Why Nicola Harding started her own brand dedicated to 'quiet hero' pieces

0:03This is Business of Home. I'm your host, Dennis Scully. Every week I'll be speaking with leaders and innovators from all corners of the home industry. My guests this week are Nicola and Andy Harding. Nicola is a London-based interior designer whose award-winning firm, celebrated for its soulful, layered aesthetic, is regularly named as one of Britain's finest. Andy, her husband, is an e-commerce veteran with experience at House of Fraser and McKinsey. In 2023, the two of them launched a home goods brand, NYX, dedicated to quality, design-driven pieces at a reasonable price point. I spoke with the two of them about why Nikola tried aviation and theology before becoming an interior designer, why they wanted to launch their own brand instead of a licensed collection, and why NYX is coming to America.

1:05This podcast is sponsored by Ernesta. Summertime projects are here. Get your clients ready for backyard gatherings and downtime on the patio with Ernesta's custom-sized outdoor rugs. Expertly crafted with plush, fade-resistant fibers and elevated designs, each rug is made to fit and delivered in as little as two weeks. Join Ernesta's exclusive trade program today and let their team of dedicated consultants handle everything from samples to quotes, streamlining your process every step of the way. Apply for membership at ernesta.com slash boh. And now, on with the show. And how long ago was that?

1:49When did you all get married? 2007. 2007. Yeah. Right, just before. For 18 years. Oh yeah, just before it all went sound. Right before it went sound, yeah. But which actually sort of kind of worked out, I guess, for us. You know, I set up the business in 2008. And I think that difficult times can be actually fantastic windows of opportunity for small businesses because people are looking for value. and I set up thinking it was going to be a garden design business because I'd just left working with Arnie Maynard who I'd been with the garden designer been with for five or six years and we'd done all sorts of incredible projects all over the world and so I set up my garden design business But had before then been lucky enough to be able to flip a few properties.

2:48I'd been at university in Edinburgh studying theology and managed to sort of do a deal with my dad where he would give me the money that he'd sort of saved to help me with rent during the course of my four years doing a master's there. and I used that to help buy a property which didn't have any central heating, hadn't had anything done to it for a very, very long time. And, you know, I squeezed a kitchen into a cupboard so I could create an extra bedroom, filled the place full of friends to pay the mortgage and, you know, worked several jobs on the side. And, you know, that was the sort of first house that I'd done.

3:33I'd done another one when I came to London and then turned that over. And friends who had seen these places, you know, asked me then to help me with theirs. And Andy's boss at the time came to our house and she asked me to do her house. And so the business became more and more focused on creating homes and one home project turned into another, turned into another. And I want to come back to that, but take me back to being at the University of Edinburgh studying theology, and tell me what path you thought you might be on that obviously took a turn. Well, hilariously, there were a few different ideas that I pursued.

4:19And one was I was in the university air squadron whilst I was at university. And I think I was hands down the worst pilot they'd ever had. But I did get to wear a really great flying suit. A fabulous uniform, I'm sure. And I had like a helmet with a visor and they do actually like spin their fingers around in circles and go chocks away. And it's a beautiful part of the world to go flying. So, you know, lack of skill aside, it was a really magical experience. And so, yes, in my infinite genius, I thought maybe a career in the military would be a good idea. And, you know, did my pre-RCB, was offered a place in the army, thought I might even join the logistics corps, which probably wasn't an obvious fit.

5:09So then and then I, you know, I also did the milk round at university and I thought about joining, you know, Procter & Gamble. But all this time I had various different jobs, which included being a podium dancer and working for Red Bull. And in fact, Red Bull, my boss just came for lunch yesterday and he's been a sort of mentor and a friend ever since. And he encouraged me to think about going into a business where I really wanted to spend time with the people who were in the industry. He pointed out that you spend more time with the people that you work with than you do with your family or your friends.

5:53So make sure they're people who you want to be rubbing up against. And he also saw this flat that I had done in Edinburgh. And I'd done set design during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. And on the back of that, he asked me to do some design for Red Bull. And I created this sort of press space to entertain press during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. You know, Red Bull was all about giving you wings and, you know, that you needed. It was actually a really interesting exercise in learning about brand and marketing. You know, they didn't want anything that was just slapping a sticker on something that wasn't useful.

6:35It needed to be something that served a practical purpose that enabled people to do their job better. And so creating this space for press to do their job was absolutely on message. So I created this and I suppose that was sort of my first foray into it. But then, you know, thinking about did I go into interior design, which I didn't even know was a thing after university or was there something related to it? And I just started to rather fall in love with garden design and the world around it. You know, at that time, it was something that wasn't particularly fashionable and it was full of the most bonkers, most passionate people who didn't mind being soaking wet and filthy dirty most of the time.

7:25And I think also, you know, an interior might look its best 10 minutes after you leave it, although those generally aren't the sort of homes that grab my attention. But a garden almost definitely does not look its best 10 minutes after you finished working on it. It's 10 years plus. And so you have to recognize the fact that there's something larger at play. And so I think it doesn't attract people who are really egocentric, you know, because, you know, yeah, there's something. The appreciation for your work will come years after you've gone. Actually, Mother Nature is the bigger hero here. And you're a facilitator to let her do her work.

8:15And, you know, actually for homes, that's kind of how I feel too, is that you're sort of setting the stage for someone else to pick up the reins, make this place their home, breathe, continue to breathe more meaningful life into it. And that's when it becomes something really special. So I want to come back and continue the conversation. But Andy, I want to bring you in because I'm curious the path that your career is on and hear a little bit about the evolution of what you've done. So I started my career in retail and I joined retail after a very short stint at university. I didn't really get on with academia so much.

9:01I can relate. Yeah. I was very lucky to work with some really incredible people. Back in the early days of e-commerce, actually, I started retail in the late 90s, just in the embryonic stage of e-commerce. And this idea of real customer centricity, thinking about the customer at the heart of everything, was such a gift to have at the early stages of e-commerce. And so I was very lucky. E-commerce was booming. I worked for several enterprise retailers. I had a good stint at House of Fraser. After Car from Warehouse, I worked for House of Fraser. And I did that for a while. And then I did some consulting with McKinsey's for a while.

9:45I did an interesting payments business, a buy now, pay later business. And then COVID hit and things became quite difficult. And that business, unfortunately, didn't work. And when I left that after a couple of years, Nix and I had a conversation. And I think every retailer has this idea of having their own train set, ultimately wanting their own shop, wanting their own store, wanting to do their own thing. And we talked for years about the idea of building a business together. And obviously, I've been around Nix's interior design business and seeing how incredible that was and the growth of that.

10:22And so we started to talk about building a business together. And so I joined in 2022, I think, and joined together and started helping a little bit around the commercial side of the interiors, but at the same time writing a business plan to launch Nix by Nicola Harling, which is our product business. And coming to America soon. Exactly. That's terribly exciting. But let's get back to starting your business. One of the things that I was interested in, and I think in part because I was thinking about Wow House and how Wow House is interestingly, it is so closely tied to set design. And it really, I mean, it's a pop-up house.

11:07I mean, that space doesn't exist in real life. No, it's a cardboard box. So in America, people are very used to show houses, but they're actually houses. their homes, their townhouses, or their great big estates. And a bunch of designers come in and they do the rooms. At Chelsea Harbour for Wow House, a space is created. And then you do all of these incredible things. In your case, laid tile on the floor, which turned out to be all different sizes and was actually quite a production. Yeah, absolutely. No, I mean, and Wow House has been, you know, birthed by the Chelsea Harbour. And it's the most extraordinary achievement.

11:44Because, yes, in only four or five years, it's become an institution and everyone comes together. It's this sort of magical opportunity for the design community to work alongside each other. And, you know, it's not just the designers whose names you see, but, you know, a huge family of suppliers who all rally and are incredibly generous with their time and materials and expertise. and it creates this incredible Aladdin's cave of ideas and materials. And yes, I think, you know, it does feel incredibly compelling. You feel like you are in a very solid building and every detail has been thought about and cared for.

12:30Yeah, no, no, it's really remarkable. And in such a short period of time, again, designers in the States are familiar with what they perceive to be very tight time frames of it might be several weeks or a month but I mean this was five days five days it all had to come together and I mean there were real installations that happened and there was no and everyone honestly you know you'd you'd think that would spell sort of chaos and tension and all the rest of it but people at each other's throats but it wasn't that way We're very British. You know, everyone really, yeah, really supported everyone else.

13:07And there was a wonderful atmosphere and it was beautifully choreographed. So, I mean, it's an enormous achievement by everyone involved. Let's go back. So we get married in 2007. We're all excited. 2008, you launch your business. Tell me what you were imagining your business was going to be at the time. And then let's talk about how. I think I very much imagined that the business was going to be a garden design business. You know, I had thoroughly enjoyed working with Arnie. We had our first child soon after and I would be, you know, going to meetings, scouring the world for antiques with babe in arms.

13:50And I would sit down in some, you know, brilliant antique dealers shop. And whilst I was feeding Sam, you know, chats at length with them about, you know, where and why and how they'd sourced what made something better than something else. And it was a wonderful learning time. And I think as the business became more about interiors than it did about gardens, I recognized that I needed to learn a lot quickly. And I thought about, you know, going and studying interior design, but decided that actually the way was to surround myself with the best people I could possibly find and learn from them. And it sounded like it sounded like word of mouth in the early days was very much driving your business.

14:40Oh, 100%. You know, like, yes, it's all been word of mouth. And, you know, that's been incredible. I suppose the only downside of word of mouth is that you can end up, you know, in a bit of a sort of echo chamber of people see something that you like, and they ask you to work in a similar way. And, you know, I love the challenge of something completely new. You know, I don't see a project as a chance to stamp myself on a place, but rather learn from that place, learn from that person, learn from their collection, learn from the team who are assembled to work on it. But yes, we've been very lucky to work on extraordinary projects with extraordinary people.

15:26A lot of designers talk to me about how do you have that conversation, say, that's great that you love that project that I did before. But you understand that was someone else's home, right? You understand you won't be living there. Right. And how do you sort of gracefully say, well, let's let's see what we can do differently together on your home? Well, I think I see maybe 90 % of what I bring to the party is to be a listener, you know, to really, really listen. And I think the kind of first line that someone might say is, you know, I really like what they had. I want that. But then it's like, okay, tell me why do you want that?

16:08Tell me about your house. What speaks to you about that? Yeah, tell me about what do you want to feel when you come home? And, you know, when you wake up on a Saturday morning, how do you want that to feel? You know, quite often you're working with a couple and quite often they might think they want quite different things. But as you get deeper and deeper, that's when you find the common ground and then start to sort of build it back up and weave these things together to be able to create a home that wraps them in meaning. meaning that is completely bespoke to them. And it seems as though in addition to a lot of residential projects, a lot of hospitality and hotel projects presented themselves to you as well.

16:52Well, yes, I think it's a sort of similar story where, you know, one opportunity sort of made way to another. And I didn't have too narrow a fixed idea of what I was looking for. So I was able to see these chances and grab them with both hands, you know, and the sort of, you know, we have been really lucky to win several awards for our hotels. But the irony is, is that, you know, when people come to us, they usually want a hotel that doesn't feel too much like a hotel. You know, I think this is one of the privileges we have is doing this combination of residential work and commercial work. Each can inform the other and sort of cross-pollinate each other.

17:35So, you know, because we develop close working relationships with, you know, smaller artisans or dealers in our residential work, we're able to understand how they work and how to sort of get the best out of them and draw them into our commercial projects. and vice versa through our commercial projects. You know, we have, you know, deep relationships with suppliers where we're able to give them, you know, really quite meaty orders. And then that enables us to negotiate very good prices with them, which our residential clients then benefit from. So, you know, it really is a very happy marriage, which sort of is a win-win for everyone involved.

18:19That's so interesting. A designer was taking me through his space the other day and he was talking about this is how we balance the books. It's a little bit more over here and a little bit less over here. And how fabulous that the commercial work benefits the residential work and that you're buying in such quantities that you can have discounted pricing to an extent. Yeah, exactly. And I think it's, you know, that is what has sort of spawned the opportunity for the next business. You know, the Knicks business is a sort of love child between the passion slash obsession with homemaking and the opportunity of batch production that was born out of creating pieces for our hotel projects.

19:04you know the the obsession with homemaking and the perpetual foraging for all the ingredients that come with it you know first sort of showed me needs that we ran into time and time again for example say you know a floor light that nestled into a chair in such a way that it's easy to read by or it casts a magical glow on upholstery rather than a sort of menacing figure that looms over your shoulder, which so many floor lights do. And, you know, by foraging for antiques mostly, you know, for years and years and years, you know, I've seen all sorts of details and solutions for how you solve those problems.

19:51And that's been the sort of jumping off point for the designs for our next collection. And then the hotel projects created the opportunity of marrying, you know, our know-how and contacts in the world of making. So Andy, and was it the Knicks business that finally pulled you in or had you already been immersing yourself in Nicola's design business? That's a great question. I'm not quite sure which came first. I mean, I definitely have been involved in the business for some time. As a family business, the business started in our house. So Nick started working in our house in Shepherd's Bush and that grew into a couple of people joined and that was then a whole floor in the house.

20:38And so I was around the business for a long, long, long time. You couldn't help but be around the business. I couldn't help but be around it, yeah. And I think that, yeah, the conversation started for quite a long time about how we might work together. I sort of stepped in and started helping with the interior design business a little bit in terms of some of the back office stuff. So some of the more boring, you know, invoice processing and accounting systems and spreadsheets and all that sort of stuff, which is more, I guess, what I'm good at. Certainly better. I'm better than that than I am at design.

21:13And we started talking about what retail might look like, what a product range might look like, and what a business might look like. It just evolved. It didn't happen instantly. There wasn't a big moment. I think it started and it took a year at least or 18 months to write a business plan think about how we were going to do it but because my background is predominantly in e-commerce um you know online and and doing a website and and and having that as opposed to a more traditional start from a showroom point of view maybe have a website but not a transactional website which is certainly more what i see in the us i think we started from we're going to build a transactional website and actually our showroom in in in queens park came much later so that that's really how it started we're taking a quick break to remind you about ernesta immerse your clients in elevated design with ernesta's curated collection of custom size rugs with unlimited complimentary samples exclusive trade discounts, and personalized support from a dedicated team of consultants, Ernesta makes it easy to explore options and bring your creative vision to life.

22:39To apply for membership or learn more, visit ernesta.com slash boh. And now, back to the show.

22:53so as you say when you thought about actually making it transactional what was the biggest consideration in your mind what what was the most important element of what had to be in place to say yes we can we can make this transactional rather than create some place for people to come and see it and then have a person take care of actually you know because i I mean, I ask in part because I talk to so many businesses who have shown me a website and who have told me one day what it's going to be. And the transaction side of it is not in place yet. And they keep telling me, it's any minute we're going to make this transactional.

23:30And then years have passed. And I'm having that same conversation. So, I mean, it's... I mean, I think I came from enterprise retail. So, you know, I'm working with teams of 200 people. And so you've got all the bases covered, all the complexity and the detail covered with so many different people. And then to come to having one person working with you on the website and one person working with you in the customer service and operations, that transition, I think, was the hardest thing for me personally to try and sort of rearrange my brain to think in a very different way in a startup mentality.

24:02But I think customer service is the thing that you have to think about ahead of everything else. So you will make mistakes. And actually, when something does go wrong, solving that and turning it into a great experience can actually be even better in terms of their advocacy for you as a brand and the way you look after them. Absolutely. than just delivering something sort of, you know, from start to finish without any problems. So, I mean, gosh, there were so many things to think, and there still are, so many things to think about. And the business evolves and our proposition evolves. But we, you know, e-commerce is complicated, so you have to get all the pieces of the jigsaw sorted out.

24:43And I think that, you know, that was a big exercise. It's a dynamic process and it's being alive to all the learnings learnings that are happening all the time. And yeah, I guess be excited about that. I don't think either of us would ever want to get to the point where we didn't feel like each day was stretching us and we were learning something from it. Well, you're certainly stretching yourselves in this case. So I'm going to check in with you. Yeah, maybe when I'm huddled on the floor. I want to see how all that stretching is going. But let's tell people exactly what the Nick's business is and what the collection is that you've assembled so that people can understand and how you've approached it.

25:26Because as you say, a lot of it is made to order, but a lot of it was born out of the work that you do and things that might have been missing in the marketplace, or wouldn't it be great if there was a quality piece like this that people could buy more easily? So tell me. Yes, exactly that. I think that we needed these things, first of all, for our hotel projects where you need just not one bedside table but 50 and you know 30 wall lights and so we sort of started creating these things for our hotel projects and then we found that actually our residential projects wanted them and then we found people beyond just ourselves yeah you know other designers wanted them for their projects uh you know customers retail customers wanted them for theirs and i think that one of the biggest surprises for me but actually you had identified it ahead of time has been the incredible reception we've received from the trade.

26:22You know, I think they're really useful tools for designers, and that certainly has manifested in who our client base is. Well, I certainly couldn't help but think of the expert, for example, in the States, right? So they built their online component with product and originally thought they were going to be selling it to consumers, to high-end consumers. But then, of course, it was really the trade that embraced it the most and most immediately. And they saw literally within days of launching it that that was who was coming to them because it was perfectly tailored for them. And so I think it makes sense that the trade would appreciate what you've done.

27:03So let's talk about specifics of the product that you're offering at the moment and what's available. And even let's talk about the studio that I had the pleasure of visiting on Sunday and what I got to see in the first sort of retail iteration of it. Yeah, I suppose in the way that the business was in our own home for the longest time and, you know, lunchtime would be around our kitchen table, meetings would be at our kitchen table. When we came to create our own studio, we wanted it to very much have that feeling. You know, we've created a kitchen, there's one of our big tables and, you know, and it is full also with our pieces, but in a very natural way.

27:47So when you come, I think you feel like you're visiting us at home. And certainly we love bringing people together. We have sort of kitchen suppers where we invite clients, suppliers, press, and it's a chance for everyone to sort of get together and share ideas. But customers always come into the showroom on the weekends and say, do you guys live here? And we say, this is like a home. Yeah. And I think, you know, our pieces are, you know, the building blocks of homemaking and they're the sort of quiet heroes of homemaking. So our focus is across, you know, a number of categories where lighting is a big part of the range.

28:28So from floor lights and lamps, ceiling and pendants and wall lights, and furniture from dining tables, side tables, console tables, and then beds. We make four-poster beds, and our best sellers are four-poster beds, upholstered beds, and then upholstery range. So we have sofas of all different sizes, armchairs, love seats. We have our own fabrics, which are, you know, our own designs of sort of checks and stripes that are woven in an incredible historic mill in the north of England using a mixture of organic cotton and linen. I suppose there's a sort of underlying theme of utilitarian, you know, what's useful.

29:17And there's an Englishness to them. There's a familiarity. There's something comforting. and I think that that's a theme that runs through what we do. There's a sort of comfort and an ease to it. You know, everything has grown out of not just our hotel experience but the experience of having three very rumbustious children and a house that's always full of friends and family. So everything gets thoroughly tested, you know, and everything that we make needs to stand up to that degree of real life. And so, yes, you know, I think one of our favorite pieces is probably our dining table. And, you know, again, there's that sort of practical question that it grew out of is how do you create a table where you can squeeze as many people around it as possible?