How Batch LDN Turned a Shop Break-In into a Viral Billboard Campaign

0:00Sam Matanle:We've got to get down there. Chop's been broken into and he's like what do you mean he's been broken into? Have you got any more information? I was like I don't, let's just get there.

0:10Cool, welcome back to another episode of D2C Diaries. Before we get started today, one thing we always forget to do, please make sure you're subscribing on YouTube. get on youtube if you're on spotify so you can see see the beautiful faces in the room right now um and make sure you like comment and subscribe as i just said but today we've got a really exciting founder on the podcast sam founder of batch london uh really excited to have you here today and get into to uh some stuff about your journey and and the brand up until this point very excited to be here thanks feel like you've done that a few times before yeah yeah exactly it's a bit of a pre-made script at this stage memorizing it all night yeah yeah cool well i think like you know batch london obviously you guys are london-based fashion brand specializing in high quality made to order suits something we you know a niche uh in within within d2c that we haven't really touched on on the podcast before so i'm really excited to get into some stuff there and how you approach uh that strategy for for scaling the brand i've not had that many fashion brands on no we haven't who have we had on i've had someone from slow jeans which like a couple of episodes ago which actually hasn't gone out yet who's who's actually just starting like a made to order fully custom denim brand yeah they're re-launching yeah yeah he was interesting um but yeah you're not hard to say i don't think we've had anyone else on here um and it's one of those niches where i look at and i'm like fuck it's hard right yeah i bet it's even harder the made to order part as well um but we can complex yeah we can definitely get into that i think what would be good just to go back to the start really yourself when you were younger before you even started the brand what were you like as a person uh and i guess what was the inspiration

1:56Sam Matanle:to to start batch london well how far back do you want to go coming out the womb yeah no i guess um i sort of education wise is always a bit of a class clown like report cards will always be like has loads of natural ability but doesn't know how to fucking use it and so that was like a repetitive theme and it was never my fault it was always the teacher's fault but in reality there was only one common denominator and that was me um and then growing up was in the sort of maths physics that sort of side of the brain type subjects since I was 12 thought I wanted to be a mechanical engineer went to university started studying in mechanical engineering hated it after a term switch to economics and management which is about the driest subjects you could possibly do but I actually really enjoyed it but in my time at uni sort of this is leading into career and business journey started a small events company running a night like a night dj student night at uni with a friend of mine and realized fairly quickly that like I like that I like the idea of running my own business and starting it and it was kind of born out of frustration i was working as a promoter for another brand and they because i ended up doing four years after three years they're like oh well all of your mates are leaving so who are you going to be bringing down but in reality i'd built and none of my mates coming anyway i'd built a network of other people over the time that i was bringing down so i was really pissed off that they let me go and that sort of inspired this hatred driven like well if you can let me go i'm gonna go and do it better yeah and then we ended up doing relatively well with it nothing like to really shut from the rough rafters about but well enough to then sell it back to the same people that that dropped me in the first place for for peanuts it was like 1500 quid we sold it back to them for but it was still like okay cool i like this process of starting something growing it and and then eventually exiting it which i think's most startup founders goals is to cash in at some point and so from there i was like okay well i don't want to be an engineer I don't want to be an economist but I quite like startups maybe I'll go and try and do project management where you do loads of different things and you're sort of pulling it all together but that was a an industry where you're chasing your tail because you can't get a job without experience and you can't get experience without a job so unless you've done a project management degree you're kind of scuppered so was like trying to work out how I get out into the big wide world post-university and go and find a project management job and just beg someone to take me on board and take a punt at the same time a friend of mine's boyfriend was launching this drinks brand called punchy i was just leaving uni he was like look we need some part-time sales help at festivals over the summer so okay cool sounds great went to taste of london as the first festival and loved it and then decided to go on full-time loved it so much that i worked for seven months for free because i didn't have the money to pay me um and it's sort of that that was the transition into startup world really so that was the question yeah yeah yeah absolutely i think that piece really well articulated actually yeah that like chip on the shoulder piece i think is like something you see a lot in those early stages and it's such a big motivator and driver isn't it to to then push forward and prove those people wrong yeah love and hate are two pretty strong drivers to go and get you to do something whatever it is but yeah for the initial one was was hate i guess distaste i can feel it yeah so how what was then the transition into you know the brand itself how how did you then you know look at starting the brand where did the idea come from yes i've been i've been at punchy for five years at this point and i joined as they launched so really really early days um and kind of saw the ins and outs of what starting a business is like what goes into it little things like how do you do a cash flow when do you register for v80 the basic business skills you don't get taught you have to learn that more often than not stop a good idea from becoming a reality because there's such an upwards steep upwards learning curve and particularly at a point in time where chat gpt hadn't really come to fruition and you couldn't just like go and type into an ai tool like how do i start something it'll help you which I think probably get onto that but it's changed the the landscape of entrepreneurship quite significantly but I'd been there for five years finished up as head of ops I'd probably learned everything I could learn at that point in time in that business before it got into retail and supermarkets or had a big international expansion those probably would have been the two next steep learning curves and so I was able to do my job quite efficiently and kind of ready to start my own thing been grafting away pretty hard and um I had chairs in the business but it didn't really feel like I was building back into my own pocket in the same way that I wanted to that sort of sentiment combined with this want for a casual suit pretty simple I wanted a casual suit couldn't find any good ones started rolling around with the idea a little bit in my head and thinking that is there a market for this do other people want this sat at I don't know family barbecues being like does anyone want a casual suit sort of vibes and getting pretty good response from it um and so it was time to start my own thing in my head had an idea to go and flesh out in a bit more detail brought my co-founder Julian on board at this point and then we started doing the research and looked into the market this was 2021 that we registered the business so we're just coming out of covid or like semi still in it and the workplace had casualized we'd moved to this very hybrid slash out of office or remote environment where you didn't really need to come and dress up smartly anymore you know people weren't wearing suits to work you're going in and out of the office and so there's a need to be able to have something that transitioned from those days that you're in the office and in london or whatever from something that's formal that would pull you through a sales meeting to then being able to go out and see your mates at the pub afterwards and not feel like a prick overdressed in a suit in the pub which we've all done before if not seen before yeah um and so yeah i'd realized that there was there was a strong market for it that was that was sort of the initial starting point could you quickly touch on that piece with like meeting your or were you friends before yourself and julian yeah yeah so what because i think one mistake that you see a lot of co-founders do when you're starting a business with someone else is they start the business with maybe the wrong person who has two similar skill set to them and as a result you know there's there's a clash there and they're not complementing each other's skills so did you was that like an intentional thought process as to like how you would you know your your responsibilities what you're both best at what did that look like it's an interesting one because it's always my first bit of advice to anyone that comes and asks for advice about starting a business is to get a co-founder because your longevity of that business is so much stronger if you've got people that can pick up the slack like it's impossible to run at 110 all the time and you kind of need to to make success of a business particularly in the early stages so you can share that responsibility it's really important someone to share the highs with as well as the lows it's easier to share the lows with your mum because you can sort of explain it and they'll understand it but it's quite hard for them to understand the highs i like just want a new bit of business or whatever it is which doesn't have the same impact on them so just have someone to be like get your head out let's go for a pint let's go and celebrate that and then tomorrow we'll get back in it because no doubt there's some fire coming around the corner as you boys will know um but to your point finding the right co-founder can can be really difficult and having complementary skill sets is obviously really important julian and i had met at university he was at newcastle as well um and first and foremost we were just a good cultural fit we got along so like if someone that you want to go for a pint with i think that that is really fundamental because you'll you'll spend more time with them than you were with your girlfriend because you're in each other's pockets the whole time you never really switch off you don't get along culturally then you're going to struggle and then in terms of opposite skill sets we've got quite an interesting dynamic because traditionally you might split it like operations and marketing or ops and finance and marketing and sales as I see a lot of the time for Julian and I we're both across the whole of the business pretty much 24 four seven we kind of lean a little bit into different responsibilities but we're both across it all which has the benefit if that one of us goes on holiday you're not then completely stranded and don't know what's going on and can't make a purchase order or whatever the job is that needs to be done we split it in terms of the way that we think and operate so I'm a bit more of a longer term strategical thinker and he's a much better short-term operator in terms of getting things done so if I didn't have him I'd come up with all these like good ideas like this is where we need to get to in three five years time and this is our roadmap to get there but it would never happen and conversely if if he didn't have me then we'd be getting loads of stuff done on the day-to-day but without any vision of like okay this is great over the next six months but are we building for the next three to five years um and like that we both balance each other out in that as well but that's generally how we split our thinking that's how we we mesh well together it's really interesting i think that's the most like that that that setup of like the ideas and the execution is like such a common setup i think and that's almost like the perfect setup from from i was reading a thing about why why combinator and they have a massive preference to co-founders because they've just they have a higher success rate and they were talking about like fundamental skill sets of those co-founding pairs and that was the most common like one person who's more strategy big ideas and one person who's more executional implementer makes sense yeah yeah and it's worked really well for us so far and i think like the other like bit of advice that i got that that's always good to pass on is right at that first stage like whilst you're still mates set out the contingency plan for what happens if you fall out because it gets very very difficult to do that when you fall out and emotions are high and like it's a difficult conversation to have early doors but it's like once it's on paper it almost takes the stress away from it and allows everyone to speak freely and be honest and just say exactly how you're feeling at the point that you're feeling it without the worry that like this might implode the business it's like you know what happens if that happens and so it's there set in stone it's kind of a safety net can you give an example of what that contingency plan might look like so it's like if we fall out and one of us wants to leave what happens to that equity do they walk away with all of the equity if they do that it's really really really hard to keep the business going because you've got a huge amount of this business capital and equity that's not working for you so it's it's plans like okay well is it vested do you earn that over a period of time or if it's not vested if we get to the point where this happens how much of that do you walk away with and how much of that goes back to the business do you then receive that at a later date but it's it's kind of like you know i'd rather have 10 of a hundred million pound business than 50 of a 10 million pound business so you have to put those plans in place in case that ever does happen yeah for sure it's the it's the classic piece of a slice of a watermelon versus a whole grape yeah um yeah interesting um could we i'd love to just touch on that the early stages of like how how you followed that um mpd process of you know actually getting that product in hand initially like what did that what did that early stage look like yeah it's a good question i mean neither of myself or julian had any fashion experience coming into it i'd come from the drinks world julian had come well it's not quite fashion but it's not fashion but it kind of is a little bit he worked for a company called oddballs who make boxes and bobble hats and whatnot so it's kind of like fast moving consumer good as opposed to to fashion necessarily um so we were kind of starting from scratch um but essentially had an idea of what we wanted this thing to look like and then brought in people that had the skill set to come and help us do it because there's so many people that have been through fashion college and that have the technical ability but don't have the business now to go and then make that into something so the pool of of talent is huge to then be able to go and tap into and we kind of just went stage stage by stage got someone to help us design it i mean i was i was surprised going into it at how broken the supply chain is in in fashion whereas to in the drinks world for example you go to someone and they'll help you develop the products they'll make your first batch they'll help you with the labeling etc etc and you kind of got a one-shop stop to getting a at least a first sample in fashion you've got a fashion designer who does something different to a pattern cutter he cuts out all of the pieces that then get stitched together then there's another person that grades it which takes that pattern and turns it into several sizes and someone else that samples it then there's someone else that does the main production and none of them want to do anyone else's jobs it's like the similarity between grading and pattern cuttings and like making the first pattern and then making it into lots of sizes is so close that I still can't work out why someone's not gone like yeah I can do both of those things but I guess it's like maybe the lack of technical understanding that actually specialization I guess it's a proper specialization the volume that goes through the fashion industry probably don't need the work which must be such a nice nice position to be in right that's that's so interesting that's so complex to learn when you're first going through that process yeah but I think we just I potentially got lucky yeah just got put in front of the right people or put ourselves in front of the right people that were there keen willing to help like the idea yeah and and helped us sort of get it off the ground and probably went through three different stages of sampling to get something that we were happy with our very first sample was quite funny we um we were calling up this uh canvas manufacturer so we wanted to make this like canvas materials what we thought we wanted to begin with and they sent us a load of swatches which are like this big and when you feel the material as a swatch versus what it feels like in a finished garment it's completely different and something that you can only really get an understanding of with experience you can't even really make it up in your head so they sent us this canvas and we're like nah it's not it's not heavy enough we need something thicker so we go back to them and they're like are you sure because this is the thickest we have like from what you're trying to make i don't think this is what you want so like okay fine we'll just send us the thickest one we got it made into the garment and it was so thick that it was like a straight jacket you couldn't move or walk in it oh shit okay fine so back to the drawing board but yeah it just took a while to go through those little stages of getting to right material right pattern right products we're now probably on the 11th iteration of the exact same style nice just with like one improvements each time nice love that and so you got the product you're kind of happy with that that first um i guess yeah version of the of the product what what did how kind of intentional were you with that um initial acquisition strategy you know to get those first customers what what did that look like and i guess what was that what was that you know turning point where you're like okay this is a viable business now yeah it's a good question i think for any startup your first customers tend to be your friends and family particularly in products particularly when you're making something to order yeah so like we haven't really touched on that yet but going through the the process of setting up the business having come from fast moving consumer goods in the drinks world and seeing how much cash gets tied up in stock and how difficult it is to pick up momentum and get a business moving when you haven't got any money to put into sales and marketing and in this horrible cash flow cycle i wanted to see if i could find a way to get around that simultaneously when you start digging into the fashion industry quick quickly apparent what an unsustainable mess it is yeah and like we all know fast fashion's bad it's like it's fairly ingrained that that's a bad thing but when you start looking at the stats they're pretty eye-opening and the one that always rings truest to me is that six and ten it's six and ten items of clothing that are made end up in landfill within a year wow when you start to process that like it's pretty bonkers basically buying four items of clothing there's another six that will be in landfill within a year and yeah when we've when like we've seen behind the curtain of quite a lot of d2c fashion brands and like a lot of them live and die by the stock turnover right because that's just like cash sat in a warehouse and you're it's always blows my mind how hard it is because like you are only two bad drops away from like pretty much being out of business like you have to nail and that's what i think like obviously represent like you look at them and they've nailed so many drops in a row built that core line out and that's like so good at products for the customer yeah but there's the they're a good case but there's so many examples i've seen where they've just got all of these like products that they've over leveraged in stock and just can't liquidate at the right margin big time and they're just completely cooked i mean i'd love to see the stats on how many failed fashion brands there are but i think it would be one of the hardest fairly eye-watering yeah and that's that's a big part of the problem because of the way that the business and the model fashion industry operates at the moment one it's not saying well for the planet because there's a shed load of waste that gets produced by people releasing too many styles over producing stuff to your point if you get a drop wrong and it doesn't sell anyway to clear that stock is by discounting it and there's only so far you can discount it before you ruin your brand's equity so yeah the perceived value of the value so then the only other thing you do is throw it away yeah um because ultimately if it's not moving it's just costing you more in warehousing and taking up capacity that you don't have so it's just this really like old tainted well it's not even that old it came in with fast fashion but it's tainted it doesn't really work from a business perspective so we decided to make everything to order one because it's better for the planet we're not producing any waste if we don't we don't sell something we don't make it so that's like tick number one two it's better for business because we take cash first and then we produce the goods later so we're not having all this cash tied up in stock that we can't then go and make work for us um and three it's better for people because we can deliver a much much higher quality item for a lot less because i don't have to account for holding stock for wastage for big end season sales for yeah returns so the only trade-off is that you've got to wait for it to be made they wait four eight four to eight weeks for your garment to arrive but from a consumer's perspective we discovered pretty quickly that ultimately we don't care enough about sustainability to put our money behind it it's a nice to have what we what we truly care about what influences the purchase decision is price and quality and the sustainability is like cool that's i feel good about myself now but it's not why you bought it yeah buy it because it's sustainable you buy it because you like it and it's at a price that you thought was was good value so by operating on this model suddenly waiting four to eight weeks to save yourself hundreds of pounds is a you know much more enticing thing to do than than to save the planet but that might be why you come back and buy another one because you felt good about the purchase or why you tell your friends about it yeah it's it's much more pain point focused isn't it because i think yeah we've noticed that like you think sustainability is an angle through ads is gonna be a big driver but it just rarely ever is and rarely ever is you know something that performs well i think it used to be it's now like par for the course right for for like challenger brands it's like it just is a must-have really like every brand should have it it's not a usp necessarily it's just like it's a hygiene factor and consumers ultimately don't care and they're completely switched off to it and so much greenwashing you don't know what is actually sustainable what's not yeah you're told all these horrible stats and really think well am i going to be able to make a difference or like maybe that's not what i'm going to make a difference in but i turn my lights off like before i leave the room we it's so easy to to like put a blind eye or turn a blind eye even um it's slightly different from business to business i think you're selling b2b businesses care more about that because there's a certain persona they need to uphold and and you've got like more cash to be throwing about but particularly in a in a uk market where people are less affluent will have a less expendable cash because inflation and things are expensive and cost of living crisis which is a phrase i hate because i don't actually think it's it's necessarily true but so what a phrase that was brandished around a lot but everything's become life's become a bit more difficult you're not really thinking about sustainability is the first thing when you go and make a purchase decision how have you found that like um we're going to come on to this later about it i think it's a good segue but have you found that kind of like re what i guess you kind of like rewiring the the consumption process for fashion with that change to like made to order how have you found like managing customers expectations communication have you been very intentional around that post-purchase yeah big time and I think communication is the key word that's ultimately what it comes down to I think if you're buying something you're waiting for it as long as you know what the journey is it doesn't really matter whether it's four weeks eight weeks 12 weeks we've not always nailed it we've got the comms wrong before and it's just sort of an constant learning curve or we've been told one thing by our factory and then told our consumers that and then the factory's been like oh sorry we've got that wrong and we have to go back and tell our consumers again and so it's not always been perfect but what we try and do post-purchase is as soon as you've bought a suit you'll then get regular updates as to who's making it how it's made behind the scenes footage from the factory so you can follow the journey and essentially you buy into the item that you're making a bit more which was largely driven by sort of us going through the factory and seeing how many different pairs of hands a jacket goes through to get to the final product and it's about 35 and so when you've got it gives you that value perception which is is consistent because the whole fashion industry like very little of it's automated nearly everything is still done by hand and then when you suddenly see like okay this is how much skill has gone into making this and how many people have been involved in this process and that's where your perceived quality comes from but you don't know that it's hard to get that i was going to say that it is like an artistry right but i feel like it's that's almost like with fast fashion it's almost been washed away that like understanding of the complexity that that is behind what you wear i think people just think it's so simple it just turns up and it's just been like screen printed and just flipped out of a factory every item's turned around in a minute or something yeah we've gone through like a t-shirt's been made in a massive machine yeah it doesn't happen it might have been like the patterns might have been cut by a machine yeah that's probably the first biggest bit of automation that i've seen is like laser cutting of patterns yeah but everything else is still sewn by hand and the piece on communication i think is yeah that exactly what you said like that being ahead of the customer rather than reactive i say it baffles me i ordered a sleep mask the other day from a brand and like i ordered it and i haven't i've been trying to get like an answer from them on where it is and i'm like you haven't sent me any communication after i've just spent 80 pound with you nothing yeah like where is it nothing which is crazy give me an idea how low the bar is still there on customer experience is kind of baffling yeah and like i do do sympathize because it's often easier said than done it's like obviously you do that but you know it's easy to get tripped up with it but it's got to be a core focus for any business really so go on no sorry i was just just on that communication piece you touched on it briefly there but like i'd love to know how much how much that's evolved in terms of how much you're communicating during that timeline of when they're looking to get the suit because it's almost like it's like the innovation of a good example is like the innovation of like taxis really there's nothing more that can be changed with that but then uber came along and introduced like the live map so it's not the pain point isn't necessarily how quickly the car can come it's just being able to see exactly when it's going to be here and when where the car is up to how much did that kind of play a part in i guess that that journey from purchasing the product to then receiving it yeah i mean we implemented it straight away like before before launch we knew that that was essential to making this work um and it's kind of interesting like people don't they're not as engaged with like actually watching the journey as we thought they would be like there's probably 20 % of consumers that really love it and that's enough to to like validate doing it because they'll become your advocates but most people just want to know to your point timeline stages updates rather than like who's making it and how it's made yeah so a few people do but lots lots just don't just like tell me make sure I know that it's in progress and have an idea of when it's coming and it's also difficult to give people exact timelines at times because anything could go wrong throughout that journey like a material could come with come in from our manufacturer with stains on it and then it needs to be washed and so that's going to be a two-week delay or it's a hold up with the embroidery and that causes a couple of days delay and so it's quite hard to give people that process in exact definite timelines so instead we've just made sure we've got enough contingency to like 90 % of the time be able to deliver in full and if it's late it's going to be by a week and we can manage expectations when it comes to that um but long term like where i'd like to get to is for that not to be a manual process for that like it's very quick and easy to tech enable that and make sure that it when a suit moves from one one pair of pants to the next it's scanned it's updated and you can sit there as a customer and just see exactly what's happening without in real time without having to be manually told what's going on that's the ambition yeah that's really cool love that um and like what what's clear is you've you've remained very focused during the the journey so far on on this made to order model i mean how hard has it been to just remain within within that have there been opportunities to break through that where you've seen opportunities to to drive further revenue or growth in the business what does that look like yeah we've had several of those sort of opportunities whether it's through wholesale whether it's like we've been in conversation with probably seven different premiership football teams to be their suit sponsor and trying to attach a retail deal off the back of that which really makes it make sense if you could buy a you know Tottenham waxed overcoat like great but how do you sell that in a in a sort of gift shop what's the word it's not a gift shop club shop how do you sell that in a club shop when you need someone there that's skilled enough to be able to explain that you'll buy it now, but you're not going to get it for eight weeks and creates a sense of confusion or whatever.

29:38Sam Matanle:And so, and conversely, it's been, we still get the occasional bloke that comes in and bloke's particularly bad at doing things on time. But they're like, I should have bought this 10 weeks ago, but I've got a wedding in two weeks. You can sort me out. You're like, you're an idiot. And so we do have a facility that if someone's bought a suit, we can loan them one of our samples we're still waiting for theirs to be made which is a short time fix but you know you also then get into the mindset of like oh maybe we should just hold some stock of one color and sell that off the shelf for people that are late and have it at a higher price and whatever but i don't we're not quite ready to move to that model yet for all of the reasons that we outlined before this that you can quite quickly for the sake of chasing revenue completely derail the business from a cash flow perspective and i've seen lots of businesses do that not necessarily in fashion but in all different angles where they're trying to unlock new revenue streams new revenue streams thinking this is going to be the one that's going to tip them over the edge and then before you know it you've run before you can walk and you've not got the focus and you're putting lots of effort into lots of different channels and not really honing on one that that that's really singing for you and just stay true to your guns like give it it's time to thrive before you start chasing that different revenue and what are those channels that are singing for you the the those kind of core acquisition drivers are for us it's physical retail so we drive 75 of our sales through through the shop interesting and then probably well obviously 25 online but of the 25 that buy online good proportion of that's repurchase how is that split looked over the evolution of the brand from launch to retail launch to not that dissimilar because we'd we'd launched into physical retail six months into starting which sort of came off the back of not really having any any experience and so doing it the way that we thought it should be done if we got some advice from people that fashion experience they'd been like what the fuck are you doing that for

31:47Sam Matanle:but when we actually kind of coming back to original question of like what was your first acquisition channel how did you win over your first customers we did a two-day launch party when we launched our first collection and we noticed that and again it was like largely friends and family buying into the brand at that point we noticed that i don't know what the proportion was but the vast majority of our sales over that launch weekend came from people buying at the launch party where they'd had a chance to feel it and feel the quality and touch it and try it on and it's kind of the product despite the fact that it's it's not a traditional suit it's a casual suit it's something that it's off the shelf sizing you can go online pick your size and and it will fit you and you know you can wear it in lots of different ways doesn't need to be tailored to you despite that people still want to touch it feel it try it ultimately go through the full experience because we realized largely what we're selling is one an emotion of like feeling good looking confident and two the experience of coming into the shop having a style advisor be like you know you should wear this color because of your complexion you'll look good in this size try on with these shoes this is what t-shirt you should wear with it and having that full experience and then once you've got your sizes locked in and you want to come back and buy another one you've got it already you only need to be fitted once that's really interesting what do you do you see a lot of that repeat purchase behavior quite quickly after they've got that first suit that you're seeing people come back to three times yeah way higher than than we would have expected because again it's like you know when you're going through it you're like how many casual suits do you need and in reality because you can wear it in so many different ways and whether charles is independently of the jacket and dress it smartly or dress it casually and very comfortable so people just wear it all the time and then suddenly they get fatigue of one color and buy another two or three but i'll repeat purchase rate is 25 within a year which which is pretty strong for what we're selling yeah it's cool really like that and you touched on the the launch party that you uh you did there i know you've done a few things uh in regards to that i know you had your your third year anniversary recently as well we did which is congratulations Brian one of your favorite DJs right yeah talk about that strategy around events you know what how are you approaching those yes I think the strategy comes from like the physical retail strategy as a whole when we were we've sort of been in lots of long pop-ups for a while moved around loads of times in Spitalfields market just basically got a good deal where they're usually putting out 10-year leases and excuse me to big brands and they might take six months to get signed off so rather than have an empty shop for six months we just sort of slid in and covered cost so it made physical retail accessible for the stage of business that we were at but when we were going into it we're like right okay there's lots of dead shops filling the high street everyone's talking about the high street dying particularly like as we're coming out of covid and everyone got used to buying same day delivery on amazon and like why would you go shopping like the psychology behind it is if you're going to convince someone to make the effort to come out shopping when they can do it much more easily online that experience has to be vastly superior so in reality it's not the high street dying it's just lots of dead shops filling the high street so coming into it we're like okay how do we make this more interesting yeah let's make it more of a third space let's make it a space that you want to come and hang out with that you've come in intentionally and you've wanted to stay in intentionally rather than sort of like aimlessly wandering into a shop running away from a shop floor assistant and then leaving you don't know why you left and you don't know why you came in and it's like bright white lights that make you feel like you're in a hospital which is great for showing off clothes and their true color and what it looks like but not a massively appealing environment to be in so like okay cool let's let's do something a bit different let's have a cafe and workspace in there and that sort of followed through into our flagship now which we've designed in a way that upstairs feels like living room dining room downstairs feels more like bedroom so you you feel more at home and you're more comfortable to like want to try on a new item of clothing or get naked and put on a new suit and you can come in sit and have a coffee or whoever you you've gone shopping with can sit down and relax and just take a moment to chill because usually when there's couples shopping there's one that really wants to do it and there's one that's not that interested yeah so having something that sort of suits everyone and being sport on the telly and just like make it a nice comfortable environment to be in as a standard that was the initial intention and then into what you're talking about with regards to events design it in a way that it's sort of a multi-use space that we can use in loads of different ways on the basis that we're spending a shed load of money on rent for this like amazing unit in covent garden yeah most shops open at 11 shut at 7 and you you're missing out on all the other hours of the day the morning session the evening session where you've got this beautiful bit of retail that just sits there like not in use so kind of driven by like a from again a business perspective of like how can we sweat this asset for as much as it's worth yeah and make sure that if we're taking a punt on paying this rent that we can secure some base revenue from running events that is separate if like if we can make the shop wash itself wash its face from doing events takes all the pressure off everything else that we're doing and means that we can just like lean in and focus without having the pressure to sell stuff which often makes you make bad decisions yeah so set it up in this way that you can run lots of different events but similarly as a way to host and engage our community people we call it batch members club if you bought a suit you become part of it create interesting reasons for people to stay engaged in the brand to stay relevant to come back down to come back and visit us again and have a chance to like you know coming down to a salsa class was that on paper doesn't give you any intention that you're going to come and buy another suit you're then back in the shop we've spoken to you again we're back front of mind you've got that next networking event or that next wedding or mum's birthday or whatever it might be and then it's like oh let's show you the new collection and you just start to feed this ecosystem and narrative of like one you've become part of this thing that's more than just an item of clothing like what does it stand for you become when you put it on and two you've got a way to keep people coming back to the shop where you know they're in they're in your house and you can tell them all the things that they need to know which you much more difficult to communicate over social email short attention spans you can actually like take five minutes to tell people what they want what they need to hear very cool yeah i love that i think covid's definitely helped with that hasn't it just like that you know that desire for just even more human connection especially as we're moving more as you say to like ai and online and big time you know it's making it's really driving uh the hype around that and i think yeah just that that model that you mentioned just around the space being more than just a clothing store is is definitely something we're seeing more and more now i was in amsterdam last week and i went to the new new product store there and like again they're the same it's like it's just such a cool space that you want to spend time in whether you're buying something or not and it just it builds layers into that brand really and how you know the emotions that you evoke from that big time yeah it's interesting to go like four or five years ago when like the high street was almost on the other going the other way it's interesting just how that reimagination of how people are thinking about stores seems to have just almost like put a new breath breath of life into it and i think it's yeah like experience experience experiential like shopping almost yeah big time i think also like if you think about it we're we're really lacking third space i like someone that's not worked someone that's not home to go and communicate and socialize with people small music venues are shutting down on the daily pubs are in a massive decline people are drinking less like same sort of reason there's the the birth of the run club is like a social environment because you know it's free or it's low cost it doesn't involve drinking you can go and meet like-minded people but in reality like across all of these social spaces like there's social clubs don't really exist anymore you're not going to go down and have four pints of ale and play a load of pool like that as fun as that is to do but like that's not necessarily everyone's cup of tea yeah so there's this rise of these other spaces that that allow for that that make that strategy make sense that people want to go and wander around and shop and just be out and about and in an environment where they they're likely to meet other like-minded people that doesn't necessarily involve like getting battered or spending loads of money yeah for sure or running because lots of people hate running yeah don't need another room club right yeah we definitely don't need any more of those um and what do you have any like key learnings that stand out to you or insights that that you know people might find valuable if they are looking to start events i think it's like work out what your community want but also don't overthink it it's like they're too like bit opposing over bits of advice there but i think it's like i don't know i'd whittle down what makes a successful business into two oversimplified things which is survive for long enough and do cool shit and i think you can transfer that same thing into into events it's like keep people engaged and doing lots of different things and like throw loads of stuff out there test what works but then also have an eye eye on what your consumers and community actually want if you've got an existing community if you're a brand and you know you've got a pretty good idea of what your target market is and what your actual market is because often those two things can differ either run an event for your actual market or run an event for your target market it's like i know that's pretty simple thing to say but yeah i think it's just like be creative with it find brands to work with you don't have to do it all on your own it's a great opportunity for brand partnerships.

42:18Sam Matanle:Don't just launch a run club. Don't just launch a run club. That's like the key part of advice, right? We've seen so many people. That's the example of rushing it and just not thinking about it, right, isn't it? Just like people don't want that or need that anymore, really. There's other places that are doing it better, so you don't have a point of difference. There's no point doing it. If you really want to do a run club, then partner with one. Go and take their community, introduce a whole new set of consumers to your brand. how are you thinking about like that next stage of growth from a from a customer acquisition perspective like retail's been a big driver are you are you thinking double down there are you thinking try and bring digital up like how are you yeah how are you thinking through that in the business at the moment yeah we've so we've got a really interesting issue in our business currently where we're 2.2x last year revenue but our website sessions are down 60 percent so like doesn't really correlate right and our brand awareness is and impressions have grown significantly so we've got this little disparity going on so that would be one of the that's one of the biggest challenges that we're looking to solve thankfully it's the the right way around for that challenge to be we doubled our website sessions and half their revenue and yeah probably wouldn't be sat here like pulling my hair out somewhere so it's it's a it's a good problem to have and and if we can solve it then in theory you know more traffic to the website will equal both more more footfall in store yeah of people that have come across the brand and checked out but they want to come and see it in person and also online conversions so that'll be a big big part of our next sort of growth strategies to work out and fix that that disparity but then also to to keep doubling down on physical retail and sweating the one asset that we've got i think we can easily triple our revenue in that one shop alone without causing too much stress and probably more but like that's that's sort of the goal before we then start looking i think it's very easy to run before you can walk and be like when are we getting to the us and like what other markets can we go to and when are we spreading around the uk but it's like make the most of the one asset you have got use that as a way of perfecting your model going through all the learnings working out the perfect customer journey from the moment someone comes across the brand the moment they receive their item and and beyond for us we we will conquer that did physically first yeah and then look at how we get as close to that same journey digitally afterwards but it's like that's our highest converting channel seven out of ten people that try and suit go on to buy one 75 % of our revenues from the physical store it's like that makes sense okay let's let's really know that and then then we can look at how we do that online and over time trust builds and makes it easier for people to to check out online anyway that's that session drop is really interesting i wouldn't expect that from the outside looking in right your content games really dialed in like your brand awareness linked in see you all the time everywhere so to know that's not i don't have the answers but i do i'll tell you because it's quite interesting are you mainly i'm assuming like is it mainly organic content you're pushing yeah i think i'm part of that would probably be that we were running a like very small amount of paid yeah last year and i'm talking like two grand a month like very small amount um so that would have had an impact yeah um but yeah not not haven't quite got to the bottom of it yet but yeah we we've we dabbled with paid we tried lots of different angles from the call to action being booking for a fitting in the shop to checking out the collection and shop now online um and what we realized relatively quickly is one we're in probably the most competitive paid social space you can be in in fashion and two we're not an impulse purchase it's not like see it like it buy it it's like see it like it think about it for six to 18 months and then buy it yeah that's our normal sales cycle six to 18 months which is pretty long so running paid ads at this stage of our journey was just not far off pissing down the drain yeah so we decided to to like stop doing that look to like what do we have internally which is quite an interesting story and narrative to tell we're challenging an interest industry in two ways one challenging the traditional suit which is sort of fairly embedded as like a timeless thing but we're like is it timeless is it a bit outdated is there time for something new and then also the way the industry operates in the way that everything's now like buy it impulse get it now it's into a slower more considered fashion model so we've got that narrative to go and tell we've got two founders that are pretty happy to to tell that narrative as well which i think that was an important thing that we had to take stock on and be like okay we don't mind being in front of camera let's go and tell the story because there's lots of brands that don't have that so we can probably stand out here and decided to hire a full-time videographer and content creator in-house which is like quite a big move for a relatively small team um and yes it's working so far how are you approaching that um in terms of like strategy on on organic like are you are you really intentional with okay here's what the content plan looks like for the next month is it more ad hoc on the spot what does that look like it's a mixture of both so we've got sort of like our core pillars of what do we need to deliver month on month and then also leave space for ad hoc stuff what's trending at the moment is there a pr stunt that we can come up with are there ways that we can supplement that core stuff which gives you that recognition when someone sees your content they're like i know this brand have seen this before you know that I've often takes me personally as a consumer of content like to see three or four reels that I think are good before I or bits of content before I'll then go and follow them so I think you have to have that level of consistency that people know once they've followed once they've engaged you they know what they're going to be delivered on a regular basis but then also the other side of it which is like the sporadic ad hoc potentially viral moments that that bring people into the funnel in the first place so we we try and leave space for both want to touch on the break it's a nice segue to the to the the big linkedin moment that that's like that's when i think i first saw you on linkedin was talking about the breaking and how you use it'd be good to just dig into how you use that moment to create that kind of viral like outcome for the business um maybe give context as well yeah i guess so this was this was october last year we were midway through building this new flagship store which was like calling causing us a world of pain because we were trying to do a half a million pound fit out with a 50k budget and the only way we could achieve that was with like brand partnerships so we were like off our feet trying to make this happen at the same time as launching a brand refresh hiring like it was just a real melting pot and we just launched this new collection of wool herringbone suits which the first time we'd gone for a significantly higher priced material so our suits normally retail at 395 the herringbone one retails at 595 so it's like our first dabble into this more expensive fabric and we'd only bought enough to make 10 suits as samples in the shop for people to try on so we're quite light in terms of of items and and in the range anyway when I get a call at five in the morning thankfully my phone was in silence I didn't pick it up and then a load of text being like your shop's been broken into you need to get down to the shop like now so I pick it up called Julian the co-founder and I'm like we've got to get down there shop's been broken into and he's like what do you mean it's been broken into have you got any more information was like I don't let's just get there so we get down there and expecting it was almost a moment of relief because when you hear that you're expecting someone's like actually got inside the shop and ransacked everything all they'd ended up doing was throwing a couple of bricks through one of the windows reaching in and just like emptying this rail that they could get to by putting their hand through the window which happened to be all of this brand new collection which nobody had tried on yet so we would like we needed it to be able to sell it and so it was bit of a disaster but initial reaction was relief that it hadn't i had when we got down there at this point got my phone out and i was just like taking some insta stories really for my own personal insta because it's just like quite a interesting slash amusing thing to share it's like stops you from wallowing and self-pity if you've got the support of people knowing what's going on and the reaction of both of us at the same time we then managed to get hold of the cctv footage so we went to security office they showed us the cctv footage which it turns out they shouldn't have done because it's illegal to do that but managed to capture a video of the blokes stealing it was just two blokes on a line bike so then put those things on on stories they went down really well so i was like fuck it let's put it on linkedin that then had its big wave of attention of people sort of like you know giving you support and think sorry it's happened to you etc then off the back of that we got it boarded up I had did a few police reports and sat in this building site of the new shop and I turned to Julian I was like I think I think we can do more with this like people are engaged in this story at the moment simultaneously an agency called 10 days reached out and said I think you can do more with this like cool okay let's have a chat and they helped us come up with this campaign called see it say it suited which is like a play on see it say it sorted from tfl of a like a recent shoot that we've done with one of the herringbone suits and like photoshopped a balaclava over the top being like if you see these wildest criminals running about like give us a call um they're the links to a billboards company and billboard company gave us seven days for free on their billboards 10 days helped us out for free because they just thought it was an interesting campaign to to get behind and put it up on the billboard the next day when i got a photo put it on socials and yeah it picked up a bit of attention which was wicked and then we were like okay what's the next step can we push this further and come up with stupid ideas like what if we like make a i don't know a suit out of lead and put it in the middle of London and be like, we'll give you a grand if you can come and steal this.

53:07Sam Matanle:Like, good luck to you. And we'll like make a baseball bat with batch branding on it. And then we were like, do you know what? We're just pushing our luck a bit. Let's just leave it there. We had enough people coming after us being like, was that all a hoax? Did you break into your own shop? I was like, what do you mean? No, obviously not. Yeah, I've heard that. Yeah. People like, but that's good because it's like conversation. like was it real was it yeah yeah um it gets people talking doesn't it i think that comes from uh like last couple of years when like every fashion brand's black friday skit is someone breaking into the warehouse yeah it's like it's just like yeah is it another play on that but yeah i loved how you used it love how you i love the authenticity we talk we've talked quite a lot of guests about like sharing the bad as well as the good and like how much that resonates with audiences especially in today's landscapes i think that that's such a such a good approach and i love the love the way you then extended the life cycle of it i think it was really really really smart yeah just really cool it's just a learning isn't it like every in every failure there's opportunity or every negative there's there's a way that you can use that to your advantage because i think as well people as humans we want to when people demonstrate vulnerability they you naturally want to get behind them don't you big time and i think that was a big learning curve for us in terms of our content slash sales strategy and that it's like a phrase that we all know we hear a lot that people buy from people which they do ultimately and so we learned from from two things from that moment like one we're still a disruptor challenger brand and so like let's go and be a disruptor challenger brand and do things that are going to garner more attention because people quite enjoy that and get behind it and two let's show show the good the bad and the ugly and like showing the journey as long as the finished product is immaculate so you've still got your sort of brand quality by the finished product showing the journey then increases engagement across both of those things if you just show the finished product it's kind of like yeah cool whatever i've seen it before yeah and if you just show the journey without the finished product you don't have that high level of brand quality which which you sort of need particularly when you're selling something that's a bit more expensive and what's what's been the hardest moment for you in business so far it's a good question really I think just like the starting a business is often over glorified and I have been on startups for a while like I still I still know I've known this and realized this but there's like an outside looking in perspective that it's like oh that's really cool you run on your own schedule and you've got a reason to get out of bed every day and you know you love what you do which is true but the flip side is because you're on your own schedule it's very very hard to switch off ever so you're just like constantly running at a million miles an hour you don't get that same like oh yes it's the weekend type feeling that you're getting in nine to five which I'm sure you boys will know full well yeah so the hardest thing is like forcing that balance upon yourself putting in those markers of like okay laptop shut mine switches off or these are the times I'm working these are the times that I'm not and making sure you've got a holiday booked in and there's never a good time to take a holiday you've just got to like force it and make it happen so yeah like implementing the thing that we all know which is that you need to have the rest to be able to keep pushing forwards but it's a much easier thing said thing than done yeah you you spoke a bit about burnout didn't you and one of your posts and be good to know like what you've what you've learned from that and how how you and I know it's it's inevitable as you say in many ways but like is there is there anything you've implemented since that point to to avoid burnout yeah it's a good question I think like burnout's a funny one because sometimes you know you're you know it's coming and you know you're gonna have to put yourself in a position where the chance of you burning out are pretty high so like for us that was building the shop as well as doing all of these things that we needed to lay foundation wise last year and then like getting the shop off the ground we're doing seven days a week like on the shop floor i knew it was coming but i went into it with the intention of knowing that it was coming and like factoring into my mind that that come january like i'm probably going to be a bit fucked like recognize it ahead of time rather than not giving yourself that grace yeah that's good i i found it i find it quite hard to even i think it's quite hard to recognize when you are burnt out sometimes because like i feel like you can like phase into it over time and then it's like you're doing all this work and driving like no progress or impact and like you can't see the wood from the trees it's like that's certainly been my experience yeah and then you get out of it and you're like fuck i've just spent like three months doing nothing just like getting slowly more and more anxious yeah yeah that you're not doing um yeah yeah no 100 i think for me i've just implemented all of the things that like Like we all know in the same things that I implemented when I was going through a tough time mentally, which was like my last year of uni.

58:02Sam Matanle:And it's just the like basic basics of life. It's like meditate occasionally, try and eat well, exercise, like talk to friends, journal. And I don't like I don't do all of those things at the same time. But I know I've got I've got these things that that will improve mental clarity, the tools that I try and do at least. like three out of six on a daily basis if I can without putting the pressure on like if I don't do this then like I'm I'm gonna burn out I'm not gonna be okay because I think you still also need to give yourself that space to go out and get battered once in a month or like go to a rave or dance whatever it is and I think if you if you take that away then you just end up in this like stagnant no release no pressure sometimes you don't even need like know that you need to release pressure and you get to the evening of like you know it's going to be a big night with mates or whatever and you're like i really don't want to do this i haven't got any energy spent it all on work this week like i've got big things coming up next week is that the right thing to do and ultimately it is yeah i mean everyone's got their different releases for different things but whatever that might be that's like a full day of cycling or whatever and it seems like the last thing you need to do right now like i think you need to have those releases in life i'm a big believer in that like you're never gonna have balance as a business owner but yeah knowing those what those things are that give you that release that escape and you know let you because it's it's that thing of like coming out and coming back into stronger and i hate this like mentality that you see around twitter of like if you aren't working 15 hour days seven days a week then like what are you doing it's just fucking bullshit they're usually people that are like 22 years old that started a business like a year ago yeah um yeah but one thing i've i agree with the journaling thing that's because i i almost just went on these like quarterly cycles of just getting burnt burnt out it's something like i've really looked at and i've started like journaling through chat gpt now so i've like almost i've created this bot that like can track when when when almost i'm reaching that point based on certain signals so like instead of like

1:00:26comment down below if you want it um but yeah no it's it's it's genuinely great because it will ask me specific questions and like scores from one to ten and then obviously i can still do my journaling within that it stores all the information and then it is able to trigger it so yeah that or obviously just just you know you have a couple of angry therapists

1:00:47Sam Matanle:yeah exactly exactly that's true though i think it's like just like putting thoughts on paper and it's a good way of recognizing like what you've achieved on a daily basis or on a weekly basis however often you journal because i think you guys will know when you're in it it's quite hard to take a moment to reflect on like how much you've done how far you've come and then you get to the end of a cycle and you're like well have i even done anything yeah and in reality you've done a shed load and like the amount that you almost become like desensitized the amount that you're achieving because that becomes the norm to just be grinding through that because it's always like pushing to get to the next stage and the next stage and next stage as it should be but quite hard to reflect and recognize how much you've actually done on a daily weekly basis sometimes moving carrot right the carrot and stick yeah that is though it's very true yeah i don't think we're very good at celebrating wins to be honest no just just on to the next just plow forward and like which is it is you've got to be intentional i think yeah for sure that that maybe that can be your little takeaway yeah definitely more pints yeah yeah no we definitely do that yeah a couple more greg sausage rolls yeah exactly um well yeah it's been it's been amazing having you on today honestly i think it's been so valuable it's been good to like get into mindset as well it's not normally something we know we talk much about actually on this podcast that we should talk more about um but yeah really appreciate you coming on where can people find you insta linkedin with batch.ldn same thing on the website batchldn.com what street and covent garden seven dials so no it's not shorts gardens which is just off seven dials seven dollars worth yeah nice nice well we'll put all the links down below but yeah please do yeah really appreciate you coming come and see me for a fit i'm gonna come get a suit yeah yeah 100 you got two new customers it is it's worth the time yeah thank you so much man cool if you enjoyed this episode uh make sure you'd like give a comment subscribe we're on obviously youtube and spotify and apple music and yeah we'll see you on the next episode