Peter Fisk

“For generations, Tchibo has been the professional home of change-makers, seekers of opportunity and innovation drivers – because it is our business to keep reinventing ourselves. That is how we continually meet the taste of the times with our coffees – and how we keep inspiring our customers week after week with clever new products that add that certain something to life.”

Founded in 1949 in Hamburg, Tchibo GmbH is now one of the most successful international consumer goods and retail companies. In Germany, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic Tchibo is the market leader in roasted coffee – and the Tchibo, Gala, Davidoff Café, Eduscho (Austria) and Jilhavanka (Czech Republic) brands exist as great retail and product brands. Online shops in Germany, Austria, Poland, Switzerland, Czech Republic and Turkey take the diversity of  offerings into our customers’ homes at the click of a mouse.

Here is the Tchibo timeline:

1949. Hamburg native Max Herz, a merchant by training, and his business partner Carl Tchiling Hiryan lay the foundations for today’s Tchibo Group. Their business idea of sending roasted coffee to customers by mail revolutionises the coffee market. Tchibo was very innovative even back then: customers could choose between having their coffee packed in tins or sewn into pouches made of handkerchiefs or tea towels. In particular, the Mocca Festtagsmischung (Festive Blend mocha) is a bestseller at 13.50 DM per lb.
The name Tchibo is derived from the words Tchiling and the German for ‘bean’ (‘Bohne’). At first, the word ‘Tchibo’ stands for a droll little manikin. Among other things, he spreads news about the roasted coffee on fliers and later in the customer magazine.

1952. Tchibo magazine is published monthly with the latest fashion tips, entertaining stories, recipes for tight budgets, clever sewing patterns, novels and beauty tips, as well as horoscopes. The magazine, unique in its field for many years, is enthusiastically snapped up.

1953. As well as having fresh coffee delivered by mail, the people of Hamburg can now buy it in the building next to the roasting plant onHoheluftchaussee – directly from the factory. “The coffee packets were practically flying off the shelves,” recalls a former Tchibo employee.

1954. The arrival of Tchibo Gold-Mocca! Gold-Mocca rapidly becomes Germany’s most popular coffee blend. The special feature of Gold-Mocca is that it is a blend of nine different coffees. Until then, mocha blends were usually made from a maximum of five. And it’s not just the coffee that keeps customers happy: a see-through container it is sold in is also very popular.

1955. The first Tchibo shop opens its doors at 10 Caffamacherreihe, Hamburg. It lets customers sample a cup of coffee before buying a whole packet. A cup of Gold Mocha with sugar and cream costs 20 pfennig. Each issue of the mail-order magazine contains a double-page spread with Little Tchibo touting the virtues of the “direct route”: at Tchibo, everything is handled under one roof – the whole coffee business from the coffee-growing countries to the customer.

1958. There are now 77 Tchibo shops in Germany, with another one opening almost every week. Max Herz travels throughout Germany with his wife, Ingeburg,looking for top locations. He renovates and refurbishes the shops and trains up new staff. By 1965, there are already well over 400 shops.
Tchibo’s Gold-Mocca brand is number one on the German coffee market.

1961. Wensley Ivan Frederick William Pithey makes his first television appearance for Tchibo. This marks the beginning of one of the longest-running relationships between a company and its advertising figurehead in the history of advertising. The coffee expert Mr. Pithey travels to coffee-growing countries, inspecting coffee plants, sailing with the coffee on ships and advising customers in the shops. Mr. Pithey is used until the early 1980s.

1962. From 1962 ‘Tchibo’ no longer refers to the manikin, but to the coffee and the firm. The company is now officially called Tchibo Frisch-Röst-Kaffee Max Herz GmbH.

1963. Tchibo opens ‘Frischedepots’ (Freshness Depots) in bakeries and confectioneries. By 1971 there are already close to 2,900 depots. A new era for coffee connoisseurs begins with the introduction of the first mild coffee variety.

1964. The first large-scale Tchibo roasting plant goes into operation in Hamburg.

1965. Max Herz dies. His sons Michael and Günther continue to run the family business.

1972. Tchibo Coffee Service is founded.

1973. Tchibo coffee expands its traditional range and starts to sell Non Food items without coffee in its shops. Early bestsellers are table sets and breakfast boards.

1975. Tchibo’s new Mobile bakeries supply rural areas with coffee and fresh pastries.

1977. The second large roasting plant goes into operation in Berlin.

1984. Tchibo introduces its espresso machine ‘picco’ to the market. More than 200,000 machines are sold in the first year. The ‘Feine Milde’ variety is Tchibo’s top-selling roasted coffee.

1985. The freshly-roasted coffee bean is launched as a catchy, memorable symbol of Tchibo’s high quality.

1986. Tchibo shops are selling ever more specialty coffees – and snacks too.

1987. The ‘Frischedepot’ system is extended to supermarket retail – Tchibo Coffee and Non Food are now available in many supermarkets. Fine coffees have their own personalities, just like good wine. From October 1987, Tchibo’s Privat Kaffee (Private Coffee) range offers the best coffees from selected producer countries. Each variety has its own distinctive flavour.

1990. Tchibo products are now available in the newly reunified East German states – in Tchibo shops, supermarkets and bakeries.

1991. The expansion into Central and Eastern Europe begins: Tchibo opens offices in Hungary (Tchibo Budapest) and Slovakia (Tchibo Slovensko). The first site in the Czech Republic is founded, in Prague. Tchibo Coffee Service enters the market in Britain.

1992. Launch of Tchibo Poland and market entry into Hungary.

1993. Founding of a Slovakian branch office in Bratislava – this site is later relocated to Prague.

1994. Tchibo Coffee Service GmbH becomes a separate company, supplying B2B clients and the hotel and catering trade. ‘A new experience every week’ – Tchibo surprises its customers every week with new Non Food goods on various themes. Tchibo opens a shop in St. Petersburg, Russia. A company-owned coffee roasting plant is constructed in Marki, Poland.

1995. Opening of a second site in Russia (Moscow).

1996. Tchibo direct GmbH is founded. Non Food goods and Tchibo coffee can now be ordered by catalogue.

1997. Tchibo Holding AG acquires the Eduscho group of companies. Tchibo enters the travel business. In 2007, more than 225,000 customers book their travel through Tchibo. Tchibo also uses the Internet as a new distribution channel for the first time – all products can now be ordered online.

1998. Eduscho coffee sales begin in Slovakia.

1999. In Poland, ‘Gala’ is introduced as a second brand.

2000. The first Tchibo shop in Greater London is opened. Tchibo increases its business involvement in Eastern Europe by entering the market in Romania. Mail-order and e-commerce are introduced in Austria.

2001. For the first time, Tchibo offers a complete set of golf clubs as well as the ‘play golf’ card, giving those interested in the sport an inexpensive way to start playing. Tchibo launches its direct-to-customer business in the German-speaking Swiss market.

2002. Tchibo begins offering financial services: eight different insurances are offered in collaboration with the insurance experts AXA – in shops and online. British customers are now able to buy Tchibo products online. Tchibo opens its first Tchibo golf course at Fleesensee Golf & Country Club. The company now offers golf lessons in cooperation with the club. At Christmas, Tchibo becomes Germany’s largest supplier of jewellery products for the first time. Tchibo opens a shop in Kiev, Ukraine. The first Tchibo shops open in Switzerland: in Lucerne, Winterthur and Basel.

2003. Tchibo is Germany’s biggest coffee shop operator. Tchibo offers exclusive tickets at a uniquely low price to see star tenor Luciano Pavarotti, giving the wider public a chance at ‘A Night to Remember’. Tchibo opens Europe’s biggest high-bay warehouse in Bremen. Tchibo offers cars for sale for the first time; in cooperation with FIAT Automobil AG, the Fiat Stilo ‘TCM Edition’ goes on the market at €14,990. From September 2003, customers can also order flowers via www.tchibo.de. They are delivered in cooperation with Blume 2000.

2004. Tchibo mobil is founded, revolutionising the mobile phone market. The joint venture between Tchibo and O2 Germany is the first provider to offer an affordable mobile flat rate.

2005. Cafissimo launches. It is the firstsingle-serving system in Germanycapable of preparing three different coffee specialties in just one machine.

2006. Tchibo launches a new marketing platform: innovative services. Whether it is correspondence courses, concert tickets or crafts, Tchibo offers regular surprises for customers, delivering compelling value-for-money at exceedingly fair and transparent terms and conditions. Since 2008, these services have been offered under the ‘Tchibo Plus’ brand. In Turkey, the first Tchibo shop opens in Istanbul Cehavir, Europe’s biggest shopping mall.

2008. The ‘A new experience every week’ slogan is complemented witha new campaign – ‘Only at Tchibo!’ – which is now used in advertising and promotions across all Tchibo divisions.

2009. Launch of the Turkish online shop. Tchibo celebrates its 60^thanniversary

2011. Tchibo launches into the world of social media with various channels of its own – a Facebook fan page, a Twitter account, a Xing company page, a Google Plus page, a YouTube channel, and a corporate blog that will go on to win many awards in the following years.

2012. Award-winning efforts: “Do good and talk about it” urged the German Business Ethics Network (DNWE) at the presentation of its Business Ethics Award. Tchibo is honoured for its achievements on the path towards becoming 100% sustainability in all areas of our business.

2013. Tchibo wins the German government’s inaugural CSR Award, a prize that serves as both confirmation and obligation. We are honoured for our exemplary business activities, which are comprehensively geared towards sustainability and social responsibility

2013. Download and buy – German customers love having convenient smartphone access to our world of shopping using the Tchibo app or the mobile-optimised web shop. Within days, Tchibo tops the list of the country’s most popular apps. At times, the number of downloads surged so steeply that on one day the app was actually second in the Apple Store download charts.

2013. Launch of cross-channel services: “Tchibo makes it easy!” Order, pick up, exchange – by linking its sales channels and the online and offline shopping worlds, Tchibo provides its customers with a seamless shopping and service experience. All Tchibo shops are equipped with iPads for ordering online, on-site.

2014. Leap to world leadership: Tchibo is the third-largest retailer of organic cotton worldwide – another step on the way to Tchibo becoming a 100% sustainable business. The ranking was published by the non-profit organisation Textile Exchange in its Organic Cotton Market Report.

2014. Launch of the “Tchibo Lieblingsstücke” (Tchibo Favourites) range – for the first time, Tchibo bestsellers including linens, crockery, socks, and many other items are permanently available in the online shop and can be ordered throughout the year by our customers.

2015. Tchibo FOR BLACK ‘N WHITE – Tchibo launches its first major coffee filter innovation in a decade. Thanks to a special slow-roasting process, the new FOR BLACK ‘N WHITE coffee has a distinctive full-bodied flavour– whether taken black or with milk.

2015. Tchibo auctions: whether for a wellness holiday, musictickets, a digital radio or bicycle – customers can bid ‘their’ price. The best price wins!

2016. Qbo, a world premiere: individual, connected, sustainable. The new capsule system features barista quality through the patented PressBrew process, innovative milk technology, and smartphone app controls.

2016. A screw cap for coffee packages! Customers now have an ideal way of sealing the package to preserve the freshness of the beans – the cap protects the coffee better than conventional methods such as rubber bands, tape and the like.

From their earliest days of providing books and building libraries in Nepal, Room to Read has continued to expand their activities based on the needs of local communities. Through their library program and early cross-national evaluation, they identified that children were not in the habit of reading for pleasure and were not able to read at grade level. Therefore, in 2008, they piloted their reading and writing instruction program activities in India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. This led to pilots in other countries and eventually a much larger-scale intervention that was incorporated across Room to Read programs. After noticing that girls were dropping out before transitioning to secondary school, Room to Read established its girls’ education program to help girls receive individual material and academic support; increase family, community, and school support for girls to stay in school; and help girls develop key life skills and negotiate important life decisions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQnR_L_YUlc

Room to Read’s efforts are focused into two main areas: building literacy and the habit of reading among primary school children, and empowering girls to complete secondary school and succeed beyond that. One of the elements that makes this organization unique, however, is the way it goes about its global outreach. Following a model similar to Amnesty International, Room to Read has become one of the most prominent international education programs with a university following; the organization boasts 50 chapters in 16 countries, with over 11,000 volunteers. Their documentary, Girl Rising, has become well known throughout the United States.

Along with creating a global movement, the more concrete aspects of the Room to Read model include: programs to support girls both financially and emotionally, both in school and after graduation; building new schools and providing training or supplementary materials to teachers; establishing and stocking libraries;and publishing books in the local language. Room to Read was ranked third in educational NGOs by The Global Journal for 2013, and received a four-star rating from Charity Navigator. Among its other accomplishments, the organization has founded over 15,000 libraries and impacted the lives of 7.8 million children.

Dai Wei founded Ofo with his fellow Peking University cycling club members in 2014. At the time they only had 400 yuan ($60) in the bank. Three years later they had created a business worth $2 billion, and expect to be profitable by 2018.

Ofo’s business model has attracted big-name investors like Alibaba and Chinese car-sharing giant Didi Chuxing. It rides a global bike-sharing boom seen across the world in recent years. In China alone, there are at least six major bike-sharing companies. Another Chinese bike-sharing start-up Mobike, which launched in 2015, is also valued at more than $1 billion with investors like Tencent.

But the journey has not been an easy one. Dai Wei’s family and friends were initially sceptical of his vision. His teachers, classmates, and even his parents, didn’t believe he could survive long. “They told me, ‘if you put the bikes on the streets, all the bikes will be stolen in three days. So you won’t be able to survive for three days.”

“Every time I came home, my parents and I would have a long conversation about whether I should get an internship in some big company, or apply for a full-time job or start a business. We talked about it until the end of last year,” he said.

Ofo as a global bike-sharing platform “like Android” 

The streets of many big Chinese cities like Beijing are clogged with hundreds and thousands of brightly-coloured bikes, which are mostly provided by the various bike-sharing apps trying to increase their market share.

However, bike-sharing companies are facing challenges,  including the sheer number of bikes on the streets as a public nuisance. In March, thousands of illegally parked bicycles were impounded in Shanghai. Similarly, in Singapore, authorities have also impounded more than 100 errantly parked bikes from bike-sharing companies.

Despite tightened regulations, the cut-throat race to win over users to the app is still a numbers game – and Dai Wei has devised a plan to win. He sees Ofo’s future as a platform for other bike-sharing companies to manage their business.

An example would be in Hangzhou, where Ofo is working with a local bike-sharing company called Qibei. In the city, people can use Ofo’s app to scan and unlock Qibei’s bikes. “Ofo is going to be like Android,” Dai Wei predicted.

“We will provide the standard API to different local bike sharing companies. We have the management system ability because we manage six million bikes now, and no other companies can manage that many bikes and they don’t have experience.”

The Ofo platform is easy to use. After downloading the mobile phone app, users may scan the QR code or enter the plate number displayed on each bike to receive a passcode and unlock it. Our bike-sharing system requires no docking stations, providing significant flexibility for users to find and return bikes anywhere, anytime.  Once they reach their destination, the user may park the bike anywhere that is legitimate, convenient, and easy for the next user to access.

Ofo’s mission is to solve the “last mile” problem of urban transportation, helping commuters and travelers get to exactly where they need to go by making bikes accessible to everyone.

But Ofo does more than help commuters and travelers access bikes for getting around their cities. As a partner of the UN Development Programme, they are focused on achieving Global Sustainability Goals and promoting green and healthy living, and have also launched a partnership with Rihanna’s Clara Lionel Foundation to provide bikes and scholarships for schoolgirls in Malawi.

Dai Wei is dreaming big, and has a vision of “100 million yellow bikes by 2030.”

In the past year, most of the financial startups that set out to upend the highly regulated realm of traditional banking have run into roadblocks. Many would-be disrupters are now working for or with traditional banks, as vendors, rather than competing with them. One standout exception is SoFi, the working name for six-year-old alternative lender Social Finance and the startup that currently has the best prospects for transforming itself into a full-service consumer finance company.

“Doing anything disruptive in financial services is very difficult. It requires a lot of capital, patience, and ability to navigate the regulatory requirements,” acknowledges CEO Mike Cagney, a former Wells Fargo trader who co-founded SoFi with three Stanford Business School friends.

His company started life hosting parties for recent graduates of prestigious universities (hence “Social”)–and offering to help them repay their student loans at lower rates (“Finance”). Student loan refinancing remains a big business for the company, which claims 300,000 customers and $20 billion in loans extended; but SoFi also has expanded gradually into other types of financial products, including personal loans, mortgages, wealth-management products, and insurance. 

Now Cagney is trying to figure out how to get regulators’ blessing for SoFi to provide traditional accounts. That’s the holy grail for any startup to fully replace a bank, it has to provide a place for its customers to deposit their paychecks. But the government has been very reluctant to grant such depository charters to nonbanks in recent years.

Anyone who wants to bring about change has to be ready to break the rules. But in sectors such as health and social care, that can be really difficult. The art of rocking the boat while staying in it is something it seems no-one is ready to help you learn.

That’s where the School for Change Agents comes in. Brought to you by NHS England Horizons team, the School is entirely online, free, backed by the world’s largest health organisation: the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), and is a platform for change agents to learn together, using powerful, guided learning.

The NHS was launched in 1948. It was born out of a long-held ideal that good healthcare should be available to all, regardless of wealth – one of the NHS’s core principles. With the exception of some charges, such as prescriptions, optical services and dental services, the NHS in England remains free at the point of use for all UK residents. This currently stands at more than 64.6 million people in the UK and 54.3 million people in England alone.

The School for Change Agents is a free five week virtual learning programme for change activists in health, social care, and related sectors.

• Five modules
• Absolutely free
• Handbook and study guides
• Guided Social Learning
• Meet fellow change agents from all over the world

Download the 2017 Programme Guide.

If you’ve been frustrated by having to navigate stifling hierarchies to get the changes you know are needed, or criticised for being a dissenter, disruptive or even divisive, then the School is for you. It’s more than just a school — it’s a platform for learning, and a community of people like you.

Anthony Fletcher was at work one day in 2009 when he tried some nuts, seeds and dried fruit that had been delivered in the post by a new company called Graze. Graze had been set up a year earlier by seven friends (including Graham Bosher, founder of LoveFilm) as an internet-based business that posted healthy snacks in cardboard boxes small enough to fit through people’s letter boxes.

Then aged 27 and working for a drinks company, Anthony says he was “blown away by the idea of it”. So much so that he immediately found out where Graze was based, drove across London to knock on its door and asked for a job. The team at Graze were impressed enough by Anthony’s get-up-and-go and enthusiasm to give him the job of head of marketing.

Fast forward to today and Anthony is CEO of the business that now enjoys annual sales of more than £70m and that under his leadership has successfully expanded from the UK to the US. With a masters degree in chemistry from Oxford University, and a year spent doing pharmaceutical research at Princeton University in the US, Anthony might not immediately seem a perfect fit for leading a snack food business.

However, while Graze’s food is all natural, the company is renowned for its very scientific and technological approach to how it operates.

Now selling more than 400 different snacks, ranging from flapjacks to beef jerky, and dried beetroot to carrot crisps, it constantly analyses the 15,000 customer ratings it says it receives every hour to tweak and develop new products and product combinations. This has led to the creation of such best sellers as “Veggie Protein Power”, a combination of soybeans and chickpeas. Meanwhile unpopular products such as fennel and caraway seeds can be quickly dropped.

Not that Anthony would claim it was always plain sailing, especially in Graze’s early years. “Lots of founders and CEOs tell beautiful stories about having the right vision from the start, but it wasn’t the case at Graze,” he says. “We had to iterate, we tried and we failed – we had to pivot a great deal. People were excited, but not about the product.”

One thing that Graze initially got wrong was to try to sell slices of fresh fruit, but Anthony says it had to be axed from the range because even though they “tried to ship it as fast as possible” it wasn’t arriving with the customer in good enough condition.

With its own production facility, Anthony says the business can put new products on sale within 24 hours. He says: “We have a vast amount of data that we can use to understand the product and the customer. “It lets you be reckless and try different ideas. That permeates the business.” It was after he had been with the business for three years that Anthony became chief executive, when he led a management buyout in 2012.

The move, which was backed by US private equity group Carlyle taking a majority stake in the business, saw three of the seven co-founders end their day-to-day involvement in the business but remain as shareholders.

After selling direct to customers via a subscription service for its first six years, Anthony overhauled its business mode in 2014. While subscriptions would continue, customers could also start to make one-off purchases. An even bigger move that year was a successful leap into wholesale, with Graze products becoming available at UK retailers like Sainsbury’s, Boots, WH Smith and Tesco.

Anthony admits that the timing of the move into the bricks-and-mortar world was fortuitous, as supermarkets and other retailers were being put under pressure to remove confectionary products from the “impulse purchase” racks near the tills. “We were very lucky, there was some serendipity involved,” he says.  “The UK government was putting a big drive to remove sugar products from the till, and retailers faced a dilemma of knowing customers were tempted into purchases, but they used to make so much money off it.”

The next big move at Graze was its expansion into the US in 2015. Anthony says Graze knew it had to move fast to get to the market before rivals, so rather than try its luck in one state, it decided to launch in all 50 at the same time. The hope was that its focus on data and its quick response to customer feedback meant it would be able to produce a range of snack products that appealed to US tastes, even if at first some items were not successful.

Thankfully for Graze this approached worked, and while it initially started selling its standard UK range in the US, Anthony says it quickly dropped items that US customers “hated”, such as mango chutney, the UK curry condiment staple. More US-specific products were then quickly introduced, such as “Creamy Range Kern Pops”, which is popcorn with a “creamy, zesty kick”, and chocolate pecan pie.

Within three months of its US launch, Anthony says Graze had gained 100,000 customers – a number that has continued to grow.

Toby Pickard, senior retail analyst at grocery research firm IGD, says there are three main reasons why Graze has become one of the UK’s leading snack brands. “Convenience, its ability to personalise healthy snack deliveries to suit customers’ personal preferences, as well as its ability to tailor new products for local markets,” he says.

On a day-to-day basis Anthony admits he finds it hard to balance being a boss of a company with 500 employees, with being a parent. “It’s a challenge,” says the father-of-two. “One of the most challenging aspects is international travel. It’s demanding, I don’t think there are any easy answers, you just have to manage.” Part of that process is changing his management skills, and taking a step back. He says: “In the early days I was really involved in the decisions, but as the business has grown, I have become focused on not solving all the problems, but still being curious about the organisation and making it better.”

Fatherly is a parenting resource for men who understand that embracing what they’ve become doesn’t mean giving up who they are. Men who want to be great fathers without turning into cliches. Men who spent their formative years laughing at blogs about dads in short shorts, but who will never, ever wear short shorts themselves.

Fatherly’s mission is twofold: first, we aim to be the most robust source of practical parenting advice on the Internet. With a comprehensive suite of content broken down by your child’s exact age, they’ll provide you info on everything from preparing the home for a baby’s arrival, to transitioning them to solid food, to figuring out what to do with this tiny human being once he or she starts walking, talking, and demanding to be shown a good time.

They don’t stop there. To expand your mind and possibly turn you into a super-dad in the process, they publish next-level stories that take approaches as unconventional as the generation they speak to. You’ll find hide-and-go-seek tips from Navy SEALs, travel hacks from professional explorers, even insider school advice from the former Secretary of Education. And yes, of course, they’ll tell you about the best new toys, so you can spend less time wandering the big box store, and more time getting to know the new most important person in your life.

Here’s more about Fatherly by JWT:

Men say their clothing and fitness becomes more important when they become a dad.

Although the parenting landscape is heavy on female-friendly content, millennials are changing the face of the modern-day family. In fact, a recent Pew Research study shows that fathers have nearly tripled the amount of time spent on housework and childcare since the 1960s. Simon Isaacs, co-founder and chief content officer of Fatherly, a new site launched in 2015 to address millennial fathers, sat down with JWT Intelligence to discuss the site.

How did Fatherly start?

When my wife and I were exploring having kids, we signed up for all the traditional parenting sites: What To Expect, the Bump. None of it was really connecting to me. I’ve built and created a lot of marketing agencies in that space, and stuff over at Coca-Cola. There was this idea that women controlled 80% of all purchasing decisions. It wasn’t reflective of what I was seeing, nor could I actually pinpoint where this information was coming from.

In parenting, that became even more pronounced. Everything was geared toward “mommies,” and brands had “mommy blogger” blinders on, and it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. And yet it wasn’t true. At the same time, a recent report had just come out where 52% of men claimed they were the primary grocery shopper. If you look downstream, the majority of master’s and PhD degree students were women.

The way we were speaking to parents was really off. And I realized what a huge opportunity that would be from a marketing and business perspective, but also from an impact perspective. Part of why we exist is that if you can create the content tools and community at scale, you can shift and shape culture. You can get men engaged even more than they already are, and excited about fatherhood. And if you can do that, you can address gender equity at home and at work.

Every new birth today is to a millennial. This is a generation of people who think very differently about gender norms. It’s a generation of people who have equal interest in parenting, as well as in work. Everywhere I looked, I saw men primarily being the one in the grocery aisle, men walking around the park with their Baby Bjorns. Between that and what I was seeing from media and from brands, there’s something big.

How has the reception been since Fatherly launched?

It is beyond my wildest dreams. We had the fastest rise of profitability of any digital media company ever. Last year I had 1.9 billion video views on our Facebook videos alone. We’re now the largest parenting site on social media, and we have about 10 times the engagement of every other parenting site, as well as Esquire and GQ.

We’re doing some stuff right. Parenting media, in its digital form, was built around gen X. We’re able to also attract millennial parents. There’s also a truism that women read men’s publications, but it doesn’t go the other way around. So if you want dual audiences, men aren’t going to the Bump. But women are coming to us, though we’re very focused on fathers.

How does “fatherhood” square with the traditional stereotypes of millennials? Do you still find the generational stereotypes useful?

The millennial stereotype is a little bit of a trap, to some extent. With that said, there’s a lot of examples where millennial parents and millennials are very consistent. For example, a focus on experiences rather than things. We’re seeing that in the way people parent. We’re seeing that in their interest in travel and destinations and experiences with their kids.

Of course, this is digitally native parenting. This is parenting through Alexa and Facebook. Another area where you see distinction and change is in the workplace. Once you are a parent, you are going to be changing jobs less. You’re not throwing caution to the winds. But this generation of parents is certainly freelancing. They are part of the gig economy more than their parents were. But they also have a core understanding of the realities of raising children, because they are so invested in their kids.

What about outside the workplace? It’s interesting that you also have pop culture and regular news, alongside parenting content.

Our guys still want to maintain their identity, of being a cool guy. In fact, men say their appearance and their clothing and fitness becomes more important when they become a dad. They see themselves with their family, and they want to present them and their family in the best possible way.

They’re still watching great shows. They’re still interested in going to cool places. Rather than going to that family-friendly resort, they want to go to the cool place, and they want to bring their kids with them. They want to go to the beer garden, but they want that beer garden to have a kid’s area with a playset in it. They want cool coffee, and they want that coffee shop to have a book corner for their kids to hang out in. They’re not leaving their kid home with a nanny to go to the bar. That’s a big difference.

What is the average Fatherly reader?

It is 100% all over the map. It is America, in many respects. It is as conservative as it is liberal. They are mechanic and vets, and they are executives and stay-at-home dads and artists. What’s cool about parenting is that in a world that has become more divided, there is this uniting of “dadliness.” And we’ve built a really strong community around that.

Are you seeing shifts in how brands speak to fathers?

Yes, massively. One area is brands that have traditionally engaged moms that realize they missed the mark. Those could be stroller companies, personal care companies, cleaning products, you name it. Today, 80% of millennial dads say that they have a primary or equal share in grocery shopping. So these brands need to start to really reach out to them and engage them. They are coming to us to begin to right their ships.

On the other hand, you have brands that have traditionally engaged men: GMC, Spotify. Now that men are putting families at a higher point in their value set, they’re coming to us to help shape their narrative around fatherhood and family. The Esquire, GQ, ESPN world of connecting with them doesn’t resonate as much anymore. And when they did work with those guys, they mostly captured a male audience.

If you look at the Super Bowl last year, it’s all dad-vertising. What used to be the Father’s Day ad is now kind of everywhere. We’re seeing a ton of engagement from finance, for example. Not only are dads still making a lot of the primary financial services decisions, but this is the most important time to engage them. They’re going through this massive life stage. The millennial generation is going from generation rent to generation buy. Sorry Zipcar, but we actually do need a car. And while it sounds nice to have a tiny home, we realize that we need a bigger one. There are other realities.

Often, there’s a massive uproar when brands depict dads as idiots. These guys don’t want to be seen as idiots, as the doofus dad. Yes, everybody should know that by now, but not always. Earlier this year, Yoplait had an ad that was probably well intentioned, but the ad said, “mom’s the boss.” There was a big backlash against that.

On the other hand, they don’t want to be seen as superheroes. They really just want to be seen as parents. And that’s it. Where we’re going with a lot of the brand communications is that it’s not your special dad spot. It’s just fully integrated into how you communicate.

What’s coming up next for Fatherly?

We are going to put a ton of emphasis on YouTube. Men search more for parenting content on YouTube. We’re going after some new platforms this year. We have a big event called the Father of the Year awards, which is our version of the Glamour “Women Of the Year” for dads. That’ll happen in October.

Anything that we didn’t talk about?

Previously, with gen X, everybody was an “expert.” All these content platforms were built around a chat room, where every mom and dad could be the expert. That’s no longer interesting for parents. We’re seeing a big rise in backlash against parental judgement. This generation just wants the damn answer, and they want it from an expert. They want it from somebody who’s the most credentialed. A lot of our approach is to deliver that

The other thing I think we’re going to see is a real focus on boys. The world has put a lot of focus on girls’ empowerment, and rightly so. But we tend to see boys as “easy.” Shrug it off, man up, all these things. We don’t recognize the complexity. there’s a lot of work to do there. I think we’re going to start seeing a lot of work around emotional intelligence and boyhood, overall.

Aspiration is a financial services with a conscience.

Unlike traditional investment firms, which charge a percentage of the assets invested, the company plans to go in another direction: Pay whatever you think is fair.

“Our fee structure is very revolutionary,” explains CEO and founder Andrei Cherny. “It empowers customers to make that decision and gives them the ability to decide whether or not we’re doing a good job for them, and whether or not our values are aligned.”

He points out that in most investment firms, the people managing your money get paid the same amount whether or not they do a good job, and that hinging the company’s livelihood on pleasing customers provides an incentive to serve them well.

Cherny, who has a long history in financial regulation, ranging from a position as a financial fraud prosecutor to working with Senator Elizabeth Warren fighting for the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, built his investment firm for middle-class investors, who he says are under-served in the current market.

“We’re bringing forth a wide range of investment products and investments geared toward the needs of the middle-class investor,” he explains. “Look at the customer base of hedge funds and private equity shops. They serve a clientele that’s mostly multimillionaires and large institutions. Everyone else is buying stocks and mutual funds, doing it on their own.”

Aspiration is so committed to serving the middle-class investor that it has imposed not only the usual minimum investment requirements on its clients (in this case, an unusually low $500), but also a maximum investment: $100,000 per customer, per fund.

Cherny says the cap is to keep the company focused on the under-served investor. “If you have a fund where some people pay $500 and a handful put in $10 million, you’re almost naturally focused more on that type of customer.” With the investment cap, Aspiration aims to limit that sort of bias.

Aspiration — whose motto is “Do Well. Do Good.” — is also focused on giving back to the community. Through its “Dimes Worth Of Difference” campaign, it donates 10 cents of every dollar of revenue to provide micro-loans to struggling Americans.

Additionally, users are encouraged to give the amount of their choosing to the charity of their choice on the website’s dashboard. “It’s the TOMS and Warby Parker approach to charitable giving,” explains Cherny, “but instead of shoe for shoe, it’s economic opportunity for economic opportunity.”

Cherny isn’t worried that his clients will refuse to pay. “A lot of behavioral psychology over the past 10 or so years shows that people have a strong sense of moral obligation and reciprocity,” he explains. “That’s as powerful or more powerful than locking people into a legal contract. If we’re not delivering the products we said we would or living up to the values we set up for ourselves, they have the ability to not pay us.”

Aspiration is not the only company to use a pay-what-you-want strategy, but it’s the first financial company we’ve come across. Some retailers have had success with the model — a North Carolina diner initially tripled its revenues when it asked customers to pay what God wants — but there’s little evidence it’s sustainable or that users trying to make the most of their money would choose to fork over fees.

However, Cherny isn’t alone in his confidence. The company, which has spent a little over a year getting ready for launch, has raised over $4.5 million in funding and counts eBay founding president Jeff Skoll as a member of its board of advisors. Aspiration’s “radical approach to its customers’ fees relies on a trust-based model, consistent in spirit with an approach that I saw drive eBay’s early success,” Skoll said in a press release. “It’s a bold bet and one that I believe will shake up a financial industry that could use some positive disruption.”

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Aspiration also wants to help its customer keep track of the impact of their purchases.

The company recently equipped its customers with a new tool, Aspiration Impact Measurement, that shows them how sustainable their purchases are. The firm has about 100,000 checking-account customers.

Let’s say, for instance, an Aspiration checking-account user buys a coffee from Starbucks. When that person checks their account balance they’ll see that they spent $X for their grande frappe whatever. But they will also see a score that gauges Starbuck’s sustainability on a scale of 1 to 100.

In this case, Starbucks has an AIM score of 78, which is the highest of any eatery. The point of the tool is to inform users about a firm’s sustainability so that they can make informed choices about spending. Users can also view their personal AIM score, which essentially aggregates all of the purchases a person makes into one score. It is updated on a daily basis.

“Today, more than ever before, Americans are looking to put their values into action and their AIM score empowers them to demand that corporations act responsibly toward the environment and their employees,” said Aspiration cofounder and CEO Andrei Cherny. “Americans spend $36 billion a day as consumers, making decisions based on cost, convenience and quality. Now, for the first time, they’ll have an easy way to make spending decisions based on conscience, as well.”

A firm’s Aspiration Impact Measurement (AIM) score is based on two different measurements: a people score and a planet score. The former score takes into consideration data such as the ratio of employee to CEO pay, employee benefits, equality of benefits, and the percentage of woman who are managers in the company. The planet score measures things such as a firm’s green house gas emissions and carbon footprint.

AIM scores are calculated using Aspiration’s proprietary algorithm that examines more than 75,000 data points. According to Cherny, the numbers behind the AIM scores are typically used by money mangers to inform their investment decisions.

“These are the kind of data providers that are working for investment firms, and hedge funds,” Cherny told Business Insider.”We repurpose this investor data for consumer purposes. It goes into an algorithm which then figures out those scores.”

The service is only available for Aspiration customers, who can access their AIM scores for free within their Aspiration mobile app.

The brothers Shoichi and Shigeru Yamanaka established an optical glass production plant in the city of Hoya near Tokyo in 1941. Now, with over 150 offices and subsidiaries worldwide, Hoya currently employs a multinational workforce of over 34,000 people.

Vision is at the heart of the Hoya corporation.

We live in a highly visual world where sight is the most important gift of life. Giving you new views and perspectives everyday. Hoya Vision Care manufactures spectacle lenses and optical products. Their motto ‘Eye for detail’ is reflected in top-quality lenses, advanced lens designs, lens treatments and excellent service to wearers and opticians alike.  As Hoya Vision Care says “we embrace your sight, helps to open your eyes and discover the beauty of the world and see more of life.”

Hoya’s Yuniku 3D tailored eyewear is designed entirely around your face and your vision. Regular spectacles can be customised only to a certain degree. The frame and fitting are a given, and the lenses have to be adjusted to suit them. Yuniku, by contrast, uses a revolutionary vision-centric approach. It begins by assessing your visual needs and facial features. Advanced software calculates the ideal position of the lenses in relation to our eyes, and then 3D prints the frame based on those unique parameters. For the first time, you can enjoy the ultimate in optical precision, without compromising on style or fit.

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