It’s all happening.

Day One in the UK and after a jet-lagged run through Kensington Palace Gardens we headed off for several meetings, before a quick feed at Borough markets. Heading back to our "office" (Thank you Pret A Manger's everywhere… ) , we witnessed a fleet of Range Rovers race past with none other than Rachel Zane, the paralegal from the hit US TV show Suits in her latest role as Duchess of Sussex. Today's episode was filmed at Royal Ascot with the horsies and all. I knew it was her as that hat was seriously battling to fit in the Rangie. 

Also today in London there is much "excitement" for The Donald's trip here on July 13. So much excitement in fact that a 6 metre high inflatable "Trump Baby" in a nappy and all will be launched over the Houses of Parliament in honour of his visit. Please note that that nappy is NOT one of ours…although at 70, statistically he probably IS wearing an incontinence product. I will just leave that there. 

If you want to get on board, the oversubscribed Crowdfunder is here.    

Today the work continues. Arrangements to start trials with nurseries, testing of new processing methods to turn our nappies in to resources, a PR agency or two to meet etc! 

 

 

 

 

When founders are married. And have kids. And have to travel.

Speaking of getting on a plane to the UK….when we first started out and we were out raising capital, I remember more than one Venture Capitalist saying there was no way on God’s green earth that they would invest in married founders.

So we got divorced, got funding and built an amazing  business. The end…

Back to the Old Dart

With a new part of our business, gCycle (www. gCycle.com.au), starting to simmer in the UK, Kim and I are off to the Old Dart again tonight (via Taipei – who knew?) We were in London in April to lay the ground work and we are heading back to launch. It’s a big step as the nature of the business is so different to the way we have done it for 14 years.

Since 2004 we have been selling our wares via retailers – Bricks & Mortar early on and now mostly via the DeathStar (aka Amazon) to Mums and Dads. In recent years, retail has undergone it’s biggest disruption since the forever. You know you are in a whole new world of hurt when the buyers for the largest bricks & mortar stores such as Walmart and Target are asking vendors like us “what should we do about Amazon then”. The recent bankruptcy of "Babies R Us", the world’s biggest baby retailer was a confirmatory signal of where we are today.

gCycle sees us selling a whole new kind of Plastic Free (TM) nappy directly to Childcare centres. We collect their used nappies each week and convert it into soil / power / fuel. We see it as a way to make a bigger impact in a shorter time frame. In retail, we work in 3 year cycles enrolling new parents in our gDiapers only for them to leave when their little ones are potty-trained (so selfish).

Childcare centres on the other hand have no such cyclicality, working their way through 3 tons of nappies each year. They then have to pay for that waste to be “managed”. “Managed” is a pretty way to say that their nappies get buried in a hole in the ground for 500 years each. We can put a man on the moon (or did we?), access 5,000,000,000 songs on our Apple watches but apparently the best way to deal with nearly all our waste including dirty nappies is to bury it all.

Suffice to say, it is not just the old make widget / sell a widget / collect the money / go home kind of business. We are trying to solve big problems around single-use plastic and waste management and that demands a different approach.

But we like the challenge! 

Procrastination: The Masterclass.

Not happy Jan. 

I took procrastination to a whole new level this past weekend thanks to a multitude of deadlines coming up this week and a complete lack of will to really get on with it. For there is grant funding available for projects like ours but it requires actually applying for them all. 

Grant writing you say? How hard could that be? But first, six sections of Saturday's Sydney Morning Herald to read. And the surf looks pretty good. And then some grant writing was had. And there was indeed a fair whack of writing leading into Saturday night. Missed a mates 50th and all. 

Sunday arrives and I'd committed to a bit of Old School (as in at the school I went to in the 80's) touch footy months earlier. Playing on an All-Star 80's team with people around my old age (let's call it mid 40's shall we?) against people way younger than us (including kids I taught back at the old Alma Mater), it was the perfect storm for the calves, the hammies, that dicky meniscus and all the ACL's. It was only after that wrapped up that I knew I needed to hunker down and I was seriously so close to getting my hunker on. Alas, no hunkering ensued. It was an afternoon of "let's get some vacuuming done" and "My legs are sore" and "Who wants to go for ice cream?".

Fast forward to now and it is 5 am on Tuesday morning and the wife / co-founder and I have pulled an all-nighter to get one of the wretched applications in. (Well, she's doing most of the work. I am writing this. You get the picture). Deadline is today, Tuesday May 29, 11.59pm London Time. We have heaps of time…sort of. 

 

 

PS: Here are the 80's All Stars in case you were wondering: 

 

 

3 years on…

Three years since my last blog post and so much has happened.

We are three years living back in Sydney and gDiapers  continues on with our team in the US and UK. 

We have been toiling away on a new offering for childcare centres starting in the UK and EU.  It is called gCycle .

We have developed a new kind of nappy / diaper that we sell to childcare centres. Each week we collect their nappy waste, take it offsite and convert it into resources: soil, power or fuel. It's a waste to energy business and we are very excited by the possibilities. If you are too, please join us by visiting gCycle and adding your name to the cause.