Words: Ian Lamont / Rosa Abbott / Niamh McNeela
This January we’re casting our glare over the whole year, rather than just the next couple of weeks and sniffing out a few projects that we expect to see come to fruition during the course of 2014. They’re in various fields and in various stages of realization, but at the helm of each are exciting, talented Irish folks putting their ambition to the test with big plans for the year ahead.
OPSH
In 2013 there was Prowlster. In 2014 there will be OPSH. Three Irish sisters – Jennie, Grace and Sarah – are the brains behind these two online retail ventures, each leaving a distinct and dashing imprint on the malleable clay of online shopping. While Prowlster offered a shoppable magazine, combining products with editorial, OPSH will a curated experience akin to a stroll down a personalised Grafton Street. “The primary goal is create a new shopping behaviour and revolutionise how people shop online”, Jennie tells us. “We aim to give women back their time. Shop on OPSH and have more time to get back to the important things in life … brunching, partying, roller-blading, taking over the world, etc.”
Building upon a love of fashion that goes way back to childhood, (“coming from a family of six girls may have something to do with it”), the sisters honed their business skills by taking part in the Irish Times FUSION Programme last year, followed by the NDRC Launchpad Programme. Prowlster launched with a bang in early 2013, but with hands busied by OPSH, they decided to sell the start-up on to creative agency Sweatshop in September. Alongside this rigorous business training, there’s also years of blogging and media experience to build upon. Jennie studied Fashion and Lifestyle Journalism at London College of Fashion but found the industry “closed off” until blogging exploded. Then for four years, the McGinn siblings ran What Will I Wear Today, a tongue-in-cheek style blog celebrated for its informal and irreverent approach: “Some say there’s more to life than fashion?” read the header banner, “What the fock are they talking about?”
No wonder then that one of the sisters’ strong points is “the chats”. As we await OPSH’s launch, the venture has already hosted two fashion discussions: one offline, as part of Dublin Web Summit, on the future of online fashion retail, and the other online, on New York Fashion Week’s decision to blacklist bloggers in 2014. Their #bigfashchat tag rapidly started trending. Asked whether this knack for stimulating discussion will be incorporated into OPSH, Jennie is pragmatic. “The aim is to embrace the real-life elements of shopping and power them with technology,” she explains. “People like to go shopping in pairs, they like advice, inspiration, tips – we will eventually accommodate all of these real-life behaviours on OPSH, but we absolutely want to avoid being social for the sake of social. We’re looking at tools for users to seek advice from friends, style-edits that you can make personal or private and various other ways to make it both personal and meaningfully social.”
Sound like a shopping experience you could do with? OPSH is looking for sign-ups for its beta launch at the end of this month, and there are competitions, giveaways and goodies on offer as incentives, as well as a tantalising first peek of this soon-to-be global Irish start-up. To sign up, head to opsh.com.
Blanco Niño
Philip Martin wants to build Europe’s first corn tortilla factory. To do this, he’s spent two years researching not only these tortillas, but the entire history of corn as the bedrock of Mexican food culture. Martin owns the Little Ass burrito bar on Dawson Street, and wanted to add tacos to the menu but, as he says unequivocally, “I wasn’t going to serve shit, so I decided to make them for myself.” This meant travelling to Mexico to visit milpas (farms), molions (mills) and tortillerias (tortilla factories), learning about tortillas from field to plate – and then coming home to meet with Irish farmers and “figure out what works for them.”
Having grown up on an organic farm, Martin’s vision for bringing corn tortillas to Ireland is firmly rooted (pun intended) in Irish agriculture. The corn will be grown using sustainable practices, without the use of pesticides, and the project aims to create 100 much-needed employment opportunities for the Irish agricultural sector within the first five years. Fields and farmers left fallow following the loss of our sugar-beet industry will now be employed to grow the high-quality corn needed to make his tortillas. “The farmers will be earning more per acre than they’re getting at the moment.”
Once up and running, Blanco Niño tortillas will be available in both wholesale and retail sectors. There are also plans for a direct-to-your-door delivery service, operating on a subscription basis; furthermore, each packet will include a “Tacos of Mexico” recipe leaflet, a helpful guide to turning your tortillas into the perfect tacos they were destined to become.
Blanco Niño is fresh from blowing away the Best Taco in Dublin competition, a feature of the Taste of Mexico Festival where the top two places were won by 777 and Little Ass: both entered using Blanco Niño tortillas. The tortillas went down a hit, and Martin has since been inundated with interest. Martin’s Kickstarter campaign will launch on February 1st, and Blanco Niño is raring to go. “All we need now is the equipment, and that’s what the Kickstarter is for. It’s gonna be intense; we’re looking for at least 10,000 people to get involved.” We reckon Europe’s first corn tortilla factory, based on Irish corn grown by Irish farmers, is well worth the investment.
As we wrap things up, we ask why the project was christened Blanco Niño. “Doesn’t that mean, like, white child?” He laughs. “It does; it’s kind of a slang term… I’m not the most Mexican-looking individual, and here I am trying to set up a corn tortilla factory. It’s taking the piss out of myself, rather than trying to pretend that I’m Mexican – I mean, the brand isn’t Mexican. If anything, it’s sort of funky, cool Irish. I’m steering clear of the stereotypical sombreros, and I’m steering clear of the harp.” Martin may have begun this venture with a lack of familiarity with tortilla-making but, after all his hard work, we’re pretty sure this Blanco Niño is onto something. Like Blanco Niño on facebook.
Popical Island HQ
Popical Island is a curious project, they can seem ramshackle and are entirely unprepossessing, but their ambition is evidenced by their plans for a new headquarters comprising of a double studio and gig venue on Little Britain Street off Capel Street in the former location of multi-use art space Siteation. There’s no discernable leader to the self-described ‘bockety pop collective’, instead when I sit down with them in Portobello across the road from their old headquarters on Synge Lane (called Fort Chops), there’s six voices all chiming in, finishing each others sentences, riffing on each others jokes, without any dissent. “We do a lot of the things that a record company or a promotions company would do, but we try not to define ourselves as doing any of them in particular,” says Pádraig Cooney of Land Lovers. “I suppose we say ‘collective’ because when it started off it was an attempt at a few bands helping each other out, and that turns into releasing records and putting on gigs.”
The plans for a new headquarters received funding from the Arthur Guinness Projects. “We had a place across the road that we all practiced in, so it grew into a place that a bunch of records had been recorded in. It was shit and badly made and cold,” explains Ruan van Vliet, drummer in seven Popical bands,“and we had the council and this Russian guy who lived in a lean-to attached to it trying to get us out, so it coincided with us looking for a new place” continues Pádraig.
“We looked at these tunnels under railway lines, Irish Rail rent them out for community projects. It would have looked amazing in photographs,” says Fiachra MacCarthy. “It would have looked great in photographs but it was insanely damp and not really manageable. Then we looked at a crèche,” says Pádraig. “It would’ve been a great place to play gigs, but that bands would have had to be exceptionally twee!” offers Ruan. Mike Stevens of Groom takes up the story: “We were dawdling and procrastinating. One of the guys [from Siteation] approached us and asked ‘Would you be interested?’”
The need for a new venue and Guinness projects coincided really well the Popical gang. “What it gave us was the ability to rent a place that we could do a bit of work on and where we wouldn’t be hassling neighbours, so basically we’re spending money on soundproofing and for the venue we want to have a decent P.A.” adds Pádraig.
“It’ll be more attractive too,” opines Annie Tierney of Tieranniesaur, “one of the things about Fort Chops was that it wasn’t a very nice place to be in. We’ve moved around venues a lot with Popicalia [their club night] so it would be nice to have somewhere where we’re set. Siteation’s been the best.”
The as-yet-unnamed HQ doesn’t have a completion date just yet but Padraig assures us it’ll be ready in “quarter one” of 2014. All it needs now is a name: “I was thinking ‘Cromwell’s’ would be kind of funny. Cromwell’s of Little Britain Street – it’s kinda perfect.” chirps Ruan.
In the meantime before their new HQ opens, Popical Island will be releasing Paddy Hanna’s debut solo record Leafy Stiletto this January with a split 12” from Land Lovers and Windings (in conjunctions with Out On A Limb Records), a new cassette from Ginnels and a split cassette from Oh Bolands and Me And My Dog in the following months.
FabAllThings
Promoting the democratisation of design, FabAllThings creates new, innovative and customizable products with input from both consumers and designers. Their interactive design platform allows anyone to get involved in the creation of new products. With design challenges held each month, product submissions can range from jewellery and furniture to home ware and t-shirts. After a design has been selected, FabAllThings puts it into production using innovative methods such as 3D printing. Sisters Emer and Kate O’Daly, alongside software engineer Miguel Alonso, set up the business after encountering delays and frustration when relying on other parties (“it was taking us weeks to get back prototypes from a laser cutting company”). Fresh from a masters in Yale, Emer had gained a considerable amount of insight into the prevalence of digital design: “I could see how 3D printing and digital fabrication were set to revolutionize the design and manufacturing industries.” After meeting Alonso, the wheels were set in motion for a bespoke fabrication workshop.
What they created was a DIY approach with collaboration from designers and customers alike. More than a product-focused company, FabAllThings promotes “a spectrum of participation”, according to O’Daly. “We combine design crowdsourcing with new methods of manufacturing to make unique and customizable products.” Their business model has attracted a great deal of attention, in both the press and from their online customers. Explaining the process at this year’s Web Summit, the long-term goal is to expand into further personalisation and customization of products. At this point one may wonder about the degree of creative control afforded to the designer, but FabAllThings ensures that designers receive an acceptable cut of the royalties in a process that O’Daly stresses is co-creative: “Nothing is significantly altered without discussion with the designers.”
Design Calls are selected from ideas put forward from the FabAllThings community and can range from 3D printed ceramics, printed cufflinks, lampshades and digitally-printed textiles. Traditionally, mass production, in China or similar locations, has been the customary approach for design manufacture. However, 3D printing cuts out prolonged delays and miscommunications commonly encountered with outsourced production. O’Daly explains, “For instance, if you live in Ireland and ordered a 3D printed piece of jewellery online from the US, the file could be sent to a printer down the road from you and be delivered to your door in the same day.” It also allows for a broad range of products with the capacity for swift worldwide distribution. For O’Daly it “means niche and customized products are now economically viable”; great news for an enterprise like FabAllThings. Laser cutting (whereby 2D objects can be formed from sheet materials) also features prominently in their products and can also be executed closer to home. Somewhat simpler than 3D printing, “it is an incredibly accessible method of manufacturing. You can go from sketch to illustrator or 2D CAD to physical product in less than an hour.”
For O’Daly, “FabAllThings is really a global design studio – a Threadless for 3D printing.” Blurring the lines between idea formation and the consumer experience, designers are given a considerable amount of creative flexibility, which is in equal part passed on to the customer, allowing them to tweak products to their liking, creating a user-friendly approach on both sides of the production line. A wholly universal approach, the hope for FabAllThings is to create a global platform where anyone can get involved in product creation and find unique, well-made and customizable products.
To view current and past Design Calls or to purchase finished products see www.faballthings.com or contact hello@faballthings.com
