Alyza Bohbot Finds a New Purpose in Her Purpose-Driven Business

When Alyza Bohbot returned home to Duluth, Minnesota, and assumed ownership of Alakef Coffee Roasters, she fulfilled her mission of keeping her parents' company in the family. However, that proved to be only the beginning of her journey in the coffee business.

Many of the world's 25 million coffee farms are small, family-owned businesses. Overall, women perform an estimated 70 percent the work involved in growing, harvesting, and distributing coffee, but in many countries, cultural and legal constraints deny them fair compensation for their work or access to vital resources.

At a meeting of the International Women's Coffee Alliance (IWCA) not long after she had taken over as owner as Alakef, Bohbot heard the story of a widowed coffee farmer in Colombia who was unable to finance equipment she needed in order to keep her farm going. Her husband had been killed in the armed conflict that has flared up throughout the country for decades, and banks refused to lend money to a woman. Bohbot decided then that she had to do something to help.

Supporting women through organizations such as the IWCA and the Caf Femenino Foundation, which helps women and families in coffee-growing regions, was an important step but not enough. Bohbot wanted an entire company whose mission was to balance the inequalities faced by women in the global coffee business. "I wanted to do something no one else is doing and genuinely make a difference."

While continuing to run Alakef, she started a second company to pursue this vision. From its name to a pink-centric brand design scheme that Bohbot calls "unapologetically feminine," there's no mistaking the intent of City Girl Coffee. She believes it is the only coffee roaster in the country that aims to source its beans entirely from farms that are owned or managed by women. And she gives a portion of the company's profits to the organizations helping women in the coffee business.

Her purpose-driven business approach isn't always easy. Working through the international web of coffee bean distributors to find beans grown by female farmers takes more time and effort, and it increases the risk of supply shortages. Consultants advised against creating a brand so decidedly feminine, and some competitors have sniped that the brand and the message are just a marketing ploy.

But Bohbot is committed to her cause and is winning fans. The digital media company Refinery29, which focuses on issues that affect young women and takes a dim view of products that are artificially gendered as a cynical marketing appeal to female consumers, applauds City Girl Coffee's authenticity and bold approach. And, with an insight that every smart marketing professional will recognize, Bohbot is totally comfortable with the fact that the brand won't resonate with all coffee drinkersand it shouldn't try to.

City Girl Coffee is winning over customers, too. A growing number of consumers, across many product categories, want their purchases to align with their values, and the younger consumers Bohbot targets are responding. In the company's second year, sales increased 300 percentthe kind of growth that every start-up dreams about. Bohbot has her eye on the long game, though, and is being careful not to grow so fast she loses the ability to pursue the purpose that inspired her in the first place.

Critical Thinking Questions

6-1. Some companies have been criticized for gendering products such as tools and toys in an attempt to appeal to girls and women. The phrase "pink it and shrink it" is sometimes used to describe what critics see as meaningless and cynical attempts to make products feminine. Alyza Bohbot enthusiastically and unapologetically branded City Girl Coffee in a feminine style. Why does this approach work so well for City Girl Coffee?

6-2. What are the business risks of Bohbot's product-sourcing and branding strategies?

6-3. Aside from the socially conscious element of sourcing coffee from women-owned farms, what are the marketing advantages of Bohbot's business model and branding strategy?

OXO Gets a Handle on Universal Design

When Sam Farber set his mind to creating a more comfortable vegetable peeler, his immediate concern was relieving the discomfort that the conventional design caused in his wife's arthritic hands. He solved that problemand helped launch both a revolution in universal design and a highly regarded company that is still going strong 30 years later.

Ever the entrepreneur, Farber also saw an opportunity that reached far beyond a single kitchen utensil. Why couldn't every tool and utensil used around the house work better? He came out of retirement to launch a new company based on this premise. He named it OXO (he chose the name because of its symmetryit can be read in any direction and orientation) and gave a New York design studio called Smart Design the task of designing a new generation of kitchen implements under the brand name OXO Good Grips.

The vegetable peeler is a simple enough product, but getting the ergonomics and the cutting function just right was no simple task. Refining the first 15 OXO Good Grips utensils required "hundreds of models and dozens of design iterations," according to the company. That exploration led to the soft plastic handle (made from a material called Santoprene) that made the utensils easier to use and that is now as integral to the brand as any logo. And the long effort paid off in terms of business success. OXO products are now used in millions of homes, and the designs are so well crafted that some of the company's products are on display in museums around the world.

For crafting products that meet the needs of people with arthritis and other physical challenges, OXO and Smart Design are credited with helping to launch a wave of universal, inclusive design. The appeal isn't limited to those with arthritis and similar problems, however. The designs are more comfortable for anyone to use, and the attention paid to functionality means they often work better than traditional designs, too. During their three-decade strategic partnership, OXO and Smart Design have amassed detailed insights into how people use household tools and utensils by interviewing thousands of consumers and visiting hundreds of homes.

Thoughtful design extends to packaging as well. Walk into most any store that sells utensils, and you can quickly spot the selection of OXO products on the display. The bold and clear black, white, and red packaging for the Good Grips line is almost as iconic as the products themselves.

With more components and more material than sparse traditional design, that first peeler and its companion products cost more to produce and therefore hit the market with higher prices. However, Ferber was confident that people would pay more for tools that worked better. He was correct, and the strategy of value-based pricing has served the company well ever since.

The company's product mix has expanded rather dramatically since those first 15 products. It currently numbers more than 1,000 products, including just about every imaginable sort of kitchen utensil and dozens of products designed to improve everyday life elsewhere around the house.

Brand extensions have played an important part as well. The original OXO Good Grips brand is now joined by four others: OXO SteeL (stainless steel tools and utensils), OXO On (electrical appliances), OXO Strive (products for sports, exercise, and outdoor activities), and OXO Tot (products for small children). These brands are a great example of smart brand extensions: They expand the reach of the brand without diluting it in any way, they let the company apply the "halo" of the original OXO Good Grips to new product lines, and they make sense to the millions of customers who have had good experiences with OXO. Davin Stowell, the founder of Smart Design, sums up the wisdom of the OXO brand extensions nicely:

• The degree of clarity to the OXO brand is quite rare. Most companies struggle to expand without losing what made them great in the first place. Not OXO. This notion of "making everyday life easier" has become the driving force behind everything OXO does, and it's allowed them to expand into adjacent categories very successfully.

With more than 1,000 products for the home, OXO shows no signs of slowing down, and its long-time partner Smart Design is still working on new ways to bring universal design to the tasks of everyday life.

Critical Thinking Questions

13-1. How far could OXO take its brand extensions and the promise of making everyday tasks easier? Should it consider an OXO-branded smartphone, for instance? Smartphones are everyday tools, after allwould an expansion into this product category make sense? Why or why not?

13-2. What other products are you aware of that could benefit from more inclusive design?

13-3. The bent-metal style of vegetable peeler is still widely available. Why do you suppose this is, given how much more comfortable the ergonomically designed alternatives like OXO are?