Business News

Tue Jul 3

The Body Shop: Healing Hearts Project

Written by Michelle Simmonds

Gypsy the Snail

Principal theme: The meaning of home and belonging

Snail is strong and thoughtful. She is a wanderer and moves around a lot, although she takes her time and is very mindful as she goes. Snail carries her home on her back. She loves her home. It is her sanctuary. It ensures that wherever she travels, she feels safe and secure. Should a storm approach

she can retreat into her shelter until the weather improves. Should she feel disorientated, or lost she finds refuge in her shell. Carrying her home on her back also ensures storage for what she collects on her journey. Snail leaves a trail behind her that tells of her life. Should she or anyone look over her shoulder, shining in the moonlight, is clues to who she is and where she finds herself now.

Frankie the Platypus

Principal theme: Cultural identity and prejudice

Platypus was deeply sad. For as long as he could remember he had felt different from everyone else. Despite some resemblance to others, no one fully accepted him. His peers at school teased and bullied him because he looked different. He felt alone, and ashamed. Some days he wished

he wasn’t around anymore. It wasn’t until he grew older and moved to a bigger river that he found some friends and began to realise that there was strength in his diversity, as he could draw from many rich aspects of himself. After this, he came to love his uniqueness.

Jaz the Chameleon

Principal theme: Adaptability and the dynamic and shifting nature of self

Today Chameleon embraces his many-coloured selves. Once it was difficult for him. Chameleons hatch from eggs, without ever meeting their parents. They are abandoned, before birth. Without guidance and help from parents as he grew, Chameleon struggled to know how to be in the world.

He quickly worked out that blending in was his best strategy. He did this for so long he began to feel invisible. He grew to feel dull and empty. Finally, he met some friends who encouraged him to experiment bit by bit with his colours. He grew in confidence and with time and practice today he

shines as he embraces his changeable self

Penguins- Morgan and Scout

Principal themes: Love, Nurture and collectivism

The chick’s parents worked in pairs to incubate and then care for their child when hatched. The chick rests on the feet of the parent under layers of fat to keep warm and safe. Parents collectively huddle together to ward off icy winds as they protect their children. They take turns being on the outside of the huddle. When babies are old enough, both parents bravely seek food for their child. Upon their return they listen out to recognise amongst hundreds of chicks the cries of their own child. This is the strength of their bond.

Angela Weller

Angela Weller is the General Manager of Therapeutic Services Program at Australian Childhood Foundation. This program delivers national therapeutic and counselling services to children and their families, who have experienced abuse and trauma. She is a Social Worker who has worked at the Foundation within both the therapeutic and professional education programs.

She has an interest in the impact of abuse related trauma on children, and in particular has been active in supporting the welfare sector to consider the needs of children who have experienced family violence.

She has a deep commitment and passion to consider ways that children can feel safe, heard and loved again after their experiences of abuse. This commitment can be seen in her work developing innovative theoretical and practice based approaches and policies to support healing in children.

Tue Jul 3

Oneflare acquires UrbanYou

Written by Ash Plaskett

UrbanYou and Oneflare join forces to become Australia’s leading curated marketplace for household services

Sydney, Australia - 3 July 2018 - UrbanYou, Australia’s leader in on-demand household services, has combined with Oneflare, Australia’s fastest growing source of trusted local services.

The deal will significantly accelerate the companies’ growth trajectory. With over one million users visiting Oneflare monthly, consumers across Australia will be offered the convenience of instant booking and payments, and exceptional service standards delivered through UrbanYou. For Oneflare’s more than 100,000 registered businesses, this provides even more opportunity to access genuine clients. Together, UrbanYou and Oneflare want to create Australia’s number one destination for trusted, reliable household services available on-demand.

Noga Edelstein and Elke Keeley founded UrbanYou in 2014 to solve the problem of sourcing reliable home help in an increasingly time poor world. The UrbanYou platform enables real-time booking and payments of household services, such as cleaning, gardening and carpet cleaning. Since, UrbanYou has experienced rapid growth delivering over 40,000 services across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. In 2017, UrbanYou extended its successful consumer offering to a range of B2B customers across the real estate and property management sectors, and corporates as an Employee Benefit.

“This deal cements UrbanYou as the dominant player in Australia for on-demand. Following our acquisition of HomeHello last year, UrbanYou has taken the lead in consolidating the on-demand market and our merger with Oneflare catapults our growth to immediate national scale,” said Noga Edelstein, co-founder of UrbanYou.

“One of the key ingredients to a successful marketplace is recurring usage, and this is where UrbanYou really excels. Each month 70% of our bookings are from recurring users, providing a growing SAAS-like revenue stream. We credit this to our laser-focus on delivering a high-quality curated service experience to time-poor Australians,” continued Edelstein.

Oneflare, on the other hand, is one of Australia’s fastest growing marketplaces for local services where every month, over one million users go to get jobs done and connect with trusted service providers. With over 100,000 businesses registered, the Oneflare platform generates tens of thousands of job opportunities for cleaners, removalists, renovators, gardeners, and many more each month.

“Most often customers will come to Oneflare and get quotes from great businesses. Increasingly though, they are asking us to do more, to pick the provider, manage payments and coordinate appointments - that makes sense given we are all about helping them get their to-do list done; from here we expect this full service model will become vitally important. This is where UrbanYou comes in, providing Oneflare with the new capabilities to tap into this huge growth area,” said Billy Tucker, CEO of Oneflare.

“What UrbanYou has achieved in a relatively short period of time is incredible. They have made simple what is otherwise a very complicated task, to find a top grade service provider that you can trust with home cleaning, gardening and the like.

“Through this acquisition, we get UrbanYou’s great brand, a strong customer base and a range of services, it also has a proven team, which is the best in the industry. We are very excited about drawing on their insights while we help the company expand beyond the existing services and geographies they cover”, concludes Tucker.

In the merged business, Noga Edelstein and Elke Keeley will continue leading UrbanYou, and will explore further on-demand opportunities across both companies.

“In an increasingly connected world, Aussies are used to getting a high quality of service from trusted, already vetted service professionals, at the click of a button. Yet, many small businesses and independent contractors don’t have the funds, or the technology, to provide the seamless on-demand experience now expected by a busy, time poor population,” said Edelstein.

“Combining with Oneflare enables us to expand our services to help support more of these businesses across multiple household verticals, and connect them with customers across Australia. We are already leveraging Oneflare’s world-class R&D capabilities to enhance the UrbanYou on-demand platform, and together we’ll continue to innovate and develop new, convenient services for both consumers and small businesses.

In 2015, Oneflare successfully acquired Word of Mouth, Australia’s leading rating and reviews platform for services. Word of Mouth aligns perfectly with Oneflare and UrbanYou’s focus on quality, trust and referrals, and will be heavily featured in the UrbanYou offering.

For more information visit www.UrbanYou.com.au and www.Oneflare.com.au