Behind the growth episode three: Stuart Trevor, founder of AllSaints

Stuart:
Well, what I always do is turn negative in a positive. Quite often the greatest lessons are learned through your own personal mistakes.

Lara:
Give me an example of something you felt was a mistake that actually turned out to be a very positive thing because you flipped it around,

Stuart
Where I've ordered leather jackets in, years and years ago, and they've turned up, and the quality was not what I thought, you know – It was, maybe 100, 200 pieces. So what I did is got one and put it in a washing machine and washed it. And the kids that worked with me going, like, you know, “You can't wash leather.” I'm like, “You can.” And I got it out and twisted it and hung it up on a Friday evening. I came back in on a Monday and unfurled it and put it on. And everyone's like, “Wow, that is amazing.”

Lara:
I recognize what you're describing because I've seen it in AllSaints. Yeah, it's the twisty leather and it's very cool.

Lara:
Welcome to Behind the Growth, an S&W podcast exploring what it really takes to build and scale a successful business. I'm Laura Lewington.

Each episode features founders and senior leaders sharing the story behind their growth journey, followed by a conversation with S&W experts to explore the key takeaways for our listeners. I'll be talking to Stuart Trevor, the founder of the fashion brand AllSaints, about the highs and lows of building one of the UK's most recognisable fashion businesses and the journey that he's taken since.

Today I'm joined by Terry Shepherd, head of entrepreneurs here at S&W. Welcome, Terry.

Terry:
Hi. Great to be here.

Lara:
From your experience working with founders and scaling companies, what are you most excited about in this conversation with Stuart?

Terry:
So I've met Stuart a few times and what I'm expecting and what I'm sure we'll get, is a real, unedited filter of Stuart's journey and his success story, one of the UK's iconic fashion designers. And what I'm really expecting from Stuart is to understand the highs and lows of that growth journey, the times when he had to make difficult strategic calls, when the challenges hit, and what those challenges were – could have been around finance or could have been around strategic decision making.

And so I think we'll get all of that insight from Stuart. And then I'd love to then be able to kind of look back at that and reflect, well, how does this story then help other business owners and entrepreneurs achieve what they want to do, learning from Stuart's story.

Lara:
And we won't be doing that alone. Fellow partner at S&W Emma Queen will be joining us.

Terry:
Yes. So it will be great to be joined by Emma later. Emma is a business tax and international tax expertand will have some great insight into Stuart's story.

Lara:
I look forward to talking to you both after the interview.

Lara:
Hi Stuart. Welcome to Behind the Growth.

Stuart
Thanks, Lara. Thanks for having me.

Lara:
Pleasure. First of all, let's talk about what gave you the confidence to leave your established role at Reiss and set up All Saints, believing that it could scale.

Stuart
Yeah, well, I'd been there ten years, and I was instrumental in the growth of the business, and I thought if I could do it for them, I could do it for myself.

Stuart:
When I was 27 and, you know, in an incredibly, well-paid and secure job at Reiss, I was offered loads of different, really interesting things – one of them was buyer Joseph, which was one of the best retailers in the world – but I had this idea in my head that I was going to do my own label, and I wanted to have my own brand. And I created a business plan, and no one was willing to give me the funding. And then I just happened to, because I kept going, find someone that was willing to do it. And of course, if I hadn't kept going, All Saints wouldn't exist.

And the concept was the sort of things that I'd been doing for Reese, but a little bit cooler, you know, and I grew up in the greatest period of rock n roll, pop history, you know, started out with Teddy Boys and glam rock and then mods and then rockers and then, you know, new wave and punk and new romantic and then hip hop and street wear. All of those things were what inspired me to create the greatest rock and roll brand in the world. And I tried to do that with AllSaints, but – I joke about, you know, obviously it had a sort of bit more edge than any other brand.

Lara:
So you went out on the loose by yourself at this point? You started off, doing items for department stores, didn't you? You were selling the items more wholesale. Before you opened up your individual shops. At what point did you realize this was the breakthrough moment, you needed your own spaces?

Stuart:
It's not quite as simple as that. So in the old days, when you launched a clothing brand, the traditional way was you put collections together and you showed them at, you know, London Fashion Week, Paris Fashion Week, New York Fashion Week, and you book appointments with independent retailers – there was millions of them back then, and there was department stores. And we sold to every one of the best department stores in the world, and every one of the best independent retailers that was selling other designers.

I realised then that with limited funding, we had to concentrate on what made us the most money, and the most money was direct to consumer. So, you know, we would buy something for £50 and wholesale it for 100 and, and the Selfridges or whatever would times it by three, so that garment would be £300. If we could retail at £300, something that we'd had cost us £50 of course we're, we need to follow that route. So that's what we did. But also you're in charge of your own destiny as as I'm saying, you could do whatever you wanted.

I found a really, amazing unit in Kensington High Street and it was incredibly successful. And then during that time, I remember really clearly there was one guy, slightly older, didn't look like an AllSaints customer in the slightest, but going through the racks, looking at every single item, and I went up to this guy and I was there, and I just went out and I said, oh, so you know, what do you do? I thought maybe he's shopping for his kids, I don't know. So he was like, I'm just fascinated by what you're doing. It's the most incredible thing I've ever seen. And I was thinking, okay, he's like suit and tie and all this stuff. He said, I've just bought Carnaby Street, and would you like to have a unit there? I'll give you rent free for a year.

Lara:
Brilliant.

Stuart:
I think that opening the store off Carnaby Street was probably really sealed the deal that, you know, it's really nice to have to, to be completely in charge of your own destiny. And you can put in whatever you want. You can dress the windows how you want. You can do the interior how you perceive your collection looking when you when you put it together. When you sell it to a department store, they come in and buy whatever it is that their customers want or what they believe – and it also, you know, it's your name above the door, the brand name above the door, and yit's all AllSaints. And people became obsessed with it. And, yeah, that kind of set the ball rolling.

Lara:
This is far from your average scale up story. Of course. What happened next? How many stores when?

Stuart:
Well so, when I started, the manufacturing company were based in Hong Kong. They funded the business, and did a fair amount of production. In 1997, Hong Kong went back to China and, property prices devalued by 50%. So the Chinese manufacturing company came after me for, first of all, £250,000 management fees, then another 250, then another. So and we didn't have the money. I think we were doing about 4 million turnover, roughly breaking even. But we'd opened by that point three stores. I didn't really know what to do because I was arguing with them saying like, you know, you could quite clearly see we don't have the money. And they were like, well, I don't care, just stop paying everyone else. So the only people that we had – we were making a fair bit in the UK production. And we had, you know, landlords and HMRC and fabric bills and staff. So he wanted me to stop paying all of them and just pay him this imaginary fees. But you can't; it's illegal; it's preferential payment.

So I went to business advisory, which I didn't realize at the time, but it's basically insolvency practitioners. And they said, you've got to get out of this. So, and they showed me how to basically, well, we could voluntary liquidate the business, and there's no reason why you can't start again. If you and speak to, you know, your landlords and your different suppliers and you explain to them what's going on and you know, obviously you're completely legitimately trying to resolve any sort of difficulties, financial difficulties. Then so I did that and we managed our way out of it. And I brought in a partner who had been the retail director at Reiss. We invested some money into it. We decided that we would just concentrate on retail. He ran around finding units in Leeds and Manchester and Nottingham and did deals with landlords where we'd get six months/a year’s rent free. And we opened up five stores. This was all around the year 2000.

Lara:
You were also using a limited number of materials, weren't you? In the early days, there were very specific things that you were making. How did that play into your ability to scale up?

Stuart:
Well, I always work within my means. I think the greatest designers always do. If you look at how Vivienne Westwood started and Alexander McQueen and Katherine Hamnett in the 80s or whatever, they didn't start working with the best fabric mills in the world and the best factories in the world. They started going to curtain wholesalers and buying up old, you know, rolls of curtain fabric and making in local factories that you could make smaller quantities and things like this. And that was the same with all things. So, I would concentrate on, you know, had a really great leather manufacturer. So we did you know, a leather rock shirt. We did a biker jacket. Who would have known that, you know, here we are 30 years later, and the biker jacket is still the bestselling. I remember, actually, the partner I had from Birmingham, the retail director, he was like, you know, when we sold the first lot of the Rock shirt, he was like, which was a basically, I said I always wanted to be a rock star. And to me, a leather shirt is like,

Lara:
This is very rock star vibe. Is it? Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Stuart:
I'm trying to be all formal here on business

Lara:
It’s formal rock star!

Stuart:
So we did these leather rock shirts; we delivered about 100, and they sold in one weekend and he was like, oh, you'll have to design another one. I'm like, no, we just repeat on that. Anyway, we reordered them. I mean, here we are 25 years later and they're still the bestsellers at AllSaints.

Lara:
And it is one of the things that people think of is AllSaints as doing those kind of jackets. Wherever I see an AllSaints in the world they're in the window. That seems to be the main thing maybe that people think of. You knew what people wanted. How often do you think retailers are getting that right? Because it's not necessarily what people think the public want but it’s what they do want. What was it that gave you such confidence and conviction in truly believing you knew what it was?

Stuart:
I have to have quite severe ADHD. I didn't really know anything about it until recently, but, when I look back at the confidence, it wasn't arrogance or it wasn't, you know, anything. It was, it was just, and also I have a very creative brain, but I also have a very, very commercial brain. So I, I'm very, very fortunate in that I do analyze things, but in split seconds. But I make split second decisions. But I look at something and think, who's going to wear that? If I'm convinced that it's, you know, well, I'd wear it. I’d absolutely die for it... I would, you know, and also, one of the things that I used to do is I used to ask everybody. I used to get in trouble for this because I would have a buying meeting and we'd design a collection and all the samples would come through, and there'd be maybe ten leather jackets or whatever, and I'd be like, call the cleaner over. And I'll say, do me a favor, tell me which one you like. I want to know what your average human being wants to buy.

Lara:
When it came to scaling, how did you approach what you needed to do and in what order?

Stuart:
I mean, always it's, you start with, start very lean. You know, you don't have a huge amount of budget to employ a load of people. You just employ, you know, the people that are most essential for what is needed at that time.

I never had huge amounts of money to throw away, and I was very lucky when I ran AllSaints, for instance, I could do no wrong. It was, I’d open... we maybe opened one store, and things didn't go to plan, and then you would work on it, but we wouldn't be opening, like, you know, loads of different things at once and employing loads of people that you, you know, didn't know or anything.

I always work within my means and try and make sure that value is added at every step.

Lara:
You must have needed to create an infrastructure that allowed you to scale. How did you go about that?

Stuart:
Well, you employ the right people. looking at, what it is that you need to do. Find out someone who has experience in that, and, you know, utilize their skills to take you to the next level.

Stuart:
Over the years, you know, meet people, they tell me, and I analyze what it is that their skillset is and make a note of when I need someone like that I'll go back and get in touch with them. But, and sometimes it doesn't work out, but majority of the time it works out. And, you know, as long as – the most important thing for me is that they really, really want to work with you. And if they get that across to you, that they would basically do anything to to work with you and be happy to work late or go the extra mile and things like this it's – and are passionate and funny you know, I find that, we can work together. I think it's really important that you can work together. And they get my mindset and get the end result. They understand why we're doing it and what we're doing and will, you know, basically do anything to achieve that.

Lara:

Clearly things were very successful quite fast. Did you ever feel you weren't keeping up with the scale that was actually possible?

Stuart:
it was very organic. The growth was organic. So there wasn't huge pots of money that we could just blow on, you know, any sort of marketing or – I used to do deals with all, back in those days before the internet, and social media, you had to rely on traditional media, your magazines.

I became friendly with the people that sold advertising space. People used to say to me, why are you chasing them orhanging out with them had going out, you know, and not the editors, the fashion editors. But they were always wanting to work with, like, you know, big Italian and French designers where the people that were running the advertising side of it, I became friends with them because they would ring me up and go, we've got the back cover of, you know, The Face or Idea, whatever, and you can have it for £300 if you could get me a copy. So we would do deals all the time.

Lara:
So clearly you are decisive and you have that creative vision. Not every founder does. What would your advice be to other founders – to believe in themselves and have the confidence to make decisions? Maybe sometimes making any decision quickly is better than making no decision. How do you feel about that?

Stuart:
So, I have mentored quite a few younger people in, in the last five to ten years. What I would say quite often is, you know, just get on with it, like stop overanalysing, worrying. Because, you know, you have to make a decision at some point. I think it's good to analyze things and, you know, make sure that you don't completely go completely off the rails, but at some point you have to make a decision, but you know what? If you make the wrong mistake, then I – and believe it or not, I have made mistakes in my life...

Lara:
What have you learned from them?

Stuart:
You learn that, you know, well, what I always do is turn negative in a positive. So, you know, quite often the greatest, lessons are learned through your own personal mistakes.

Lara:
Give me an example of something you felt was a mistake that actually turned out to be a very positive thing. Because you flipped it around.

Stuart:
Where I've ordered leather jackets in, years and years ago, and they've turned up, and the quality was not what I thought, you know - It was, maybe 100, 200 pieces. So what I did is got one and put it in a washing machine and washed it. And the kids that worked with me going, like, you know, “You can't wash leather.” I'm like, “You can.” And I got it out and twisted it and hung it up on a Friday evening. I came back in on a Monday and unfurled it and put it on. And everyone's like, “Wow, that is amazing.”

Lara:
I recognize what you're describing because I've seen it in AllSaints. It's the twisty leather and it's very cool.

Stuart:
I mean, basically I, I don't know whether I could say I invented washed leather, but no one else was doing it at that time. Mistakes like that. That's how you come up with really interesting new concepts. Every designer will tell you that.

Lara:
But along the way you made all these discoveries. The range expanded to do lots more things. What was the journey between the growth, more stores and exit?

Stuart:
I had gone from, you know, me in a room on my own thinking, what the hell am I going to do to a £15 million business. We were doing about £4.5 million profit. I remember thinking at the time, the right decision for the business would be to get somebody with experience to come on board. And we started talking and the idea was I would be able to focus solely upon product, and they would look after the business side, and we would build the business from £15 to £100 million.

So I made that decision. He bought out the partner that I'd been working with. There was a silent partner and and he bought him out and then he had majority share. He wanted to emulate Zara and H&M with these huge stores. He wanted to move all the production at China. And I was furious because I used to love working with Italian fabric mills, going to Italy, going to Portugal, working with English manufacturers and English fabric mills. And we used to do about 40% of the production in Europe about 20%, 30% in India, embroidered things and beaded things and, and then about 20% in China.

And then also this opening huge stores, I didn't want to do that. Employing more people than you could possibly imagine – and then he put like a loan on the table for £20 million and said, you know, sign that.
And I'm like, “I need a business plan.”

“Don't worry about that. I know what I'm doing. You just sign it.” And I'm like, “I'm sorry. I'm not doing it.”
And so we were at loggerheads, and I tried to buy him out. He made me an offer I couldn't really refuse at the time. I also was a bit worried about how is this going to – we were going like, you know, £2 million, £4 million, £6 million, £8 million, £10 million, £12 million every year was growth and I was convinced – I'd seen recessions when, where stores were closed for a year and people still had to pay the rent. And I just thought. Do you know what? I've enjoyed it so far. And now I'm arguing every day. I don't want to do this. And I never really paid myself any kind of lump sum. All I'd ever done is put the money back in, and every time there was a big pot of money, I'd find another store and open it. So it was all about, I just thought, you know what? Maybe it's time to go. And I always think as well, I always compare myself to David Bowie, and I think about the different sort of ten years or five years of Ziggy Stardust and then The Thin White Duke. And I just thought, you know what, I've done it once. I could do it again. So I decided to bank and get out.

Let's talk Stuarttrevor.com. Tell me all about it. This is about upcycling clothes isn’t it?

Stuart:
Yeah. 100%. It's, we're building, as we say, the world's most sustainable brand. It's a brand that doesn't produce any clothing. We started out in the beginning, we produced a small amount of deadstock fabric. We turned it into, you know, really cool little shirt jackets.

Stuart:
I've been going to vintage military warehouses. There's quite a few all around the world, and they have, like, millions of garments like, stacked up to the roof, huge warehouses. I used to go there to get, you know, flight suits similar to the one you're wearing or bomber jackets or pea coats or, and I used to go there and buy the garments and take them to the factories – the first ever AllSaints collection was based on garments that you found in these places. I've been going back there ever since. And every time I'd go there, you'd find something and you be like, wow. Then I thought, why don’t we just sell that?

Why don't we cut out the middleman, take these garments, add my Stuart Trevor branding; I'd come up with this new logo, the S T with the lightning strike, David Bowie inspired. I added a little label that we hand sew on the back of everything with, handcrafted in London in limited edition, and I sign it and I date it and if you buy it, your name goes on it. And we decided that we would take all of this existing clothes and see whether or not we could launch that as a business.

Stuart:
And I knew that if I was to say I'm launching a new clothing brand, no one's going to be interested. If I was to say, what about a clothing brand that doesn't produce any clothing? I'm going to launch a clothing brand that's made from vintage clothes and everything's upcycled, I knew I'd get two pages in The Times and within a month I had two pages in The Times and two pages in The Sunday Times, because that's what journalists want to write about.

Stuart:
And, here we are, two and a half years later, we've sold – 6,000 people have bought from a clothing brand that doesn't produce any clothing. Everyone loves it.

Lara:
What's interesting is that you have the appetite to do it again?

Stuart:
Oh, I really didn't want to run another business. I didn't want to go through the whole thing of employing loads of people and... You know what, to me, people ask me all the time about this. Another reason why I sold AllSaints at that period is the fun part is, is £0 to £5 million. You’re building something from zero, having the concept and the idea and then, you know, working it through, and then you get to, you know, the point where you're all you do all day is on the phone dealing with problems.

Lara:
But I guess a lot of this is taken away from the new business, because many of those elements aren’t part of it?

Stuart:
I got rid of all those elements. All the things that I didn't like, I sort of eradicated.

Weathering the storm

Lara:

You've clearly had a lot of successes, but this has, of course, been a roller coaster. What if some of those lows been. And how have you overcome them?

Stuart:
Yeah. I get a lot of people say to me like, you know, oh, it's all right for you, you founded AllSaints as if it’s been you know...

Lara:
Plain sailing.

Stuart:
Plain sailing. It's not. I've weathered the storm. I've been through some hurricanes, and the guy that bought AllSaints from me, that was that was horrendous.

Lara:
In what way was it horrendous? And what did you learn from that experience?

Stuart:
Because I didn't want to – I had an incredibly successful business that was, you know, the profits – we were making more money than you could know what to do with. And somehow I let a wolf in the door, and I had to get out and, so, you know... And then, and then you have to rebuild your life, because you're having this incredible sort of success, and then all of a sudden you're starting all over again.

Stuart:
You just have to make the most out of what you've, you know, wherever you are in business. And I have a lot of drive and determination.

Lara:
When you had those moments where you felt that things had gone low and you weren't sure what was next, how much did you believe in the upcoming?

Stuart:
You don't really have a choice, so you just have to get on with it. So and I'm fine with that. I don't want to ever be seen or I don't want personally to think – There's no way I could just wallow in misery of whatever. I'm a very, very upbeat person. And I know that anyone who's a success – not many people it comes very easy. You have to work hard. And I like working hard.

Lara:
Let's talk a little bit about investment. So when people have come to you wanting to invest and you talk about how you've been lucky that people have wanted to, but it's one thing to come along and show interest and say, I want to give you this money. It's another thing to actually see it through. And it happen, and it happen with the right terms. Yeah. What's your experience been?

Stuart:
There's a lot of people that will, you know – when I launched Stuart Trevor, a couple of years ago, there was a lot of moths around the flame, and they're all like, you know, attracted to this bright light, and they want to, you know... but trying to get them over the line. It's never that easy. So you need to, you know, be very honest with them. You need to be, you know, lay out the facts. And I always talk about – people ask me, I mentor a lot young people, and will tell them that it's not an easy journey. You know, there's a corridor and there's a hundred doors, and you've got to not walk down and knock on every door. And lots of people are not going to answer the door. Lots of people are going to answer the door and say, “I'm sorry, I'm not interested.” One of them eventually will open the door and go, “Wow, I love this. Come on in.” Now they might go ahead and invest with you or, you know, really want or want to work with you or whatever, you know, take you seriously. Sometimes they don't.

And the most important thing is, one of my number one mantras is you never lie about anything because you will get caught out. So, you know, if they ask you about, you know – I had a business advisor and they put down forecasts and I was looking at them thinking, I don't know whether we could reach that. And the investor would say, you know “So these numbers, what do you think? You know, can you guarantee them.”

And I'm like, “No, of course not. There's no way to be honest. The numbers are the numbers. I will do everything in my power to, you know, to be a huge success. But I can't guarantee anything. But, you know, come along for the ride and you'll have a lot of fun, and I will make sure that, you know, I'll do everything in my power that we don't fail,” you know.

Lara:
You use the word honesty. I want to dig a little bit more into that. When people buy into you, when they buy into your company, is honesty one of those big things. Is that right up there at the top of the list do you think. What is it the people are buying into is a list of things they get from Stuart Trevor?

Stuart:
Yes honesty, integrity, authentic. I'm a very authentic person. What you see is what you get. I don't there's no, I don't – you know, none of what we're talking about today is preconceived. I haven't written it all down and things you know I'm a very natural person, and I just want to be I'm very I feel very, very, very lucky to have been, you know, given any opportunity in my life. And I will go out of my way to make sure that I, number one, I don't let people down, and I don't let myself down and that I will, you know, do everything I can to be a success.

Lara:
These are very strong characteristics. What would your advice be to other people who are finding the founding journey difficult or the scaling difficult? Just the journey throughout business challenging. What would you say to them to keep going?

Stuart:
I don't know, it's you know, get on with it. My number one mantra is like, you know, you get up in the morning and you – I mean, I, I had a friend of mine that said to me, “My god you've got no fear. You know, founders fear. Have you ever heard of that? And that's this fear that you're going to fail. Well, and I would say, “No, I don't have any fear,” because and again, it's like the ADHD. But, of course, I wake up every morning, go, what the hell am I doing? Why am I – you know, surely I, you know, but then you get up and you get on with it and, you know, work out if there's any issues, resolve those issues, turn a negative into a positive, like I said before, and just make sure that you succeed.

Lara:
The sheer determination and keeping going. If you could go back now and talk to young you, what would you say?

Lara:
I always had this drive and determination as a young kid. I remember meeting Paul Smith when I was 18, and I asked him, as an aside, “Did you know you were going to be a huge success as a young kid?” And he looked at me and he went, “You've got it, haven’t you?” And it was kind of like a wink that. I don't know, I always thought as a young kid coming from a very, you know, underprivileged background, I knew that I was I had something that I could really turn into a success, but it was just drive and determination. And I think Paul Smith had that. And I think a lot of people that I've met in that have been successful knew it from a very young age. So I don't know what else I could tell myself. But, you know, just, you know, try and be the best that you could be. I always say to anyone like, you know, whatever you do, you know, make sure that you're the absolute best. And I've always had that real drive to be a success, yeah.

Lara:
With that in mind, who gave you the best advice and what was it?

Stuart:
When I started AllSaints, there was a guy in Canada who ran a company called Club Monaco and he had offered me a job, and I didn't want to move to Toronto, and so I told him, I want to – if you open – if you want to become a global brand, we need to look at New York, we need to open a design studio there with a retail store underneath. That would be the best route. And, it took a couple of months to come back to me, and he rang me on the same day as the partners that I started AllSaints confirmed that they were going to fund it, and I told him, “I'm really sorry, mate, you know, if you rang me a week ago, I'd be coming out to New York, but I've been offered the opportunity to launch my own label.” He went, “Listen, honestly, I don't want you to come and work with me, and you'll just be thinking the whole time, why didn't I start my own brand? Go and launch your own brand. If it doesn't work, ring me, and I'll take you on.”

And I went, and launched Allsaints, and I bumped into this guy about ten years later in Paris in Première Vision, a fabric fair. And he came running over went Stu, oh my God, you know. And AllSaints was a huge success by then. So that was really great advice. I think, you know, if you've got it in you and you really feel like you could start your own business, then, you know, do it, because you'll only regret it if you don't.

Lara:
Yeah, go for it. Make decisions. Yeah.

Lara:
Where do you see founders most commonly underestimating the challenges that come with growth?

Stuart:
The biggest problem in the fashion business is that people spend fortunes on stock that they don't need. And, and in any business, it's, you know, spending too much money without having, you know, knowing that you can – you know, working within your means. And I talk a lot about, working within your means because a lot of people think I would love to run my business. I'd love to be... And they think that you – I had, you know, unlimited funding to do whatever I want and just go around, you know, flying round the world first class and buying tons of whatever, you know.

I never had any of that. When I was building AllSaints, and what I do at Stuart Trevor, I analyse whether we need it or not, and never, I would never just, you know, order huge amounts of anything and they’ve had a name for it and it’s called reactive buying, where you, you know, react to whether or not you need it.

And I think reactive – In business, if you're – whatever you need to do, there's no point in... And, you know, I know people that have opened huge studios or massive offices, because they think, oh, I'm going to need that in the future. Well you don't need it in the future. You can work from home, you can do it in your bedroom. I think some of the most successful businesses in the world, including Amazon, was started in a garage or in a bedroom. And, you know, once you get to the point where you can, expand, you do it then; you don't do it, you know, in advance. No one's impressed by, you know, turning, turning up and having a really amazing studio or office or whatever like that. That's not important. What's important is a successful business.

Lara:
Now for our our quick takes round.

Lara:
What's harder, starting or scaling?

Stuart:
I think scaling. I've really concentrated on starting things because that's the fun part. Building a business from zero. Scaling it is also difficult because you can, you know, you can start dealing with huge figures and huge numbers and then, you know, that's a big, if you make the wrong decision, you could be talking, you know, £100,000, £1 million pounds worth of mistakes

Lara:
What earns you trust in business?

Stuart:
Just people that are really honest and hardworking.

Lara:
I knew that's what you're going to say. How do you avoid echo chambers?

Stuart:
I challenge everything. I want to get the answers from other people, and I don't want yes people.

Lara:
What do you look back on as your greatest success or win?

Stuart:
I believe that the greatest success is yet to come.

Lara:
That's great. What would you say to other people going on a similar journey to you?

Stuart:
Just, you know, get up in the morning and get on with it.

Lara:
And what do you look for in a trusted advisor?

Stuart:
Honesty and integrity and authenticity..

Lara:
Thanks Stuart for joining me on Behind the Growth. It's been brilliant.

Stuart:
Thanks for having me.

Lara:
Hello again Terry and Emma, welcome to Behind the Growth.

Emma:
Thank you very much.

Lara:
Now there were lots of lessons that we can take away from Stuart's journey there, but one of them is about learning when to pivot. He talks about that moment where he realised that he needed his own stores. How important is it to identify it's time now. I need to make the right change

Emma:
Incredibly important. Vital, in fact. I think Stuart's story really kind of goes to the fact that the only certainty is change. So being able to be resilient enough in your in your business and yourself, you know, your leadership, that's incredibly, incredibly important.

Terry:
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I totally agree. And that ability that Stuart had not just once in his interview, but multiple times during his interview around his ability to see what it is that his customers needed and then adapt and change his business strategy, which is like an evolution. It's all about changing a strategic direction, pivoting to doing something different to reach that goal that you're trying to achieve.

Lara:
Stuart also spoke really openly about that moment where he felt that he'd hit a wall. He had legal pressures, financial challenges and some really difficult decisions to make. How common is this for founders to face?

Terry:
It's more a question that every founder will face this at some point. It's an everyday thing that we see with our clients at some point in their journey. And it's a really critical phase, because as a business is growing and scaling really, really quickly, that growth and scale can often mask underlying issues. And that could be underlying financial issues, cash flow issues, issues with culture or team. But because the top line number is growing, no one seems to care. So, it's a really, really important part of that journey to sort of understand what are some of the challenges underneath the numbers?

Cash is king always gets kicked around. But it's absolutely critical because like I say it can mask certain things that are going on. So when Stuart was hitting those walls, intervention early is really, really critical, really important. And that's where people like us come in, because before your cash starts to erode, we can really help you understand what your choices are. It could be structuring, refinancing. It could be helping you understand your cash flow forecasting alongside your finance team. As your cash starts to run dry, s
o will your choices.

Emma:
And that restructuring might be a defensive move. And a lot of founders don't like that. They worry that that's kind of a perceived failure in their minds. But businesses have to restructure all the time, whether it's as a defensive move or whether it's actually as a more proactive, strategic move, that should be on the agenda of founders all the time.

Lara:
He spoke quite passionately about his experience of bringing investment into the company. What do you think everyone could learn from that story?

Emma:
It's not easy. It takes time. You need to have the team around you to carry on running the business and the day to day. That's what I see most underestimated with my clients, actually, how much energy and effort and time bringing an investor on board really takes.

Terry:
It fundamentally changes so many different dynamics of the business. And if you can get that creative part, which is Stuart's part, and get the financial part right and them together, then you really have got the rocket fuel to really drive the growth in the business. The challenge is, and I think that came out in Stuart's story, is that, if your vision is slightly misaligned to the investor’s vision, then you can end up having friction. And Stuart was talking about that, almost that every kind of key decision became a negotiation.

Emma:
It's definitely not all about the best financial deal on the table. If you're led solely by that, that is in all likelihood going to go horribly wrong. Founders need to make sure that they have an investor that is aligned with their culture, with their brand, and ultimately with their vision. When investors come on, they often bring in professional CEOs, professional CFOs to help founders along with the strategy. And there's often friction there between the founder and a professional CEO or CFO. But that's a positive thing, as long as they are aligned on that North Star and that vision.

Terry:
When those investors come in. Your role as a founder has to change significantly. So that North Star still needs to be the same. but there will be an awful lot more governance around how the business is run: controls, roles and responsibilities – all of these things take real clarity or give a business real clarity as it's scaling, but for a creative like Stuart, it's a big change and a big and a hugely different dynamic.

Lara:
Even when you've got that investment, you still need to work within your means. And this was something that Stuart talked about. You've got the cash. You want to scale up. But how do you do that sensibly without just feeling you have this great freedom?

Terry:
Yeah, so Stuart picked up on this really well. And from an entrepreneurial point of view, you can almost think that managing your finances and managing your cash is the uncool, unexciting part of growing a business. But it's absolutely imperative. So, you know, it's a massively underrated leadership trait, understanding your numbers, controlling your finances. Where we see businesses struggle is where they scale their expenditure faster than they're scaling their top line.

What came out in Stuart's bit as well was just ask yourself two fundamental questions. Do we really need this? Is it going to add value? And if and if you do that there's simple questions to answer. But you have to keep asking yourself that question as you're scaling on every decision that you're making.

Lara:
A lot of the problems that Stuart had faced along the way required external advisors. How do people go about selecting what they need and when in terms of that.

Emma:
Founders need different advice at different stages of their business. So, when you are just starting up, testing out a concept, you want to keep costs relatively sensible. Where you really need support is in that scaling phase. You need to be able to trust your advisors. You need to be able to get on with your advisors, and they need to understand your brand, your culture, and your North Star as well.

Terry:
Yeah, because that journey as well for the entrepreneur, so someone like Stuart, and the business itself, as it's scaling, its complexity grows. And you can't have every part of the solution in your business. And so you need to use external advisors to help you.

Emma:
I think it's not surrounding yourself with, yes, people as well. I think that's really important. And actually, those founders that are open to external perspectives, learning from other people's journeys, learning quickly from failure – they're the ones that we see build really resilient models.

Lara:
Learning from failure. That's something that always comes up. If you take a step back from Stuart's really interesting story, what takeaways are there, there for every founder?

Terry:
I think for every founder, what you can see from Stuart's story is clear strategy, being able to adapt that strategy, pivot as we've spoken about, during the course of the journey, understanding your finances and your numbers and the direction of travel for the business. And Stuart was just exceptional and still is exceptional at doing all of those things really, really regularly.

Emma:
What came across was his conviction. He absolutely believes in his decisions and what he does. He stands behind them. He clearly has some kind of very strong personal values that can be felt within the brand and within all of his business decisions as well. So I think that's probably helped him along the way when times get tough to be a bit more, a bit more resilient, having a real sense of those values.

Lara:
The lessons never end. Thank you both so much. Really interesting.

Terry:
Thank you.