He walked away from a £1m per month business to build D.Louise even bigger | Jack Zambakides

What folded out is definitely, definitely different to what I predicted.

Which is crazy to think that was even 4 and a half years ago, because that was basically the focus of the entire pod.

But we're selling about £1 million worth of PlayStations a month, just number 1 on Google and ripping them on Meta, because it was when everyone wanted a PS5 in lockdown, I was able to get them.

But I guess your opinion and priorities have changed.

Exactly. It was a burn the boat sort of situation, so I thought make myself go all in on Deluise. You know, we went from 250 to 1.3 to 4.5 or something like that. The first year of any business, I would say, is horrendous.

Biggest single lesson from scaling the brand?

Pay yourself more as a founder.

I still think the vehicle, i.e., the product, the category, the timing, the geography, I genuinely think that's 10 times more important than like how hard you work.

I don't think I'm the best CEO for the business. It's not what I enjoy so much. Like, I enjoy being the founder and driving growth and still would love to be able to make the decisions. It's sort of like once you have that enough personal liquidity, then what?

So we're back with episode— I don't even know— the Midnight Pod. We have Jack Zambichide. Is that how I said it?

Zambichides.

Just to warm up the pod again, given it's like season 3 or something, that's come on since the previous showing on March 6th, 2022, which is what I was just checking on here. But, um, Yeah, you're living in Dubai now. Moved to Dubai. You scaled Dear Louise a lot, which we'll get into. But I want to start— I think we've kind of gone through your story previously, so I'll link below the original, as in like the backstory prior to any of the entrepreneurship stuff. You said a few things on that previous pod that— not to like call you out, but I guess your opinion and priorities have changed. You said back on that pod that you were going to focus on LS Shopper. which was your personal shopping business. And I think D. Louise maybe existed. I think, but I think— Liv wasn't fully in it officially then.

I think she was probably just running it, but I think it was ticking over. But, you know, anyone starting an e-com business in 2021 seemed to make some money. So it's probably, yeah, a Facebook ads business spending a bit of money every single month, but nothing big.

And LS Shopper, that was your main thing back then? Yeah, because that was basically the focus of the entire pod. Yeah, which is crazy to think that was even 4 and a half years ago.

Yeah, so that was my, my previous business. I think I was probably, uh, ambitious and confident with that because we just had a lockdown. We were selling a lot of PlayStations. Yeah, but we're selling about £1 million worth of PlayStations a month probably at that point. I don't know if I mentioned it, but we were on just number 1 on Google and ripping them on Meta because it was when everyone wanted a PS5 in lockdown and, uh, I was able to get them. But yeah, opinions and what folded out is definitely, definitely different to what I predicted.

You also said you would never seek investment, or you didn't want to.

I would say that's still pretty true.

Then Steve Hewitt came in, right?

Yeah, with a very minority. And it was more— it was near off sweat equity. And honestly, we didn't need the capital to— yeah, it wasn't growth capital. Yeah, it wasn't VC money yet.

And I think you were the actual official founder then, right? Of at least of the company that today is D. Louise, is that right?

Correct, yeah.

Because Olivia wasn't in as a director, or—

Uh, she wasn't in as a director, but I think that's more just probably paperwork the company's had. But yeah, we definitely set it up together with the idea of giving her— she was going to do all the product and all the stuff which I probably didn't enjoy as much.

So at what point did— does Ella still exist?

No.

So completely over the past few years?

Yeah, my first ever employee, a guy called James, he now runs the business, but I was sort of I was the business to a degree.

But it does still exist? It does still exist, yes. Are you a shareholder still?

No, not a shareholder.

So there's nothing to do with that at all?

Exactly. It was a burn the boat sort of situation. So I thought, make myself go all in on D. Louise.

So when did that become like big enough to make that decision? Because did that even exist in any form? Because I think you said you were selling like men's bracelets or something back on the previous pod.

Yeah, I can't remember what I, what I did and didn't say. But no, the, the story is that LS was my first business which sort of took off. We had a good client base, sold to tons and tons of footballers, um, built up the e-com business over, over lockdown, sort of similar to everyone else. You sort of had to pivot your business model slightly. The business massively scaled up, built out the team. Then obviously, you know, post-lockdown, people had less furlough money, less desire, desire to buy designer clothing, all of that sort of stuff.

Mm-hmm.

So the business definitely didn't do the— at least on the e-com side, wasn't doing the numbers it did. We then had a lot of issues in terms of robberies, which we can like go in and out to.

But I had like—

you're selling high-value goods in the UK out of a warehouse. So we just had multiple big things go wrong. Big, like, we had one incident in particular which cost a lot of money and it was sort of to the point where I sort of saw how big I could take the business. But the issue we had was it was always supply-side constrained. So I couldn't always get enough product because we would sell whatever we were selling online, Yeezys, Dunks, PlayStations, whatever. You'd spend your whole day, opposite to sort of our businesses now, We're all about acquisition. You spend your whole day, how can I make sure I can source this product? Because a lot of it you didn't have in inventory. You sort of had that combined with your gross margin is pretty crap. You'll be buying a shoe at £300, selling it at £400, £450. So to sit on inventory, you have to have huge cash balance. So the model was hard and it doesn't really suit scale. So it did get to a point where I was like, right, I need to make a decision here. But it was definitely a 2 steps back or one step back to take 2 steps forward sort of situation in terms of I was making more money from LS when I decided to step away. than what I was for D. Louise, for sure.

So how long were you doing both? Oh, was it like a gradual— probably one up, one down?

Yeah, probably a couple years, year and a half. But you know, when you're doing 2 of anything, it doesn't really work. Um, so, so I was probably doing it for, for a couple years. But yeah, D. Louise was started with the idea— it was Liv was really passionate about the product and loved jewelry, and I just knew business, and it was sort of like, this will just be a bit of a lifestyle business for her.

It was her idea? Initially, yeah. So I think you said on the pod, not to quote you— quote me, um, where's the quote? You said something along the lines of, I'm just funding my girlfriend to like start. I'll give her 6 months of salary, I think is what you said. Yeah, words to that effect, because she had the idea, right?

So she was basically— I was, I was at this, I had my lockdown, the LS was doing well, lockdown was fun for me. I was going to a warehouse full of like 8 to 10 lads in their early 20s. My business was scaling every month. I was then coming home and she'd done like 10 Courtney Black workouts and made 4 banana breads. Um, so she was like losing her mind a bit. Fun for a few months, but sort of losing her mind. Then I was like, right, we need to start an e-com business. Well, you need to start a business. E-com's the easiest way. I was literally, you know, I probably had only been messing around with Facebook ads for not too long, but at that point it was pretty simple. You'd literally make a Canva static ad and plonk it on Facebook and run it at 4 ROAS.

Yeah.

So then, uh, she'd always She loved jewelry, she did work in Pandora, so it felt like the— and there were jewelry brands at that time who were scaling, the model just worked. So that's sort of why we jumped on it.

And had she done e-com before?

No, never, no. She was just doing the product and buying that and putting it on the site, and I was sort of the one doing all the backend.

And how long was it like a hobby for both of you, or her, before you decided to actually swap? From a business that was doing really well?

Yeah, well, so year 1, I know we did quarter of a million pound in sales.

Um, when was that, 2021?

Yeah, 2021, 20— well, our financial year falls slightly different, but '22, then we went to like £1.3 million. And then when you're over £100 grand a month, it was sort of like, we should probably employ someone at this point. Um, so it's probably around that point, probably after like, you know, a year and a bit.

Yeah, so it's you and her. It seems quite Quite intense to be co-founder with your now fiancée. Wait, you married now?

Yeah, we're married. Oh shit, that's of June.

How long were you engaged for?

A year and a half.

What, with your now wife then?

Yeah, my wife.

That still feels weird to say. That makes you feel old?

Yeah, very.

I don't have a wife, but like, fuck, if I did, I'd feel older.

Yeah, you would, you would. Um, no, it's, it's an interesting dynamic. We work really well together, in honesty, which is like lucky. We, we definitely have 2 different sides. I think, you know, all— if you asked her what's our gross margin, is she thinking about how we can save on product costs, is she thinking about, you know, uh, all of the meta updates, like how creative strategy, all that sort of stuff— she's not in the weeds there. But she, fortunately for me, handles— well, loves all the product side of things and definitely more involved with the brand side of things, which for me is like, you know, I get it, I enjoy it, but I'm too impatient. Like designing a piece of jewelry, we're now— because we're rolling out into wholesale, we're thinking like a year ahead, a bit more like fashion. And it's like, for me, I design something, or if I think, oh, that's a good idea, I just want it done. Like, waiting for suppliers and going all that back and forth just doesn't naturally suit me. So it feels good that, you know, she can handle that side of the business with, uh, with a bit of the team. So, so we work well, work very well.

I kind of forget that I had a jewelry business.

Yeah, good numbers, no?

Yeah, I got it to like $400K a month maybe. It wasn't ever huge, but that was between like end of 2018 to mid-2021. Yeah. And then because of the Neon business, which obviously was the start of the pod talking about that, that just kind of crashed and burned along with it. And then it got bought out by—

because it was under the same limited company.

But recently they shut it down, like I think it was 3 months ago, ceased to exist. So I messaged— I think it was E-Complete Group, certainly, who bought Neon. Naming no names, gonna say who bought it. But I emailed the person and they just didn't reply to me because I was like, I thought, buy it back just for the— just become another shiny object thing. Because then Crafted London were like my main think compared at the time. Obviously they're now massive.

Yeah, they've done some amazing things.

I just always thought it's a crazy category, jewelry, because the product margin's fucking insane.

It wasn't, you know, that was probably definitely what— there were a few brands which inspired us, um, because of that, you know, that there were that—

who were they? Like Missoma?

Yeah, Missoma did amazing things. Monica Vinader still do amazing things. Like, they're category leaders. They're like an incredibly ran, like, well-run business. Obviously they've done it like, you know, they're far, far, far bigger and they've positioned themselves and their brand in a slightly more premium way. But yeah, even, you know, there's people in the US doing massive numbers. Like the jewelry category does have some huge players all the way up to like, you know, the Pandoras of the world. You know, if you ever— you'd have to be really bored, but Pandora's earnings reports, they're printing like 27% EBITDA on like $4 billion a year. So like they're making a lot of money.

That's the first jewelry I ever bought, was a Pandora charm bracelet.

Exactly.

My first ever girlfriend when I was 15.

Yeah, she still got it?

You have to ask her. Hopefully. But they literally have stores everywhere as well, right?

Yeah.

So they've got a category that works for that.

Yeah, the, the playbook of, of the category which has been done similar to Swarovski is that you just really elevate your brand. So Swarovski is great, so they'll do like a massive collab with Ariana Grande, they'll make the jewelry, these are Swarovski crystals, they're made to feel extremely, you know, high-end. They'll do the collaborations with Nike, and then it's just a game of distribution. So every single airport you can find Swarovski, every cruise ship you can find it, every shopping center. So they'll have like, I think Swarovski are like 5,000 to 7,000 points of sale. So, you know, it's a different— well, I suppose similar to you with Space Goods now, distribution is a huge play.

Yeah, especially drinks.

Yeah, if you can get, you know, you need to sell a few a day, but if you're across thousands and thousands of places, it adds up to a big number.

Yeah. So how's it look, first few years, it's scaling quickly. Like, at what point does it go from you and your girlfriend at the time— who, were you co-founders officially? Yeah, yeah, 50/50. Yeah, yeah. To building a team? And what did that journey look like the first few years?

Yeah, so we went from that sort of like doing a few million, we then were just— we were growing really, really fast at that point. But we were very, the business was very meta ads driven, very simple business model. It was definitely a different time then to what it is now. But now it's probably 'cause of AI, you can probably move even faster. But then it was, we did sort of get the business to a point where I was like, right, I know I can probably get this to a certain level just with our current strategy. But like how the hell, acquisition cost goes up the more you spend on ads. So it's like, how the hell do we get a brand past $10 million? How'd you get a brand to $50 million, $100 million? Like when you see these businesses, you're like, what the hell? How is that even possible? Yeah. Um, so then it was at that point I knew I needed probably to try bring on a team or people who've got some experience in doing that. Um, we definitely still haven't totally cracked it, of course, um, but it's sort of like then it was at that point, you know, when we were probably doing like 4 or 5 million where we're like, right, we probably need to brand build. Liv's became more like Liv. She had like a hidden Instagram before that with like 400 followers. It was like, right, she positioned herself more as the face of the brand. Like, what are the— what sort of content can we try to do to like Storytelling around the brand, make people feel something, all of those sorts of things, having a bit more of a cadence to new product, NPD. So then we sort of started to build the team out around us there. Started with like, you know, the obvious stuff you hate, like ops and customer service, which is just, you know, for me it was something I just wanted to get off my plate and, yeah, her plate as early as possible.

She looks like the founder, like the sole founder almost, online.

Yeah.

Today. Is that fair to say? I mean, you searched that, D. Louise founder. I even thought she was called Louise at one point.

Everyone, that's a common thing.

Is that her mum?

Yeah, her mum's name.

Yeah. So is that the story of the founding?

Yeah.

Her mum passed away and—

Yeah. So when we were thinking about names, I remember being in Putney and I was sat on the sofa and she was cooking dinner and it was sort of like, you know, you go through that journey of like, right, what should we call it? And then came up with all different sorts of names, you know, terrible, like something London, you know, like all of these like classic—

It's London but it's based in Manchester.

Um, but came up with all of these names, and then she said, oh, we could call it D. Louise after my mum. She'd obviously lost her mum when she was, uh, with me, um, just sort of just after I met her. Um, so then I was like, oh fuck, like, we could call it that, but like, for me, like, then I just can't let it fail. So there was definitely that like emotional tie. I was like, cool, let's roll with it, it sounds great. There's definitely—

This is before you sold anything, or was this like—

This was before.

Got momentum and you were ready?

Yeah, yeah, no, no, before we sold anything. So then I was sort of like, we went into the business like me knowing like just out of like like a place like this is— I'm never like, they're going to let this fail. Like, we'll make this work because it had that emotional tie. Like, I think you can't, you know.

And were you already meant to be checked out of LS at this point? I guess no.

No, no, no.

Because Pod was actually after that.

Yeah, yeah. No, I wasn't checked out of LS. That was sort of like, you know, that business was very—

That's when it was peak LS.

Yeah, peak.

So how long until you decided or realized LS didn't make sense to focus on? I guess you said, yeah, market got harder, then you got to—

It was probably at the point where— so we started '21, '22, probably 2023. where I sort of knew that LS was, was, you know, it was a really solid business, but the business was very much resolved around me. So like, you know, that industry works as if you've got like a client base of people who spend like £100K to £200K to £300K a year on clothes. They would obviously have—

£300K a year on clothes?

Mate, it's just ridiculous. It's another—

Footballers, right?

Yeah.

That's not your average like John Smith.

No, not your normal sort of like— but you know, Christmas would be us renting a van to drop off like £50,000 worth of gear at someone's house. Like, you know, and we have to go to Harrods and—

a drive-through supply business fundamentally. Like, obviously we spoke about before, but like, yeah, they're paying you because they can't get it or because they can't be bothered to queue for it?

Uh, a bit of both. Can't get it, can't be able to queue for it, don't want to have to go like, I just need my whole family sorted, you know, just buy them all ever. Like, you know, thing you need's a Canada Goose, buy this, buy that, like, what do you reckon, just go handle it. Um, so, so that business was great, but it was, you know, you're getting texts at like all the time. You're just, you are You know, it's— I've always used to refer to it, it's not far off drug dealing because you're getting anything like, I need this, right, meet me at Heathrow Airport at 8 AM. And obviously you can build a team around you, but the model is similar to barbering. Like, I built up, you know, we probably had like 6 personal shoppers below me, but then they all want to deal with you. And then these people can obviously like take and leave with your clients. So if they build the relationship through building it, then they just spin up their own little business and think, well, you're only paying me X a year, I can go make 5 times that. Yeah, because I'm doing all the work.

Who's the best client or the biggest one you can share? I know you said some before, but Lando Norris was a good client.

Yeah, he's obviously blown up since. Loads of footballers. Footballers are very hard to deal with, which is sort of probably why I want to—

Do you not think there's any— has there been any like crossover in using those connections in D-Louise anyway, or is it just less relevant because—

Less relevant, but I always say that I need to like— I think that, you know, the Hyperice and like businesses like that, like the massage guns, that I've got these connections for when that next thing comes off and we just need to let something rip. Um, but, but yeah, no, I probably haven't leveraged it enough.

Yeah. And in terms of you focusing on D. Louise and then actually not being a shareholder in LS, was that like, was that the same time, or did you stay as you owned it, someone else ran it?

Uh, no, you decided to actually leave? Yeah, effectively someone— it was sort of like, it got to the point where we had like another robbery effectively, which, which is what happened. Like, I had a, had a break-in at— we had an office in, in Surrey, had a break-in there, ended up like, you know, It's like, here we go again sort of situation. D. Lewis was doing really well. I think we probably just had a good, good Q4 and I was like, right, it's not making the same money, but it could easily get there. There's definitely a path there. So then I was just sort of like, right, burn the bridge. How can I find my way out of this? Obviously you've got a shit ton of inventory, which I tried to liquidate. And then I effectively agreed something like a buyback over time with the first employee who now runs the business.

Is it still doing well?

It's ticking up. It's got a real solid— yeah, the space is very different. It's got a great client base. The business can run like clockwork, in honesty. If you've got 20, 30 customers who buy £100,000 worth a year, you've got a £2-3 million business with okay margins. So it's a good small business, but I always have had ambitions and still have ambitions to build something big. It's a hard business to build to £100 million. No one's really done it.

Yeah. No one's done it.

Yeah, exactly.

I think a lot of people see like brands that are doing well like you guys are now, or have even made it, like look at Julian selling Huel or whatever, but they kind of assume that there wasn't that. Maybe they just forget that there was the grind phase. Kind of, oh, I wish I could get it. Like, how, how would you describe that grind phase at the start? Obviously it's a grind now, but like I think every business has maybe a year or two where it's just in the fucking spare room, no team, maybe there's fuck all cash relatively, or there is cash but it's all in the business, you can't take it out. Like, how long would you say that period was until it felt like this is like a more of a machine that has a team, kind of runs? Yeah, maybe not autonomously, but less of a founder grind.

Yeah, I think 100% as bootstrapped. I remember just being like, especially as you're fast growing, like, you know, we went from 250 to 1.3 to 4, 4.5 or something like that, that you're, you're literally just spinning your money again and again and again. And obviously your EBITDA margins say I don't know, say 10% at the time. So you're making on $1.3 million, you're making $130K, but then your inventory purchasing for the next year—

Yeah.

Is obviously if you're doing $4 million and you have, I don't know, 20% cost of goods or whatever it is, you need $800K worth of inventory for the year. So you're— so it is cash, like cash is tight, um, cash is hard. And it's probably only really the last, you know, we've been running the business for 5, 6 years, probably in the last 2 years where it feels like you know, we're in a slightly different position. I think a lot of that's probably more so come from growth has definitely slowed. We're not trebling every year. Um, and then also you just, you've probably become slightly more sophisticated with, you know, like forecasting, and then you start, uh, you have better payment terms with your suppliers and all those sorts of things. You start just becoming probably a bit more educated. But yeah, it's the process. The first year of any business, I would say, is horrendous. Like, from my experience, um, it's hard.

Yeah.

Probably different now because you could probably well capitalize it and you know what state it's still—

AI probably helps though.

Yeah, AI will definitely help. Yeah, so, but it's still relatively shit. Depends on what business though. Multi-SKU isn't easy.

Are you still like 12 hours a day grinding at it, or do you think you're—

Yes, in all honesty. You're approaching it different? No, no, like I'm full on, you know, probably the, the same as you and most founders. You go through like different waves where you like I think the hardest thing is, as individuals, humans don't really know what they want. So you sort of want what you don't have. So one minute you want like a £100 million business with tons of employees and loads of capital and all, like raise loads of capital. Then the other minute you're like, I just want a real simple £20 million business, which is really profitable and I can pay it all as dividends. And you probably jump between when you've got one, you want the other and vice versa. But no, still, yeah, I feel very confident in our next, we've sort of like 2 to 3 years of growth. We're going pretty aggressive on retail, so like wholesale for us. Our e-com business is doing really, really well at the minute, which is great. Um, so feeling pretty, pretty confident in it. I think the only other, like, I'm sure it's a discussion point, is that without using the buzzword of AI, like, the e-com space is changing a lot. Like, some of the stuff I'm seeing, you know, you can whip up Shopify sites. Like, I'm— you can— the image generation for new products is like Better than what I've ever seen before.

I was doing some today, it's crazy.

Yeah, it's just like, oh, here we go. Like, the playing fields are really, really changing. So I think there's definitely, you know, you're seeing people build like 8, 9-figure businesses pretty quick, um, that I'd probably love to have a go at, uh, at one or two of those. But at the minute, we're just, we're just trying to stay focused writing a not-to-do list still.

I think you said on our previous pod, unless this was about LS, that you plan to run Deal Louise for another 18 months to 2 years and sell it. Do you remember saying that? Because we're probably 2 and a half years into that.

I haven't sold it yet. I haven't sold it yet, no. Um, so current plan isn't like— we've definitely— we've obviously, you know, similar to people you get when you're on all these lists of fast growing and all that crap, um, you get in loads of interest. But for me, I think the— there's a huge amount of complexity when you add people to your cap table just because Naturally, as founders, we probably don't— I don't mind losing if it's my own fault. What I do mind is it's like, you know, if someone really influences your decision and goes, we really should do this, and then you lose, then it's sort of like, fuck's sake, I even own most of the business and they're controlling me, or whatever. It becomes more difficult.

I've felt that at times.

I think every, every founder probably does. So, so at the minute it hasn't been like a priority for us, and I don't think the market's obviously great, but no, I think you know, we're, we're sort of at a scale where we can still put our foot on the gas a lot. Like, we're small relatively.

Yeah, yeah. Obviously no institutional investors yet, although we did speak about that a few months ago. But you did have obviously Steve Hewitt from Gymshark, very well known, I'd say famous in the space. What was the context he came in? I know you said it's a small investment and so on, and you can share that if you want, but it's a big name to have in like a small business, especially at the time. Yeah, 2020, 3 or 4 we came in?

Yeah.

How did that even come about? Because, yeah, yeah, interesting name.

It was, it was literally not after the point where I stepped away from LS or was trying to, trying to get out of it. And then I knew that, you know, we were running a very simple business with D2Es. You buy your product from Far East, put it into a warehouse, like shipping, whatever, what everyone else does. But I knew that if we wanted to take this business to, you know, I've just gone from, right, I have to take a step back, it's really important I take 2, 3 steps forward. Um, so then I was like, right, we need to find someone who knows what they're doing. It was just that my hypothesis of like what we're trying to do has been done before. It's not rocket science. Let's find someone who knows what they're doing. Um, I had an employee from my— from LS who worked with me there who used to work at Gymshark. So I used to ask him like millions of questions. And you know what, I think they're like rocket ship journey still was like a generational run of what they built. When you look at the numbers, I was looking at it even the other day, like they go adding on hundreds of millions a year selling athletic—

I think just quickly on that, that stuff, and same with like Huel, kind of a similar vein. I guess Gymshark's a bit bigger, I think revenue-wise. revenue-wise, but similar ballpark. I think the more experience I've got, the more impressed I realize that is.

100%.

I don't know if you relate.

100%.

When you're younger or less experienced, I think— well, certainly I did— you sort of just think, oh, to get to $500 mil, I just spend, I don't know, 50 times more than I'm spending now on ads, right?

Yeah.

But actually it gets exponentially more complicated. So then to keep growing— because you're right, Gymshark, I think they get a lot, kind of a lot of hate. Maybe not hate is the word.

No, I agree.

There's a lot of Twitter and LinkedIn, there's a lot, oh, Gymshark only did, I don't 5% EBITDA and it's like on £600 million in revenue consistently growing every year. Like, what have you done? Yeah, I just think it's still a fucking insane business.

Yeah. And especially like on their growth journey, they were print— they're like super profitable. Like, I think when they did the transaction, they had like £50 million in the bank. Like, yeah, to build a bootstrap business to £50 million in the bank, I don't care. Yeah, I mean, lucky or not, that's like my wheels. Yeah, wheels can come off. Um, so then I kept asking millions of questions and then eventually saw on LinkedIn one day that Steve had stepped down Uh, had he stepped down from the chair? 2023. Yeah, I think he'd stepped down from the chair. I think he'd been not CEO for a couple years at that point, but had set up Fanow, um, which was like his advice.

I've spoke to those guys before.

It's hard. Yeah, it's hard to say. Fanow, which was like his advisory group.

Yeah.

And I was like, cool, here we go, someone who can help me, because, you know, what I'm doing is sort of just running a few Facebook ads and, and we're getting, we're getting far, but we're not doing anything that sophisticated. Um, so went on his website and it was sort of like, do you run a business doing over £10 million turnover? We weren't, but I was just like, on the form I was just like, yep, cool. Like, blagged my way in, got on a call with one of his teams, sort of told the story. We're not doing 10 million, but we will be soon.

Yeah.

Told the— did a bit of storytelling. We'd love to meet you, love to help. Told— spoke about the employee who he knew, the team knew. Then had a meeting in Birmingham, which is where their, uh, like, sort of headquarters slash office was. Like, was in this fancy room. I think the day one fee, it was sort of like just all went to charity. So I was like, you know, we just had a good Black Friday. I was like, cool. Um, Steve is a very charitable guy. I was like, let's just pay the fee and, and all of that will go to charity. Like, I can feel good at night. And it was, you know, a few thousand pounds or whatever it was. Um, so then we did that. We then started talking to them about the business, obviously explained we're not £10 million, but we are now. He was running through like, so what's your P&L? Probably the same stuff you do now. What's your North Star? You're like, all of this? We didn't have any of it. It was literally like, yeah, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, hang on a minute, we're not— like, there's a lot I don't know.

Yeah.

And I think as well, you've probably found it's like I was pretty well-read and I had spoken to like a few people in like the e-com space. But there's a, there's like this e-com space which is like the gurus who are, some of them are ripping it and doing really, really well. And then there's like the businessmen who are like, they actually know how to run a business and, you know, build out a team and all different things.

Yeah.

Org chart design and all those sorts of things. I don't think you need to be one or the other. I think you probably, there's probably a combination of both which need to sit. Sit in the business.

Yeah, agreed.

Um, but, you know, we got a lot of education there and a lot of value. And then after a few sessions, he just said, you know, would you be— you know, their model effectively—

The initial concept was just a consulting sprint.

Yeah, but, but their model is exactly that, that they can help out brands. And then Steve's got capital from, from obviously Gymshark, which he can invest into the right brands and write small checks for, which he feels, you know, align with what they want to do.

So that was their suggestion or yours to invest after that?

Theirs, theirs. Yes, we did sort of like 5, 6 sessions. So I knew he was getting involved with putting his own money into some brands at the time, which was slightly vocal. So then I knew that he would put money into brands and he said, would you like to be interested? Like, would we be interested? And we managed to come to a bit of a deal.

Because he was on the board, right? Then at that point. Did he take a board seat?

We don't really have a board, in all honesty. It wasn't really—

Did he become a company director?

Yeah, he was a, he was a director.

Because that's quite involved given, as you said, it was a relatively small investment at the time.

Yeah, it was effectively how we worked with them is we were working with the team pretty closely, but then we were working with, um, you know, every single quarter effectively what we were doing is just sitting down with, with him and, you know, we're trying to formalize and make the business feel a bit more professional.

Where do you think he helped most at that stage, or do you think In some ways, kind of his experience was at a bigger business, so therefore maybe less relevant.

I think it's a, it's a balance. I think the, the wider thing, which is probably what I've just got better at over time, is he's never looking like, you know, you're saying you're not even in the Shopify dashboard anymore. Sometimes when you're so in the weeds of a business, you end up—

I am sometimes.

Yeah, not today, but you drive yourself pretty insane when you're so in the weeds and you're looking at your click-through rates and you're trying to get He's very, very holistic, which you have to be. And then he's just incredible alignment of people. Like, you know, as the team gets bigger— we're still small— but it's just making sure that everyone's like, right, this is the plan. He'll just say the same things, like, these are the targets, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it. So it's just that real alignment. Um, so I think it's probably those 2 things. It's like really zooming out, it's being like, right, where do we want to take this? What markets do we want to play in? How do we want to play in them? You know, all the simple— Like real, like product, geo, channel, that sort of stuff, being real top level at that. Tactically-wise, this would definitely be more his team. And then it's just the alignment of, you know, the core team. Once you've got your strategy, how do we make sure we're executing against that? As opposed to just being like day-to-day, week-to-week, quarter-to-quarter, which sometimes, you know, you can end up when you're just—

It's a fine line, isn't it? Because—

It's a balance. It's 100% a balance.

I've come across people have to be pretty careful what I say, but naming no names, like people that have built and sold big businesses in some cases and otherwise, and they can have really good experience and, and they do, the ones I'm thinking of. But then I found often, because it was maybe 10 years ago, like the macro themes can be true, but like it's just not that relevant to now.

100%.

And I think to your point, like being in the weeds versus being more high level, and I think the high level stuff, yes, is useful, But I also think it's relative to scale, right? And I've struggled with this a bit in my own business because I think I stepped back too much last year because we built the team, I think in hindsight, more than needed to be built at that time. And I was kind of like, oh yeah, I'm going to do strategic stuff. And I'm naturally a fucking builder.

100%.

So now I've gone almost founder mode.

Yeah.

We had a few team changes in certain areas. I've just gone fully founder mode again. And I'm like literally Claude coding like a brand new website and shit just to prove how easy this shit is, almost out of principle.

Yeah.

I really shouldn't be doing that long term, but it's an interesting one because it's like, how do you get the balance right? Because it's all very well being strategic, and I do think that stuff's good, but at the end of the day, at a certain scale, and even any scale, but especially smaller, I think you just gotta do the fucking doing.

Yeah, I, I agree. I think the, the journey which I've been on on this, and it will probably continue to evolve, is we went to um, like incremental. Like when you're, you know, especially when we start starting something, you're looking for swings. You're looking for like products which are just going to like double the business effectively, or like it can really lead to growth or new markets, or, you know, any way, like, you know, a new ad channel, whatever. We went to sort of like little tactical, like this quarter we just want our conversion rate to go up by 0 point blah blah blah, and we're going to raise our ASP. And it was too like gradual, which we did lead to growth and more profitability and stuff like that. But it feels like now the business, like D. Louise, is in a really good place because we've not been scared to take some like bigger hits. And like, what are our— like, I call them like 3 to 4 big bets, and I call it like bullets before cannonballs. So we'll fire— like, with retail, we've— we threw a few bullets, we made a couple hires, it worked really well, we got traction for a few different reasons. But now, like, let's go at it. Like, let's really, really attack it. And I sometimes think when you go too strategic and you get people's opinions, it's too like ticky-tacky. Like you're not actually making— yeah, you're not making any like huge big bets on like what are we going to go after and what are we willing to fail at. Um, but yeah, founder mode is— I've found more success that way.

I definitely agree. It's obviously a balance, but like I think as well too many opinions. I kind of got to the point, especially last year, which feels like the fucking learning here. Well, I kind of was scared to give my own opinion on my own business, especially as a solo founder rather than 2, which I guess you can still disagree, but like, at least in your case, there was more founders than investors, right?

Yeah.

And it's quite weird because, oh fuck, I'm like walking on eggshells in my own business a bit here because I've kind of lost confidence in my own opinions because other people do it differently.

Yeah.

And that's fine, but like, I don't think you should completely lose that like founder instinct.

But I also think that like, if you were going to say what is your zone of genius, it probably is like just give your diary 6 hours a day where you can just like crush it. If you said grow Space Goods, here's 6 hours a day for the next 365 days a year, you'd probably get pretty far.

Yeah.

And that's what I've found is that, you know, as soon as you start, I think that's, you know, you can obviously leverage the team and do all that sort of stuff. But I think, you know, your zone of genius is probably similar to mine. Mine isn't leading the team through all these things. I can do it and I can make it happen and I can give my opinion. I can be the smiley guy and, you know, try align everyone, but it's not what I'm best at. Um, like, I know you've, you've hired an MD or CEO or—

CEO.

CEO, yeah. Um, but yeah, there's definitely a CEO out there better than me.

Yeah, I think it's different stages. Like, I've read a lot of what that Chad— Chad Janice, great name for a guy that Chad-scaled to $1.2 billion exit in 3 years, obviously from grunds. And he's very vocal on LinkedIn about— he makes it sound so easy, I think, for a start. It definitely isn't, or rather, I imagine it isn't for him, but He talks about set the vision, hire great people, get out of the way. And I think that's like, on paper, that's great. I think the nuanced difference there though is he even says himself it got to $30 million a year with just him. So it's like, you can't then take that because basically I think a lot of founders, including myself, probably last year kind of leaned into that too much. Hire great people, get out of the way.

Mm-hmm.

Like, that obviously can work, and obviously you want to build a great team, and you certainly can't do it yourself, but I think the caveat is he's now talking about that as a $500 million a year business or whatever it is.

Yeah.

It's definitely different at the earlier stage.

I don't know his— well, I know what they built was phenomenal, but I don't know the intricacies of his career. But the journey I found, um, is, you know, there's that awkward middle ground where if you pay someone— I could just say it— but pay someone $50 grand a year, they're normally not amazing because they haven't had that experience in their career where they've been doing it long enough, or they haven't been on sort of that growth journey. And that— there are exceptions, but what I found is that you're not going to get exceptional talent talent who you can get out the way at that level. It's not the market. It's not where the market's at. So then you, you have to hire heads of, which are say like 6 figures, low, like just below, just above, you know. Yeah, they're not— you're not gonna pay them $500K a year, you're not gonna probably pay them $300K a year. Um, but you have to hire those heads of who do have experience, who've been and done what you want to do. And then that middle ground is almost obsolete because of AI. Then yeah, you just— you have those heads of and then you have admin staff who can be overseas, who can be helping out, who are clicking buttons, you know, making sure that everything's firing. But that seems like at least for me, the way to structure your org chart at the minute. I think the difficulty you go on as a— the journey you go on as a founder, which we're still going on, is, you know, for us we have to hire a merchandiser. You don't know what a good merchandiser looks like until you hire a bad one and they screw everything up. So then you're sort of like, I swear, like, it's until you find someone and you see like the trait. Same with finance. Like, everyone's amazing at finance until they actually do your accounts. You never get them on time or anything goes wrong. So you sort of learn This is not what I want until you find someone you do like. You're like, okay, this is what someone good in finance looks like. So when— if you had to hire that person again, you're like, okay, they need to just be like him or they need to have those attributes. But you sort of have to, you know, probably just get through, like hire people, make sure— try and make sure they're best fit. But until someone's in the role, you don't really know. But if you've never hired a merchandiser like we'd never had, you're sort of like, are they doing the job? Are they not? Like, yeah.

I think hiring has been the biggest area of learning for me. I feel like a lot of the general e-com stuff and that I kind of already knew most of it and obviously you get better and stuff, but I spent more time focused on hiring to the point before of probably stepping back a little bit much. And then you realize the problem with hiring and people, maybe not the problem, but the challenge compared to just, is my CAC on target? It's like people are fucking not just numbers on a screen.

Yeah.

So there's kind of like the EQ and IQ side of it, I guess, if that's the right description. like, it's not just as simple as are you doing a good job or not. It's like, oh, do they— do you work well with them? Like, are they happy?

Like, no one— like, at least it wasn't any book I read, um, or anyone I spoke to— just hire people you genuinely get on with. It helps. And I know that that probably doesn't work for 100 people, but at least that, you know, I'm gonna say up to 20 people. I think just hire people you generally, like, would actually go for a drink with and, like, don't have to manage your words around. 100%. Because otherwise, otherwise it's very difficult. And then just at least for us, you know, the, the category of e-commerce— we're not working in private equity where we can afford to pay people a million pound a year or half a million pound a year. Like, like at least at our scale we're not. So you're never going to get like the people— you're never going to get like top, top Harvard, you know, Cambridge, you know, all of those. Like, maybe Cambridge, but you're never going to get like the, the real smartest people in the world are going to probably fall into other categories. Um, at least if you're trying to hire them, you know, at our sort of level. So then I think for me, hiring people who've just got a huge amount of grit has definitely worked. Like, our best employees that aren't like the smartest, or they aren't like coming up with these things, but they are just like— they reply to like messages on the weekend, or they'll message me with an idea, you know. They're never going to be like, sorry, it's after 6, I'm not going to reply. That just doesn't work, in my opinion, in a startup. And when you speak to the startups which have— behind the scenes of every startup fast scaling or not, is absolute chaos.

Yeah, yeah.

So I think you get used to, oh, it's not just me who's having all these problems. People are problems. So within every business, there are problems as well. Um, it doesn't suddenly, you know, only a bank, I suppose, is everything like HR perfect because they've been running these banks for hundreds of years. Um, so yeah, I think hiring people who just have that sort of grit is, is, you know, they're our best employees or people who I see Yeah, I think lean into it.

You should probably spend an hour talking about hiring. But I think that I actually went through like loads of thought. I basically, I think I did it on YouTube, transcribed all my podcasts, which for me I share a lot on my YouTube website. Like, basically pulled out all the, all the biggest learnings, including like loads of like self-notes I'd written, to almost have like a handbook for going forward, which I think is way harder unless you start a new business because it's kind of hard to change like the way you've operated. But the one thing I just didn't do is just be super clear with people about everything up front. So I mean, like, and that's hard to do unless you are clear. And I think now in hindsight I am. But like, even like what the brand is, what it isn't, where you want it to go, what it isn't, what the culture is. And that should absolutely be set by the founder or founders, because otherwise who's it going to be set by? And otherwise, like, it just gets— it gets interpreted by other people who may not see eye to eye. And that's kind of what resulted in me being a bit like, oh, like, should I even give my opinion of my own business? That was a weird place to be.

Yeah.

But it's all just solved by communication.

100%.

Ideally upfront, as in like just don't hire the person. I'm not saying they have to be the same person as you, obviously, but like some people just don't click with certain styles. To your point, like, are they going to find it toxic that you're messaging them at 6 AM, whereas the other person might find it fucking inspirational that everyone's on the same team? There's always two sides to like 100% anything. Like some— I would say my style is often like Marmite at times because I'm very passionate and intense. One person sees that as, oh my God, Matt really cares. That's great. Another person sees that as, fuck this guy, he's rude.

Yeah, but I say that like one of the interview questions would just be like a final is like, if I message you at 9 PM, what are you gonna do? Are you just gonna leave? Like, and you see the message, then it sort of was an awkward one. Yeah, it's like if, say, if it's about work, are you gonna reply? And there's no like, just to see how people react. If they're like, oh God, no, no, I definitely wouldn't, it's sort of like, okay, like, do you know what I mean? If it's just a quick message saying, why is this out of stock? Stock arrived yesterday.

I do just think startups and scale-ups are just a different thing, and often people just come from bigger businesses. Yeah. And therefore that is just alien to them.

100%.

Not even just like the late message, but just like maybe the speed of things, like the expectations around like doing things unconventionally, etc. Like even with AI now, like if someone doesn't use AI on the team, I'm just like, yeah, fucking wake up. Yeah, it just makes your life easier as well as everyone else's. I think most people on our team definitely do now, But I've just, I've hammered home Granola and Claude. It's like a, that's just hygiene level now.

Yeah, it has to be for sure. And don't email you.

Yeah, I don't read emails, although the other day I did set up a Claude coworker to basically flag the only ones that are actually important.

Okay.

And then the rest is still like 4,000 unread emails, and that's even after I've filled half of them.

But no, yeah, I think, yeah, I don't know, it's one of those things, hire the right people, get out of the way. But I think there's You know, there's nuances to it, of course.

It's a lot easier.

It was that simple.

Yeah, if the business is printing cash, I think that's easier. Yeah, for sure. Okay, cool. So coming back to kind of the past year or so, I mean, it sounds like you guys have been obviously growing consistently, but even just on your Instagram stories, maybe the past— I don't know, is it fair to say the last, what, 2026 has been even more growth? Certainly in the past month, unless that's just flexing on Instagram. No, something's working. I think you had 1,500 active ads in your ad library. I think, I think you shared. Yeah, fuck me, for a jewelry brand, that seems especially high. Yeah, yeah. No, like, what worked over the past, say, year or two to go to the next level?

Yeah, I think there's a, there's a few things. It's sort of like a— 2026, we, we have seen strong growth. I think it, it naturally is just a case of we— the— if you just look at like Google search terms, waterproof tarnish-free jewelry is going up quite considerably every single year. So steel is being used more and more in jewelry. It was brass and other metals. Um, what's happening like macro jewelry industry is that most— so a Monica Vinader brand like that will use silver in their jewelry. Silver prices have gone really, really choppy lately, gone up massively. So in the last 10 years, silver's up, say, 700%. Steel is only up 10%. So what we're seeing is those brands are rising in their prices. So our competition having to rise prices because of margin, um, their margins getting eaten. So we're occupying that space quite well. So we do have like the headwinds are definitely in our favor. So I think we of, you know, we're naturally seeing that more people are obviously buying into, you know, fashion jewelry and waterproof jewelry. And it does feel like we are leading that trend, at least in the UK.

Is that just stainless steel?

Stainless steel, yeah. Because, yeah, that's sort of only in the last sort of like 5 to 6 years, at least in women's jewelry, that it's been done. Like, we go to the jewelry shows, we go to Hong Kong twice a year. When we first started and we first started suppliers, basically the material, the machinery you need for steel to make jewelry is very different to what you need for brass because steel is so much harder.

Still more expensive?

No, not more expensive, but it will mean it doesn't tarnish. Yeah, the hard part about steel is it's very hard as a metal, so you can't bend it in certain ways. But what's happened is machinery's got more sophisticated in the last 5 years, so you can start to do more with, more with it. So you can make a nice-looking tennis bracelet, which is thin. You know, 6, 7 years ago, they'd be like, oh, it's too hard, you can't do that. But they've developed machinery which has made it possible. So we've definitely got, you know, the macro conditions have helped us. I think we've been operating in the UK, like, doing a lot of brand work, which does start to pay off.

Um, do you think that moves the needle? Because that's an area—

Our UK does, yeah.

Every investor says, well, my investors included, invest in brand. I think it's fair now, but then I still just know so many Chad scalers.

Yeah.

Well, not so many, a handful that are doing like £10 to £20 million a month. And if you said brand to them, they'd probably just fucking laugh.

I think the The lens I try to think through is 2 things. I think every industry, I think, has like a natural CAC.

Yeah.

So I think, say, if you're selling ice baths in lockdown, you probably can't get to like £10 million a month. Like, fuck brand. Like, that should not be a priority. Like, let's find that. I think for us, we were sort of, you know, we have to be breakeven or first order profitable. So you start to reach that. So then, you know, of your marketing mix, you know, effectively every single year we spent less on performance marketing as a percentage, slightly more on brand marketing, but our marketing efficiency has got more efficient. Which has just obviously meant that your bottom line's improved and your top line can keep growing. But yeah, if we turned our ads off in the UK, we have still got a business. If we turned our ads off in, you know, a smaller territory where we are, you know, more meta-focused and more direct response, we wouldn't. So I think it does compound in the right way. But I think, you know, probably similar to what you're doing in your business, like just being out in person, I think can definitely help becoming more recognizable within retail or just more of a household name.

How big is retail? No, as a percentage.

Uh, oh, uh, next year in terms of units, it will probably be 40% of units. But in terms of revenue, because you're obviously selling it at a discount, yeah, it'll probably end up being a pretty good number. Um, maybe 20% of revenue, 25%.

Do you think that's definitely a better play just to get bigger versus D2C, or do you think that's more like you're trying to diversify and build more of a brand, as you said?

Yeah, more of that, I think. So our, the Effectively, I think to build like a maybe a £500 million jewelry business, I think D2C isn't actually the right channel. I think, you know, maybe I'll be wrong because I was wrong about everything I said 4 and a half years ago.

But you were young and dumb then.

Still am. But I think I say in 10 years' time, I reckon we'll be doing as much sales offline as we will online. Just, I think the category suits in-person. You know, we could open up a— the Pandora model is they can open up a shop in Cardiff shopping center, pay 50 grand, or maybe a bit more, 100 grand a year on your lease, but it can probably do 700K in top line. Um, so, you know, you don't have the same level of marketing spend like you do online. So as long as you can brand build in that way and have desirability for people to come through the door and buy, you can build a great business.

Yeah.

Um, so I think wholesale's sort of our step there.

Who's your main competitor, do you think? Would you say it's like Monica Vinader, Astrid Mio, Misoma, Albert Lyon, all these brands I used to obsess over when I was in the space?

Yeah, all, all of them are, you know.

Or do you see more of like an even smaller brand as a bigger threat?

No, I wouldn't say smaller. There's obviously loads of, loads of small brands who are probably doing 100K a month or something like that. Um, I think Monica Vinader are an amazing business. Like, they're definitely like probably the— in from what the outside in, like, we've hired a couple people from there, they're all like super sophisticated. Like, they are very, very well run. They're like sort of have been private equity run for the last 7, 8 years or had a huge amount of equity and they've been very, very well run. Um, so yeah, I'd love to— they're, you know, far bigger than us, um, far bigger team, far bigger sort of distribution. But yeah, they're, they're a very well-run business. I look at them, you know, it's hard not to look at them. They're leading the category.

What's your main angle on ads? Because obviously for like supplements and sort of stuff I do, it's kind of like problem solution, lifestyle, comparison.

This is where jewelry is a hard category. It's good up until this point.

Is it just a good-looking lady with a necklace on? I imagine not. Uh, or is it more functional?

Storytelling. So I think, you know, uh, again, from an ad point of view at the minute, what we see is that it is important to have what I would consider top of funnel— like, middle of funnel is a bit wishy-washy— but say top of funnel and bottom of funnel. So top of funnel being more like storytelling. So explaining why do other jewelry brands tarnish, what are, you know, explain the founding story, just all of those things where to try get people to understand the brand and, and we are what we sell and the solution we solve. Or like, your jewelry tarnishing, or beautiful designs at an accessible price. Those are the sort of 2 sort of main areas. And the bottom of the funnel is more just like conversion there. But how can we get these people? How can we overcome objections and buy? Um, but yeah, it's definitely no— it's frustratingly not just like a pure problem solution.

What's your best ad ever, if there is Be a founder ad, 100%. Of Liv?

Yeah, 100%.

Just like talking about the story?

Yeah.

Are you in any of the ads? Or are you like intentionally stealth?

None. Yeah.

Got a face for radio.

Intentionally stealth.

I feel that way about myself.

You're featuring in a few ads, no?

Founder ads do do well. Yeah, I just often think I'm not the right— I mean, like, I don't lean into the founder story that much, even though I probably should.

Does it outperform sort of like wherever baseline is?

But yeah, founder ads and even podcast ads like this are like just easy top of funnel.

Yeah.

Because it's authentic. Even just getting other people in podcasts that aren't the founder, it's just like, what are they using it for, etc.?

Yeah, no, 100%. I think, yeah, we've had some founder ads which have just been— we had a— before Andromeda, we had like, you know, we would just make slight variations and we had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of founder ads. And a few of those—

Is that just like UDC iPhone spec or is that high prod? Cinematic?

Uh, a bit of both, but mainly just a— probably a little bit of both. We would just do like a founder shoot day, probably similar to you, and then it would just be like, right, here are 50 hooks, record all these, record like script, script, script, you say it, I say it, like just go at it. Um, and then just keep editing up, chopping up that content.

Are you even on the website as a founder?

No.

So like fully out of the story? Yeah, yeah, that's probably the better way to be, to be honest. I get a lot of hate on founder ads. Well, you get over that stuff. It's just like, there was a really good one I had a while ago and I just looked tired in it. Someone was like, this guy looks like he's fucking smoking crack. And I was like, fair enough. But you know, just when the comment—

This is founder mode, mate.

Yeah, exactly, it's founder mode. But the comment gets a lot of engagement, so I choose—

Yeah, no, all of the ones—

The broader market thinks.

We've got one at the minute where Liv, um, tells the story of the tennis bracelet and it's like, it is a winning ad.

Um, the story of the tennis bracelet—

So like a lady was playing at Wimbledon and her tennis bra— her Diamond bracelet fell off, and then it got named the tennis bracelet. I can't remember.

Oh, is that is that actually a thing?

It's legit the thing. I never thought I haven't even hit the ad. Effectively, we've spent hundreds of thousands. You haven't seen it yet. I've just clearly not not in that not in the bucket not in the algo.

Is it just women you target, by the way? Is that your base?

Yeah, yeah.

That might be why then.

Yeah, exactly. Hopefully. But effectively, Liv mispronounces the name of the lady, and it just got she's like intentionally or no? No, no. But we should start doing this stuff intentionally because the comments are just ripping and the engagement's doing. through the roof and the ad is performing. So, um, feed the algorithm.

How do you think about SKU expansion? I think you said 4 years ago, this is very much the help of AI, that you had 80% of revenue from 2 SKUs. Is that still the case?

No, I wish it was the case. That'd make life easier.

Um, because you must have hundreds of SKUs at this point.

Yeah, about 1,000 SKUs.

Wow. I used to fucking hate that when I ran jewelry.

Yeah, it makes, makes life difficult. Um, for us, our approach is effectively, there's, there's a couple things. There's firstly, there definitely are trends within the jewelry industry similar to fashion, which, you know, jewelry's probably maybe potentially even move faster. You have less design element from like a logo. So like there might be a trend in fashion of like people all want this logoed brand, so they buy into that. I think for jewelry it might be a shape of earring. So we definitely have spent the last sort of probably 18 months building out the muscle. Obviously AI has come in to help that. But where effectively we can go from like product to like idea. So like we've come up with in a meeting this idea, we should jump on this trend. We've seen it. Hailey Bieber wore it on TikTok. You know, for us now at the minute, a trend is like a pear diamond earring. So we've seen that trend. Well, then we've got a good supplier base. We'll buy into that product if we have to design it. But there's minimal design, but we'll buy into it. We'll get that on site and we'll effectively test it. We'll know from sell-through within the first few weeks, like where is benchmark? If it's above that, then we lean into it.

Is that what's on your new Inception?

It probably will be somewhere in New Inn. Exactly. Um, then we'll create— so we sort of like a few-step process. So we sort of combine that with like more seasonal drops, so like having a summer collection, a winter collection, and going down that. But yeah, I think we lent into the trend. If you read like the ASOS model was, you know, the fast fashion was that they can come up with an idea and have it on the site in 2 weeks. We're definitely nowhere near that. Um, but I think being able to—

How has AI helped with that process though? Is it images?

Images, yeah. Yeah, because some of those images—

I used to fucking spend weeks doing these images back in 2018, '19, way pre-AI. Or you'd have to get a render, which is super expensive as well.

Super expensive.

Like your gold ring I'm on here, that could be Molten Shield ring, £45. Is that AI?

I can't tell you that specific one because I didn't—

But is that possible with AI?

Probably, right? Yeah. So a lot of it will just be, you know, similar to what a lot of people are doing that will have, you know, even a supplier sends you 10 photos, you have all the measurements, and then obviously you've we've got bundles of product e-com shoots which we do, I don't know, 8 times a year, I think. Yeah. And then we can just obviously move, put the images on. I know there's regulation in EU now on AI imagery. Have you seen all this?

Yeah, it makes sense.

So I don't know how long, how long this will go on for, but yeah.

Is that an AI-generated founder?

Yeah, Liv's not real. Yeah, I don't have a wife.

Complete, complete concept.

But yeah, so then we can use that to jump into jump into trends. And then the benefit of brand marketing is that you have that brand and, you know, we always have nice packaging, good service, all that sort of stuff. I think what's interesting, we were talking about it at an offsite the other day, is that, you know, the biggest thing with this AI movement is that trust is going to come down because people are going to, you know, we had it, I'm sure you've had it, someone's just ripped our store, changed all the model imagery, changed the name.

Yeah, especially single SKU or, you know, sorry, not single SKU, less users to rip.

Yeah, someone's gone through the time of doing basically our whole site and all the model images and taking Or they're smarter than me.

You should hire them.

Yeah, a couple of Dutch kids. Yeah, effectively they've gone and done that process, but it just means you can obviously move so much faster. But trust is going to become the biggest thing because everyone's going to get stung by these stores or the product's going to turn up and it's going to be crap.

I guess that's where Trustpilot and stuff comes in, right?

Yeah, Trustpilot. We're actually going to— we're running the numbers now on if we could have a phone number where people can call. Um, so we'll just have UK, or maybe we can move overseas, South Africa or somewhere like that, but just have a number so like the average, you know, 50-year-old mum who's buying for their daughter actually can call and get an AI person on the end.

Yeah, that sounds real. Yeah, it's gonna be levels to this.

Exactly. But yeah, it feels like leaning into the building trust is, you know, going to be important in brand building for the next 2 to 3 years, of course.

Who is your customer mainly? Is it older women or is it more We say 25. 18 to 30, like everyone says fashion.

Yeah, we say 25 to 35 female, but we definitely expand further. Like, that was what we target with our marketing, but we definitely have a customer base older than that. I think they naturally sit on, you know, advertising platforms more than, than people who are in work all day, every day. And like, I'm sure if you go in some of our reviews, some of the images, the customers are, are older. Um, but yeah, I think, you know, there is this thing of like, have your customer base aimed for them. I think the jewellery category can be wider than others. You can, you know, we've had, you know, we have bundles of people who are 18, 19 buy for prom all the way through to, you know, 70-year-old who wants to buy as a birthday present.

Do you think the brand could have or would have scaled as much without the founder story?

No.

Do you think that's a really important part of it?

It's a key part, yeah. It's hard to put like a percentage on that, but yeah, the founding story is important. But people buy from people. It's just just, you know, human nature. Yeah. Um, so it's definitely been an important part.

I think I'm even on our website.

Yeah, get yourself on there.

Maybe there's some crap page that was done 4 years ago, like on fucking GemPages.

You're looking young. Hasn't been updated. You're looking great.

Yeah, like old packaging, etc. I just— yeah, I'm not a, not a femaleist. I just feel like it's—

yeah, I think maybe, maybe particularly with the, uh, targeting a female audience, it's part, part of that as well. Um, but no, the founding story has been, yeah, an important part of our— it's definitely helped. I'd be lying if I said otherwise.

Yeah. What's the best product ever?

Compass necklace.

Oh Christ, it's every brand, right?

Ours is like, so you can engrave 4 initials. An interesting thing on jewelry I try to think through is it's similar to a tattoo. So some people, you look at their tattoos and they look like it's pure aesthetics. They've got that just because they want a tribal on their arm. Other people have got tattoos which don't look great, um, but then they, you know, they might have a real meaning. It might be their grandma's handwriting or something like that. I think of jewelry in a similar sort of way. So if you think of it like a Venn diagram, it's like an overlap of I need this to look aesthetic, but I also want it to be meaningful. And that's sort of like that sweet spot. If you can try occupy both of those, like, you know, it looks great, plus my boyfriend got it for me and it's got his—

Yeah.

The date we got engaged on the back. You know, that's a pretty sweet spot for jewelry.

Yeah.

That's worked for us.

Yeah. In terms of the economics thing, because for me the whole game is LTV to CAC, and that's a lot easier when you're like 90%, pretty much 100% subscription now, because that's just what works. Obviously you're not a subscription business because you're not consumable, but people do buy, I imagine, multiple things, or at least you would like them to. Like, how do you like forecast that? Are you just like running to a target new customer CAC? Is it a blended ROAS and just spend more if it works?

Yeah. So probably, yeah, return customer revenue is obviously nowhere near like a business like yours. How we try to think of return customer first, which is definitely easier to forecast because of like whatever cohort analysis, and you can run the maths, do it using whatever model. But we try to have that 4 peaks theory. So people will buy back. Like, say if someone doesn't buy from us in 6 months, I still think that if we have a great product, if we had great service, that we will be top of mind. It's just that jewelry as a category is not something you need to consume or buy every single month. So we'll try to have that Black Friday, that Christmas period, and then we'll go into Mother's Day/Valentine's Day, then we'll have summer sale. And then Q3 is always obviously the awkward one where you want to try to have a moment just to like try to give people to buy and then we go again. But what we do see is, you know, sometimes people do repeat purchase just a year apart. Like we do see probably more of that than what, you know, you would probably consider that customer churned, obviously, if they're not on subscription. But we see that our active customer profile can, like, does look better over a longer time period. But then on new customer acquisition, yeah, we are just in the game of acquisition, which is frustrating. But I always want to be, you know, a subscription brand. But then I know that comes with its other challenges that you end up losing money on first purchase. And how far can we push it? It's just the nature of the beast.

Like Miss Jewelry in a way now.

Yeah. So we always try, like, we don't want to be hemorrhaging cash on first purchase. So it's sort of, we do try to push it as hard as we can.

How's the geography split now? You mentioned US a while ago. Is that still the biggest?

Yeah. So UK is our strongest business, and I think that is definitely down to like our strongest and definitely our most efficient from a marketing point of view. We do have a good US business. It was screwed with the tariffs. So we got hit, like consumer confidence, everyone's CAC went up.

Is that still active? That's a dumb question, but we're not in the US.

We got refunded all of that money not that long ago, a month or two ago. So effectively, the tariff came in, we were paying like 120%, and then went down to 60% or something ridiculous. But obviously, if the cost of goods is, you know, over a month, if it's X dollars, you're paying 120% on top of that. So it was just unfeasible, combined with your CAC went up because consumer confidence is absolutely screwed. So that our US business definitely shrunk, but then our UK business has sort of compensated for that. But so UK is our core market. It's so interesting, I find now, how people are running such international businesses with this like China 3PL model and stuff like that. that. But we've tried to stay focused on markets and sort of replicate our playbook of going into wholesale, building the brand. So before we go take on the US, because we know, as you know—

So you went in and basically came back?

We're still there. It's probably 30% of our business, 35%. So it's just shrunk slightly.

How big do you think you can get in the UK?

Monocle do £75 million.

So just in the UK? Yeah.

Build a £100 million business. Pandora do £400 million.

Just UK.

Just UK.

Wow. More than a million a day. That is big.

Yeah. So we can get to, you know, 100 million. But obviously you always—

do you want to get it to 100 million? Like, where's— you alluded earlier to like, you know, wanting to build a big business, loads of people. I feel like lots of founders go through this. Everyone says 100 million because it just sounds cool. 120?

No, 100 million does.

And then you get 10 or 20 and, yeah, fuck me, it's hard. Um, where's your head on that now? Like, what do you— what shape of business do you want to build? Which, to be fair, now with AI, it's probably not necessarily the same as—

100%.

How big does it want to be?

Yeah, 100%. No, I would love to build a big business. I think, you know, you go through different stages of your journey where it's probably like, uh, like I ran the maths, and I'm sure if you did this, it would make you feel even worse because it's like, how much money have I turned over? You know, you get to like your late 20s, you're like, how much money have I actually turned over in e-com? And you do all the maths and you're like, like tens of millions of pounds. Then you, then you look at your own, like, how much financial security have I given myself in this period? And you're probably like—

I think about this a lot.

Probably not enough. Um, so I, I like— and I think you only start having those realizations— obviously you develop so many skills, like you build the thick skin, which is what, like, which can— you can have for the rest of your life, all of those things. But I definitely hadn't prioritized my own, like, financial liquidity as much, and it wasn't a priority. Like, you know, once you've got enough money to do what you want and live what you want and drive a car or whatever, you're fine. But I'm definitely in a period now where I think like secure myself because, you know, I just got married. You start thinking about kids, like make sure, okay, let's not like just absolutely try go for the moon. Probably secure myself a bit more and then go for the moon. Um, it's probably, probably my current approach.

But how does that look for you then? Just make more profit, pull out more money, or is it like try and get an investor in, sell a bit of the business?

Yeah, for us at the— And how are you looking at that now? It is a dividend-first approach is how we're— what we're currently doing. I think we can still, like, because of— we've been like pretty good at building out our payment terms with suppliers, you know, we can run the business on— we don't need to have loads of liquidity in the business. And because I was always building the business in a different way, I've always been very conservative with the business. So the business was at a point where we built up, you know, the business was like we had just spare capital in the business. My idea was that I was going to go open up stores, which is why I was quite bullish on just building that over time. Now we've gone for wholesale first, which still requires more capital than e-com, but not nothing crazy. Because, you know, if you, if you can pay your suppliers in 90 days but then your stores pay you in 30, your cash conversion cycle is still, still, uh, still negative. So you're in, you're okay to scale pretty quick. Um, so now it is just, yeah, probably having more of a profit-first and a dividend-first approach. Whether that'll be forever, probably not, but it would just mean that we don't have to go have a— take on investors and have a liquidity event yet. Give us control.

Do you see yourself running it for like 10 years?

Yeah.

It's like a lifestyle. You do?

Yeah. I don't know if I— I don't think I'm probably— same journey from you, I can learn a lot from, but I don't think I'm the best CEO for the business. I think if we got another 10 people, I'm necessarily— it's not what I enjoy so much.

Yeah.

Like, I enjoy being the founder and driving growth, and I'd like— I still would love to be able to make the decisions, but I don't think being the one who's like, you know, out there leading the team and having like one-to-ones— my— I don't like one-to-ones. I don't really have one-to-ones.

Yeah.

Like, just text me or call me, or like, if I've got a problem, I'll call you on— I'll huddle you or what, call your phone. But I'm not the type of person to have like a real structured management framework, and these are my— that just just isn't me as a founder. So then you sometimes think, okay, well, maybe I can plug someone in there. I know that's not that simple. I think the best approach for me would be to build out a strong sort of like leadership team and then probably promote one of them into that position. Probably feels like the right move, but we'll see.

Do you think you are motivated by money to the same level as before? Uh, well, assuming you were before, but I feel like every founder when they you know, first do anything is, oh, I want to get the fucking— the car. Yeah, it's the car. Then you realize no one gives a fuck.

Um, blacked out windows anyway.

Yeah, exactly.

Um, no, I think I'm def— I'm motivated by progress. I find it very difficult— I would find it very difficult if the business didn't grow or didn't go in a direction where it felt like we're moving, even just progress. Because I think if you're working so hard at something and committing to it, if you weren't seeing growth— like, fortunately You know, our top and bottom line have grown every single year. So if you sort of model that out over a long enough time horizon, you think, okay, we'll be in a good position. I think I would find it very hard if the— I'm not the sort of person to like, oh yeah, let's just keep it as it is, I like it how it is. Like, let's just, you know, some founders are like, I just like the business this size, if we grow, we grow, if not, I'm happy here. That's not sort of me as a person. Um, I'd always want to put my foot on the gas.

You said in 2022— got a good quote from you.

I hope it is.

I get more pleasure from the coffee shop near my flat knowing my name. That beats going to Nobu with a bunch of pricks.

Still true.

Did you actually say that? I don't recall.

I don't remember saying that. I don't even think that sounds like me, but that's still true. Like, I don't know about you, but you know, I brought my laptop. My laptop comes with me everywhere. Yeah. And like, I don't mind— like, tomorrow, a Saturday or Sunday, I'll just sit, I'll enjoy having a coffee shop stop working on building— I'm building something with AI at the minute that is like, doesn't require, uh, like, you know, the lifestyle you want to— I want to live doesn't require, you know, bundles. And, you know, I don't need a £50 million exit. Um, so it's sort of like, once you have that enough personal liquidity, then what?

Like, are you shooting for exit at all?

No. Would you rather just keep running it for fun and just make enough Yeah, I think building an environment of, you know, what we were talking about earlier, if you can find a people of like a team who you actually enjoy working with, you know, whether you're working on this business or, or another business, you're in this, you're gonna have the same problems. I think there is definitely a case of some founders are massively passionate about the products and the category.

Hmm.

I haven't found myself that passionate about another category or another product, so I think I'll probably just fall into the exact same position I'm in now. And then I think naturally over time you learn that the best businesses do just take like a decade or 2 to get to a good level. There are obviously exceptions and there probably will continue to be exceptions. But, you know, typically, like, I'm sure you know, being in the e-com space, we know— I know people who've gone from like 0 to 8 figures back to next to nothing pretty quick. Like, what goes up—

I did that.

Yeah, what goes up must come down. Like, the rate you go up can also mean the rate you come down. I also don't think that, you know, within e-commerce specifically, that model of owning multiple brands works. It hasn't worked historically pretty well.

I used to have that fantasy.

Yeah, everyone did.

My Gmail account, which I still use, which has all my driver's tax really, was the name of my holding company from when I was 19.

Holdcos just don't work. I had the same thing. I was like, let's have 5 of these because it was at a point where you could launch a brand, run a few Facebook ads and it would go. And it was sort of like you could get 0 to 1 very easily.

It's very few I've seen that work, right? Yeah, at least on like an earlier stage.

100%.

I know a few people that have tried, and even the ones that have it, there's still one that does 95% of the revenue. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of.

So what's your view on— obviously now it's easier to jump into a category, come up with an idea, jump into a category faster than possible. The constraint is probably product sourcing. What's your view on that? You can jump into a category and spin up something and get it to 8 figures. Like, I think You know, getting to £1 million a year was normally, oh my God, that was so fast. You could probably get something in the right category to 8 figures.

Especially in consumables.

100%. So what's your view there on should founders, if they're in our position, at our scale—

I was going to ask you this, but I'll take the question. Well, I'll put it this way.

That's something I think about.

I'm 100 million percent confident I could go a lot quicker and more efficiently if I did something again. I almost have an exact playbook in my mind, especially in consumable subscription products. i.e., supplements, really. Um, supplements slash, you know, food and bev. Because I've just made every— not every mistake under the sun. So I'm sure I'll make more. Yeah, I, I honestly think, and maybe it's just the way my fucking autistic brain works, I don't know if there's any founder that's made more mistakes, at least publicly, than me. Like, it's a fucking shit show. Um, but at the same time, I do feel incredibly well placed to just do it again and do it way bigger. I'm obviously still trying to do that in this one, but It feels cleaner to me and easier to me to like go again because there's less, there's less baggage. I'm not saying I'm not in this business, obviously I am, but like I almost have a fantasy, and it's probably like ADHD or whatever, of just like the grass is greener, start something clean. Um, I think I could do that, do it very quick. So an interesting thing which I was reading the other day, because of the learnings. Yeah, because exactly, I wouldn't recommend that to early— well, everyone's—

No, no, but yeah, I— there's a billionaire in Australia called Brett Brundy, and he runs, uh, a brand in the jewelry space called Lovisa. And Lovisa are— they're a retail business. If you go on their Instagram, they've got like 5,000 followers, but I'm pretty sure they're doing $800 million Australian dollars, so £400 million. Yeah, search them up. Um, so Lovisa are these sort of like— they're Claire's Accessories fast fashion for jewelry. But he's very, very good at retail, so he understands the retail model very, very well. He's built out a team, Um, so, you know, if you read their earnings report, next year is about— we currently have X amount of stores. I think each store is about half a million pound each. How do we open up another 100? So every 100 they open, they do another £50 million of revenue. I think they're doing like 20% EBITDA, and they pay massive dividends as well. Um, so he understands retail. He's also done that model within, uh, bras twice. So like selling like women's underwear, he's done that twice, like a Victoria's Secret So he's going into the category thinking, I understand retail, I need a women's light product. He knows selling to women's probably better than men. I need a women's light product which I can put into retail and I can scale internationally very fast. That's why he publicly says that's why he jumped into Lovisa, and they've built that business up over— I don't know, whenever they started, you're gonna find it— 7 years to say $400 million. He has a model. I think what you're saying is, which is the truth, is you've been in subscription, you understand the space, you've got a model that works. It's also just about finding something which can scale. I think the question, which probably is the answer, like the boring answer, is like, where's the best use of time and capital to generate?

Yeah, I think about this a lot.

As a shareholder, I think in the short term, you know, they're sort of like that— you get that, yes, you can get it to say 8 figures, but then you're just gonna have the same issue.

Yeah.

Which, which we have now, which is a different set of issues. But maybe that, like, not natural CAC, but that ceiling can— you can get to here a lot faster. But then you just have another glass ceiling, and it's about finding something you can scale through.

Yeah, I think there's like 2 parts to scaling something. There's probably what I now think is the more important thing, which is the vehicle, and then there's the work you do in the vehicle to execute properly. I guess what I have now is, well, probably more context on both, but assuming someone is a competent operator, which a lot of people are not, and I'm sure I'm not as much as I should be yet, but I'm getting better, I still think the vehicle i.e., the product, the category, the timing, the geography, is— I genuinely think that's 10 times more important than like how hard you work, assuming you're doing the basics right.

Agree.

With like zero exceptions. Because I think most brands, call it UK, can get to £10 million a year, which is probably $50 million in the US, like for like equivalent. But the ones that get to £100 million, it's just like— I'm not saying it's luck, I'm saying it's a combination of good macro factors Like timing, product set. I think you can be more intentional about those things with experience. Even with Space Ghost, I wasn't that intentional. With stuff before, it was even less so. It's like, oh fuck, I want a neon sign, I'll just make it like the same day. This one was, oh yeah, seems kind of cool doing consumable, I haven't done that before. But like, if I did another one, or I guess even just the things I'm doing within this business now, although it is constrained by the brand and like that can't tomorrow be a fucking bread business. Not that I think bread's a good category, but you get the point.

Yeah.

And it probably can't be a, I don't know, fucking gut health brand. In fact, it could be, it would make no sense.

But it'd be a hard pivot.

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, there's obviously a lot of good categories. I think timing is super important as well.

Yeah, but I think as well, it's like when I think about going back a step of like, what do I want as a founder at the minute? It probably is you know, being more profit-driven, being, yeah, more distribution. Setting up a new business to try scale from 0 to $10 million, $20 million, it's the hard part. That's the hard part. And you're not getting it. Actually, you're going to put in a million or two, you know, you're not gonna, you're not gonna be pulling any money out. So then you start thinking, oh well, then I, I'll just sell the thing. And then you start going down the journey you've gone on where it turns out like, you know, $10 million, uh, $1 million, like yeah, you can raise a shit ton of cash, but actually trying to flog that is not an easy, easy job. So it's like, okay, here we go, better just stick to my day job.

Yeah, people— a lot of people said to me like the start is the hard part, and I used to think— I kind of still think it's the easier part in a way, because now I've done like the messy middle, which is probably where you are as well in terms of scale. It's like easier, you know, it's less work, it's less effort kind of, but I think it's harder mentally because I've not done it before. Whereas 0 to 1 for me is incredibly simple.

Yeah.

It's a lot more effort, like it's literally 12 hours if it's just you and a laptop, like launch a business. It's like even with AI, you could easily do 12, 15 hours a day, 7 days a week for 6 months to like get something properly moving. Although obviously you could create leverage through co-founders and agencies and partners and stuff, which you would have more of now. But in principle, whereas like work now is like, I don't— I could, I could just fuck off for a month and the business still runs.

Yeah.

But I also worry about a lot more things and have to think about things I didn't think about before, like, ah, like how do we get this to $100 million and how long is that going to take and what's my role now I'm not the CEO? Do I feel like I'm actually that useful? Because I kind of love micromanaging to feel useful. I like doing actual work, not just like, oh, let's like make a nice slide deck and hire loads of good people. And like, again, in principle that's fine, but yeah, I don't know.

I think that the nature of— as the business gets bigger, decision-making is more important. And I think so, you know, should we go into the US? Should we go into retail? Should we hire this person? Should we do this? Should we do that? Those decisions become more important because, you know, when you're 0 to 1, it's sort of like, yeah, let's rip it. Let's just turn on some ads and see what happens. And you can, you can move in and you can move out really, really fast. As you've got like a team and you need alignment, like for Space Goods to go into US retail, you've suddenly got to whip up the whole team. You've got to find a manufacturer. Like it's probably like a 2, 3 month project. At the beginning, it probably is, you know, you can make those decisions. And so your decision-making becomes more important because you're steering a bigger ship. And I think that at that point, it's then a case of you do need more headspace and more time to make those decisions. And naturally, the decisions you make just take longer to implement because you're not just doing all the work yourself. There's lines of communication, you've got all these different people. But I definitely think there's a place for, you know, you know, so many people are doing some great things at the minute with that affiliate model in content and different creative agencies. I've gone through like a process where I'm like telling my team like, we need to do this. go do it, and it's just not being done to the level I want. So it's sort of like, right, cool, sleeves are coming up, I'm just going to build this myself. Like, get me on a call with 20 creators tomorrow, I'm gonna hype them up and make them all make 100 videos in the next month. Um, so I think there's just elements of that. Um, but yeah, it's definitely less hard work but more strenuous.

Yeah, I agree. You moved to Dubai semi-recently.

Yeah.

Which is following the same path as me basically, and a lot of other people. Like, how has that— how has that changed, do you think? How's that— well, how has that changed your day-to-day practically? Do you think it's more efficient? Obviously before you had an office in Wandsworth, right?

Yeah.

Is that still there?

Yeah, office is still there. I think for me, you know, as I mentioned, I'm not the sort of founder slash— I don't even like the term CEO, but founder who's going to be like, you know, sitting down managing everyone. Like, you know, people come into the office and I'm locked in. I'll just be doing like 4 hours of like really trying to think through something or working on something So I think in terms of like communication, it's worked better because I can just, you know, obviously we've got the benefit of the time zone here.

Yeah.

I can just like lock in and do work for 4 or 5 hours before anyone's up, and then I can take like internal calls, which are just naturally less hard work. So for the business, I think, you know, they're definitely working. So when you— before you move, probably something to you like, is this the right thing? Is it not? It's 100% the right— been the right decision for the business. And I think all employees would agree with that as well.

Are they all in London apart from you two?

They're not in the office full-time. They're probably in the office 2 days a week, 3 days a week. We have made team—

But the team is based in London?

Most hires we make in London, but there are a few which are like— we've got a head of e-com in Germany because she was just the right person. I couldn't find someone in London.

Do you think there's any resentment for the 2 founders like leaving to Dubai? Because that's an easy narrative. I've even felt it in my own business.

Yeah. I don't think there is. I think maybe new people who are going to join the business, there's an element of, of— it's probably hard not to have that thought, but I think they know like how committed I am and live to the business. So it's sort of like they get it. Like, we're not— I'm not at a beach club on a Tuesday afternoon. Like, I'm not— I don't even play golf midweek. Like, I'm just not that type of person.

I don't have time for anything.

Um, so I think they sort of know that I'm still all in. We still come back to the— to come back to the UK. But yeah, being more remote has— it's worked well for, for me at least. And the team. And I think you have to, as a founder, like we're a small business, you have to build the business around you. Like, this works for me, so I'm just going to build a business around me, you know, hire people who it works with as well.

What's the logic of having a team in London then versus just fully remote?

Uh, I think that in-person is important. So then we'll come back sort of once every quarter and have like our QBRs, and then, well, we're going back probably more often than that just for that alignment. I think in-person is important in sprints. Yeah, if they want to go to the office, they can. They don't need to be be there at all, but a lot of people just prefer it. Um, you know, maybe if anyone lives in London, they normally don't have that big of a home, so they're probably just set up of sitting at their kitchen table.

The same setup I have now. Um, although not all our team's in London, more and more of it is now. I've kind of just accepted that probably is best for the business.

Yeah.

Although I do get FOMO sometimes. How do you find— like, do you like your routine here? Because I just find— I mean, I live with my girlfriend, she's not my wife, but like, okay, we're not co-founders either, but she works half in the business as well. Yeah, I just feel like, fuck me, The only person I see day to day is my girlfriend.

Yeah.

No, even more intense for you because you're literally co-shareholders and founders.

Yeah, no, I think—

And I work more here than I did in the UK.

I definitely work more here.

The days go quicker as well.

Really?

I think it's the time zone thing.

Yeah, yeah.

I easily just work like 7 days a week.

No, I think the—

Kind of our choice, but it just happens.

Yeah, like it's, it's interesting. I think it's like working more, you realize that, say, if the business quadruples My day-to-day is not changing in Dubai. Like, my life isn't changing. I'm still getting up, going to my office, like, going out for a bit of dinner. Like, nothing really changes. So I think you definitely have that less of that human, you know, when you're building the business in person, you have more of that.

Yeah.

But I think we can try— like, I'm trying to subsidize it, or like counterintuitive like that, that some of our QBRs, like, obviously at the minute because of, uh, stuff going on here, probably not the best idea to fly all the team out, but like try have more like, you know, How can we do a big one in Europe?

Quality in-person time.

Yeah, make that more like, put more intentional, put more budget towards that. It's currently the approach. But I think naturally, as you know, with AI, you're not going to need teams. If you think about like demand planning, you know, all of those sorts of things, you're not going to need a big team as what we did. No way. You know, I know the norm was £1 million per every employee.

That's just gonna go up. I think you can 5x that now.

Yeah, I agree.

Maybe that's on the upper end, but it's definitely possible.

Yeah, I agree. It's just gonna go up and up and up. So you're gonna have— you're gonna be paying fewer people more money, and that's the way it's gonna go.

Yeah. I mean, what do you think would happen if you guys fell out or broke up? I guess you're now married, which maybe makes it harder to do so. Or you think you would have, you know, considered that implication up front? Uh, maybe that's a silly question, but I don't think we will.

I'm confident. I think, you know, there's Same with business. I think it's important to have commitment. So, you know, don't even try, try to think of that. Definitely committed to each other.

Yeah, yeah, you're a step ahead of me on that one. Not that I'm not committed, I just mean you're actually married.

Yeah.

Whereas I think my girlfriend's been hinting at a ring for about 2 years.

Okay, so it's a shortcoming.

Yeah, for sure. Any category you'd jump into? Say you weren't doing D. Louise tomorrow, have you thought about that? And I guess you mentioned AI and stuff, like, would you Do you think there's room for something else? I guess you built to a certain point now where—

Yeah, I think— I don't think about— I think the space is super interesting. I like the idea of doing something out of just like, you know, not— when the business is at a certain level, at least when you're scaling up, there's a lot of financial pressure and stuff where you put a lot of pressure on yourself. I think there's, you know, I saw that those guys behind Operators Podcast launched something like— I just like the game of of doing something and just being like, can I get something from 0 to a million? And when we— when you have a bit of capital, you know, you can throw a bit of money at the beginning. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. You don't really care.

Yeah.

I think there's something nice about being in a business and being less like— I'm sure like you, um, even though we don't have like loads of people in the capital, there are— there is a pressure to hit results because you put that as you build the team, you know, their bonuses are tied to it, all of that sort of stuff. Like having— being more in that environment of like play in terms of categories. I think if you're going to be e-com first, then yeah, it is obviously something subscription. I'd probably just try, you know, I think the best ones at the minute where you just disrupt what's quite a traditional category. So I think Tallow and Ash did an amazing job. Purdey and Fig, of course. Yeah, just going down that route, something operationally not, not too difficult.

Agreed. Biggest single lesson from scaling the brand so far?

Single lesson. I think it's pay more, just pay yourself more as a founder. I think—

Have you started doing that more since the move, by any chance?

Clever. Yeah, yeah, no, 100%. I think, you know, I think you— I've definitely built the business with the mindset of the business is more important than myself, in the sense of, you know, this like mindset of yes, you might need at the beginning, but I'm not the highest paid employee in this business, or yeah, I only pay myself 50 grand a year because anything more than that I lose half. Like, I think that is a bit of a false fallacy which is pushed too hard into founders. Like, I probably at the age of like 27, 28 could have had like full financial security just through distributions, and I didn't. And I probably think that's naive. I think that's— I, I, if I was going to give advice—

It comes from a UK mindset.

100%.

I think that's a scarcity mindset, kind of tall poppy syndrome.

I think that's exactly what it is. I think that like when I speak to investors, they— or like people, investors who've built, you know, they're not using their own capital or they haven't raised, they haven't made that money themselves, they're of that like, yeah, that's the great— we want a founder who's hustling and do stuff like that. But when I speak to entrepreneurs who've made their own money and then invest into founders, they all like say, I don't have a problem with the founder paying themselves a huge salary or taking off secondary or securing yourself financially. And I think if you can secure yourself financially— my lifestyle won't change, or it hasn't changed, but, you know, I can just— you can afford to roll the dice more if you keep all of your equity, or all of your— if you look at your personal balance sheet and your company balance sheet. My personal balance sheet was like, okay. My company balance sheet was healthy. It's sort of like, well, you know, for what?

Yeah, I think not enough founders speak about this. I know they speak about this in the Operators I think a lot of earlier founders just consider the business as their balance sheet. And obviously, it's not, especially if you live in the UK, tax setup and so on.

Yeah. No, it's— but also, yeah, you get the experience as well. It comes with experience as well. You get the opinion that, OK, if I'm going to pay myself £1 million this year, can I afford to even lose £400,000? Do you know what I mean? So then you probably don't go do it. But I still think it's probably the right move. Well, it is the right move. For me, it would have been.

Biggest mistake?

Um, I think I've had my most success when I've stayed focused. Um, and I know that's such a boring thing to say because it's not actually true. Yeah, I think naturally I've made mistakes with the business where I've seen that shiny object and like, we're going to jump into this, jump into that. I think the business has had more success in the last 12 months because we've just been more I've thought through more what we're going to do and been deliberate about that execution. And even if I change my mind, I'm still like, just keep seeing this through. So probably not staying focused enough.

What's the one metric you look at first every day? AMER. I just think of— I'm the kind of the inverse new customer CAC, but yeah, percentage of revenue on marketing, right?

Yeah.

AMER. I don't know how to describe that. We've had MER. Average. Is that average MER?

No, acquisition.

Oh, sorry.

Yeah, but it's So because of that, so do you look at new customer ROAS less tax?

Yeah, I guess ultimately the model more lends itself to just looking at new customer CAC mid-month, but obviously blended ROAS, inverse of it, MER is the total thing. Agencies or in-house?

I'm leaning more towards in-house. Uh, paid media. Like, I think there's a few core arms where you're outsourcing too much talent, um, and it just adds risk. I think in the— like, if I was gonna— if the business is gonna continue to scale, I'd want to bring as much as possible in-house.

Starting again, would you do UK or US first?

Uh, probably UK, only because I understand the consumer. But if I wanted to really go for it, I'd move out there and just go for it. I think the issue we have with our US market is we don't understand our consumer enough. So even when we're talking, creating ads, creating product, we have a cross necklace which sells really, really well in the US, but I don't understand that consumer as much as I understand the 25-year-old in London. So probably still UK.

Bootstrap to $30 million profitable, owning all of it, or invest it back to $100 million?

Bootstrap $30 million.

Why?

I think it depends on your business model. I think I've seen people in the jewelry industry raise capital and turn a good small business into a bad big one. I think the, the lens I'm currently thinking through, that it's probably— I would— the right person, um, who I, I feel like could really complement. So a big thing for us in the future will be our own stores, our own retail. and building out distribution that way. At that point, I think it obviously needs to be very well capitalized. And then also, I think bringing on someone strategic who I fully feel confident can go ahead and execute it or be part of that execution journey, because that will take a matter of years. I think just taking on some capital for capital's sake, like—

Yeah.

You know, there's, there's a lot of money out there for businesses who are turning over at a fairly decent size, but it doesn't, you know, it just adds more complexity, like It's a game of, if we raised £20 million, I wouldn't even know where to deploy it.

Yeah.

So, and get a good return at least.

Would you start a business again with a partner or not?

Yeah.

You have to say that, I guess. Sell tomorrow at a number you're happy with or keep building because you love the game?

Keep building.

Honestly?

Honestly, yeah. I think that the— I don't think D. Louise— if someone offered me an outrageous number and it was overpriced and I could go and I felt like I could use that capital get back to a good size, then it's a different conversation. But at the minute, you know, I suppose it's that contrary because they always say the best time to de-risk or sell a business is when things are going well. But then that's when you're like, we're going to the moon, so give me 6 months and we might be on the other side of a bad Black Friday.

And I will keep pulling out Divis tax-free, you'll be all right. Yeah. Final question, one bit of advice to your 18-year-old self. And I used to ask this question to everyone on the pod.

It's super cringe, but I think it's useful So it would be to myself, not to a normal 18-year-old. To myself.

Yeah, it's kind of the same thing, right? Looking back at yourself in retrospect.

I think, uh, be more bullish and take more risks. I think every— what I— what has felt like a big risk at the time for me has typically paid off more. And I think that, you know, even moving to Dubai, that feels like a risk, but it's been the right one. And, you know, sometimes you, you you create these, they feel like, oh my God, it's all gonna crash, when actually it pays off. Like, for me, it was like, you know, when I first started entrepreneurship, it was like that first office which cost me £700 a month or £500 a month, whatever, it felt like the biggest piece of money ever, paid off. Like, all of those big stepping stones have paid off. I'll give a shout out, but I've got a really good friend called Harvey who runs a watch brand called Kettle Kids. They sell secondhand watches, but he's been like a testament to that. Like, he's just— they've just opened up their store about a year ago on New Bond Street.

I saw that.

Yeah. And it's just like he's willing to roll the dice, but he makes it work. Like, he doesn't care. Like, if you meet with him, he's fit. Like, he's probably the biggest entrepreneur I've met who's fearless. And I've seen that journey come up. When I first met him, he had 10 watches, and he's gone exponentially— not above where I am, it's not a comparison contest— but he's just been willing to take bigger risks, and they've all paid off. And I think when you see these, you know, people who've gone and amassed you know, built £100 million, £200 million, billion-pound businesses, normally it is they're taking some big fucking swings and they paid off. Um, so I think what feels like a big risk often isn't, you know, you know it's going to work. So I think probably take bigger risks.

Well, on that note, we'll wrap it up. I know you've got to head. Yeah, interesting story. Thank you, Matt. Pleasure. Hey guys, that's it for this week. Thanks so much for watching. If you get any value from this, please click somewhere on this video to subscribe. Then please do drop a like and comment below. It helps more than you could know. I'm finally seriously trying to grow the pod for the first time in about 5 years. Any feedback on anything that you like, don't like, any suggestions or thoughts going forward, please do also drop a comment. Massively helps too. And share this with a friend. Really appreciate you guys watching and engaging, and we'll see you next week. Thank you.