Choices Local - Launch July-August 2017

More documents

Recommendations

Info

successful in other international territories and then slightly repackaging them or trying to recreate the same success of that brand in the United Kingdom. moved from TV into marketing and events. The main common thread between everything that I've ever done as a working adult is I'm a storyteller. That's what I do. So when I approached the sandal company, it was really just to say, I'll help you with your communications strategy, it was not actually to get involved with the shipping, the buying, the warehousing, the distribution and the selling. But they said, well, if you want do to it, you do it all. We're not interested in helping man the logistics or set up all of that. And now you are the sole distributor? Sole exclusive distributor for the majority of countries, which is really exciting and also daunting at the same time. I've got a warehouse in Hong Kong, we've got a warehouse in the UK, and we’re looking at a warehouse for mainland Europe. We've got sales reps across every single country and we’ve got a woman who's based in Hong Kong who's helping us at the moment to man the South-East Asia expansion. We've just signed a deal with someone in Thailand and we're in communication with someone from the Philippines, so it's a lot of balls in the air at the moment, but everybody loves the brand. Tell me about your professional journey. I started off in TV, fun TV, music TV, and then I moved into dry TV documentaries and hated it, and right at the beginning I started doing radio, but for only two weeks, so I don’t really count that. And then I Unpack that for me. If I'm a scriptwriter in TV, I'm telling a story and it might be someone else telling that story in front of the camera, but I've written the script and it's the story that I've created. If I was documentary making, again, it's a story in a slightly different way. Marketing and events; you're telling a story about the brand or introducing the brand to someone with a story about the product. So, when I set up my agency, I made a really specific decision, that I would only work with brands that had an authentic true story. It has to have a real story, not a made up one. And I can sniff out a made up story from three metres away. It has to have a USP, a unique selling point, which is a gap, a proper gap in the market and the product has to function; it has to be a good product. 10 CHOICES <strong>Local</strong> Haringey
How does Salt-Water Sandals shape up to this test? Salt-Water Sandals - authentic story, 70 years old, never heard of outside of America, been around since the 1940s, haven’t changed the design in over 70 years. The product functions. It does exactly what it says. You can wear them all summer, they don’t fall apart; they stay looking good. They're not pretending to be anything other than a functional decent looking straightforward sandal and I really like the humbleness of that. And then the unique selling point is that they can get wet. So, it ticks all three. And it's a delight to sell. I enjoy selling it and I feel I'm not selling someone clutter. I'm selling them the equivalent of a wellington boot, but in summer. So, it's a sandal that does everything. How many outlets would you say you've got now in the UK? What’s been your biggest achievement? What are you most proud of ? The ultimate was to benefit my family. You know, but if I'm slightly selfish, because of my background in launching brands to market, some of the satisfaction doesn’t necessarily come from making money. And this is the honest truth; I have a huge satisfaction out of introducing a brand that no one has heard of and then watching people discover it and watching people totally fall in love with it and become really massive fans of it. So that has been really great for me, just watching - because obviously in the area we are, there's lots of mums and families and I've introduced the brand directly, and just watching all the mums in the local school and all the kids wearing those sandals in summer and all of them coming to me and saying, they're the best pair of sandals. Oh, crikey. I'd have to ask my sales director. I've got a sales director now. Actually, in the UK, we've probably got maybe 160, at a guess. And how do you choose who stocks the brand? Our route to market is you find your best independent boutiques or your best independent shoe shops because, without a doubt, if they're any good at what they do, they choose a really good brand mix for their clientele, and we look at what brands they're already selling and if they've got a few recognizable brands that will really sit alongside our sandals nicely, we go, oh, they're a good fit. CHOICES <strong>Local</strong> Haringey 11
Page 1: Entrepreneur fears? Do these 7 thin
Page 5 and 6: Contents Don't be shy - 7 Start up
Page 7 and 8: 5. Have a business plan Writing dow
Page 9: We caught up with marketing and PR
Page 13 and 14: also backstage at the Wembley conce
Page 16 and 17: Crouch End duo share their Windmill
Page 18 and 19: Scared to make the transition to en
Page 20 and 21: Separate Talkers from Doers Top Biz
Page 22: Last word... Thank you so much for

Choices Local - Launch July-August 2017

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?