Arksen’s Jasper Smith on building a business for extraordinary adventure, whether across oceans or ice sheets

0:11Hello and welcome to The Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. Today's programme is all about adventure. First, we'll meet a lifelong thrill seeker who's built a business to share his love of exploration and bring a new approach to the outdoor industry in the process. There's no shortage of people that want to go and do these extraordinary adventures and have these experiences with the people they love or their friends. But the barriers to entry are almost impossible for most people to overcome. So how do you create a fleet of assets that actually has a really low entry point.

0:47And from building expedition yachts to planning the perfect summer escape, we're staying in travel mode to hear about the new destinations for luxury holidaymakers this season. Not everyone can handle the 40 degrees heat every day in August. So places like Copenhagen or even Edinburgh are really more popular as summer holiday destinations. This is The Entrepreneurs with me, Tom Edwards.

1:20You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Jasper Smith is the founder of Arxen, a company making vessels, adventure apparel and overland vehicles based on the Isle of Wight. A lifelong adventurer, Jasper has sailed across oceans and explored remote ice sheets. He now channels that passion into building some of the most innovative expedition craft on the water and smartest sets of wheels for land too. He joined me in the studio to talk about the inspirations behind Arxen, why narrative is central to the brand, and how he hopes to change the way we think about adventure. Jasper began by telling me all about the company's many projects.

1:57We are a company that makes sort of iconic adventure products from huge explorer vessels that can have 7 ,500 mile range, run on solar and hybrid fuel cells, and can take you pretty much all over any part of the planet you want to go to. all the way through to adventure apparel and experiences, whether those are sort of free diving experiences or climbing Everest, through to extraordinary overland vehicles and things like that. So what we tried to do is just work on these completely iconic products and then bring them to life through really authentic storytelling and have a brand that sort of represents a new generation of people that want to get out and do stuff and, you know, maybe turned off by the sort of corporate machine that is the North Faces and the sort of Patagonias of the world and things like that.

2:47And it's funny, you mentioned New Generation, but you also mentioned your dad. And this, you know, it kind of runs in the blood, right? Because this is the sort of, it's kind of what he was doing. Go back, I'm trying to think now, I was going to say 50 years, 60 years with some of the innovations he made, right? Yeah, he was really interesting. He still is really interesting. And he started off as a scientist and an adventurer and then a filmmaker. And then an actor. And then he fell in love with this funny little car called the Minimoke. And he built a business that was the largest sort of dealer and distributor of Minimokes around the world.

3:20And so I grew up sort of as a young baby in a cardboard box in the back of a Minimoke being driven around. I loved that. And, you know, no seatbelts or anything. Going across the Alps in an open-top car and stuff. So I guess it just rubbed off. It was amazing. What choice did you have, right? None at all. That's the thing. Now, tell me, one thing I find really interesting is you describe what you do, which is and you're interested in making things that last as well which is what often we mean by sustainability not just about some sexy materials chat it's about making things intentionally to last but when you combine that with adventuring and traveling around the world often people say well actually look you're advocating for these things but by encouraging people to go out to these places and discover the undiscovered that can be detrimental and it's i think really important to stress that you bake into the intentional foundational values of what you do a responsibility to address that tell us how you've done that and why that's so important for you and the business yeah i think that our appreciation of the planet comes from extraordinary people that have gone before us whether that's sort of you know hansen james hansen who you know first brought up climate change four decades ago or whether it's thor hey eddow crossing you know the pacific in his raft or Fridjof Nansen doing the Fram.

4:33So there's a whole catalogue of these extraordinary people and Jack Cousteau, how he brought the oceans alive. And so to me, it's sort of fundamentally, we've been taught to care by the people who have gone before us. And the responsibility now is to try and build businesses that are planet first in their approach. And that doesn't mean that you can build products without using resources, right? Because you do. So fundamentally, there's always a sustainability issue there. But I think it's how you use those assets and I think it's how you bring stories to life. And, you know, obviously we just produced the Oceans film with David Attenborough.

5:06And that's a great example of how a brand can be pro-planet and can invest in narrative that fundamentally changes how humanity looks at something. So already that film, you know, it's the most viewed ocean film in history. It's the highest performing film at box office in UK history for a documentary. Second highest performing in Europe, highest performing in Australia. It was a core driver of change at the United Nations Ocean Conference last week. So for a small adventure brand to be able to have that sort of impact. So that's how we look at sustainability is sort of look at the profound work that people have done before us and be inspired by that.

5:48And then use the assets as a modern storytelling platform and bring to life things like the Attenborough movie. Listen, maybe it's because I'm a journalist. You mentioned that storytelling world. And there's a story that you've again told before. I think this was just sort of before the Oxen start, about on a sailing trip, I think, keeping it intergenerational. Was it with your son? Is that right? Tell me a little bit about that, because it speaks again to, well, it gets us into almost philosophical area. You tell it because you tell it best. So, yeah, I think I had two wonderful experiences. The first one, I was quite a lot younger.

6:23It must have been about 30 years ago. I sailed a boat from Australia through to Alaska. So it's an extraordinary journey. seven-odd thousand miles, trying to follow the anchorages of Cook's combined voyages around the Pacific. So it was a really geeky trip, four of us on a sailing boat from Japan across the Kuril Islands, then into Kamchatka, which was extraordinary then. It was the time when Petrostoica was just coming through, so the end of communism. And so the whole northern fleet was sinking into the harbour, and an extraordinary journey. And then across the Bering Sea, Unfortunately, we collided with a whale.

7:00So there's, you know, all these epic adventures baked into it. And so that installed in me this absolute desire to ensure my kids had adventure in their veins. And so at the time of that journey, my youngest was four months old or something. So, you know, you're imbued with this inherent guilt of leaving your kids, but having this extraordinary time. So when he got older, we went to Greenland, and that was really the sort of core behind forming arcs. And so we went to Greenland, we went up to the ice sheets, we took a chopper right into the middle of the ice sheet, stayed there a few days. It was just a completely extraordinary experience.

7:40As we came off the ice sheet, you could just hear this rumbling. And the rumbling was just the amount of water, the melt water coming off the top of the ice sheet. And it was just, like, it was unfathomable. how much water was coming off. It was just extraordinary. It was like going to the Niagara Falls, but it was miles wide. And it was the first time, this is about 10 years ago, it was the first time that we had really understood what climate warming, what climate change meant. Because before, you know, everywhere else it's quite nebulous, you know, sort of, oh, it's a bit hot today or it's raining today or it's this, and so it's quite hard to see.

8:17So that was very profound. So that was the sort of moment where we were like, let's do this extraordinary business together. And talk to me about, I guess, another sort of value that looking from without Jasper seems quite foundational is this idea about being, well, being democratic or being inclusive about opening up these kinds of adventures and the possibility to actually access that kind of different perspective to as many people as possible. That has a number of corollary challenges, of course, but that's another thing that I think you're, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you're quite passionate about.

8:50Again, it's probably self-evident, but tell us why that's important. Well, it's sort of, I came from, as almost all people do, not a background that was sort of, you know, loaded with cash and stuff like that. And so I was always looking at these boats or these trucks or these things, you know, these are assets that enabled you to do adventure in a lustful way, thinking one day, you know, one day maybe I'll get, you know. And so when we set the company up, we were sort of, how do you democratise access to these things? Because there's no shortage of people that want to go and do these extraordinary adventures and have these experiences with the people they love or their friends and family and stuff.

9:27But the barriers to entry are almost impossible for most people to overcome. So how do you create a fleet of assets that actually has a really low entry point so I and you and anybody else can sort of go and do these things? So, yeah, we created all these platforms around shared ownership and club membership. And fundamentally, I think that's the way all of these businesses will go. You know, I can't imagine in 10 years you'll have a point of purchase where you pay 300 ,000 for a boat or 200 ,000 for a car or 1 ,000 for a jacket or something like that. It will all be based on sort of, you know, subscription-based models and club-based models because it just makes so you buy into a church, you know, and you go to the church and the church serves you with the spiritual nurturing and the guidance that you need and gives you some sort of map of what you think you can do.

10:20Can I interrogate that a bit more? Because, you know, that's, I suppose, a little bit the way Monocle looks at our business in the media landscape is the same. The idea that you sort of buy literally and metaphorically into something a bit bigger. And certainly in premium products or higher value purchases, one can see how that is intuitive. Do you think that all consumers, though, are catching up with that narrative? Because that's probably when you started, people were a bit like, oh, you know, here comes Jasper with one of his crazy progressive ideas. but actually the kind of lay consumers catching up but at the same time we have mass production fast fashion brands diametrically opposite to those values and actually the same consumers are buying into this but they're also still buying that how do we reconcile those things jasper an easy question for you yeah yeah super easy yeah i mean look i think it's just generational isn't it and it's it's all gradual it comes down to the power of of storytelling so again the Attenborough thing is a really good sort of test of will people be influenced by key media events like that and can you use a key media event like that to affect change and so nothing happens overnight and I think every business model is and there's a great example in the games industry so I my background was in the games industry for years and years and we were lucky in that but the big shift in the games industry was from subscription-based games for the first games on mobile were all subscription and someone figured out actually that the problem with subscription is you put a gateway right at the top and out of 100 people only two subscribe and so the you know the 98 have gone to another game and so actually if you make it free at point of access and then you have a payment wall some you know six minutes in five minutes in or something like that the jump rate through to pay conversion is infinitely higher and everyone gets to play the game So those sort of generational shifts in model have profound impacts on the business, and particularly in the marine industry.

12:16At the moment, it's driven by mum and pup shops that are dealers that have been selling ribs and boats and things to their customers for years. But most of those people are 60 plus, and there's no new generation coming in. So our own view is that lots of these industries shift, The business models shift because the fundamentals of distribution change. And so our model is to try and own a new form of distribution by having these sort of club type propositions at the front end. Give us an example, Jasper. Pick a product, I guess, from the portfolio. And to be honest, whether it's more on the sort of expedition side, the adventuring side, or if it's physical product, vehicle, vessel.

12:59I never get the terminology right. Give me an example of a product and tell us how it comes together. and we're talking here in the abstract, slightly abstract way about what goes into that, philosophically, foundationally, values. But talk about making things. It's pretty important. So my studies as a sculptor, so my sort of fundamental in all of this is the product design, is the aesthetic of what we can do. And the Arxen 85 is a really interesting product. I mean, it's obviously a huge product. There's three and a half million components. It's 79 % recycled on day one for a boat that size. that's sort of unheard of in terms of its adherence to a circular economy.

13:38That's come about because of a whole chain of people who philosophically have said, well, how do we build a boat that will still be here in sort of 60 years? How do we build a boat that's infinitely recyclable and is built from recycled materials on day one? How do we build a product that can recover from capsize? You know, this is a large boat. You don't have boats like this that can recover from capsize. You know, how do we build in the most innovative technologies and sort of road test all those. And so you build these extraordinary teams of mad people, of engineers and scientists and product designers who just throw mud at each other for months and months and months and months.

14:20And there's a beauty in that. There's just a fundamental beauty in just things like the pipework. Like looking at the abstracts of the pipework, it's just stunning. All of these, you know, like, I think there's 27 miles of metal pipe work and like 70 miles of cable runs and things like that's the joy in these things. And the challenge always is can you if you can build this this extraordinary vessel that has all of these core functionalities and adheres to a circular economy, etc, etc. Can you then communicate that to an audience? Because the audience is sort of like, how much is that? And you're like, well, it's a lot of money.

14:59But it's a lot of money because it's got four sets of redundancy across everything. It's infinite. Not infinite, but it's got a huge range. It's got three-month autonomy at sea. If everyone falls off the boat, we can bring it back to shore. We can run it through. I mean, it's a profound piece of engineering, but it comes at a price. So a lot of people are like, nah. So that's why the sort of shared ownership model, this sort of democratizing access to these things really works. and then just you know with the with the clothing we make it's you know there are less components but it's it's real adherence to a circular economy it's using the best fabrics working with the best mills working with factories that are running on renewables that are paying their staff you know european wages we're manufacturing in europe and so you're sort of trying to create how do you create a brand that's good all the way through you know just fundamentally is not based on exploiting resources or whatever.

15:58And it's super tough. Well, I was going to ask you a little bit about that because I think you often get the statement of the intentionality, but then the practicalities of supply chain complexity undermine even the best intention. So it's interesting to me, in terms of that entrepreneur's toolkit, how important is the capacity to pivot when confronted with no? Because presumably you talk to the first, I don't know, 10, 20, 50 scientists, material experts, and the answer is going to be no, Jasper, this is nuts. No one could or even would do this. What's the entrepreneurial skill set, toolkit that you have to have to be like, okay, this is just a fork in the road, but I'm going to get around it.

16:37How do you do that? You must confront that every turn. It must be so frustrating. I think most entrepreneurs are sort of slightly broken people in many ways. You know, we're the sort of fundamentally flawed people of humanity. and that is quite often a scary place to be because you feel sort of ostracized and you don't feel like you fit in and so you end up creating these worlds your own worlds that you can exist in it's like the truest form of autism you know so it's like you create your own world and you try and build a system an ecosystem within it not necessarily people will say yes all the time but you try and build a world that you think you can move forward around an idea that you you believe in.

17:18And so no is always a wonderful word to hear because it's sort of like a red rag to a bull, isn't there? And you're sort of, and so I think what a lot of the best entrepreneurs do is they try and look through the surface of something to what's the core of the change I'm trying to make or what's the core of the problem I'm trying to solve and then how do I break that down into bits and stuff and i think most good entrepreneurs are just very compartmentalized people horrible to live with really hard to work with often very lonely souls you know etc etc so there's a really grim side to it but their ability to work through a yes and a no scenario is just compartmentalization and and well you know bugger that he said no i'll go and find somebody else and try again um jasper tell me about what you're most excited about and you you can choose whatever you want product innovation tweak to an existing idea a vainglorious project that you've got on the back burner what's the thing that you have a residual twinkle in your eye but what really gets you fired up yes i i mean i'm a complete ocean lover and fanatic and filming this film with silverback and attenborough was you know it was the pinnacle of many years four and a half years in the making etc it was a really extraordinary thing but what that's done has created a platform that enables us to create a lot more films so i'm really interested in the film fund we're putting together which enables us to sort of use the the boats that we've got which support awesome diving and potentially things like submersibles and things like that so i'm really interested to sort of go what's the follow-on promotion you know what are the other films that we can do and we're really interested in you know the pacific and what's going on in the pacific and and yeah so above all i'm interested in how do we use this brand to tell stories and what are the 10 great stories that we can line up over the next few years and so that's been really interesting because we've had lots of big partners coming to us saying well how do we collaborate with you so i think every brand hopefully has a moment in life you know it has this little awakening and this film for us was that moment it's like okay it's it's validated the sort of 10 years of grind and gone okay yeah actually if you get a community and some assets and some capital you can do some really profound and interesting things and just finally people say look you know the scale and urgency of the challenge is so profound that we need immediate action and anyone will tell you in order to move quickly you need buy-in you need collaboration but you need to compromise and yet it sounds like you're not a man just but who would lean into compromising so can we drive the change we need truly without compromise where did you see what i'm getting at i mean are you can you stick to your guns can you build everything on these foundational values how does that work i mean i look i it's hard to see into the future and you sort of go the sustainability for a brand that's going to try and do the things that we want to do is based on economic stability within its business.

20:26And so you have to go, how do I reach a big enough audience to do that? And so ultimately you do come down from the mountain or whatever. And so you say, okay, rather than doing sort of 1 ,600 pound top of the mountain jackets, I'm going to do t-shirts and hats and stuff like that. But I don't think that means you need to walk away from the principles of sustainability or circular economy. So I think you can be really dogged at it. And I also say, you know, humans are so adaptable. We're extraordinary creatures. And when we look at climate change, we look at it in quite existential terms. And we're sort of, you know, we paint these pictures around.

21:00It's going to be catastrophic. It's going to be this. It's going to be that. But, you know, nothing is transitioning to a point where we're unable to be here in a really contented, brilliant way, as long as we make some really good decisions. And I think all Arson's trying to do is just be, let's be a good decision. If I'm going to do this thing or buy this thing or go to this place, let's do it with an organisation that's sort of fundamentally trying to do the right thing with us. That was Jasper Smith, the founder of Arxen. And you can find out more about the business by heading to arxen.com.

21:43You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. We're shifting gears now from high seas to high season. It's the perfect moment to think about a last-minute getaway. Monocle's Tom Webb caught up with Bloomberg's Sarah Rappaport to hear about the destinations and experiences during travellers this summer. So we're finding that luxury is meaning a bit less busy this season. We're seeing a big shift away from the typical hotspots. I mean, everyone still loves the south of France and Ibiza. The people are picking Menorca over Mallorca this year, or places like Antiparos and Paros over Mykonos and Santorini.

22:20Places to take a little bit longer to get to, still not too hard, but just to give a little bit more of an off-the-grid feeling. And that's just because of the boom of people with my accents, Americans coming over to Europe. People want to get away to somewhere a little bit less traveled. We welcome you to Europe, particularly the Mediterranean. Why is it everyone skipping around the Mediterranean this summer? I mean, it's just a lovely place to go. It's great. Everyone loves Greece in the summer. But with climate change as well, people are finding that cool occasions are becoming more popular.

22:53Sometimes not everyone can handle, you know, the 40 degrees heat every day in August. So places like Copenhagen or even Edinburgh are becoming more popular as summer holiday destinations. You know, you might have to bring an umbrella or a sweater in the evenings. But cool occasions are proving very popular this summer still. Going to the Nordics, getting off the grid. Very, very nice. Well, speaking of your umbrella, are they branded umbrellas? Because branded beach clubs everywhere in Europe, particularly around the Mediterranean, from Dolce & Gabbana, Lounge Liners, the Four Seasons, Taramina, and the Dior branded boys off the Amalfi Coast.

23:28What is driving this? Well, it just seems you can't escape a branded beach club this summer. Even the Newt in Somerset has a Burberry club. So even England has it now. And there's lots of reasons behind this. Part of it is that younger consumers, especially Gen Z and millennials, love a bit of the Instagram moments that these provide. But also the only area of luxury that's really doing well now is experiences, which is travel lifestyle. So consumers are willing to still spend$1 ,000 a night on a hotel in the Med. they may not be able to buy a handbag or might not want to right now so they're tapping into that that psychology of being on holiday of having a nice time so to sort of bring that mood to the trip to make you maybe want to go inside the shop and buy for example at the four seasons a 600 euro yeah beach towel for deltia and gabbana they're selling them so you could get in that holiday mode of being at these beach clubs making you want to spend more it's a smart trick by luxury companies And also, you know, it looks great on Instagram showing, you know, I've been there, you know, took the Instagram story, bought the T-shirt.

24:32So are people opting for experiences to enjoy the moment or are they just trying to make each other jealous? I think you're right. It's a latter, but a bit of both. And closer to home, if we can move away from the coast and get onto the rails, because you've been writing about the rise of luxury sleeper trains for Bloomberg Businessweek. What's behind this huge resurgence we're all seeing? Yeah, it was actually the 200th anniversary of the British Rails this year. So, you know, happy birthday to that. But luxury sleeper trains have really come back. There's a new one that launched this spring called the La Dolce Vita Orient Express that goes around Italy, kind of taking the Orient Express brand back.

25:13And these are very expensive trains. They're about 5 ,000 euros for a two-night trip. But it's really like a land cruise. All experiences and food and drink are provided for you on board. and they have special trips around Venice or one-off walks around hotels and Michelin star chefs aboard these tiny little galley kitchens. But it's also, in the same way, a real Instagram moment. It's really special. People are opting for these unique once-in-a-lifetime bucket list experiences still. And there's a new one launching in August by Belmond, the Britannic Explorer, £11 ,000 for three nights. So that first journey is going to Wales likely this August.

25:51It's a to start in July. Technical difficulties, but it should be on the rail shortly. The Belmont Pretend Explorer are going to Wales, Cornwall and the Lake District. I can't quite believe that. Yeah, they're busy. They're getting quite booked, actually, up until next year. And it's largely Americans wanting to visit. But people like the design by Alvion Nord. They like the experiences and the chance to kind of get off the grid a little bit. And as you say, it sounds expensive on paper, but when you consider all the extra expenses when you are traveling, and buying food and getting to A to B.

26:24You can do that all in one place. That's right. And it's nice not to think, you know, pulling out your car desk for another glass of champagne, just being in the moment. That was Sarah Rapoport in conversation with Monocle's Tom Webb.

26:46And that is all we have time for on this episode of The Entrepreneurs. We'll be back at the same time next week. The program is produced by Laura Kramer with audio editing by Jack Dewars. You can listen again and find out more about the show at monocle.com or follow us and catch up with the archive wherever you get your audio. If you'd like to contact the team, email Laura on lrk at monocle.com. I'm Tom Edwards. Goodbye, and thanks for listening to The Entrepreneurs.

27:22Thank you.