Trader Joe’s is known as a chain of neighborhood grocery stores that is ” committed to providing our customers outstanding value in the form of the best quality products at the best everyday prices” (traderjoes.com).  But many do not know the story of how this chain came to be.

As a recent graduate from Stanford in 1958, Joe Coulombe began working for a large retail pharmacy chain and was tasked with creating a new line of convenience stores.  After successfully creating a chain of 6 “Pronto Markets” in South California, Coulombe was instructed to shut the markets down.  But instead, he took out a loan and bought the stores himself.  However, competition began to move into the Southern California area, and, instead of trying to compete head-to-head with Seven-Eleven, Coulombe came up with a way to differentiate his stores.  So instead of carrying the same boring American food that most grocery stores carried he focused on a mix of interesting tastes from around the world. Nailing that trend would turn out to be key component to his success.

Today, Trader Joe’s prides themselves in their process of selecting the products they carry:  “Our buyers travel the world searching for products we think are exceptional and will find a following among our customers. To earn a spot on our shelves, each product is submitted to a rigorous tasting panel process, in which every aspect of quality is investigated in context of the price we can offer. If a product is assessed as an outstanding value, it becomes an essential part of the Trader Joe’s shopping adventure” (traderjoes.com).

Almost everyone has heard of food delivery services such as Doordash, Grub Hub, or Uber Eats.  These services pick up the food you love from restaurants in the area and hand deliver them to your door.  But what if there was a service that delivered all the ingredients you need to make meals for the next two weeks, saving you the inconvenient trip to the grocery store?  This is what Dominik Richter created with the service HelloFresh.

HelloFresh began in a basement in Germany where Dominik Richter,  Thomas Griesel, and Jessica Nilsson hand packed each meal kit.  However, shortly after the trio launched their pre-packaged meal kits, other competitors came out with similar ideas and the race to seize the top position began.  In fact, “Over the next six years, venture capitalists dumped more than $1 billion into funding over 100 competing startups that offered some variation of the following: For between $60 and $180 a week, consumers could receive at their doorstep a deconstructed meal in a cardboard box–pre­measured groceries, step-by-step recipe instructions, and the almost-realized fantasy of a home-cooked meal” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HelloFresh).  In the past year, HelloFresh has been able to separate from its competitors and claim the number 1 spot as meal delivery service by finding the target customer, busy families, improving the quality of the recipes, and expanding the range of the offerings to cater to even more customer segments.

HelloFresh is a good example of entrepreneurship because Richter found a niche to work in through a struggle he had of his own: being too lazy to go through all the work of buying, measuring, and cooking every aspect of the meal.  His problem is common to many other busy individuals and families, and, thus HelloFresh has been a great resource to many people.

Have you ever walked into store looking for a certain box of cereal, but you find that its placed inconveniently on the top shelf where no one except a giant would be able to reach it?  Or perhaps you’ve been in your own kitchen and, for some reason, you had the brilliant idea to place the bowl you need on the top shelf that you can’t reach without a step stool.  Well not everyone experiences the daily inconveniences of being shorter, many do including Alyssa Brown.

Alyssa and her husband Zach love to go on any type of outdoor adventure: kayaking, camping, hiking, etc.  However, Alyssa had a slight problem- at only 5 feet tall, she naturally struggled reaching the roof rack where they stored all of their outdoor equipment.  And with her husband working 12 hour shifts at the fire department, she didn’t have his help accessible either.  So, the couple created the Moki Door Step.

The Moki Door Step is a fairly simple product: it “hooks over the u-shaped latch in your car door and serves as a strong and comfortable step allowing you to easily reach the vehicle’s roof” (https://www.theengineblock.com/rightline-gear-moki-door-step-ingenious-product-american-success/).  The couple launched their product on Kickstarter and quickly raised over $100,000 in support.  After this success, Alyssa and Zach decided to pitch their product on Shark Tank, where they ended up selling their entire company for $3 million to Daymond John.

Alyssa and John Brown are great examples of entrepreneurs, for, through their love of helping people and ability to solve a problem they themselves experienced, they created a truly innovative product that is thriving today.

At age 14, Bella Weems decided that she wanted to start her own business in order to save up money to buy a car by her 16th birthday.  Beginning with $700, vintage glass lockets, various little objects to fill the lockets with, and a kiosk at the mall, Weems worked hard to get her business off the ground.  After a year and a half, she decided to switch to a “direct sales model” in which the company sells the materials to independent sellers and receives a portion of the profits.  The purpose of the lockets were to be unique to each individual so that they “could tell their own story with a locket.”

After 2 years, the company had generated $24 million in revenue and today, it is estimated to be worth about $250 million.  Bella Weems is a true entrepreneur because she was motivated to start her own business and work hard in order to provide for herself.  She adapted a long-standing product, a locket, to be customizable with charms.  This drive and innovation is something we should strive to imitate, for she was able to look at a object that has been around for centuries and turn it into a brand new, thriving product.

Origami Owl Jewelry

Katy Craft Lim, a sports and yoga enthusiast, searched for the perfect fitting hat for women for years.  As she looked, she began to realize that there was a lack of caps that fit women’s heads specifically in the market, and, so, she decided to do something about it.  Katy decided “to completely re-engineer a cap for women” (https://vimhue.com/pages/about-us) and created her company Vimhue: a hat designed particularly for female athletes.

After much research, trial, and error, she designed and patented a cap made to fit a woman’s skull perfectly.  Additionally, this hat is the first and only one that is designed to adjust to the various hairstyles someone may wear.  High ponytail? Check.  Braids? Check.  Messy bun? Check.  These hats allow for whatever hairstyle the wearer may desire, so no more adjusting your hair everytime you want to wear a hat.  Additionally, these caps are designed to keep the wearer “cool, comfortable, and confident” throughout the day (vimhue.com).  Katy Lim experienced the problem in her own daily life and realized others may too, so she did something to solve it.   And why hadn’t this problem been solved sooner when the hat has been around for so long?  This is what true innovators/entrepreneurs do, and it is an inspiring example.

In 2006, Ryan Berg went on a mission trip to South Asia that would change his life.  Although he had spend more than 12 years of his life doing missionary work, this particular trip impacted him greatly.  Before leaving home for this trip, Berg learned about the brothels in South Asia filled with children and women being abused daily.  After visiting these inhumane locations, he turned to the Lord to ask what he should do.  He began to consult other individuals working against sex-trafficking and learned of the need for “sustainable employment” (https://www.cru.org/us/en/about/partners/aruna.html).  And, thus, his idea of The Aruna Project was born.

Aruna is a Hindi word meaning “bright morning sun,” so the company was founded on the idea of giving the trafficked girls a new day, a new birth in Christ (cru.org).  It is a Christian run company that employs survivors of sex trafficking in order to give them “sustained freedom, dignity, and independence” (https://arunaproject.com/pages/the-cause).  The company began as a run where each participant would run for a particular woman who was still a slave, and the next year they would be handed a bag made by that same woman who was now freed.  Now, the company is a successful business that sells athleisure items made by the freed women.  In fact, “When you support Aruna through purchasing products, 100% of the profits directly impact freed Artisans. When you participate in Aruna events, 100% of donations help free, employ, and empower” (arunaproject.com).

The Aruna Project strives to make an impact for those who do not have a voice through races and products that “are crafted in freedom by skilled Artisans who are finding their voice, experiencing independence and growing with a sisterhood of others who have overcome” (arunaproject.com).

Check out The Aruna Project products and story

About The Cause – Free, Empower, Employ – Transforming Lives. – Aruna Project