The Agenda: Business

Often the answer is right in front of you, if the glasses that you’re wearing are clean enough to let you see it. For Gaëtan Gaye, the founder of Antwerp-based eyewear-care brand Alpagota, it was a matter of spotting a gap in the €130bn-plus eyewear market. “Cleaning products represent only 1 per cent of the total revenue, so we saw untapped potential,” he tells monocle. “If you wear prescription glasses or sunglasses, one thing is certain: you will need to clean them.”

With a background in the world of luxury horology, Gaye applied the lessons that he learned from timepieces to eyewear. “Fine watchmaking is all about the details,” he says. “ You’re not selling time – you are actually selling an experience. So I asked myself, ‘How can I enhance that for eyeglass wearers?’”

Alpagota launched in 2022 with a line of aromatic lens cleaners in refillable glass bottles, designed to look good on display, and cleaning cloths. The products combine high-quality clarity with fragrances such as Sandalwood & Matcha and Eucalyptus & Patchouli. “The look and smell were very important to me,” says Gaye. “The bottles have mid-century aesthetics and we worked with a perfumer in France because we wanted it to be a sophisticated multisensory ritual, so you look forward to doing it daily. I didn’t want it to smell of lemon or orange.”

In less than a year, the brand has taken off, expanding to Belgium, Germany, Hong Kong, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland, with a distributor in Japan and agents in France and Scandinavia. Gaye partly credits its success to fairs in the optical industry. “We launched at Silmo Paris to scale a bit of business,” he says. “It’s a product that you need to see and touch. I rely on retail and wholesale so, from the start, I thought about a margin and finding the suppliers.” 

As the brand continues to grow internationally, Gaye is planning to build on the momentum and help people to see lenses and frames as medical devices that deserve elevated maintenance. — L

For more visionary ideas, listen to Monocle’s ‘The Entrepreneurs’ radio show and podcast.

The ferry voyage from Vancouver on the mainland to Vancouver Island, which lies off British Columbia’s coastline, is one of Canada’s most picturesque commutes. These routes have been served since 1960 by government-owned BC Ferries. For years, attempts to open up the passenger-ferry sector to healthy, private competition have hit choppy waters. That is, until summer 2023. A new, privately operated passenger service joined the region’s fleets, setting sail for the 70-minute voyage between Vancouver and the waterfront city of Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island.

Cheerfully named Hullo, the service was launched by the Vancouver Island Ferry Company, a new operator, which was founded in Nanaimo in 2022. In its first year, 400,000 foot passengers used Hullo’s fleet, which consists of two speedy dff 4212 ships built by Dutch yard Damen at its facility in Vietnam. Plans to increase the number of daily journeys next spring – including at night – are already in place.

Hullo’s foray into the passenger-ferry sector has been smoother sailing than those of its predecessors for two reasons: high population growth in Vancouver and on the island, plus the addition of onward transport networks, including buses and seaplane services, at every ferry terminal.

On 3 September the Anemos, the world’s largest cargo sailboat, completed its maiden voyage from Le Havre to New York, carrying champagne, cognac and jam across the Atlantic on wind power only. The 81-metre vessel is full of cutting-edge seafaring technology. It can carry more than 1,000 tonnes of cargo, thanks to its two towering masts, and is the brainchild of French shipping company towt (TransOceanic Wind Transport).

The company has raised the funds necessary to commission a fleet of wind-powered cargo ships that emit only 10 per cent of the emissions of conventional versions, while remaining cost competitive.

Though towt’s ships have only a fraction of the capacity of conventional cargo vessels, it took the Anemos 18 days to deliver its payload to New York Harbour. That’s less than most container ships, which often have to wait days to unload at a select few ports. towt’s vessels are equipped with cranes that allow them to unload at any dock.

The Anemos’s voyage is a turning point for the French company, which has secured more than $200m of contracts and plans to deploy a fleet of 200 ships by 2035.