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clayray3290 · 4 years ago

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Clayray Closeout 2020

Alrighty, I am writing this in 2021 because I had things to do on New Year’s Eve lol.

Well, 2020 has been quite a difficult year. I am grateful to be as fortunate as I am, but at the same time, most of the year I have spent full of rage and despair and frustration and fear and grief at all of the loss and all of the injustice and just all of the horrific things that have happened this year. For 2021, I’m trying to find hope and to gather strength to persevere and keep on doing my part in fighting for what is right and contributing good to the world.

Art played a huge part in helping me get through this year, so let me take a look back at some of that great art:

Music - Artists

BTS

Jesse & Joy

Niall Horan

Glass Animals

McFly

Taylor Swift

Fiona Apple

Little Mix

Chloe x Halle

Secret

Who knew BTS would top this list? I’ve followed them from before their debut, but I am a casual fan at best. Though I was supposed to take my mom (who is a bigger fan than I am) to the concert at the Rose Bowl this year...until the pandemic happened.

Obviously, I did not go to any concerts this year, so there are no artists that got a bump from my having seen them live this year. However, some old standbys released some new albums this year - Jesse & Joy, Glass Animals, McFly, Little Mix. And speaking of Little Mix, news of Jesy’s departure from the group sent me into a spin down memory lane listening to their discography more. Also T. Swift’s two (2!!) new albums were in heavy rotation as well.

Secret made this list too, even though of course they’re disbanded now. My love for them stays strong, and their solo releases this year I enjoyed - Particularly Jieun’s Make It Love.

Chloe x Halle I started listening to much more than before, because “Ungodly Hour” is a fantastic album. Which juuuuust missed the cut of my top albums.

Music - Albums

BTS - MAP OF THE SOUL: 7

Niall Horan - Heartbreak Weather

High School Musical: The Musical: The Series Cast - High School Musical: The Musical: The Series Original Soundtrack

Jesse & Joy - Aire (Versión Día)

Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters

Starry Cast - Starry

Glass Animals - Dreamland

ZOMBIES 2 Cast - ZOMBIES 2 Original TV Movie Soundtrack

Taylor Swift - folklore

Beyoncé - The Lion King: The Gift [Deluxe Edition]

HSMTMTS and Z2 are products of work, but there generally are some fantastic songs from these soundtracks that I love independently. Olivia Rodrigo has turned out to be a star, and “All I Want” is gorgeous. And “Flesh & Bone” in particular is incredible and young people found such meaning from its lyrics, like “No more hesitation, it’s time we start to realize / With all this separation, silence is still taking sides.”

I have a fraught relationship with Glass Animals’ Dreamland right now because I had bought a limited edition vinyl, but there has been a whole rigmarole because it was super delayed (literally months!) and I went home to Michigan and so then I had to change the delivery address to my friend’s, and then she moved, too, so it has been a whole thing.

Starry is an as-yet unstaged musical about Vincent van Gogh, and it is exquisite. Please give it a listen and fall in love with it like I did.

Lastly, I once heard “Fetch the Boltcutters” as “Vegetable Goddess” and I cannot unhear it.

Movies

Soul Yes, would love if we could have a Black protagonist be a Black protagonist for the whole movie, but look, this is a beautiful beautiful film that is so meaningful. I cried so much.

The Old Guard It would be an honor to be slayed by Charlize Theron, Kiki Layne, or Gina Prince-Bythewood.

Palm Springs A delightful time loop take, and just so darn charming.

Emma. Works better as a comedy than a romance, but lusciously shot and Anya Taylor-Joy takes one of the trickiest Austen heroines and brings her to full life.

A Recipe for Seduction Okay, this one’s a joke. The KFC x Lifetime “movie” is ridiculous, but I have no regrets watching it.

The above list is just of movies that newly came out in 2020.

I watched a whopping 390 movies in 2020, 200 of which were Quarantine Movies with my friend Richard w/a Beard (Our 200th was BLOODY NEW YEAR, literally begun on New Year’s Eve with just moments left of 2020). Rw/aB and I watch mostly B-movies, slashers, giallos, psychedelic musicals, 80′s sex comedies, kung fu movies, and made-for-TV kids’ movies. And the KFC x Lifetime movie. (For the record, my top 5 of these movies would be: Blood Beat, Killer Workout, Pieces, StageFright: Aquarius, Mr. Boogedy. Honorable Mention to The Apple and Miami Connection.)

Honorable Mention: Sound of Metal (Technically a 2019 movie), Lucky Grandma (Also a 2019 movie), Hala (Again 2019), the Disney+ music specials like Hamilton and Black Is King, the Pixar SparkShorts particularly Loop, our DCOM releases this year - Zombies 2 and Upside-Down Magic and Secret Society of Second-Born Royals

Films I Want To See But Haven’t Yet: Minari (I can’t believe I haven’t seen it yet), One Night in Miami..., Definition Please, Disclosure, The Forty-Year-Old Version, The Personal History of David Copperfield (DEV PATEL), Nomadland

Television

I May Destroy You What an awe-inspiringly incredible show. Michaela Coel is a force.

Ted Lasso On a much lighter note than I May Destroy You, lol. This show could’ve been so stupid, but it is actually so deft and wise and mature. And just so full of heart.

The Baby-Sitters Club It is hard to take a beloved work and reboot it. But this show not only made it contemporary, but updated it to be relevant and to ring true for today. And it is just simply a really good show.

Normal People My heart aches from this show, and in the best way.

Little Fires Everywhere This show took an incredible book and distilled it into its best form, packing just such gut punches along the way.

Not New: Pen15, Crash Landing on You (Did a group watch with friends for this, like we did with Erkenci Kus last year!), Schitt’s Creek, What We Do in the Shadows, Watchmen, Kidding, Succession

Honorable Mentions: Never Have I Ever, The Queen’s Gambit, Lovecraft Country, Bridgerton, Dead Still (A show about a Victorian dead people photographer!), The Amber Ruffin Show (I’m not actually much of a late night person, but I adore Amber Ruffin), Dash & Lily, Supermarket Sweep Reboot, Julie and the Phantoms, Taste the Nation, Little America, The Stranger (RIP Quibi)

Shows I Haven’t Finished Yet But Will: Ramy, Saved by the Bell Reboot, Gentefied, The Mandalorian, Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist

According to my Trakt, I watched 282 hours of TV and 522 hours of movies in 2020 (But this was before the last week of 2020, so this is an undercount). That’s 805 hours total, which would be about 33.5 days lmao, so basically a month of my year was spent watching something hahahahahaha. I watch a lot.

But apparently, I listen even more? According to my Last.fm, I scrobbled 30,916 songs, making for total listening time of 74 days and 8 hours. Whew! Well, let’s get into my top songs then~

#Clayray Closeout

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jeremystrele · 6 years ago

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How Can Your Business Give Back?

Small Business

Fiona Killackey

Members of the Who Gives A Crap team in their Collingwood office. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

Co-founder and CEO Simon Griffiths. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

‘If you do good you’ll be held to a higher standard than your competitors! ‘ tells Simon. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

Who Gives A Crap launched on crowdfunding platform IndieGoGo in 2012. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

Every June the business makes its annual donation, which usually means its bank accounts go from full to empty overnight! Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

It gives 50% of profits to build toilets and has provided $1.8 million to charities to date. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

TIPS FOR BUILDING A BUSINESS THAT GIVES BACK

1. Know your why

What’s the reason your business exists? What’s the long-term impact or legacy you wish to create? Knowing this is the first step in working out how your business can give back and the best possible charities or causes you will support. Perhaps you wanted more flexibility in your life after becoming a single parent, or perhaps you felt there was a gap in the market for a more ethically produced product. Maybe you were influenced by trauma in your past or perhaps you wanted to build something that would enable minority groups to have more of a voice. Whatever your why is, uncover it, understand it, share it and ensure however you choose to give back aligns with it.

2. Research the contenders

When it comes to charity partnerships, rushing in can cause long-term confusion for your customers, and financial loss for the business. Do your research. Is the charity you wish to partner with stable? Who else do they work with and how does your business align? What support (content, reporting, field trip access) can they give? How transparent is their practice (will your customers be able to genuinely see how their money has impacted the planet/people)? How do their business goals align with your own? Ideally, you want to forge a long-term partnership that’s beneficial to both parties.

3. Understand the numbers

The amount you may wish to donate or give back may not match the reality of your sales. Go in too large and you may be left financially vulnerable, go in too low and you may not be able to make the impact you desire. Ask youself, what does this figure look like today, and what does it look like five years from now? Is it sustainable? Work with an accountant or CFO to crunch the numbers so your donation and/or partnership makes sense and won’t leave your business open to instability. And remember, you can start small then scale as your business does. Giving back doesn’t always have to mean going big!

4. Invest in your brand

Thank You began purely as a water business, before offering additional product categories. This was only possible because they had invested in building a strong brand and loyal audience, who were devoted to the overall cause – “life-changing products” – rather than one specific product (water). Consider your messaging: is it about the people and the vision behind the brand or does it focus too heavily on one product line? If you were to pivot how would your customers react? A strong business is one that is able to carry their audience with them as they grow and adapt (even if that means dropping or changing offerings).

5. Walk the talk

If you’re aligned with a charity to empower women through education, what training and education opportunities do your own staff have access to? If you’re working with an environmental cause, how does your workplace wastage stack up? Well before launching any marketing or media around giving back, ensure you’re ‘walking the talk’ when it comes to your own business practices and processes. Aligning with a charity or cause will magnify scrutiny of your business, and you must be ready to answer any and all questions that your customers – and the media – will have.

Fiona Killackey is a business consultant, author, and mentor for My Daily Business Coach. You can sign up to her weekly email full of small biz insights and tips here or purchase her new ebook, all about having a great business year here.

The Who Gives A Crap team (left to right): Tim Baxter, senior growth marketing manager; Megan Olney, head of customer experience; Simon Griffiths, co-founder and CEO; Tim Jacob, financial controller; Phil King, head of sales; Ellie Smith, head of people and culture; and Zoey Hopkins, inventory planning analyst. Photo – Amelia Stanwix for The Design Files.

IN PRACTICE: WHO GIVES A CRAP

Since launching on crowdfunding platform IndieGoGo in 2012, Who Gives a Crap has become a household name, with their toilet rolls, tissues and paper towels stocked in homes, restaurants and hotels across the globe. Created by Melbourne trio Simon Griffiths, Jehan Ratnatunga and Danny Alexander, the business gives 50% of profits to build toilets and has provided $1.8m to charities to date. We sat down with Simon to discuss the brand’s vision, advice he would give to others just starting out, and why financial acumen is crucial when building a business that gives back.

Who first inspired you to create a social enterprise?

Who Gives A Crap is all about impact – we’re on a mission to show that businesses (and our customers and staff!) can have a huge positive impact on the world by making better decisions. Who Gives A Crap’s main inspiration are the 2.3 billion people across the world who don’t have access to a toilet. That’s roughly 40% of the global population and means that around 289,000 children under five die every year from diarrhoeal diseases caused by poor water and sanitation – that’s more than 700 children per day, or one child every two minutes. I wanted to start a forest-friendly toilet paper company that donates 50% of its profits to help to improve access to basic sanitation, hygiene and clean water in the developing world.

How do you balance profit and business viability with giving back?

Our goal has always been to have as much impact as possible, so we structured the business to ensure we’re able to grow quickly (as growth ultimately means more impact), while maximising our donations along the way. When we started, we had a decision to make: donate a small amount of profit, donate 100%, or somewhere in-between. Donating 100% of profits can significantly impede a business’ ability to grow, while donating 10% or less might have meant it would take a long time to have any meaningful impact. We decided that 50% was the perfect number – it allowed us to continue to invest in the rapid growth of the business, while still having a significant impact along the way. A few years in, we’ve been able to double or triple the size of the business every year while donating over $1.83 million, which we’re incredibly proud of!

It hasn’t always been easy, though. Managing cash flow is a challenge for many businesses, but it’s especially hard for us as we have to balance making a big annual donation with the usual costs of doing business. Every June we make our annual donation, which usually means our bank accounts go from full to empty overnight, and we need to ensure that we can do that without slowing down production, shipping, marketing and, of course, paying our suppliers and team! We’ve gotten incredibly good at modeling cash flow as a result, so it gets easier every year – we’re expecting this year to be the smoothest yet!

What advice would you give to someone who has a business or a business idea and wants to give back but is scared it will make their business non-viable from a financial perspective?

1. Doing good is good for business: regardless of how our customers initially found us, our impact is what they remember most. Our impact helps us to find new customers, and keep existing customers engaged and coming back to buy from us again – our social media posts relating to our impact have the highest engagement, and we see a strong correlation between our biggest sales days and the days we’re talking to our customers about our impact. We hope that our model will inspire more businesses to do good

2. Doing good isn’t easy: if you do good you’ll be held to a higher standard than your competitors! We tackle this by providing lots of information on our website about our impact, where our profit goes, our production standards, and a whole bunch of other questions. Doing this well builds trust in your customer base, which, for us at least, has meant that our customers often go above and beyond to tell other people about what we’re doing.

3. Decide what impact you want to have, then design your business around it: lots of people told us that it would be impossible to run a business that donates 50% of its profits, but so far it’s worked really well. If we were a regular toilet paper company we’d look at the cash required to make an annual donation and say that it’s not possible, but because we started with this constraint from day one we’ve simply found ways to make it work.

4. If you’re on the fence, think about the impact we could have if every business donated just 10% of their profits! I think that successful business owners have an obligation to give back, but it’s important to do it in a way that’s true to who you are.

What’s next for Who Gives a Crap?

We’re hoping to see more than just toilet paper, tissues and paper towels in our customers’ homes before the end of the year, but I can’t say more than that for now! In the meantime, we’re concentrating on building up our USA and UK customer base (as well as at home in Australia) to encourage more people to make the switch to toilet paper that’s good for people and the planet. And of course, we’re looking to maximise our donation as we get closer to our June 30 donation deadline.

Who Gives a Crap is currently hiring for their LA and Melbourne hubs. Visit them online or connect on Instagram.

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