We've written before about product life stories and how they're bringing new transparency to the creation and distribution of consumer products. Dole Organics did it for bananas, and now Crop to Cup is doing something similar for coffee.

Crop to Cup, founded last year, buys directly from African coffee farmers and represents them in consumer markets. With the goal of improving farmers' livelihoods, Crop to Cup trains and educates them in sustainable practices, and it coordinates the coffee's processing, export, import, roasting, marketing and distribution. Not only do farmers get paid fair prices, but they also have the opportunity to realize additional per-pound bonuses connected to sales on the coffee drinker’s end. Meanwhile, Crop to Cup also reinvests 10 percent of its profits in farmer communities. So far, so good, but not new—most fair trade companies work that way.

Where the innovation and product life stories come in, however, is through what Crop to Cup calls the digitization of coffee farming. Through Crop to Cup's website, consumers can trace their coffee back to the farmers who produced it and interact with them (along with roasters and other drinkers) through message boards, forums, ratings and reviews. The result is that drinkers of Uganda Bugisu AA coffee, for example, can read profiles of the farmers who produced the beans, including Bernard Walimbwa's 17-member family, which manages roughly 30,000 coffee trees in the Bugisu Region of Uganda.

The company's founders explain: "By training and working directly with family farmers we're able to control quality of our coffees. By virtue of full disclosure and farm-level transparency, we're able to ensure a fairly traded product without costly certification schemes. We involve the farmer and their ultimate customer—the coffee drinker—in a dialogue to determine what's important."
Crop to Cup's site is still rough around the edges, but its approach is a promising one, from both an ethical and a marketing perspective. As our sister site trendwatching.com noted in its (still) made here briefing, consumers' desire to find out about product origins will only increase. Time to get working on those stories!

Website: www.croptocup.com
Contact: midwest@croptocup.com

Robot vacuum cleaners are slowly taking off, and robot lawn mowers have been around for over a decade. What's new this month, however, is a mower that not only trims the lawn all by itself, but does so using solar power.

Sweden's Husqvarna just introduced the world's first solar/electric hybrid robot lawnmower, which has no exhaust emissions and uses approximately the same amount of energy as a standard light bulb.

Cleverly targeting time-starved consumers as well as tree-huggers, Husqvarna claims: "It's been calculated that using Automower Solar Hybrid to cut the lawn in an average garden can save 40 hours of labour every year—the equivalent of an extra week's holiday." Owners just lay out a boundary cable that tells the robot where to stop cutting, saving the delphiniums from an untimely death. Cuttings don't need raking, either: the grass is cut so finely that it can be left where it falls and acts as a fertiliser.

Combining two powerful trends—convenience and eco-friendliness—has to be a winner. Who's next? (Related: Indoor composting made easy.)

Website: www.husqvarna.com

Last year we wrote about Blends for Friends, a British company that sells bespoke custom-blended teas, and recently one of our spotters came across Design a Tea, a similar—but more affordable—option.

Founded last year, New York-based Design a Tea bills itself as the place "where tea leaves dream," and users of the site get to choose each element of the teas they create. The process begins when they select a base tea to start with—black tea, oolong, green tea or rooibos. From there, they can choose one or two flavours to add, selecting from a list of more than 40 that includes such options as cassis, mango and zabaglione. Users then choose whether they want their tea loose or bagged, and they give the tea a name or personalized message to include on its packaging. Pricing is USD 4.75 for 10 bags or 22g of loose tea, and 8.50 for 20 bags or 60g of loose tea; an assortment of signature pre-designed blends are also available.

As we've said before, there appears to be no end in sight to the opportunities for customizing everyday goods, whether it's chocolate, lingerie or duvets. Design a Tea ships only within the United States and Canada; how about bringing affordable custom teas to the rest of the thirsty world?

Website: www.designatea.com
Contact: brian@designatea.com

Spotted by: Bill McMahon

Who hasn’t checked their coat at a restaurant or other venue and worried about losing the claim ticket? London-based Idscan aims to put those worries to rest with a biometric cloakroom system that it claims is a world's first.

Cloakscan records a customer’s thumbprint via a small scanner, while a digital camera records the transaction. When customers return and touch the thumb-scanner once more, their pictures show up on a monitor, allowing the cloakroom attendant to verify their identity and quickly see where their valuables have been stored. Idscan explains that Cloakscan eases stress among customers and staff alike. Customers needn’t fear that a dropped claim ticket will be found and redeemed by someone else, while staff can use Cloakscan’s touchscreen monitor to log checked items faster and more accurately. Cloakscan even prints out reports if valuables do become lost, to aid in police or insurance investigations.

The system can automatically charge customers for coat checking services and can also scan in promotional codes for special offers and services. Idscan rents its cloak-checking system for GBP 17.50 per week as a complete system or alternately sells the software running it with the scanner and camera for GBP 999.

Idscan’s Cloakscan illustrates is how pervasive biometric scans and photo verification systems are becoming. Already widely used in banks, relatively inexpensive thumbprint ID systems particular can speed up operations in everything from a retail store’s merchandise pickup area to the checkout desk at a movie-rental outlet. Bottom line: lots of start-up opportunities exist for system integrators. All it will take is some software writing expertise to fine tune thumbprint and photo applications to new types of businesses. (Related: Drive-in cloakroom.)

Website: www.idscan.co.uk
Contact: www.idscan.co.uk/uk_contact.php

Back in 2006 we wrote about wallpaper's renaissance and innovative wall graphics. While those offerings were intended primarily for indoor spaces, the D Garden Collection is picking up on the same concept and bringing it outdoors.

Paris-based D Garden Collection has its sights set squarely on terraces, balconies and patios with its textile banners, self-adhesive wall stickers and waterproof cushion covers. Banner designs are individually produced to the customer's size requirements from high-quality textiles and inks to ensure UV protection, resistance to the elements and machine washability. A variety of designs are available in categories such as "country," "grasses" and "geometrics"; a 200-by-50-cm banner, for example, is priced at EUR 140. Wall stickers, meanwhile, can be adhered to any glass or plexi surface, outdoors or in; when outdoors, they'll last at least 3 years. The standard sheet size is 30 by 42 cm, for which pricing starts at EUR 15; custom sizes are also available. Finally, D Garden Collection's cushions come in no fewer than 50 designs, with or without the inner cushion. Standard sizes are 50 by 50 cm, priced at EUR 60 each, or 65 by 65 cm for EUR 95.

No matter how tiny their terraces, consumers' desire for individuality and personal style remains super-sized. Plenty of room here for minipreneurs and others to make their mark on patios around the world!

Website: www.dgardencollection.com
Contact: deborah@dgardencollection.com