research at the Go Green Expo in Auckland earlier this year. The company trialled several gin blends in colourcoded cups, with drinkers asked to vote via which rubbish bin they put their cup in: the one marked ‘hell yeah’ or the one marked ‘no way’.

“If there were enough positives, we’d know we had a business and which flavour profiles to focus on. However, the feedback was so resounding we knew we had to give it a shot. We didn’t even have product to sell, yet people signed up

If you think about how human being celebrate and reward themselves, it’s drinking. Our product seems to speak to that, with so many people buying us as something special for themselves that has no untoward consequences or regrets.

and paid for pre-order bottles.”

But the process hasn’t been without its challenges. The methodology of creating the drinks is a lot more intensive than a regular distilling of a spirit, she says, as alcohol is an efficient flavour stripper. Flavours are extracted from botanicals in an intensive, lengthy process, and carefully blended together to ensure the taste is right, but Miller says it’s a “labour of love”.

Ecology + Co is now a few months old and has launched with two distilled alcohol-free spirits: a London dry and Asian spice gin, hot on the heels of the release of Seedlip, the world’s first non-alcohol spirit. Seedlip sold out within a week of its release in New Zealand in March.

Tapping into another growing trend of the business-for-good movement, Ecology + Co is also a social enterprise, with a portion of its earnings going towards projects supporting the UN’s sustainable development goals, and helping women in the developing world grow their businesses.

On the business front, Miller says Ecology + Co has a few large stockists already and has had to ramp up its production to meet demand, while the hospitality industry are excited by the thought of a new crop of alcohol-free alternative drinks – or “something other than lemon, lime and bitters”.

As well as selling direct on its website, it counts Moore Wilson’s Wellington, Smith & Caughey’s Auckland and Ballatynes’ South Island stores among its retailers, while hospitality joints such as Matakana Market Kitchen, Alberts Post and Vic Road have also got on board.

But perhaps the best signal that the alcohol-free spirit market is one to watch is Ecology + Co recently signed a deal with Lion, New Zealand’s largest alcohol company.

“We’re very excited that Lion will shortly be distributing us too, which will mean that there are 3000 more bars and restaurants out there who can easily stock our products, as well as being retailed at Liquor King outlets,” Miller says.

The plan from here on out for the young company is to take its product to the world. Miller says Ecology + Co is already fielding requests from around the globe for its products, which in turn creates inspiration for new product ideas, as there’s the opportunity to tailor botanical blends to specific regional tastes.

And as for how the company wants to influence social change in our drinking habits, Miller says seeing how culture is evolving through how people experience Ecology + Co’s drinks has been really rewarding.

“I still get a great deal of delight when I watch someone taste our products for the first time,” she says.

“There is always the initial moment of hesitation with the decision, to ‘Okay, let’s try this”, followed by ‘Wow, this actually tastes good”, to the realisation which shows on their face, as well as what they say next, when you can see they have discovered something that will fulfil a part of their life better than anything before.

“If you think about how human beings most often celebrate and reward themselves, it’s through eating and drinking. Our product seems to speak to that, with so many people buying us as something special for themselves that has no untoward consequences or regrets.”

We’ll drink to that.

The Fred Hollows Foundation NZ (FHFNZ) estimates that there are over 1.35 billion people in the world with vision loss, most of which is both treatable and preventable.

Avoidable blindness is common in the Pacific Islands, with four out of five people who are blind, but it doesn’t need to be. With this being said, FHFNZ is working hard – globally, but specifically focusing on people in the Pacific Islands – to prevent and combat avoidable blindness and its effects on communities.

Founder of the social enterprise New Zealand beauty brand Indigo & Iris, Bonnie Howland (now 22) was 18 when she travelled to Vanuatu and witnessed the significant differences that FHFNZ was making on people’s lives through helping to cure blindness in the Pacific Islands.

Inspired by the FHFNZ, Howland began dreaming up ideas for a mascara that would be made and sourced ethically, while still being a popular and successful beauty product.

This decision to design a product supporting such an important cause was sparked when she returned to New Zealand and saw the first-world problems people were getting upset over.

“I really noticed a huge difference in the issues, and what mattered in contrast to the Islands. The wrong colour of beige shoe ruined a person’s day [in New Zealand], in comparison to being blind but not needing to be with the right treatment,” Howland says.

Soon after she met Hannah Duder, a Canterbury University graduate with a Bachelor in Law and Commerce and a passion for social enterprise, at an Entrepreneurial Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, co-hosted by President Barack Obama.

Their values aligned, as Duder’s mission was to prove that it is possible to “do good business and do good at the same time”. Howland invited Duder to come on board as CEO of Indigo & Iris, and to help launch their product into market in 2017.

Levitate Mascara was Indigo & Iris’ first (and at present, only) makeup product, an “epic mascara that is vegan, cruelty-free and made with love in Italy,” Duder says.

The ingredients have been sourced sustainably, ethically, in an environmentally-friendly way, and with no animal testing, all while still being a high quality mascara.

“We operate for a profit company – we have a solid supply chain where workers are fairly paid, no products are tested on animals and whenever a decision is being made, it is never just the bottom line that is considered. We always make the most sustainable choices we can whilst still running a successful company,” Duder says.

In addition to this, all of Indigo & Iris’ mascara tubes are recyclable when clean, and the pair offer great ideas on how to repurpose old mascara wands online.

However, their biggest point of difference is that 50 percent of the profits from Levitate Mascara’s sales are donated to FHFNZ to help their mission of curing blindness in the Pacific.

“We are a beauty brand that gives a damn,” Duder says. “Our mascara is life changing for our customer who uses it, but also life-changing to those who have their sight restored through the donations of our profits. This is because when someone has their sight restored, it is not just their vision they regain, but their independence and freedom.”

However, she says getting to this point has not always been smooth sailing.

“We had to raise capital to get our first stock. As Italy is renowned for its beauty manufacturing, there are very high minimum order quantities. It was hard for two young Kiwi entrepreneurs to fund this themselves, so we had to ask for money from investors, the band and our crowd. We raised capital through investment and a Kickstarter campaign last year in November.”

The Kickstarter campaign was

met with a magnitude of support by New Zealanders. In just over 24 hours after launching it in 2017, the pair had succeeded in raising more than $12,000.

Their success didn’t stop there. In three weeks, this rose to more than $39,000, then $75,000, ultimately ending up with just under $128,000 – surpassing their goal of reaching $75,000 by a large margin.

This support from New Zealanders has continued to grow, as they currently have over 2200 supporters on Kickstarter and were able to launch their autonomous website store this year in May.

“We have been overwhelmed with the support from New Zealanders, who are already re-ordering our mascara and even signing up to our three-month subscription offer,” Duder says.

Levitate Mascara is also receiving international support, with regular sales in the US, UK and Australia.

Duder says one of the key challenges the brand has faced is sticking with what they had first envisioned for Indigo & Iris.

“Staying true to our brand and ourselves has been one of the biggest hardships,” Duder says.

“It can be difficult to stay on our own path and create the company we want. There can be a lot of temptation to follow trends but we really wanted to stay true and be our own brand and voice in such a saturated market.”

But regardless of the obstacles, Indigo & Iris has been successfully selling Levitate Mascara online for just over four months to customers all over the world. The pair have also succeeded in raising enough donations to help restore sight to 250 people in the Pacific – reaching a culmination of curing more than a person a day.

There are currently no stores or sites other than indigoandiris.co that stock the Levitate Mascara, as Duder says that the margins and overheads incurred would mean that there would be less profit and therefore fewer people impacted through their donations.

As for Indigo & Iris’ next steps towards developing its company, Duder says, “We will be launching four new products in the new year (January 2019) and will link these with different impact products. The plan is that your full face of makeup will be having a positive impact on the world.”

The pair plan for the new products to also give 50 percent of the profits to fund projects which address some of the biggest social and environmental issues in the Pacific.

“We’re first looking to support The Fred Hollows Foundation NZ. They have a long term approach to increasing access to healthcare in the South Pacific – their programmes are run by incredibly talented and dedicated Pacific Islander healthcare professionals,” Duder says.

“However, we are building relationships with other organisations who are having an awesome impact in the Pacific Islands – such as Women in Business, who are crafting our nourishing and beautiful organic coconut oil for Levitate. We are looking to support organisations working on climate change and coral restoration in the Pacific next.”

We are a beauty brand that gives a damn. Our mascara is life changing for our customer who uses it, but also life-changing to those who is because when someone has their sight restored, it is not just their vision they regain, but their independence and freedom.