Consumers interested in handmade goods already have online marketplace Etsy to help them find new treasures, and now Foodzie aims to bring similar capabilities to the food lovers of the world.
Based in Boulder, Colo., Foodzie is an online marketplace dedicated to helping consumers discover and buy food from small artisan producers and growers. The site acts as an aggregator that focuses on gourmet and organic health foods, allowing small producers to set up storefronts to display and sell their products. Though Foodzie hasn't yet officially launched its full marketplace, three producers are up and running in a "sneak preview" version of the site: Seth Ellis Chocolatier, Boulder Popcorn and Tetulia Teas, all out of Colorado. Nicely designed producer pages feature not just a selection of products for sale online, but also information on ingredients and allergens, tags, photos and background details on the people behind the store. Foodzie operates on a commission-based model whereby producers pay the company a fee of 20 percent for each transaction conducted through the site, allowing the producers to keep a full 80 percent of what they charge. (Traditional retailers, by contrast, often charge fees as high as 50 percent.)
Foodzie was founded as part of the 2008 TechStars incubator program, and is currently seeking USD 350,000 in seed funding. Not only is it another nice example of a curated marketplace—allowing consumers and small producers to find each other as never before—it's also one artisan food makers will want to get in on as soon as possible!
Website: www.foodzie.com
Contact: bizdev@foodzie.com
Spotted by: Susanna Haynie
When corporations donate to charity, it's often far-flung global causes that benefit. That's still entirely commendable, of course, but British grocer Waitrose recently launched a locally focused giving program that enlists customers' help in focusing on issues closer to home.
Kicked off last month, Waitrose's Community Matters program assigns each store GBP 1,000 each trading month to donate among three local organisations such as community groups, schools or local divisions of national charities. Customers nominate the organisations to benefit, and Waitrose's local democratic bodies make the final selection. Customers are then offered a token each time they shop that can be inserted in any of three Perspex tubes—one for each of the selected charitable groups. At the end of the month, the pile of tokens donated to each organisation is weighed and the beneficiaries receive a corresponding proportion of the cash. Following a trial in four Waitrose stores, the Community Matters program is scheduled to be in place at all branches in the next two weeks.
A similar program is in place across the Atlantic at upscale chain Whole Foods, where customers who bring their own bags are rewarded with "wooden nickels" that can be deposited in boxes assigned for donation to select local charities. And as interest continues to grow in all things local (see our sister site trendwatching.com's still made here briefing for more on that trend), consumers will increasingly appreciate having a direct hand in choosing who to help in their local community. One to emulate around the globe!
Website: www.waitrose.com
Contact: customer_service@waitrose.co.uk
Spotted by: Maria Dahl Jørgensen
All that's old is new again... Last week, we wrote about a bank that brought back the shoebox as a no-tech organizing system for their time-starved clients. Now, one of our spotters alerted us to the return of the milkman. Delivering organic milk to customers' doors in glass milk bottles, the Manhattan Milk Company is reviving old-fashioned dairy delivery.
For a USD 5 delivery charge, Manhattanites can get a weekly delivery of fresh milk. The company's driver loads up his truck on Wednesdays at 4 am and delivers to all of Manhattan, picking up empty bottles when he drops off the full ones. The milk is sourced from 51 Amish farms in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, about 160 miles southwest of New York City, and is also sold at the Batch store on 150B W. 10th Street.
While we hope MMC switches to electric or pedal-powered delivery vehicles for its many stops and starts in the city, the concept has an undeniable still made here charm that will appeal to consumers' sense of nostalgia. And what about combining dairy delivery with the community supported agriculture ventures that deliver organic fruit and veg from farms to households across the world? Convenience, charm, organic and local—combine that with business smarts, and it's hard to go wrong. (Related: High-end dessert trucks.)
Website: www.manhattanmilk.com
Contact: info@manhattanmilk.com
Spotted by: Esther Chang
Electronics retailer Best Buy has installed vending machines at 8 major US airports. It's a pilot program for the company's new Best Buy Express kiosks, which are large vending machines that carry cell phone and computer accessories, digital cameras, flash drives, MP3 players, headphones, gaming devices, travel adapters, and other items that are likely to appeal to customers on the go. Prices are similar to those in Best Buy stores.
Best Buy is targeting travellers in search of last-minute gifts, as well as those who need a replacement for a gadget or accessory they forgot to pack or lost along the way. The kiosks can currently be found at airports in Atlanta (ATL), Boston (BOS), Dallas (DFW), Houston (IAH), Las Vegas (LAS), Los Angeles (LAX), Minneapolis (MSP) and San Francisco (SFO). Four more will follow over the next few weeks.
It's an interesting move by Best Buy. The convenience factor is an obvious draw for travellers in a hurry, especially at airports with limited shopping options. But the branding on a vending machine by a well-known retailer is also a clear visual signal, instantly recognizable by consumers, which is a real advantage at busy and cluttered airports. One for other retailers to experiment with, too? How about a vending machine by Target, carrying their top 20 small items? Or one by Whole Foods, offering organic snacks?
Website: www.bestbuy.com
Spotted by: Bjarke Svendsen
Last summer, SANS—a small New York fashion label—launched an intriguingly simple shirt known as the Square Shirt. It made the rounds on fashion and design blogs, and subsequently sold out.
The label has moved on to new collections (including socks with carefully placed holes), and no longer sells readymade Square Shirts. Instead, they've released the pattern so that customers can make their own. The straightforward pattern means that anyone who can use a sewing machine can fabricate one. After buying and downloading the digital pattern, customers print, cut and sew their own. SANS, which is known for creating cool clothes from organic materials, suggests using a worn garment or remnant piece of fabric. The pattern is priced at USD 6, which includes an original SANS label sent by post to add that branded finishing touch to the shirt.
We like the notion of a brand taking one of its iconic pieces and instead of retiring it after the season is through, recycling it as a DIY project. Which appeals, of course, to the growing number of consumers who like to make things, and also gives anyone a chance to own something that might have previously been out of reach (SANS sold its Square Shirts at around USD 85, and in limited edition runs). While few products are as easy for consumers to reproduce as SANS' simple shirt, the notion of releasing a product's design is definitely worth exploring.
Website: www.sans.name
Contact: one@s-a-n-s.com
Eco-conscious consumers may be acutely aware of the environmental impacts of many of the products they use, but jewelry is not often among them. A new line of gold and silver jewelry offered by none other than Wal-Mart, however, is designed to deliver affordable, quality jewelry that can be traced back to the sustainable mine it came from. Between the clearing of vegetation, blasting of rocks and processing of ore, the mining of metals and gemstones can have very negative effects on the environment. Every single gold ring that's made, for example, generates approximately 20 tons of mining waste, Wal-Mart says, while processing gold ore uses "thousands of gallons of cyanide." With such facts in mind, Wal-Mart—the largest retailer of jewelry in the world, it claims—has established a jewelry sustainability group that aims to provide jewelry with less of an impact on communities and the environment.
With almost 30 products including necklaces, bracelets and earrings, the company's new Love, Earth jewelry brand is the result of a pilot project using a transparent supply chain to ensure that the 10-karat gold and silver it uses is from mines that meet Wal-Mart's environmental and social standards. (Wal-Mart's partners in the effort include Aurafin, Rio Tinto, Newmont Mining, Conservation International and Historic Futures Limited.) Each piece in the Love, Earth collection comes with a tracking number on an attached tag; consumers need only visit the collection's website and follow a series of instructions to learn about the exact mine their jewelry came from. In the future, Wal-Mart will also add diamond jewelry to the collection, it says.
"The Love, Earth pilot project is important because it shows for the first time that materials found in a piece of jewelry purchased from a retailer of Wal-Mart's size can be made traceable all the way from the mine to the store," explains the company's site. "Secondly, it is important because it ensures that at each step of the supply chain, from the mine to the manufacturer, companies are working toward leading industry standards for environmental and social performance."
We've already written about several examples of product story labels—most notably, on bananas, coffee, spinach and T-shirts—and this brings that trend into the world of jewelry. Nothing like transparency, sustainability and a status story to give a necklace a little extra shine! ;-)
Website: www.loveearthinfo.com
Contact: www.loveearthinfo.com/contact.php
Spotted by: Maria Dahl Jørgensen
Before consumers can design their own duvets, dresses or handbags—to name just a few—they must first find a company that will let them do it. That's not always easy, but now German site DaWanda has built a portal that brings together in one place a variety of design-your-own opportunities.
Berlin-based DaWanda is a marketplace for independent designers much like Etsy, which we've written about before. Independent creatives from all over the world can join DaWanda to sell their handmade wares in a marketplace categorized by fashion, accessories, bags, jewellery, baby and children, home, art and supplies. Now, on the site's Style Lab section, consumers can create products with their own individual style and have them made to order. Those interested in Queen B. lingerie's Funky Undies, for instance, can choose the style (hipster, bikini, thong) as well as the middle, side and back fabrics used and additions like lace, roses and bows. An Initial Screenprinted Poster offered by alyoisiusspyker, meanwhile, can be customized via the colour of the paper, stripes and other elements of the design, along with the font used. By offering customers the option of buying exactly what they want, Dawanda is drumming up new business for its members. It also limits the need for keeping a lot of product in stock. And if makers use their customers' designs as a very direct form of market research, it can also help them find out which styles they should add to their ready-made collections.
More than 30 products are currently listed in the Style Lab, with opportunities to customize in a variety of ways. Make no mistake: "Have it your way" will be a theme for years to come. One to incorporate in your own product line!
Website: www.dawanda.com
Contact: support@dawanda.com
Spotted by: Sabine Janssens
There may be thousands of fonts available online, but for truly dedicated members of Generation C—who live to create their own, fresh content—that's sometimes not enough. Luckily, help is now at hand in the form of a do-it-yourself font-building tool from digital type retailer FontShop.
FontStruct, which was opened to the public in April, is a free, online tool that lets users quickly and easily create fonts by arranging geometrical shapes in a grid pattern, much like tiles or bricks. Working one letter at a time, users add and remove shapes including blocks and dots to achieve a look they like. Once they're done building, FontStruct generates high-quality TrueType fonts, ready to use in any Mac or Windows application. Users can keep their "FontStructions" private, or they can share them with the FontStruct community for discussion, rating and downloading. They can also display them on other websites or blogs through the FontStruct widget. Several Creative Commons license options are available to allow varying degrees of sharing. The site is supported through links to San Francisco-based FontShop for sales and downloads of its professional, non-modular fonts.
There's no end in sight to the customer-made trend, and legions of prosumers out there are eager for fresh new ways to express their ideas. Give them the tools they need as a token of your free love, and they just may love you back!
Website: fontstruct.fontshop.com
Contact: fontstruct.fontshop.com/contact
Spotted by: Dana Pizzolato
