How Lapland Turned an In-Person Experience Into a Global $20M+ DTC Empire

0:00I've never seen anything like this when it comes to testing a market from scratch. Really excited to have Matt from Lapland on today. My parents founded it nearly 20 years ago and it was eight years ago I joined a company I describe it as the biggest open goal of all time. We're at the Glastonbury of Christmas. The queues are growing every year, 300 ,000, 400 ,000 people queuing trying to get these tickets. The way we were presenting ourselves digitally versus the quality of that experience just wasn't there at all. We had 20k followers on Instagram. They came in, took on the brand, channels blew up massively.

0:30I think you saw 10 ,000 plus advent calendars in the four hours, right? Yeah, like 15 ,000. We actually launched that in America to test the market over there. You should preface this with there's absolutely no presence in the US at all. Yeah, yeah, literally our average order over there was$50. People just don't shop like that in the UK really.

0:51Welcome back to another episode of DTC Diaries. Sam, good to have you here again. I'm back you're now the most frequent person in the room other than Lucas and myself so pretty big accolade but not the main star of the show today really excited for all of those watching that keep complaining that we only ever talk about supplement brands this is directed at yourselves really excited to have Matt from Lapland on today thank you for joining us good to be here we're definitely not a supplement brand I couldn't be further away from a supplement brand. So I'm really excited to dig into Lapland. I was just mentioning before the show, I've been telling quite a few people we're having you on.

1:37Myself and Sam are just blown away by the business and everybody over the age of 30 that I mention it to seems to be so excited to hear more about Lapland. Everybody below the age of 30 who doesn't maybe have a kid has no idea who you are. So if I do ask this audience. but yeah just really excited to dig into the journey the brand I wanted to pass over to yourself just to kick off an intro yeah no thank great to be here and yeah thanks for having me so it was just shy of 20 years ago that my parents had four young boys myself included and my mom was a prime school teacher I don't know if you guys have ever seen Matilda yeah so think miss honey kind of teacher like she loved it um she she would say to my dad she couldn't believe that she was getting paid to do this and hang out with five-year-olds all day so absolutely adored her career as a teacher um but um as a family in the home uh obviously obviously everything was incredibly magical um so from our birthdays to Halloween to Valentine's Day even like she'd always decorate the house and make it really special for me and my brothers um the height of that obviously being Christmas so we would write letters back and forth to Father Christmas um in the home and we understood that he knew everything about us and it was this kind of magical experience we had.

3:13So that was what was going on in the home. And then we would try and find that magic elsewhere in the UK. So we would travel up and down the country, going to trains and caves and all kinds of random things, trying to find that sort of same Christmas magic and couldn't find it anywhere. So whilst me and my brothers didn't know anything otherwise, we were so young at the time but we unbeknownst to us she was getting more and more frustrated at the time being like why is there just nothing really special out there and real attention to detail when it was such a sort of juxtaposition to what was going on in our family home where we were writing all these letters back and forth and having this real kind of relationship with with father christmas um so you get more and more frustrated so then we actually flew up to Finland, Lapland, as the kind of, we're really doing it, we're going to do just one time the sort of most special way you can experience belief in Father Christmas.

4:13So I flew up there as a family of six, and it is stunning physically, of course, so you've got the northern lights, and you've got the deep snow, and the husky sled rides, all that kind of thing. So that was all really amazing but then still the father christmas experience she was really really disappointed so it was a bit of a kind of smile and wave to the children father christmas sort of situation and um he gave us all a toy and it was this crap plastic thing and it even like cut my younger brother's little hand um therefore we came back from that trip um and uh she was was still frustrated she was like it's all so perfect like you've got that amazing setting the families are there they're believing in father christmas yet still he doesn't know any of the children's names he doesn't know anything about them and she was to the extent of just trying to sort of slip father christmas notes so he could actually know our names and know something about us again as children we were all unbeknownst to us we were just having a great time we didn't know this was all going on behind the scenes so she was getting more and more frustrated comes home and then turn the question on themselves so basically brought this problem to my dad and my dad had been working in the city but was very much a frustrated creative really so he ideally would have gone to art college and is very very talented creatively but as an irish immigrant family sort of arrived in the uk and at 16 it was you need to go to the city's money for the family so to the extent that like the school were kind of bringing his parents in saying you need to this boy needs to go to art college and they were like no no he's he's off to the city So he'd very much had that creativity.

6:09So that's where the two came together. Quick word today from our sponsor, Safi. The problem that I see with most affiliate programs is that you're either overpaying for affiliates or you're undervaluing others. The problem is we don't have vision on any of it. You pay for sales that they didn't actually drive. The codes leak into deal sites. And the one I hate the most is that you see those people that are running ads against your brand and pocketing the commission. But there's so many good affiliates out there. but the ones that are doing the best work are usually invisible. Last Click hands the credit to the people that actually turned up at checkout.

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7:14They're also going to handle the whole migration and onboarding process for you. Go to mysathy.io slash demo to book a walkthrough now. It was my mum's adoration for childhood and wanting to really honour that moment. And then my dad's creativity and vision um so the two together that's really how it came together um and yeah they went for it um that was nearly 20 years ago and it's been an unbelievable adventure since really in terms of um yeah it's it seems to have caught the imagination of the British public as you say um people in that zone yeah I feel like everybody I've mentioned this to a few family members that were doing this interview and they've all been like everybody knows Lapland from everybody over the age of 30 with kids go on the Instagram everyone in that demo that I know is following the account same for yourself yeah it's yeah the first time I discovered Lapland who follows Lapland like every single female I know in my uh in my life that's over the age of 30 and you look through the comment section and it's clear that you've built like such a such a powerful community which i think yeah really acts as a reference point for the for the rest of in-person experience and just brand in general as well yeah for sure it's like the engagement is it's if it seems to just go up and up and up like nowadays uh people like will come to me and say okay my my uh sister's pregnant so um we reckon we're gonna be coming in about three years that sort of thing everyone's like what's the perfect age to be bringing them I wonder how you attribute that one yeah I know for those watching who may not be familiar Lapland's I guess an experiential marketing business or business in itself has two sites one in Cheshire one in Manchester what is it?

9:17Ascot and yeah Cheshire and And I think from my research, you've welcomed over 1.2 million guests since 2007 to those sites. I'm sure that's growing exponentially every year. Yes. So each site is about 200 ,000 people a year. So yeah, 400 ,000 people last year can. And I want to dig into what Sam said from a community perspective. Hopefully from this episode, we can give the DTC founders a look inside a very different business, but some learnings that they can maybe take forward into their own company. um but i wanted to start with the the mission and and that journey from 20 years to where you are today um you mentioned in your notes back to me that you felt like you got the biggest like lay up ever from your parents taking over the taking over the company when you when you stepped into your role um i'd love to dig into that and and this concept of the mission being that belief and everything that you do being tied to that belief in father christmas as a concept and a goal yeah for sure so i did think that as i was explaining the long founding story i didn't talk about my role in it at all um but yes so um found parents founded it nearly 20 years ago and uh then it was eight years ago i joined the company and yeah as i say i describe it as the biggest open goal of all time because my parents had created this beautiful experience amazing attention to detail hollywood sets hundreds of actors like the best way to experience father christmas as a family and the belief in him but they they're not of the of the social media generation so we were it was just like the way we were presenting ourselves digitally versus the quality of that experience just wasn't there at all.

11:13We had 20K followers on Instagram. We'd have a whole season and you'd have still some big names going back then like Elton John was coming and things like that, Paul McCartney. Yeah, we were doing four or five social media posts over like a whole two-month run and just like terrible content. So it was just like, and also anyone that came, we wouldn't invite anyone. we would just if someone got in touch and they wanted to come great yeah we'd let them come with big celebrities and influence things like that we would never actually outreach anyone or anything like that so my parents themselves them stepping out from behind the brand they'd never they didn't have any of their own social media or anything like that so that's been quite powerful they've got Mr and Mrs Lapland as their Instagram handle now so there's some great engagement on there but yeah so that's been my role really was I took on the brand and I guess it's all I've ever known from a very young age is not only the brand itself, but just like it's very much is a product of my parents.

12:24So the way they do things, the attention to detail, the sort of drive for it to be excellent, the passion, etc. That's been my whole upbringing. So it did kind of flow very naturally, to be honest. I think Lapan is one of the most mission-centric brands I've come across and from working with you now for the past couple of years, it's clear that that kind of leaks into the digital side, but more specifically on the e-commerce front as well, which is, I guess, like very different to maybe a lot of the founders we've interviewed and a lot of the brands that we come across. it's usually the reverse you take digital in person um i would love to just know like how how did that actually come about what was the decision making behind right we've got this amazing experience in person how do we how do we take this online and actually start selling selling products d2c yeah yeah so um as i say came in took on the brand all the digital channels blew up massively um we've now got like 1.5 million people on our main list of 900 account instagram that kind of thing um amazing audience super engaged um so that was all brilliant um and felt like the world was really getting out there about how special this experience is with the content we're putting out there um so then i got to a point where this was ahead of us actually opening latin manchester as well so i was thinking i can keep trying to grow this brand awareness and let people fall in love with what we're doing and hopefully grow um the the audience but to kind of to what extent um we're just selling out faster and faster every year so the press sometimes say we're like the Glastonbury of Christmas in terms of we have this um event release each March and it's it's absolutely mental yeah it's like your lead gen campaigns yeah I've never seen before yeah yeah no it's it's crazy with the yeah multiple devices and like people booking the day off work and all the mums whatsapps groups you can imagine but um it because of that though it was like it's great but it's like what's what are we going to do this just make it that more and more people are actually disappointed each year because there was only so many tickets and the the queues are growing every year 300 ,000 400 ,000 people queuing trying to get these tickets so therefore I thought I wonder if we can make products to bring the magic in the home so to let people experience the magic of Lapland but through a physical product and flowing very naturally from the live experience so the same attention to detail the same storytelling, the same world, but it's a feel like everything's come from that world.

15:17So you could buy an advent calendar, but this isn't just an advent calendar. This is the advent calendar from Lapland that the elves have made just for you. And this is the way that the elves count down to the sleeps in Lapland. And you can be a part of that experience yourself at home. how do you like because i love how like you're what you're alluding to that each product has got a real story behind and i think that's i think that's often often neglected in in e-commerce and maybe speak to that for for a moment like how do you think through ideation and turning that into physical because it's not really the other way around is it it's not going physical to how how can we market this and create distribution?

16:02Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think it probably is quite unique. It's the way we've always done things, but... It is the reverse. Yeah, yeah. Like most brands watching will be like trying to do research into customers, figure out how to tell a story around a product, whereas like your products kind of start the other way. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's why when you've probably gone digital, it's absolutely blown because it's all storytelling, which i think is yeah must be so must be such a nice asset to have when you're working with within the business but yeah we'd love love to hear a bit about that process yeah definitely no you're right there because i hear obviously a lot of people talk about world building and things like that now in terms of a marketing sense and it's like we've got 32 characters and this this literal whole world that people believe in but um yes so it's um everything we make will think through the lens of the elves and that sounds funny and what they do so as I say thinking through the moments really of Christmas so what would be the moments that the elves really celebrate in Lapland each Christmas what are the kind of spikes I guess in the countdown to Christmas so then it's like okay well Advent is is an obvious one or Christmas Eve or dressing the tree and then then it's sort of like thinking in creatively like it what would that look like okay well we believe that um everything that Father Christmas does is is of the highest standard so if it comes to the live experience um the the post box has to be immaculately painted and perfect because this is this is father christmas it's not going to be like everything every detail has to be perfect so kind of take that philosophy into the product as well it's like if he were to make some baubles to hang on the tree they've they've got to be beautiful because um they come from the home of father christmas all of the trees in lapland would have to be perfect yeah it's like that magic kept capturing that essence of magic in every product yeah yeah definitely i think it's really interesting and then it's very flows very naturally in terms of our launches and our content because we'll film it as as it's in world so like we'll um say we're launching the advent calendar we'll do a shoot with the elves and father christmas and then they're making it and then they're packing it and it's like it's it's lets people kind of fall in love with hopefully the story um more than the actual product specifically itself has anyone watched jiro dreams of sushi yeah it reminds me of that it's like the constant pursuit of extremely high standards in experience it's the sushi restaurant that's under the tube station in japan yeah yeah um that got the three michelin stars and it just reminds me of exactly what you're what you're saying there and i think that's really difficult to do as you're growing and scaling as well to like never forget about that there's always going to be some sort of shiny object but you've managed to retain that excellence in the MPD process right yeah for sure I think yeah one of our values as a company is driven to deliver excellence and yeah all some people sometimes say it's like it's not like a business in some ways really it's just because of the way we approach things but then actually it really is once you get into it um but yeah I think that's all I've ever seen growing up with the live experience that's what our production team are incredible in terms of delivering that but then we bring that same attention to the product so for example when I launched that first advent calendar it was an advent calendar but hopefully it was true to the soy factory it had beautiful clocks to count down the sleeps for the children i developed an app so they could every day they had uh not only a chocolate coin for from lapland but they also had um uh a little ar moment so whether it was a game or a joke or something like that so it's just like trying to really push ourselves i guess so product driven so experience driven so so customer centric in that in that way you must do you end up saying like saying no and like not doing a lot of things through that lens that must be a part like must difficult to retain that like restraint and because there must be so many avenues you can go down as you've grown yeah i think it's it's yeah it's in terms of like brand partnerships and things like that probably every brand you can think of from land rovers whoever would on a partner with us but we've never done a brand partnership um in that sense because it's it's my mom really she's like the north star and she's like that just makes no sense in the world for the children like why why would that um be a part of the world this is a world the children believe like what's that got to do with with cars or partnerships etc like that so um it's yeah i think it's a constraint though that is is amazing in a lot of ways because it's it's i think that's when we partner with like very talented guys like yourselves, why it can work really quickly is I think that our positioning is hopefully really strong and clear in terms of from the products to the experience to the content.

21:36So yeah, it's kind of kept us on the straight and narrow, I guess. I want to give the audience like a flavor for, I guess the response that we saw when you launched D2C. Was that the first year when we first met? Yes. Yeah. So that was when I was actually managing the Lapland account back then, met Matt. And you're like, right, let's launch. Let's go a couple of hundred quid a day and see what happens. And from that first couple of days, I've honestly never seen the ability to drive so much spend in such a short period of time. I'd love to know what was that moment where you thought, oh, right, we've got something here when it comes to DTC.

22:14Just to give some metrics behind that, I think you saw 10 ,000 plus advent calendars in under four hours, right? Yeah, it was like 15 ,000. Yeah, which is crazy from like a stunning start. Yeah, did it meet expectations? Did it exceed expectations? I think that was really the moment when we launched the Advent Canada because we've been a live experience for so long and that's all I'd ever known is delivering that and selling that and building the brand around that and raising awareness for that, et cetera. so then stepping into into the the world you guys inhabit of econ which was it's it's a whole world that yeah i remember you always described it as a game yeah it always feels like a game yeah i literally loved it like um i think now you do once you're in it now you just sort of take for granted but like it's a it's it's podcasts you can listen to and like twitter accounts and youtube and like the book there's like so much to it and um it's a whole language um yeah acronyms yeah yeah so loved sort of just like learning about it and kind of trying to really immerse myself in it um but yeah it was that advent calendar uh we actually did it on a pre-order made to order because again this was a a new realm and now it's it's working quite well that it seems sort of obvious, but at the time didn't know, didn't kind of thought people were just going to see us always as a live experience or is there a potential that they could experience us through products?

23:53Could we actually make products special enough that it can feel from the home of Father Christmas? So did it on a pre-order. So just to, as I say, because I would have had no idea what sort of stock to order, launched it in July. So really Christmassy time of year.

24:10and um yeah uh just just did it launched it how i would launch a ticket sale um through the content and the teas and the countdown all that kind of thing and then yeah literally 15 000 sold to like turn it off because it was like when we're not we need to guarantee that we can deliver these and pack these and all that kind of thing um but then the moment that was kind of key in that was then looked at the data of the people that bought it, those 15 ,000 calendars, and 80 % of them weren't coming to the experience that Christmas. So that was really the kind of, oh my God, moment, because it was like, oh wow, it's not all about the live experience.

24:56The massive majority of the people that are buying into this aren't coming this year. They just want a piece of that magic. yeah i think that's so interesting you've got clearly just got so much demand around the business and like around that it's like an insatiable demand that to give that feeling to it or experience to a child i feel over over that christmas period you're and you're the ones kind of like providing that and obviously there's the experience has a certain price point limited capacity and travel so yeah i think it's like rush engineering it into your world and i remember sam saying to me is like the tam of uh of uh families that want an amazing christmas it's like yeah like sort of limitless really some so i guess like that the speed in which you're able to scale over that period and product launches and things like that three key learnings and like things that just like shifted your perspective on how can i set this business up next year for scale huge surge in sales towards the end which means you're always forecasting and planning 12 months in ahead when you saw that scale and you had to plan for next year what were you what were you thinking yeah i think we see it as the the seasonality is actually as a strength rather than a challenge in a lot of ways because i think that's why in a lot the experience has become so incredible over the years is that we have a very clear time that we need to ship basically and it's always coming.

26:32There's no product development, say the event could get pushed back or delayed or anything like that because the families have got booked tickets. We need to open the doors at that time on that day. And it's the same with the product really. We have this other period of the year and everyone's favorite question is, oh, what do you do for the rest of the year? And it's like the rest of the year is just like trying as much as possible to get everything perfect and then hopefully come some last sort of period of October, November, December, everything's sort of set up and ready to go. Yeah, I feel like for the e-com owners watching that think their Black Friday side Monday is difficult and challenging for a week, imagine doing it for like three months back to back.

27:17That makes sense. And obviously that huge spike took that learning and then you've rolled forward to broadening the product range, haven't you? How have you approached that problem? recovery approach that yeah so um that was as much as it was hugely exciting um it was still just a single skew literally and with the numbers we did on that um on that was just like okay what if we actually built out proper collections so um yeah the the the next uh collection we launched was um the christmas eve collection and that was actually a fully built out collection so it was beautiful cotton pajamas big chests um tin chests uh hot chocolate blankets and a really built out collection to um let people experience the moment in a bigger way but also commercially it like the bigger yeah yeah exactly outcomes bigger yeah so that that was the next one and that went brilliantly well you guys um brilliant did brilliant job of that um last year and then um we actually even launched that in america as well to to test the market over there went really well yes yeah so that uh was yeah hugely exciting and talk about yeah talk about the moments you like thought oh this is this is working um firstly i've been but then yeah the last year with America was like that, where our 3PL have a facility over in the States as well.

28:51So I thought, I wonder, let's just send a small amount of products over there. You should preface this with there's absolutely no presence in the US at all. Yeah, literally, no brand awareness. But just wondering whether the quality of the product, the quality of the creative, the UX, et cetera, whether it would resonate at all or not. So sent over the product over there, got all the creative ready with you guys, launched it into a completely cold, no brand awareness. And yeah, almost immediately, the orders started rolling in over there. Amazing performance numbers, from literally a standing star.

29:38Which is baffling in the US. like many brands watching will spend like six months trying to get that to work and i think when we when we met for dinner a few months ago we were talking about this this view of like feels like the business has still got so much headroom to go before it's even like got to a point where you can cope with the the natural demand that's around these products and like things like repeat customers like we're not even there's barely any of that coming through from a product perspective which means that the next this year is probably going to be even even more exciting as you continue to expand those ranges yeah definitely no i completely agree i in some ways it feels like from a product and econ perspective i say it's my parents i thought we've done like nothing in terms of we've like we've done one collection and it's going really really well but waiting till it's actually a fully fully built out out range and as you say just those um behaviors over time in terms of if you acquire someone and they buy a christmas eve collection like what percentage of those the next year see our baubles and go oh wow and they're already in our our world at that point and like at the moment it's all so new we haven't we can't track any of that over years about actually how that's all going to play out it's uh very exciting i remember when we were having a conversation about demand planning for for the us which want to go on to a little bit shortly um but i remember saying to you like i've never seen anything like this when it comes to testing a market from scratch some of the signals that you are getting through it reminds me of when uk d2c was first launched where you almost just feel it instantly and as someone with like a growth background you constantly all you see is day to day to data and you can usually see like that it's like um a little golden nugget where you know if you know you know this is going to be easier to scale um which comes with like operational challenges for sure i wanted i wanted to ask a question i'm really like really curious about because i think a lot of founders that i speak to there's often this tension in creative when it comes to brand and vision which probably comes from your parents and then the need to just drive commercial outcome through through d2c what what does that look like for lapland right now is is there tension there and How do you bring it together to make sure that there's still outcomes being met?

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33:08They're also going to handle the whole migration and onboarding process for you. Go to mysathy.io slash demo to book a walkthrough now. Yes, I would say it's, I don't know if you have any other brands similar to this, but it's the balance really. because obviously it needs to perform at the end of the day, the creative and land the messaging and all the metrics that we're hoping for. But at the same time, we are very, very particular about the way the brand shows up. So I think it is achievable though. I don't think like sometimes people think that it's like one or the other. It's either sort of like really highly performing creative or it's really kind of beautiful brand content.

33:54Whereas working with you guys and our creative team, it seems like we've found, I think, a happy medium. If myself or if my parents saw any of the ads, et cetera, they're completely happy with how they represent the brand. But at the same time, they are doing all the things we need them to do as well. How have you approached building out that content machine in the business? Because I know there's another evolution of that, which I want to get onto as well, what you've got coming up with the studios. but yeah, so content is such like an important part of any growth engine. Now I'd say it's almost like one of the, if not the most important work stream is distribution and creatives at the forefront of that.

34:31What does that look like in, in, in Lapland? I know you mentioned at the start, there was like, you're posting four Instagram posts. Yeah. Yeah. Now I'd say you've got like best in class content execution by channel. Yeah. We could hear about that journey. So it's, I've, I've still, do the Instagram to this day I just I love it in terms of yeah well I think it's such an important way that people experience the brand so so much of the growth has been through that channel but in terms of content it's we again it's back to being given a massive open goal it's such an unfair advantage we've got in terms of these got Hollywood sets we've got incredible costumes actors so it's sort of like this is a simplification but sort of pointing the camera anywhere and it's going to look beautiful back to the quality of the experience my parents created but in terms of the actual team yes we across everything this is sometimes quite stressful way to approach things but it seems to work really well for us is um having a really lean team through the year and then working with a lot of agencies come our busy period so um like best in class agency so whether it's you guys on our paid um we have a content agency that we work with um who do amazing content and uh the guy that leads that ollie is really uh across um a lot we're doing we have with this particular photographer who comes in i've got sort of black book really of people that come in um pr agency etc etc but it's a matter of kind of running pretty lean through the year and then sort of building up with a great mixture of different agencies and to support us in everything we're trying to do in that very busy period yeah it makes sense i do think a lot of other brands should approach things from a fixed cost and variable cost perspective in a similar way over q4 but you're obviously now transitioning towards like lapland studios and i'd love to touch a bit on that but i think that's this evolution of the business more towards like a media company more towards more content driven business that then sells products and sales experiences off the back of it from from what i could understand i know you've got a netflix series coming yeah how did that come about like what's the journey into the into that realm being like yeah just a small old netflix series on the way yes so that is that's my brother so my young brother christian uh he is head of latman studios so that is the third pillar and so you've got the the live experience uh then you've got the latman store and then you've got the Lapland Studios and the studios, um, they, what they're hoping to achieve is letting people experience the magic of Lapland through media.

37:44So, uh, whether that's an animation or whether that's a live action movie or any way to experience that world and those stories through media. So So he comes from a media background. Again, it's part of what's worked with me and the brand and same with him on the studios is that he knows YouTube really, really well and has run TikTok accounts and he's very, very plugged into that whole digital world. So therefore, he's been able to do amazing things with that. So he got his first production for the studios is the Lumo the Lapnam Reindeer and he put it out on YouTube last Christmas just a number of episodes.

38:40The hope is, as I say, it's a real world that people can experience in different ways in terms of whether you've got a two-year-old and they're watching the animation on YouTube and seeing Lumo bouncing around and meeting some of the elves and things like that or whether you're got a nine ten year old and they're doing the advent calendar or whether you're coming to the live experience it's a whole to take someone through that journey of like yeah yeah childhood definitely yeah yeah 100 that's what we sometimes say and retain them for as long as possible before they eventually yeah drop out the other side yeah so i'm sorry to answer you on the netflix bit so yeah um that it just got picked up there so um the head of acquisitions in the UK saw her on YouTube and yeah 1st November the episodes are going on there which is yeah it's really really awesome it's really cool yeah I love that third pillar though obviously live is where you started store feels like the natural evolution as you've come into the DTC industry which you probably joined relatively late relative to where the DTC went relative to when DTC started for sure but now that when I look at like the biggest brands biggest businesses that are that are like disruptive or on or less legacy businesses they all seem to be built around this concept of like media almost like a media company whether that's through affiliates online content or whether that's through like long form youtube videos and um young form youtube series and i feel like that it makes sense that that's a third pillar of your strategy yeah yeah definitely just continue to maximize that distribution um i love how um anti-ai laplanders as well it's like 10 years from now where um we've got we've got agi and it's running the show we've got lapland in-person events and there's just such an increased craving for it as well well this is it's very difficult to look like in the future but i guess like five 10 years from now you've got these three massive pillars of the business do you see lapland becoming more of like a media engine with this in-person arm to it or is it still an experienced company with a with the store what does yeah so it's really hard to predict because the the good problem to have is i think that they they've all got enormous potential so the live experience standalone if we didn't if i hadn't started the store if christian hadn't started the studios the live would be roaring forward and we'd be looking at international expansion of that on its own without the other two but the store is sort of creeping up and they're thinking wow that actually can grow internationally a lot more easily than a physical experience she does even more so again so um yeah in terms of like horses in the race where what leads um we'll talk about the new york store but that is it's all interlinked i'll explain yeah it makes sense i think it's just fascinating that you you have all of the things that other brands like really want so like experiential marketing community storytelling content just built into the business so i imagine like picking something to prioritize them becomes really hard because everything is like everything probably feels a little bit easy in time from a growth from a growth perspective i'm sure it isn't easy i don't mean it like that but um yeah i'd love to get onto the us i just want to touch one on one more thing from a um experience perspective um seeing a big wave of brands also like really trying to tap into community and offline and bring their brand into the real world obviously you've gone the other way but um you mentioned one of your like culture pillars around excellence are there any other like pillars that you've built those experiences around that like when you say bringing in new team members and when you're trying to indoctrinate people into like the lapland way of of showing up um that you really want to make sure that they embody and you want to make sure that they're very clear on coming into the company.

42:47Yes. That others may be able to learn from to make those experiences so special because it's often the staff and the other people who are involved in the delivery of that that make the difference. And you can set that from the top down in the business, but if it's not delivered daily, I think it can really change the perception of the company, can't it? Yeah, for sure. So we have three creative principles that we all follow internally. And this was kind of part of my challenge when I took on the brand, that everything had been completely organic, but actually trying to distill that down into pillars, really.

43:24So the three of those are, the first is elegant abundance. And these are the kind of cliche way, these are up on the wall in our offices and our production facilities, etc. So, um, elegant abundance is, um, everything in the world is, uh, really abundant. So all of our sets, all of our costumes are, but then this all flows into the products, into the studio stuff that it needs to feel abundant. It needs to feel generous. It needs to feel rich. Um, you see that in terms of our invitation box that arrives, it's, um, beautifully, um, printed with the elves on it and gold foil and then there's a pop-up inside it and we say to the families put it in the freezer before you deliver it to the children so there's there's such abundance and detail in it but always elegant so um it can't ever feel too much or busy or over the top it needs to all be elegantly delivered so which isn't that easy to do and that's the first um that largely comes from my dad in terms of he's always pushing and pushing for things um to be better and more beautiful and that that kind of creative um talent that is rooted in that then you've got the second which is whimsical wholesomeness which is it's very unique to us isn't it um that is the charm of the elven world we would say that the the way that the elves speak to each other they say cheery hi and they drink nettle tea and it's that roots back to my mom's kind of love for um children's fairy tales um and uh that eenie blighton sort of literature so it's there's no edge to it everything has to be very charming um and a lovely world to inhabit and again this all carries through all the products so poetic almost yeah yeah definitely um so that's the second is the women's called wholesomeness and then the last is nethermost nature so nethermost means like the the real the complete bottom of something so you could say that the nethermost depths of the sea or something like that so the way we use it is nethermost nature is that underneath everything is nature so that really underpins the world and the stories so um the elves come out of pine cones or the anything we create the invitation box or there's always going to be botanicals in it there's always going to be that natural element and it's not on the it's not all about that but underneath it all of our sets so there's floristry everywhere it's um there's that nature element we say that the elves and nature are living perfect harmony um so that is the third pillar and yeah they're the three so any kind of creative output have to hit those three pillars for it to be blackland um yeah i think I think what I've heard there is like you're doing things that don't scale naturally because it's an experienced brand but I just think no D2C e-com founder is is often having that mindset of how can I create experience true customer experience and part of that is doing things that don't scale but I think that's the difference between good and great right could maybe like I think it'd be great to to touch on like what's maybe one way you'd do that on the on the d2c side just to inspire like a d2c founder that's that's listening to this to maybe think through customer experience as a key key growth lever for the long term good question i would say the obvious thing is the is the product that we make um and as you can say sometimes it feels like you get that momentum when we launch stuff but it's it's rooted in the in the quality of the product um but yeah there's whether with every parcel that arrives from us there'll be a personalized letter um the we don't really need to do that but it for us it's that's what makes it it's believable it takes it from being uh set of pajamas to a set of pajamas and a letter from father christmas saying dear ollie um the elves have crafted these beautiful charmas for you this christmas um and then the believability all yeah i love that i think it's those little things you mentioned quite a few there like there's the the letter in the the letter in the putting the letter in the freezer yeah the handwritten letters um those tiny little details that are very hard to measure but just like compound aggressively over time i feel like the world would be a much better place if people had that much intention behind the things they put out into into the world and had that level of standards i think it's very hard to and very rare to to find that level of care in in most in most businesses um definitely definitely i can imagine it's hard to then instill it through a team i don't know if that that must be something that you think about like how do you how that culture develops as the business grows because it is it is a challenge right when it as you add more people to any organization yeah yeah definitely um also that it's a great example the letter the box in the freezer because because it's free that's just that it doesn't cost us any more to do that but then again it massively elevates that moment and that's something we've been doing for 15 years and the amount of people that say to me oh my god we put it in the freezer and it's just like yeah it's great um but yeah you're another one i just thought of in terms of econ products is that we've uh we had the app as part of the advent calendar where they have the ar moment of the elves and things like that but then also recording podcasts with products so um whether they're doing a letter writing experience with with each letter they receive a letter from father christmas and then there's that audio component yeah that that will record a voiceover on Mother Christmas and they'll play to them and say, dear small folk, you will have received your letter.

49:53Didn't know you did that. Yeah, yes. So I guess it's quite outside the box, but it's just so much care, so much storytelling. And I think those are the things that really stuck out to me as we've discussed this. storytelling's inbuilt, but the level of attention to detail and care that goes into actually execution is just crazy. Yeah, Yeah, 100%. And to answer your question on the culture, we spend a lot of energy getting people on board with it. So we have our head office up the road from here. There's 50 of us. And yeah, the team do a brilliant job of really spreading the values and really getting people bought into it.

50:38Now it swings the other way. Now there are some people that I'd say are more passionate than me and my parents and brother about it. They know every detail about every character, et cetera. They truly, truly live it. But also we hire 4 ,000 people a year to deliver the live experience. So to get those values installed in them is, yeah, a lot goes into that of sort of standing on the stage and sharing videos with them and content and they receive beautiful packs as they arrive and it's really sort of bringing them on the journey and into the world with us. Yeah, I can imagine that's such an operational challenge and very different hiring a team like that versus an office team, I guess, in terms of the workforce.

51:28Yeah, for sure. I guess it must be easier when it's so tangible, the impact and so like real, the impact you're having on people, I imagine working at those live events and so rewarding in that sense. I imagine that really helps. Yeah, definitely. Well, yeah, as I say, we do our best to get people really excited about it, but it's also not that hard. We are creating magical memories for families that hopefully they'll remember forever. So, yeah, people seem to get excited about it quite easily. We touched on the D2C activation into the US last year and how well that went. um us store activation in new york coming up very soon we're talking about this just before the pod how has that process been it's a big step obviously for the business indeed very exciting um talk me through the yeah the journey from from the top down i guess there yes so yeah the engagement last year with the zero brand awareness was enough to make us think whether we could do a physical activation over there.

52:37And again, that's what we know and love. More so, I think for a lot of probably DTC brands, the thought of taking on a big space in Manhattan and dressing it and making it immersive, it's quite scary. Whereas that's like, piece of cake. Yeah, yeah. That's it. That's a live experience. It's a shop. If you're friends with Facebook, I'll just make you nervous instead. so therefore again i do think about that a it's a brilliant thing to do but leaning into our unfair advantage we've got an in-house production department we can make props we can make costumes um so that we've got carpenters we can do there's a lot we can do and so that made sense but so leaning into a what unfair advantage would be what we're good at um is a physical experience So the hope is that it will be an amazing way to correct the zero brand awareness we had last year and actually bring brand awareness and bring a brilliant glow to the e-com.

53:41but also just let people, as we've spoken about so much today, it's like, it's such an experiential brand that to let people experience that physically in a store and see how we dress things, the smell of it, see some of the characters, interact with them, that should hopefully be special over there. So it felt like the next natural step to go for a Laptopland store and then with America, New York, the Christmas city was very much the obvious candidate. So yeah, no, we've recently been out there and got a short list of locations, really, really brilliant locations. And yeah, no, it couldn't be more more excited to see how it goes this Christmas.

54:36You were walking, when we met up a few months ago, you were walking me through roughly what the demand planning process looks like for for the store i was super fascinated by that maybe speak to that for a moment how are we how are we thinking about stocking up sorry a bit loose yeah yeah yeah i think that i was saying this to my dad yesterday it's that it's such an exciting time for the brand right now because when you're doing things for the first time you just don't know in some ways and that's scary but that's also incredibly exciting because yeah like immediately even next year we'll do this we'll do the store in New York this Christmas we'll all being well do the store next year in Christmas and next year we'll have targets that we need to hit and whereas this year it's all kind of are we going to do x or why it's um it's very very tricky so i have done my absolute best with modeling and footfall and capture rate and marketing boost all that kind of stuff um but it is also it is an incredibly difficult thing so um the strategy has been sort of buy buy as deep as we dare basically um because i do think there is a reasonable chance it goes the other way that we get our content right we catch the algorithms over there, get the right creators down, and then people are queuing and we've undercooked it quite badly.

56:07So that's kind of in the plan. I think approaching a new market, regardless of the model, a lot of the principles carry over to DTC versus experience and retail. Maybe talk through some of the ways in which you're just going to create that awareness for the eventual eventual launch and you've mentioned uh celebs influencer pr what are some of those bigger levers yeah so definitely pr so when i was most recently over there um meeting uh our agency over there that um will do that um pr has been amazing for us over the years um it's really been a vehicle to tell our story um so yes PR and then our content so that uh agency I was mentioning earlier that do a lot of our content here in the UK and we work very very closely with um uh they'll some of those will be coming over um to to shoot the store and And I'll work with my brother on that whole content strategy and what we're doing for that.

57:20But yeah, hopefully a lot of what we do for the live experience really, PR and content, yes, again, with the live experience, what's made it feel like we're, obviously it's been incredibly difficult in a lot of ways, but what has made it feel like we're running downhill sometimes is that what we're offering is something that people really, really want. So celebrities like all those Beckham, Elson John, Tom Hardy, etc., they want to come. They want to give their children that experience. So there hasn't been us really pushing and getting the PR agency to really drive people there. A lot of them just reach out and say, my friend of mine went, this looks amazing, can I come?