Startup Stash - Germ Dip, 80% Work, And Game Rise🧤

Would you pay $5000 for a jacket laced with bacteria or fungi? 

At least one startup thinks you will. Which is why they so proudly launched their clothing line just 2-weeks after the Paris Fashion Week. 

Normal Phenomena of Life is a luxury online store offering fashion, beauty, and lifestyle products created with microbes

The company’s first products include face oil derived from fungi ($80), prints enhanced by algal ink ($245), and their signature Exploring Jacket ($4,895), colored by Streptomyces coelicolor. 

But why? Because NPOL wants to be a hub for a sustainable industry that combines design and biology. 

The products are created through naturally occurring practices like bacterial fermentation.Less water is used to dye bacteria in comparison to traditional practices, as bacteria grows in a lab setting and does not require farmland, unlike the plants that are used for the same purpose. So in a way it may be better for the environment than plant-based clothing.

What’s more? 

Their products are also inherently one of a kind. The pattern on an item like the Exploring Jacket is determined by how a particular set of bacteria interacts with a particular piece of fabric. 

This uniqueness falls in line with NPOL’s extended vision to challenge traditional fashion, which place a high emphasis on excess and the ephemerality of trends. 

All this is great, but how sustainable can the industry be if it’s only catering to high-end, high-income consumers? Especially during a time when even rich people are trying to curb their spendings. 

If startups really want the world to be more sustainable and environment-loving, they need to find a way to make their products more ubiquitous. 

There’s been a bit of a trend recently for some companies to move to 4-day workweeks. But the actual number of companies offering this still seems pretty few. It’s not hard to imagine why. CEOs have to pay full salary for 4-days of in-office work. And they may not trust the employees to work as productively from home. 

But what we don’t see often is the 80% job systems, in which employees work for only 32 hours (instead of the 40-hours) at 80% salary? This has been a trend for a long time in the Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland, Norway, Ireland (most countries with high happiness index ranks).

Sadly(as you can see from the image above), most nations with high job or career opportunities and high competition such as the US, Israel, France and most of the European Union don’t offer or endorse such a system. 

Advantages of offering 80% jobs

• For the salary cost of 4 employees at 40 hours, you get 5 employees at 32 hours.
• Those 5 employees are more rested, and may be generally happier.
• There’s a lower risk of burn-out and attrition.
• Yes, you get paid 20% less, but that could also bring you down a tax bracket. 

🇩🇪 Germany is reportedly set to overtake Japan as the world’s third-largest economy by the end of 2023.

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