All right. So, we were obviously talking about there's no middle ground with podcast. Rory, what what did you say before we went um live? essentially that, you know, you can either do the full professional thing with cameras that move along on rails, studio lighting, etc., or you do, you know, full-on what you might call lowfi. >> Yeah. >> You know, just total total amateur hour and you, you know, you deliberately make it scrappy. There isn't really the middle ground doesn't quite work, does it? >> It seems to be like a philosophy in where like marketing, branding, and everything's going. It's either you go super relatable or you go um almost like high production. You demonstrate that you have the resources to really start to unlock uh challenges a consumer has. And I think the middle is just being cleared. But uh we were speaking before this and we're talking about also the conversation around perfection and the fact that if you just wait for things to be perfect, sometimes you don't actually gain momentum. So I I guess the middle works at the start. You can have the equipment, you start putting things out there, you refine, refine, refine. And then you hit your your if you will, your momentum, if you will. But but yeah, we were before we get into all of that, Oscar, I believe this is the first podcast you've done. >> Yep. >> So, we're very very honored to have you here. >> Thank you very much for having me. >> Like I always like to say, um we like to make sure that our guests uh control their own narrative, right? So before we even dive into the conversation, it'll be great for you to uh introduce yourself uh what you've been up to for our guests that don't know um about you and your career and then we'll dive into some of the bottlenecks, your journey and uh some of the perspectives that you have about what's happening in the world right now. >> Uh I started define um what about >> just over four years ago now. Um many different failures throughout that. Um things have just gone absolutely nuts over the last four years with the company. >> Um I completely forgot everything else I meant to say or introduce myself. >> And what did you do? Tell tell us about define and how did you start? >> So we sell uh uh sportsware. >> Yeah. >> Um we built it up just with one simple narrative. Just make people feel incredible. The clothes, the athletes we work with, customers, suppliers, everybody. Um and it seems to have just exploded it. Like we love making things that make people feel great when they try it, when they wear it, everything we do. And we we make a lot of mistakes along the way. And I think this comes to that perfection point earlier where um we're not perfect >> and how quick things have gone in the last four years. It's it's breaking at the seams here and there, but it's how do you fix it? what do you do to try and repair those mistakes, whether it's with a customer, whether it's um within the team, like what what do you consistently do to keep it up? But um yeah, we're always trying to do that as much as possible in everything we do. >> What made you start? >> I've Well, to be fair, that's actually quite a long story. So, I've always I was never into fitness when I was young and then I became very into fitness. And then when I was 21, I snapped my kneecap. >> Yeah. It wasn't very good. >> Yeah. >> So, at that time as well, I was I'd just left university. I'd wanted to start up a company. Um I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. I was trying like bunch of different things and then that happened. >> Yeah. Uh and then throughout the rehab I was using a lot of K tape and knee sleeves to try and actually like it not hurt. >> Yeah. >> So I kind of realized I was like if I use one or the other it doesn't necessarily uh work as well as if I use both together. But then I get these like strips of hair that constantly getting ripped out and you've got just rolls of tape and exun student. That stuff's quite expensive. like actually you're like okay trying to keep it on as much as possible cuz you can't afford more rolls. Um >> but I kind of thought oh you know what how hard could it be to make a material that has both of them in it. So I saw there was an innovation grant and I still remember there's like 3 days left to put it in. I was like you know what why not? I don't know anything about this. I'm sure I can figure out some way. So oh god. So basically put in this whole grant uh application uh in three days was like just working solidly through it trying to find out as much as I could possibly understand about how to weave fabrics and what could be done and somehow we ended up getting it. >> Wa >> and then that started the first company. >> Who was that from? >> Uh that was from uh Innovate UK. >> Got it. Uh back when they were doing those sort of grants for innovation. Yeah. So, we actually made a brilliant product and we had it tested. It was scientifically proved to improve performance and recovery and um I still use it when I do sports sometimes cuz it's uh uh it does help my knees. >> Yes. Got it. >> Um but long story short with that company um maybe just the wrong people involved um wrong investors and >> um they now have the patents. They've taken that on um and kind of >> I don't know. I think we had different approaches to what was the right way of doing it and um what happened happened and I basically had to I left well was asked to leave it happens. Um but I felt like I knew it was the right thing at that point cuz I didn't feel sad. I was like relieved. >> Interesting. Yeah. >> So from then I was trying to get a job cuz I left uh no money in my account. Could barely pay rent. um ended up getting a job just working in a uh I think it was like like a P reach PLC. They like do all of the digital marketing for um well they basically trying to become digital paper like Birmingham Live and things like that. >> So worked for them for about a year. At the same time I'd met somebody who wanted to start up another clothing brand. Like I really enjoyed making clothes at this point. Like there was I still remember there was one guy and it was a customer and he emailed me and he was telling me the story about how he's got a young kid and he's not been able to carry him up the stairs when he's sleeping for like the last 2 years cuz he's had a problem with his knees and he bought one of those compression garments and he was just he was just so thankful. always like it's the first time in 2 years I've been able to carry my son upstairs and I just thought you know what that's that is why >> we do this >> like those are the types of feelings you want to create for people and I really enjoy making clothes and that's kind of why I stuck at it and then after that it was the next company >> partner after god because it takes so long to start something um it's it's almost like hitting your head against a brick wall and It's almost will the brick will give out first or your head. >> Yeah. >> And it's painful. >> It really is. Um so next one just the the the guy I started the next clothing company with just didn't it got to that point and he's like I I can't do it anymore. Um and I completely get that. >> So that's where I came home and said to look this has happened. For some reason AMX has also given her quite a big credit limit. was like £6,000 something like this. >> Haley is your wife. >> Haley is my wife. Yes. >> And you were in Scotland at this point. Were you in Glouster? >> So we was we were in Birmingham. In >> Birmingham I went to university in Birmingham and then stayed there and then so we were in Birmingham this time and I come home. >> I say to her it's like so business partner doesn't want to do this anymore. I think I can do it. Like I'd gone I'd seen what we did in the first company and it's almost like you boil it all down to the raw nuts and bolts. still remember I worked out we were making 214 from£1 >> from marketing spend and then you've got I was like you know what you can make the rest work within that 1 14 that you've got left over >> same again with the second company so I went home and I said to I was like look I think I can do it however I have zero money I'd just been let go from the job that I was doing at the same time cuz this was due co >> I was on benefits we had nothing coming in she works as an oroptist an NHS. So, like 24,000 a year. We have rent, no money whatsoever. Somehow AMX had given her this credit card with about £6,000 on it. I was like, I think I could do it with that. >> Yeah. >> Can I max your credit card out? >> Mhm. >> And I remember thinking, she's she is always right. If she says yes, this will work. If she says no, go get a job. Just stop. >> Perfect. >> She said yes. >> And max credit card out. I timed it for the payments so that it was right on the very first day. Made payments for stock. I spoke to suppliers >> cuz you can choose where in the month you pay, can't you? >> Exactly. And I spoke to the suppliers and I was like, "Look, this is what I'm trying to do." They were really helpful um cuz I through the other companies I've ended up working with them um a bit and we somehow managed to pull it off and then um >> you effectively had a month in which to make it work almost two months. >> 56 days. >> 56 days. Yeah. >> And I still remember as I was coming out to the fifth like you going to be able to do this? I'm like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Oh, no." >> Um, but interestingly, I argue that you should be able to use your student loan to start a business instead. >> There's no reason why the government should give people what is a very worthwhile thing at the beginning of your life. having access to large sums of money prevents you spending your whole life in a cash flow trap. Okay? Because otherwise otherwise you get trapped in this kind of hand-to-mouth existence. >> And I've always argued there's no reason why you should privilege people investing in their education, worthwhile though that sometimes is over starting a business or >> taking a risk or doing something of that kind. And weirdly, if you think about it, if your education doesn't pay off, you don't have to pay back your student loan. It will be interesting if the same applied. I mean, we did have the enterprise allowance scheme back in the day, which they should probably never have got rid of. I mean, it was a it actually almost accidentally led to the creation of a load of businesses. Um, I just to tell the story about this, it was a kind of conservative era. I think it was a late Thatcher era idea where effectively if you started a business you got more dull money. >> Oh, >> and lots of people effectively thought they were gaming the system because they said, "Well, I'm in a band. If we pretend the band is a business, I'll get we'll all get more dull money." Now, the weird thing is because they then formed a business and thought of the band as a business, it completely changed their behavior. So, they they became vastly more business-like. Yeah. And so, you know, I've often wondered it'd be very very interesting if you gave everybody their own, you know, their own limited company, you know, at the age of 24. What effect would that have on, you know, general simply as a kind of mental reframing of what you're doing? Um, but no, I mean, the other thing that really interests me about that story is it always seems to be the case in every business startup that there are two or three kind of sliding doors moments where, you know, if your wife had just said, "No, I'd rather not." >> Yeah. you know, you know, if you hadn't broken your knee first time round, etc., >> you know, there are extraord and it's true if you look at anything, you know, you know, the formation of bands where, you know, Mick and Keith meet on a train. >> Yeah. we you suddenly realize that there's much more I always recommend to people reading the book Fluke by Brian Class which which effectively explains that you know although we kind of construct a story you know we love we love to construct a story to make our life look linear and everything intentional in fact it's just not like that at all yeah >> there's so many of those moments just you it so the way I met my wife she moved we I was living in a house share with seven other people the person in the room next to me moved out. She moved in. >> Wow. >> If she didn't move in there, we might have never met. If we never met, we may have never come to Scotland. >> And when things really kicked off is when we moved to Scotland. We had >> two We had three people. >> No, we had two people when we left um Birmingham to move up to Scotland with the business. So, this was a year and a half in. >> Wa. >> Like a lot of smashing. >> And you moved to Scotland because your wife was Scottish eventually. >> Yeah. That was so it's we set the company up start trading September 21 then we moved up to Scotland in June 22 >> at the end of that >> we had two people one was actually already in Scotland um cuz I knew we were going to move up >> perfect >> since we moved up cuz we kind of hit this threshold and it was like we couldn't get past it >> and it was just because I was doing everything and it's that real like we had six months of that where I just saw you cannot do this without a Without great people around you, you cannot build something. No one person can do it. And physically for six months saw what the absolute limit was for us. We just you couldn't do more. You got to pack the orders. You got to talk to customers. You you only have so much time in the day. The people there that we met when we moved up. That is why we've grown so big. >> That is why things have gone the way it has. >> You just found that access to superb talent and energy. >> Yes. It's just people who care more than anything. And then it allows us to care for them more. For instance, like the way we've >> we we've >> got our goals for what we want to do with teams. For instance, like finance director, his goals to have an average salary of over 160% over what the average is in the UK. And our bonus scheme is based within our market. 10% is roughly what you spend. Anything under that half of it goes into a pot. >> Yes. >> The other half goes into growing the company. >> I don't have it at all and it gets shared equally between everyone. And it based if you it's based on how long you've been there during that year. So for the full year you get the full year >> and it obviously if you join halfway through the year >> this year the bonus is around 16 grand. >> Yep. That's the cleaners, warehouse workers, social media team, every single person an equal amount. >> Go and see Gary Hamill who wrote the book. He's at London Business School. Uh he's written the book Humanocracy. He would absolutely love this case study. Absolutely love it because it, you know, there are these fantastic companies that work in this way. What has been destroyed in a lot of modern capitalism is when I first went into, you know, the business world, it was tacitly understood that if we do well, we all do well. >> Yes. >> And now we've created this sort of shareholder value movementdriven effectively you have a managerial cast who are bonused on treating the frontline staff like shed. Bluntly put. I think part of it is is it's sometimes because you can never make everyone happy >> and there's always going to be things within businesses with with people who either don't fit or something like that and I feel like often it can be that you focus too much on those that maybe have not fitted or gelled well within the team >> and then you start to go okay well why would I do this for you and you can see how if someone starts doing that, that's where they stop doing things like that. Instead of going, "Wait a second. What about all the amazing people that make this place what it is?" >> You know what? The 1 2 3% of people that may not put the effort in, you we're always going to have that as the company grows. Yeah. >> But it's trying to create the culture and environment for people to do well and never forgetting the people that are making it happen. >> And I think that's where it can easily >> you can fall into this trap where you focus on the few and then you start to the way you operate. You focus on the people on the extremes. Either either you have this delusional belief. There was a guy from McKenzie who's cited in the book humanocracy actually who said you should focus your bonus on the 2% of staff who really make a difference. Right? >> And someone went to him and said, well, what evidence have you got that 2%? It turned out it was pure prejudice. And what it is, it's managerial self agrandisment that managerial people are convinced that their decisions are wildly important whereas everybody else is effectively funible and just a human resource. >> And every advertising agency I've worked in that works is a really weird ecosystem. I always remember a brilliant colleague of mine saying, "Look, there are two things that matter in some ways in a pitch. You know, it's the quality of your thinking and the quality of your elves." I said, "What the hell do you mean by elves?" And he said, "Well, you in a good agency, you say, uh, by 9:00 tomorrow morning, I want the pitch room to look like a teenager's bedroom." I mean, that's assuming you're pitching for a band, which is okay. I don't mean at random. Okay, that'll be pretty weird if you're pitching to kind of, you know, IBM, but but but I want the pitch room to look like a teenage bedroom. And you don't even have to check cuz you know that when you come in at 8:00 to rehearse the pitch, the whole thing's, you know, absolutely, you know, could be could have been done by, you know, a theatrical set designer. It looks exactly like a teenager's bedroom. >> And and and he always said, you know, that never never underestimate the importance of all that sort of secondary stuff. And no, this is absolutely fascinating. So the bonus is exactly the same. M It's exactly the same all the way through because >> Yeah. >> I feel everyone makes the place run. >> Mhm. >> If you don't have people in the warehouse able to pick and pack orders, you can't deliver it. If you don't have the cleaners coming in to do the cleaning, maybe they're not the prettiest jobs. Then the place turns a mess. If you don't have if if you don't have the whole team, that's it. And the only person that doesn't get any of it is me. And we've already spoke to those who as the company grows, we're putting some thresholds in place. Say, hey, once you start earning over this, >> you start getting equity or >> you don't but you don't get a bonus. >> You don't get a bonus. >> Yeah. So we work around the share option pot as well, but the idea really is to try and make sure the whole team are as equal as possible >> because John Lewis created the partnership because he had this epiphany which was that I think it was that the amount of money the family were making out of the store, good Welshman by the way, uh was about the same as what they paid all the staff. >> And he he he fundamentally realized this was a completely inequitable, you know, system. Yeah, I've always been a big fan of humanocracy, right? And I think a lot of the times people think that treating your staff well doesn't actually have an ROI to that, right? And we're going to talk about some of the growth numbers there just to demonstrate how I like to talk about the fact that it's not about being nice, it's about being kind. What is the right human thing to do, right? Because niceness, I don't think, is necessarily authentic. I think that kindness basically means that you're doing right by the people. Whether that be from having clear and honest conversations, transparency, whether that be making sure that you almost have like this wolfpack mentality. And my co-ounder >> also risk pooling, isn't it? That you share in the downside. And let's face it, all employees share in the downside because you lose your job. Okay. >> If we don't make if we don't make profit, >> no bonus. >> Exactly. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> It has to be. So it's that everyone working in an equitable way and it goes that way. But I think there's a brilliant book radical cander which speaks about that. Are you being kind to the person or you being nice to the person? >> And I think it's >> don't I think people sometimes may think it it >> fine. It's not >> easy. >> It's not crazy hard. But it's saying when we have up and ups and downs in the year, when it is a crazy time, yes, we will ask a little bit more of you. But because you're doing that, we don't need more people. Bonus is larger. And then during the down times, leave at 2:00. >> Mhm. >> Work on what you need to do. You are in control of your life. You need a holiday. Go on holiday. This is the expectations of what we want to do. and that clear clearly talking to people about >> you don't have dar proxy metrics of you know presenters or no >> we try and ball down all of our metrics to a couple of key ones that work per department so for instance in customer care our metrics are actually based on how many fivestar trust pilots we get per the number of um customer queries that we get however we do not and they are not allowed to ever just send a uh an automatic request. We don't do that because the whole point there is for somebody to take the time to willingly go and give you a very good review, they you have to be very fast getting back to them. You need to deal with the problem extremely well. You need to go above and beyond. You need to do several different amazing metrics to do that >> because you're never going to ask someone for something like that unless you feel you've done very well and then they take the time to do it. It's so easy to get a bad review. >> Yeah. >> And it happens. And we have when we have delays, which after Black Friday, this has happened right now. New warehouse is opening up. It's just manic. These things happen, but then what can you do to try and communicate with the customers to talk about >> this is happening and we're sorry and what can you do for them? these few little metrics and then understanding what's actually influencing the others trying to say to each department this is the one goal you're trying to go for >> this means if you're doing this you're able to hit these seven eight metrics and these seven eight metrics we can have the team leads and those who are responsible for the teams and look after them to say oh you're not able to hit that let's have a little deeper dive ah this may be why do you need a little bit of help with But they can equally use their own ingenuity and their own autonomy. So there's a guy if you ever rent a car from Avis at Glasgow airport, there's a guy there who uh is I think is the best rated person in Scotland for and uh a lot of a lot of the reason he achieves this cuz I had a long chat with him is he uses his own initiative. So I got a personally I mean it's probably templated but let's not ruin the whole illusion. Um, but as soon as I returned the car, about 20 minutes later, I get an email from him saying, "It often don't get to meet the people when they return a car because he's obviously at the front desk. Please just let me know personally, you know, if you had any problems or if there's anything further I can do." >> And it's like, whoa. Now, I think what it is, that's his own initiative. You see, he's doing that effectively off his own bat. And as a consequence, he's getting a stack of fivestar reviews. >> Yeah. Um and this is a really interesting thing which I think that what if if you if you have a small number of metrics and you allow people discretionary judgment to attain them you gain this extraordinary entrepreneurial inventiveness in people >> and this is sorry I might have mentioned this on the long on the last podcast but I don't apologize for repeating it. I met the guy Steven Wolfrram who's the wolf from alpha mathematical genius guy and he just made this observation which is one of those sentences which you hear it you go yeah yeah yeah and then suddenly you realize actually this is a life-changing insight he said the reason evolution works in nature is it has quite a loose fitness function in other words stay alive long enough to reproduce okay very simple metric if you can manage to do that you're still in the game and it doesn't matter whether you're a shark or moth or a bacterium if you can meet those criteria and then you're free to use all the engine well I'm obviously personifying evolution here evolution is free to use all its ingenuity so that if you can find an ecological niche in which you can fulfill those criteria then you get to stay around and by cont and so we we then inferred from this maybe that's why free market capitalism works and command and control or or what I call Soviet style capitalism which is what you see in large organizations now where there are people in finance trying to effectively uh you know effectively create absolutely rigid rules for the performance of every single piece of activity and you lose that complete evolutionary exploration you see and so you if you think about it free market capitalism is if you can stay in business long enough to get lucky >> you know you stick around and you know Interestingly, everybody's obsessed now in large organizations with defining and I think a little bit of it is a tech conspiracy which is if we can define people's jobs very narrowly then we can replace them with a machine or an algorithm or a process and then we can make our staff completely interchangeable and replaceable. And what you of course what you what you can't see when you do that is what you're losing. >> Yeah. which is all the opportunities and ingenuities that come bottom up rather than top down. And actually most of them do come bottom up. >> Yes. >> You know, most most of the innovation happens, you know, at the level of manufacturing, not at the level of design. >> They're the ones doing it. Like with our design, we we send them straight over to the factory. Go and see how it works. And you can see it transforms how they approach and look at things. M >> um we have a problem, I'd go and speak to the team who are the closest to it >> and those doing it and asking them what can we help with because they know it better. >> Yeah. >> Maybe four years ago when it started and I was doing all I did, but actually they probably know better anyway. They just went around. Um they are always the ones who are going to know better cuz they're the ones experiencing it dayto-day. What are the problems? And if you give them that freedom to fix issues by themselves, you can then focus on the bits that you need to do. Each parts of the team can and they know where they're going and the goals. It does come with a little bit of >> it can take a bit of adjustment for people. >> Oh yeah. >> To be giving people that freedom, >> there is quite a lot of adjustment. >> It's a bit like political devolution. You know, there's that wonderful line um uh in Yes, Minister >> where they go, well, shouldn't we, you know, devolve power into local councils um uh you know, on this matter. Well, we we really ought to do that because someone might make a decision. You know, the fear that people might actually exercise autonomy in a way that's unexpected. And I I I find that, you know, and it's very difficult to get people. I mean, Octopus Energy is a very interesting case of a large, very successful organization that has extraordinary devolution of power. So, Greg said to me that often the first time he knows they've introduced a new tariff is when he read into the papers, you seem and um uh and actually octopus, which is totally accidental, of course, the octopus, I think, is an interesting analogy for that because I think it has multiple brains, doesn't it? I think each tentacle someone told me has its own sort of central nervous system. But that business of devolving power which is interesting because companies are actually becoming and I think all these weird bogus jobs like compliance and HR and things okay you know these job creation schemes for the useless middle class um uh what they're doing is they're making um business decision-m look more and more like military decision making in the 19th century. Ironically, at a very time when the military have learned the importance of devolving decision-m so I always like this story that someone I think some there were a bunch of overseas sort of people being trained and they were told by the Marines or something right here's a load of material we want you to build a bridge across the river and they all start putting materials together and the person comes in and goes you failed we you told us we had four hours you know how can we have failed you didn't ask Why? And the point is if you say if you say why am I building a bridge uh they may say it's it's to get X across. Now you may say well there's a patch of land quarter of a mile downstream where they can just drive straight across. Why do we need to build a bridge? >> So effectively you have this weird top- down you know unidirectional hierarchy where it's impossible for any useful information to filter back up. I've always tried to make Oh, sorry. >> No, no, I was just going to say it's really interesting how we have this conversation. And I think for the longest of time, you almost had this shepherd and sheep hierarchy in organizations, right? So people would wait for somebody to tell them what to do and then they would do it. But then what you're starting to see right now, as I mentioned before, is this wolf pack mentality, right? Where the leaders are in the field with you. They're probably running just a little bit more ahead than everybody else and they want to have a team of other people that allowing them to make more democratized decisions because the world is moving so quickly and so fast. You want to have different perspectives solving different problems, right? But then the key to that is making sure that you have the right people. At the end of the day, we always say that the definition of a company is a collective of people. So the thing that separates one from the other depends on the quality of the people that they have and whether they align with the culture. And Michael and I uh my co-founder Butterfly Effect, we realized that it's so important to hire the right people for that model to work. And we actually stole something from uh Arsenal's football manager cuz we're Arsenal fans of course, Micheletta. And I coined it as the three A's in terms of like how you how you hire the best people to able to fit within a model like that, right? And the first one is all about ability, right? Do they have the skill to be able to do the role, right? And that's obviously looking at what they've done before, some some bright sparks that they've demonstrated through the interviews, some where the skills naturally lie. They might not even been aware of it. Do they have the skill to potentially do the role? Right? Then you have agency. How autonomous can they be when it comes to actually doing the thing? Not just are they proactive in terms of doing the thing, but are they also proactive in terms of finding that there's a problem and something needs to be done, right? And then depending on where they are there, depends on the seniority, right? If they are very good at you telling them what the problem is and they get it done, very junior. If they're very good at saying, okay, I can identify the problem. I know what needs to be done and I can also make sure that it happens. They're a little bit more senior. But then the one thing that's almost non-negotiable is attitude, right? Because you can teach somebody to get better skills through experience. You can give people the confidence to have more agency but attitude you can never change because that's down to the individual. So a lot of the times for somebody to function within that model they have to have the right attitude to be coachable >> to be willing to fail to be willing to try and then you can do something with that. >> What would you think about that? >> I mean we we have it's kind of developed over the years when you start working with people and figuring out how to how to build the company, how to build the teams. And what we found is you can anybody where maybe it's not quite going to plan, we figured out if you just draw out three boxes and you put cultural fit, attitude, performance. If you can tick those two, cultural fit and attitude, >> performance is rectifiable. Yeah. >> Every single time. And what can be misconstrued is the attitude for performance. So, we had somebody who um it we just we couldn't figure out what was what was going wrong. I was this was earlier in the days. I was like trying to figure out okay what's going on? What's going wrong? Like he's so good. It's such a good cultural fit. Like just things aren't going very well. And basically it's almost like such a good culture fit. He's trying to help everybody. >> And what that meant is he didn't have he hadn't yet embedded to learn >> enough of how we were doing things. So, he was trying to help everyone from the get- go >> and amazing guy, like really trying to help. >> But it meant that ever so often like there'd be something missed here, something missed there. And like you you're working on like launching something on a website or something like it's not a it's like a oh crap moment. So it got to this point and as I was kind of we we kind of figured it out and I was speaking to him and then we kind of figured out and we drew this out and I was like you know what >> I never questioned your attitude or your cultural fit and I can see how I'd misinterpreted the attitude for the performance >> because you can see that you're working really hard and you can see you're a cultural fit but the attitude towards the work seemed a bit misconstrued because he was trying to help everyone. Yeah. So he can only do everything at 50%. And the moment he changed that, he's just absolutely flown through the company. >> And how did you spot that? Because right now, >> unfortunately, I speak to him and um I do tell him I'm sorry quite a lot because you don't know in those early days how to do it. And I don't think I dealt with it in the right way. Luckily, it wasn't for like a long time, but um >> I think it's one of those where you need to admit like I made a mistake on how to figure that out. I didn't know any better at the time. >> It's sometimes very difficult to um separate out to tease apart those different things >> because you can read one as the other. I I mean I always find that really interesting when you have uh you know certain things I mean one of the things I always realize in business is it's very difficult to tell what's rigor and what's ass covering. >> Yeah. So you know you you know actually an awful lot of what appears to be rigorous decisionm is really defensive decisionm which is if this goes wrong I want to make absolutely sure that no one can blame me. Um and you know so there are a lot of behaviors which from the outside look remarkably similar but the motivation behind them is completely different. But what's really interesting is obviously let's take it back to co right so you now decide you're going to go on your own you get six grand right we obviously like jumped into the 6 months of you trying to make it work obviously I'm sure the mindset was I need to make this work because of the trust that was given to me because of the fact that I had this shot. So you get six grand, lands in the bank account, you've got 58 days, was it 58 days? 56 days to be able to to have to pay it back. >> Yeah. 56 days back. >> So where did you deploy the capital? Like like how did you make sure >> stock? >> Uh yeah, cuz over the years I'd learned how to build website, how to do some basic code, how to do the photography, how to um basically do every single function. Uh-huh. >> So, I built everything. Um, the websites, >> how are we going to do the shipping? Absolutely every part of the function. Um, and to have it operational. Um, and it meant I didn't need to spend any money on marketing like I found the athletes. >> Mhm. >> I found >> How did you find your first customers? >> Uh, so through um uh so we have we we use uh uh influencer athlete program. um they are absolutely integral to how we've grown and they are we always make sure we look after them >> same way >> so it's micro Nike effectively >> I guess so >> yes that's how we got our first customers and it's just gone from strength to strength this is what I saw in the previous companies this is how it works so I was like okay well as we grow though always look after every single person as much as you can throughout and there's always going to be people who feel hard done by but we >> always try and do the right Always do fair and don't treat people differently. >> Yeah. >> Try and find a metric to and this is where we can put all our athletes in a room. Every year we have uh on a birthday we bring everyone together. >> Wo. >> I think this year we actually could only bring like maybe I think it was 75 or 100 people because >> flying 600 people from around the world is quite expensive. >> Yeah. >> But you can put them all in the room. We do not need to worry about them talking about any of their pay this that the other because we treat everything fairly and we're always going to help push them up as much as possible. The same as inside the company, we use competencies to grow to for people to move up through competencies. So if someone comes up to you as a team lead and ask for a pay rise, it's hard to say no. You feel bad. But this way we've created the structure to say if you have to say no. >> Yeah. >> You say >> no. But if you would like to get there and you're asking this, you're saying this because this person gets that and >> they do these things. I will help you. I'll help you get there. I'll help you get further. I'll help you get more. But yeah, >> and to be fair, we don't actually have many people ask because we put the onus on the team leads and those in heads of positions to be looking after their teams to if they're being asked for their for a pay rise from someone in their team. Either we found the team lead or the head of isn't looking after their team well enough. >> Mhm. >> Or that person is wrong because they don't understand what's required. You don't get it just for being there for a long time. >> Got it. >> You get it for what's been written out when you come in. This is what we show people and we try and develop these uh competencies. And it's at a point where you could be a a senior expert and be earning the same as your team lead because it's not about what you end up having is your team lead is responsible for moving the obstacles out of your way for you to do an amazing job. >> So if you're doing an amazing job, the team leads maybe have a few more people in the team. Why should there be differences in pay? >> But you have to do a great job to do that. And this is what we're trying to level out as much as possible. Now, there does become a point where the responsibility for so many people does come into into effect. When you're talking about team lead where there seven people, it's you can have a level. When you're talking about somebody who's saying up a department that has 60 people, it's definitely different. However, we then base some of their competencies on how much everyone gets paid in the team. Because if they're getting paid well, it means they're high up on the competencies and it's all based on how long they have been there for the year. >> So they cannot just up everyone's salary and then go, "Oh, this is it based on last years." >> So you have long-term kind of goals for everybody. And this is where if they're looking after the teams really well, then they get the reward. >> Yeah. >> And it's trying to filter that down as much as possible. >> Interesting. I think a lot of the times people get this wrong is you get and we talked about this in a previous episode where you get these really skilled people that are good at doing a thing that's very integral to the business but because they can no longer go up the corporate ladder if you will until they become a manager which is something that doesn't it's a completely different role right the goal of being a head of department and manager you're more of a conductor and a coach you're there to take things away from people and to work through the team right which is a completely different skill And some people that comes naturally to them. Whereas other people they prefer this almost like black belt >> growth, right? Because at the end of the day what it does is it's integral to the business. The quality of the execution is as integral as this the the the management of how you work on the day-to-day because you can have we always used to talk about squiggles and squares, right? And I think that you can create a pretty robust uh business with a lot of squares because everything will be structured but you're not going to change the world. >> You're not going to do anything that is not expected unless those two can work together in harmony. You need that art the squiggles and the squares. You need the people that can provide structure. So those that color after the line to be able to know uh the the almost like the the almost like a coloring book, right? they know where they can go wild but effectively within that stage it allows you to see some real brilliance there and a lot of times people that are brilliant executors almost get not hard done by but they never get a look in when it comes to either compensation either recognition from a business perspective it's usually the people that are the great talkers with the great title and a lot of the times I think a lot of leaders they base their decisions on what they hear from the leaders within their business they don't actually take that time to sit down with the people that are actually executing and understanding where the brilliance is coming from around the business. It's super important as an owner leader of an organization to take the time to actually meet and connect and see where the impact is driving from a business perspective and not just listen to the outcome of what happened throughout the month, quarter or year. >> Gets hard when there's more and more people. But yeah, >> that is interesting. So, how many employees do you have at the moment? >> I believe there's about 185, but growing. Yeah, because you will hit that sort of I don't check it every week. >> No, >> sometimes every day it's it's a lot more, but I try and get around everybody. >> So So by the way, I don't think people are understanding what you've just said, right? So in COVID, which is about 5 years ago, four or five years ago, right? >> When we moved up June 22, there was two people. >> So and you now have >> 180 185 I think. So can you walk us through the growth of the business from a people and topline because where we met right was at the time's fastest growing company in the UK right and the fund was number one right so you are currently the fastest growing company in the UK it'll be great for you to walk us through that journey what how how did you do like from a numbers perspective from a people's perspective year one two three four. What did that look like so that people can understand just the sheer velocity of this business? >> So year one basically one person >> uh into year two. Um so during that year >> what were your first products? >> Uh so dynamic le leggings. >> Yes. >> Uhhuh. >> Four colors. >> Um we still have dynamic leggings now. >> Yeah. >> Um we had origin as well but we've changed things within it. uh Aftermath, which isn't even a collection anymore. Um there was a range of different things. Um but we had we didn't have too many items to start with. Um got to get going very quickly. It was helpful that I had the previous company before connection with suppliers and designs that had already worked on with them. Um so that helped did help speed it up. And this has comes to that piece of luck as well. >> Of course, >> timing with that. >> And they're actually British suppliers are they mostly or are they mixture? >> No, mixture. So we have initially it was supplied from China and now China, Turkey, um uh some in Pakistan we look at Portugal as well. We're trying near shore potentially looking at Mexico as well. So we're trying to figure out the the distribution but >> Got it. >> Um yeah so first year was uh so I think Abby joined towards that would be the February so at the beginning of the second year. >> Mhm. >> And then we moved up in June 22. Megan joined, Abby was already there, Ross joined. Um, we had a couple of people. So, we had about four, five people by the end of the second year >> and then >> it grew to about 30 trying to think now. So, that would be so we moved to company old there. The next year was about it must have been about 45 at the end of year three because I remember we could sit 33 people upstairs. >> We couldn't get any more and then we had the warehouse as well. So it would have been about 4550. >> So year three 45 people. So year one revenue size around >> uh year 1. Oh I should really know these right? >> Uh I believe it was it was just over £250,000. We work in dollars, so it was around $300,000. >> Yeah, we got dollars. Year two, >> uh, year two was, I believe, $2.4 million. >> Year three, >> uh, that was 20 million either pounds or dollars, I can't remember. >> And then year four was, yeah, >> I believe it was it was 66 million pounds, which we had there, which would be about 80 million plus dollars. And then since then we've done the same again. >> Whoa. >> Which is why things at the moment with this new automated warehouse is the >> the last two weeks it's just things have just broken in the warehouse and we're moving to a new place and trying to keep on top of it and we've had these it's it's it's just this complete perfect storm of basically >> and we're trying to do right by the customers and get things out. But at the moment where we're sat today, we can see now now the new warehouse is finally working. We know that by Saturday night we are back on top of it. And it's moved from being able to maybe do 8,000 orders in a day to uh the new warehouse will be able to do 16,000 in an 8 hour shift. But that's only 6 and a half hours of working. >> So that finally I'm just waiting for we've I've been in there for like two weeks non-stop. the the guy from DHL was I was helping him get some stuff off the um back of the lorry and then he came over like the next day. He's like, "Oh, I was talking to Grant over there like I just thought you were another warehouse worker." I was like, "Yeah, man." He's like, "You've just been here doing stuff, but like I don't introduce myself cuz it's just I'm just I am there with the team. >> I say my name, but like I'm not going to be like ignor >> Where are your main markets? Uh how much do you export? How much do you >> We export probably about 90% >> 90% >> about 10% is UK 50%. >> Which of the sports where you dominate? >> Uh so we focus on the gymwear >> pure gymwear. Yeah. >> And 90% 90 95% of our sales at the moment is still female. >> So we're growing in the males markets um as well. And I think it's just about trying to it's just focusing in on that. We've had some issues this year with products. So 2026 is all about um we fixed a lot of things with suppliers, our supply chain, making sure the quality is perfect. The um being able to >> That's probably a leggings uh h hangover, is it? If you started with leggings, it starts female. I mean, there are male leggings, but it's >> No. Yeah, exactly. So we start started female um and then move into the male market. Um, and that's starting to make a move now. But I think it's just this no matter how well that's going, it's that whole when things are going crazy on one side, it dwarfs even if things it's the guys is probably growing at the same rate the women's was at the beginning >> as in the same rate at the same time. >> But you compare what the women's is now compared to the guys. >> And we're starting to see the guys increase. But it's trying to also remind people within the company. It's like you're now getting to experience almost kind of what it's like starting something from scratch because the guys don't give a >> Mhm. Right. >> We are a female brand to start with. Guys don't care. >> We need it takes time >> to build up that the brand and it takes time to build up that connection with new customers. Mhm. >> What proportion of it do you think is gym wear as gym wear and what proportion is gywear as fashion wear? >> I the Lululemon sort of honestly I >> it's it's hard it's hard to >> it's very blurry obviously. >> It's very blurry. I mean I hear like uh my wife tells me about um like the family have um she's got like five brothers. Five >> four brothers. She's one of five. Um, and they they sort of talk about when the other parents are like seeing like defining the schools and they all want the like the water bottles and things like and I'm hearing this I'm like this is mental. It's more than what we even wanted to achieve. And our focus has always been on like the gym wear make you feel great when you go into the gym you know like when you you find a spot >> and the lighting's good and it's almost like how can we do that with clothing? How can we give someone that little bit of extra confidence to you know what it's like? You go in and you just don't feel great in yourself >> and you just do five minutes and then you bugger off. >> Yeah. >> Or if you go and you're wearing your favorite shirt and anything like that, you go, "Oh, you know what? I feel like I feel good." >> And you find the right lighting and the gym's all nice, there's nice people around, you do a little bit more. And this is this whole upward cycle. And it's the same way then we manage to design. >> When you go to the gym, you probably have >> a favorite shirt. or when you go out, wherever you do, you probably have a favorite shirt, >> favorite pair of boxes, favorite hat, favorite >> and our whole design philosophy is the first thing you put in the wash and the first thing you take out. >> Wow. >> Got it. >> And within that, >> because you want to recycle it, >> they're free to do anything apart from buying tren books. They're not allowed tren books. >> Oh, interesting. >> We don't have a single one. They are allowed to spend all of that money plus more traveling the world >> and go and get inspiration. >> They're not allowed to buy trend books. >> Interesting. Too der too derivative. You Yeah. >> You create a bias in yourself. Yes. >> So we try always try through everything we do is to go right try and come up with something then you can look at others. >> Yeah. >> Do not look at others first. >> Got it. >> Otherwise you will bias yourself. And when for instance we're trying to I know you're writing a script or um a reply and I don't know what it might be but let's say a campaign. >> Yeah. >> Um or a reply to a customer. That is a little bit tricky. We never get people to sit down and do it together and go right three of you. If you three want to work on it, let's go away. You all write it individually then come together. Got it. >> And then you have different perspectives. The moment you do it together, the moment someone says it, the moment a team lead speaks first, the junior person won't want to say something >> anything or contradict it. >> Exactly. So it is trying to remove as many biases as possible and then come together cuz we're all we all have that. >> If you if you show me what you've written, I'm already going to have that in my mind >> 100%. >> No matter how hard I try, >> sometimes I'll say, "Oh, do you guys work together?" Yes. >> Right. Don't do anything for next week. next week, >> go and do the same thing. >> Do the same thing, but don't do it together. You'll forget about this. >> Yeah. >> There's this whole Nelson Mandela um quote about the fact that great leaders speak last, >> right? So, they allow everybody else to form their opinion and say what their perspective is on something before they add their opinion. And it it's brilliant for two reasons. One, you don't stifle ideas, originality, or you don't miss anything. And two, sometimes you might be wrong and by listening to everybody else's perspectives, you might reshape >> uh uh because you miss something, right? And that's super super interesting. >> There's another reason as well, which is if you notice a blind spot, >> yeah, >> you can then correct it. Whereas if you're the junior person speaking last, you cannot go, I think you've completely missed this relevant point. PNG used to have this rule that when they evaluated advertising, the uh the feedback came in reverse order. the most junior persons but had to speak first. >> Yeah. And also that closes to the ground. But I think a really important thing about um what you said was this whole concept of the fact that I I watched this this study that said that the reason why startups tend to outperform and out innovate bigger organizations because you might start off with a team of five and you have five different opinions and then you have a team of a thousand you have one opinion which is the opinion of the leader, right? And because everybody feels like for them to be able to thrive in the business, they have to abide by the perspective of the leader. And it doesn't encourage independent thinking, doesn't encourage um uh problem solving. You want to make sure that every time your company grows that you have more perspectives and you can actually feel that growth happening, right? And now obviously we just talked about the growth journey, which is absolutely insane, right? So you go from getting a six grand loan, right, to about $350,000, right, to 2 million to 20 to 65, right? And one thing that I think is really interesting is that this is this there's this like theory that I have about ecom brands or just like brands in general that are not based in London, right? It seems that other than like fintech or the tech space, etc., etc., The biggest exports that we have in the UK all don't come from London. They come from Birmingham, Manchester. >> I was I'm so pleased you raised that because I was going to say the same thing, which is you have an invisible competitive advantage in being in Scotland. >> Yeah. >> Not least, by the way, I I won't get into Georgeism because I bore people on this, but uh you can actually make you can actually give people discretionary income which doesn't get soaked up by the housing market. So, I always get annoyed because everybody talks about everybody moving to a, you know, Dubai as a low tax um regime. Okay. Okay. No, no. If you're if you're under 40 in London, you don't care about the rate of tax. You want to move to a low rent regime >> because that's the thing that's really stripping you bare, you know, effectively that you know, and I'm willing to bet I have I've never seen your car park, but I'm willing to bet that the contents of your staff car park are pretty pretty nice. Is that fair? >> It is. And it's actually I still remember the first person that probably got like I remember when I got my first nicer car. >> Yeah. >> They as Oh, you must be so proud. I was like, "You know what? When you get one >> and then now there's more." And that has always made me a lot happier seeing that. >> I always notic that you move out of London, you move out of London, the further away you go from London, the cars get nicer and nicer and nicer. >> You also know they've got a nice house at home as well. >> They also also they got a nice house at home which isn't bankrupting them. But we forget this that Silicon Valley started as a low rent place to go. It was a garage. Okay. The whole reason Silicon Valley is in Silicon Valley is cuz shockly the Nobel Prize winner who basically invented the transistor, his mom got ill and she lived in Menllo Park. So he wanted to start the business there effectively to be close to his mom. >> It makes a huge difference. We've got we've got a couple like there's whole walks of different life. For instance, like there's one person, she's uh single mother. She's just managed to buy a house, >> refit the kitchen, has a new car. >> Yep. >> All by herself. Probably big part of it is being in Scotland. Big part of is what we're able to do. She puts in so much effort. >> Yeah. >> So many other people do. And you can see how those who are coming in see people like that. And I feel like I feel bad that I can't like there's so many amazing stories like that. But it's like it's just crazy what can be done up there like that. You would never be able to do that in London. I don't know. >> But it's like a it's the London's just a form of indentured servitude for anybody under 40. You're basically working for your b tolet landlord. >> Yeah. Um, you know, I mean, you know, by by about November the 7th, you've paid off your berlet landlord. You've paid off your utility bills and you've paid your tax bill. And from something like late November to Christmas, you get to keep the money for yourself. It's I I mean, this is one of the things that really gratifies me. And by the way, nobody talks about this, but of course actually video conferencing and COVID and Zoom has rendered that 10 time what I noticed. Nobody ever mentions this is that before co actually slightly actually before that because I was a very early Zoom enthusiast and Zoom adopter I said you know I would literally go year to year in working in advertising in London and you would never have a conversation with someone in Birmingham. You might have a conversation with someone in New York. >> Yeah. >> Okay. And I suddenly realized that I was having conversations with people from all parts of the UK suddenly because it was no longer the opportunity cost of a day to have that conversation. and and and the importance of the importance of this that actually Zoom effectively enables people to escape from the depradations of high property prices because it's got to a point where this is a you know it's it's got to a point where as I said you know to anybody under a certain well I I'll give you the perfect example in terms of access to talent okay I don't think anybody aged over 30 unless they're offered a job at Goldman Sachs can move to London anymore So we are effectively basing ourselves in a place where your talent pool is entirely limited, you know, by people's access to housing. This is just ridiculous. And Scotland's actually extraordinary in that respect because the cities are a sensible size. Both Glasgow and Edinburgh. >> You can get parking anywhere. >> You can park anywhere. And actually, if you want to live in rural seclusion, you can still drive into the middle of town. >> Exactly. We talk about space being an important thing because it allows you to think right and I think the benefit is also obviously from a quality of life perspective is great and also for what you can do with your space what you can offer to your team but I actually think that there's a strategic and mindset advantage as well I always talk about this idea of creating big brands in boring towns because there's nothing else to do right there's so much distraction uh when you're in London and also there's the pub culture so if your business is doing well the word travels a lot quicker. So people you can't be a bestkept secret but then also a lot of the times people come to London not for your organization but they come to London for London and your organization happens to be the person that's paying the bills to be order to live in London whereas if you are from another town and you go to Scotland for your business you are committed there yeah you're going there for like the business right you're going there because you believe in what you're going to be doing but then also I do believe that if you were based in London and you jumped from a 300 and 300 uh000 business to 2 million to 20, everybody would know about you. Whereas what happens is you're able to just crack on and because no one's giving you that false validation, you actually don't realize that you're doing so well, right? And it's only when you get to a particular level that everyone's like, "Wow, this company is the biggest, fastest growing company." And you just come out of the rubble. >> You're absolutely right. Apart from fintech and people who effectively leech off the financial services industry, >> if you look at it, all the interesting businesses that seem to be springing up are either somewhere unusual, AO for example, you know, you know, they're somewhere like Lichfield or whatever or Crew, okay, or they're kind of weirdly virtual. In other words, you know, there's another business I work with where, you know, they get together fairly frequently, but I mean, you know, the staff are dotted all over the place. And by the way, I mean, you know, that that's another form of salary. I mean, free wear is just as valuable as free time to many people. But actually, and you also mentioned the fact that nobody who moves to Scotland from England ever wants to move back. Everybody you meet who's left Scotland for England always wants to move back. >> Yeah. But the case, always the case. And I think the difference with Scotland is while it's not an area where there's not a lot to do, it's an area where it's easy to get to the places there's a lot to do. >> Yeah. >> And the people are great. >> 100%. >> And I think it's 80% of the people are great. Yeah. 80% 80% of the people are better than people anywhere. I mean, it's worth remembering everywhere in the world. >> No, no, no. There there is that really weird dichotomy in Scotland which is you will either get the best customer service you've ever had in your life or the worst customer service you've ever had in your life. It is I always find that rare one once you prepare yourself for that you're fine. Yeah. But but actually I mean this I always do find it strange because this is the company that basically you know along with some Brumies basically invented the industrial revolution invented modern capitalism etc etc. You know, there only there's a population of sort of four million people, a tiny tiny population whose contribution to general inventiveness and uh and ingenuity is pretty hard to match. I mean, it's it's astonishing. >> You think it's just the weather, oh Christ, I'll go and I'll go and invent a steam engine. I'm not going out. Terrible. And then they they drink quite a bit. Um silly ideas come out and then actually they go the next day. That wasn't a half bad idea. >> That was Yeah. >> Yeah. Oh, it's raining today. Let's go do it. >> Let's go and do it. >> But the crazy >> when it's lovely, it is unbelievably lovely. I will make that beautiful place ever when it is. And we had actually quite a great summer this >> parallel with Scandinavia actually, isn't there? Which is also unbelievably inventive per head of population. >> Talking about Scandinavia and and this is what I think I don't know even a lot of people noticed this is you mentioned that the large m the large majority of your sales come from outside the UK, right? Another thing that I notic about um brands that are not from London is because they're not from London, they almost feel like an outsider. Therefore, you can't just infiltrate London, it's actually easier to go outside of London, understand the new culture. And in Scandinavia, they say there's a reason why out of Silicon Valley, a lot of brands, tech brands are coming out of Scandinavia is because the market is so small that they have to build for a global market, right? And if you learn that >> there's no point in effectively dominating the Swedish market. So they immediately think international from day one. >> 100%. So >> Germany, Italy, France, Spain, you can argue, well, it's it's good enough if we're simply successful here. >> So once you get to a particular point where you're the talk of London, you already think that you're massive. Whereas if you're the talk of Birmingham, you're like, well, that's not impressive. I may as well just keep going. And then what often happens is you become a global brand before London accepts you. >> It's a bit we're number two, so we try harder. >> Yeah. It still feels like day one. So why >> from house into work and just feels normal. It doesn't feel like it's become what it is. Like the numbers become beyond anything tangible and you're like okay well now we just have more people to to look after and that's where your responsibility lies not getting caught up in everything else. >> So was it a particular influencer strategy that drove the fact that you export so much? Um >> um yeah, I mean we possibly a little bit of luck. >> Mhm. >> Um >> it was just that I I believe part of it is to do with when you use an influencer strategy where a lot of the followers naturally lie. >> I do believe that's kind of what's happened and this is where we've kind of seen those sales kind of marry that up. um Australia, UAE is growing, Europe, UK, Canada, um US certainly US being the majority and I think it's something that can kind of unless because we weren't focusing on we must have people from the UK. We were focusing on let's find amazing people. >> Yeah. >> So >> they're global tribes, aren't they? To some extent you've identified a pretty and it's pretty homogeneous culture, isn't it? In a sense. >> Yes. >> Yeah. And everybody wants to feel good, look good, etc. Um I mean I got to nerd out briefly. How do you do the distribution? So do you you have warehousing in >> So we have literally >> sorry my shadow self is I'm absolutely fascinated by logistics. >> We have a well we now have two warehouses and an office and a gym. So we've got four buildings. Three of them opened up last week. Um we now moving the warehouse from one which was walking around. We had pallet stuff comes in the pallet goes up. We now we've just opened brand new automated warehouse where basically robots take it all around and then we people picking it and it gets packed automatically. Now it works brilliantly. But this last week the machines to pack the bags break and then the other one works and then the machines to back the stuff is great. The other one breaks. It has been a hellish week, which is where we've ended up having some like delays unfortunately, but it seems like it's kind of all fixed as of this morning, which is good. And there's we've been managing to like kind of tread water a little bit, but we're then also having to get all this stuff from one warehouse to the other. Once that happens, we'll be able to bring everything through into the uh from uh into the new warehouse. Um the old warehouse will become a returns warehouse. We'll build up stock, move it back over, and we've basically should be able to put through at the moment about 16,000 8 hour shift. We should >> And you ship direct to the consumer in the US or do you go >> direct? Everything >> you only Everything is DTC is it? >> Everything is direct to customer and everything is through DHL. >> Grief. >> So, we've done a good partnership with we've worked closely with them to be able to do everything to when stuff leaves the warehouse quickly, which it should start to by Monday. >> Yes. um pretty much get on par with how quickly Amazon can get to you things. In the UK it should be next day um as we start to grow. >> In the US it's what two day delivery or something. >> So we can get to the US sometimes for them because of the time difference. Sometimes they get it next day. >> Of course they do. Yeah. >> Sometimes they get it 3 days. So Australia we still need to work on and this is where when we have this blueprint of the new um automated warehouse like run efficiently people we can upskill everyone that's already there like I never want us to ever do a redundancy ever. >> The whole reason we've done this early is to make sure that we can upskill everybody who's there. We do it at the right time. But this blueprint will be able to go and say, "Right now, this works really well. We need a warehouse in Australia. We need a warehouse in the US." And then you're able to look for a few really great like a small team that want to work really well and can work really efficiently rather than having these colossal massive warehouses. So for instance, our the current warehouse is similar size to the the our returns warehouse now, which will turn into an innovations hub. So it's about the same size. The current the old place we could at a absolute push like crazy push maybe 10 12,000 orders in a day was the biggest we've ever done cuz it's just the sheer size. right now with all the problems we've been doing 12,000 of course >> in the new warehouse and we can scale it up because it's only we haven't even got all the ports going because we can build up phase two we can get to a point where we can do about 200,000 orders a day 24 hours of the day >> grief >> through the same size warehouse as the old one so it allows us to scale up and stay there and then open up different warehouses around the warehouse world as we need it, but then not have to do what Amazon had to do where it's more and more more also our products work very well for this type of um automated warehouse. So, we're able to do it. Yeah. The size of everything, it actually does work quite well. >> So, we're quite fortunate in that regard. One thing that's really interesting that you said and we're about to to wrap up because I know we all have to have to head off and my brain is still spinning about the like sheer velocity of this business. And I think we talked about influencers and using creators. And the thing that I realized that people often get wrong is that they try to use influencers as an alternative to paid media. It's a very transactional one-off relationship. But often than not, the people that see the best from that are those that see the value in a long-term relationship. Because there's a thing called follower crossover that people don't think about, which is before this interaction with an with a creator, here was the percentage of our follower crossover. And after we work with them authentically over time, more and more of their followers trust us and they become therefore become our followers. Right. >> Well, there's a whole load of things that influencer marketing conveys that performance marketing doesn't. I mean tons and tons of kind of tacid information is communicated by an influencer not least trust because they their credibility is at stake. Okay. So it's a what you might call it's a costly signal not a cheap signal. That's the first point. So and we uh the second thing is you're not massively overexposed to one platform. M >> so if you think about it the influencer platform by dent of being diverse >> uh you know there isn't one influencer who can have a hissy fit and really damage your business whereas I think hotels.com write in their annual report or whatever it is that look we are perpetually vulnerable to the fact that Google might have a brain fart and change their algorithm and a third of our business disappears overnight. I mean I'm I'm kind of paraphrasing obviously but I mean the great thing with influence is it's an ecosystem. you're not effectively enthralled to any one particular entity. >> I think part of it as well is you get to create more friendships, more relationships, meet more people >> and grow the team together, grow something together. And I think this is that other part you have far more human connection with >> when when you do your influencer and athlete man like uh program in this way. For us, we don't ask them we don't force them to do anything. If they don't want to do a campaign launch, they don't need to. We say we have obviously agreed number of posts to see perform. But beyond that, it's like we're not going to if you don't like the clothes, >> be honest. >> Yeah. >> Because that will create the most authentic thing for you. It will create the most trust in your followers, which means you will grow good or for bad for us. >> We have the responsibility to make things great, >> for it to fit well on you, for you to feel great. That is our responsibility is not to tell you you must say this this way. >> Of course. So I think this is >> also influencers can say things that advertisers don't say. >> Yeah. >> You know there there are you know there are persuasive strategies that you can adopt one to one that never get adopted by you know by advertisers typically. >> Yeah. >> Um fantastic. >> And so parting question right a crazy couple of years I'm sure. Outstanding. And I'm sure the number of decisions you have to make on a day-to-day basis, I can see it. It's it's a really difficult it's it's a hard thing to do. I know on paper people see the numbers. They think it's a linear experience, but I'm sure it has been both fruitful and chaotic at the same time. So I guess my final question would be what is the compass that drives your decisions? Right? Because obviously you have to make a lot every day. You have to find a center that allows you to make sure that you find clarity within the fog and the chaos. What would you how would you define that compass? What is the thing that makes sure what do you lean on to to make sure that you make the right decision? >> I think there's two parts to it. One is always just salary test. Will it make people feel incredible? >> But the second one is almost remembering it's fair, not nice. Mhm. >> And trying to do the right thing and to be fair and being nice sometimes in the moment is the easiest thing, but being honest and fair is better for everyone in the long term. And that is probably one of the biggest lessons I've learned over the last few years. like you're doing a disservice to people if you're just being nice only without the fairness and the honesty in your opinion cuz at the end of the day that's what it is. My opinion is my opinion. So pretty much those two things drive most decisions beyond the the the financial obviously there has to be a certain margin to be able to do this to do that but for instance when I spoke to DHL about taking on I was like spoke to Drew and went and uh I'm thinking about putting all our packages through and he's like no no okay well hold up there because we need to uh talk to these guys it's like yeah okay well I need to kind of get down to this this is what we're paying right now this is if we can get close to that I think it will work well because we'll try and do right by the customers was and he's like, "Okay, leave it me for a little bit." I was like, "Yeah, okay." Um, and he said, "Are you serious?" And I went, "Yeah." He's like, "We're going to run a test. So, you think you can get it done next week or like before we have to do our next bill?" And he said, "I think so." Okay, brilliant. Switched over. And he went, he called me up the next day. Are you putting everything through? I was like, "Yeah, yeah, but I know you'll talk to the guys and I know you'll get it done. You said you you said you would." And he's just like, "We have a lot of carry on quite a lot." And he's just like, "You're going to give me a heart attack." But he did. And it it was a matter of it was wasn't close. All right. >> To what we what was the ideal, but it was about working together as a partnership. >> And so that month we had no sales or anything. Everything grew 33%. >> And I think part of it is is now we need to get the the out the warehouse quicker. >> Have you ever done any measurement in This is a very nerdy question. Sorry. I I know. Have you ever done any measurement on the effect of speed of delivery on repeat purchase? Because I'm always convinced that in e-commerce, speed of delivery is pretty critical. Honestly, >> yeah, >> I have not because the month that we we we flipped over >> without we had it was April. It was in April. It isn't necessarily a basing month. It's coming out peak and it grew 33%. There was no sales. There was no no new launches. There was zero. The only thing we changed was that >> and things continued after that. >> We stopped having customer complaints and it's the the intangible part. I mean right now we have a little bit of an issue with the a backlog but when things are working well you stop the complaints and I do believe there is I haven't figured out a tangible way to >> see it but you you can see you can see it makes a huge difference at the end of the day people want things now >> bottom line >> when you order something you want it now >> between ordering and receipt there you're in a state of mild uncertainty which you find disquing and unpleasant >> and you're much less likely to repeat the experience. >> Do you offer clero and all those? I'm always always interested. >> Yeah, we offer cler and afterpay and all those ones and >> uh everything there and honestly the most stressful times are when there's something wrong in the warehouse and we are struggling to get when things just explode. This did not happen last year >> and this year it's just grown even even faster beyond what we actually thought. it didn't it just doesn't make sense and we're like okay crap so trying to get on those are always the most stressful times >> and DHL handle returns do they as well or >> no so we work with seco on returns and a couple of different partners so they bring it back right now what we're trying to do is be able to sort it in the country themselves so then we can get those refunded for customers quicker >> refunds will also be now a bit quicker now we got tags and we're getting RFID put onto all products so literally it comes through the warehouse we know exactly what's come in we're able to work even we over the next year we'll be able to start working. >> Amazon have been quite smart with that, haven't they? Where you more or less get refunded the second they know it's in the mail. >> Exactly. And this is this is exactly where we are now working on that to try and get that like move move that point of when someone gets that refund closer and closer to when they've actually processed it and sent it. Um while still checking cuz you'd be >> obviously >> you get some crazy things that like I've returned a pair of shorts. You're like >> this scooter is not a pair of shorts. Like you'd be surprised some of the crazy stuff you get through. >> I bet. I mean, and that's the other reason to expand in the mail market. Of course, you get no returns to you. Men never return anything. Absolutely bizarre. >> And they'll buy a lot of the same color. They'll like it and they'll buy. >> By the way, can I can I give you a small tip on the male market? I've never understood why nobody does this. Okay. When should when in female fashion when you have a sale, you sell a load of stuff to people who don't own it. You've never had a sale. >> With You've never had a sale. Brilliant. No. with men. My argument is if you've got a certain amount of stock left, just email the people who've bought it already and say we're now running out of this now because uh cannot make this up. Once my wife had a dress she liked a lot and I saw the dress was on sale, so I bought another one. Okay. She looked at me as if I were insane. She But I've got two identical items of clothing. Now, if you look at Bloke World, we'd own 17 copies of the same thing. Absolutely. Exactly. Okay. Sometimes people say, "Oh, do you uh do do you wash your clothes?" Yes, I wash my clothes. I just have a lot of clothes. >> I'm just going to love the same thing. Exactly. Yeah. So funny. >> Do you know what? We don't want you to miss your flight. >> No, we don't. Not that. >> But but Oscar, thank you so much for your generosity, your honesty, and for you taking the time to come and for us to be the first podcast that you debuted your >> your yourself. And thank you for being open. Thank you for being so kind to us. And uh wish you all the best. then we're going to be watching and rooting for you. >> Thank you so much for having me on. It's been an absolute pleasure. >> Like fantastic. Thank you.