The Product-Led Strategy That Rebuilt Hera: Holly Beadle

0:00Holly Beadle:My background is already in product. That was my skill set. That's what I knew what to do. I didn't necessarily know how to be a CEO, even though that was my title.

0:13Welcome back to DTC Diaries, episode 51. And today I'm delighted to be joined by Holly from Hera Clothing. Feels like this has been long overdue. We've been trying to get a date in the calendar for what feels like six plus months. so yeah yeah super excited to have you on thank you for coming down yeah really happy to be here to join us i'm really excited to dig into the journey of of Hera as a brand especially post um acquisition and post you taking up that CEO role um and and a few of your um specialism specialisms especially relative relative to the the when put into context of of our podcast where

0:53Holly Beadle:we spend so much time talking about marketing and front end, but don't give enough air time to products. Being a founder of an e-commerce business is a constant grind, as a lot of our listeners will know. You're the marketer, you're the accountant, you're juggling many, many things. And one of the biggest problems that we see in most e-com brands is cash flow. So let's say you've got an ad campaign that's absolutely crushing, but you don't have the capital to be able to pour more money into it. Or let's say you're about to run out your best-selling product and you needed to restock like yesterday.

1:25We know so many founders that have tried the traditional route. They've gone to banks and been told to come back in a couple of years when they've got more history. Or they go to traditional investors and they spend more time pitching than actually running the business. They thought there was no other option and that funding always meant giving up control. That's where Wayflower come in. They understand the speed and unique needs of e-commerce. They give you the funding you need based on your business's performance, not endless paperwork. And it's non-dilutive financing, which means you don't have to sell a single share of your company.

1:56No one wants to give away their equity and you get to keep all of it, which is something you've worked so hard for. Plus to give you more than just cash, to give you access to insights and analytics so you know how to best spend your newfound capital to drive growth. I think I can speak on behalf of Ollie and I here. so many of the brands we have worked with have used Wayflyer at inflection points within their business to help them scale to multiple eight or even nine figures in revenue. It's not just a loan, it's a partner in growth. So if you're a founder looking to scale up without giving away equity, it's time to check out wayflyer.com in the description below.

2:32Holly Beadle:I guess I can dig into it a little bit with my, but that's my background. So for me, when we took the brand over so we took the the brand was founded like 10 years ago now I guess for anybody who doesn't know um and was a predominantly menswear brand and we acquired the business about four years ago now it was four years in October and it actually yeah 10 the brand was founded 10 years ago in October near enough to the day which is quite strange um so yeah I'll be celebrating like 10th birthday but obviously like fourth birthday in a few weeks for us and my background is is product kind of exactly what you said I have always been I did fashion design at university so always had that kind of love for clothing specifically but product and very quickly realized while I was at uni that I didn't want to design and so I decided I wanted to go into buying and that's when I got my first kind of roll out of uni at flannels was with them for a little bit of time and then actually went into toiletries but it was such like a massive learning curve for me at that point because we it was all around the actual development of the product and putting it putting together so from like an ops perspective I learned a huge amount of the critical path and the supply base and like how it was the best way to plan stock and you know a huge amount of that and I worked it was a very small business and I worked really closely with um the founder and owner and that was her background so I felt like I had a bit I had a mentor there who taught me so much I was really really fortunate and then from that went into Gymshark so I was I mean everybody knows Gymshark um I was one of the first hires outside of I guess like the friends and family uh group that were originally there and um so like nirin who is now ceo of adenola um seb steve hewitt who was eventually kind of became their ceo we kind of all went in at a point where the brand was already seeing like phenomenal growth and we were i guess the skill sets to try and steady the ship and shape out those and allow the growth yeah that was almost not like um happening without trying because obviously the guys did such an incredible job but it was like that no one could keep up yeah with what was happening um and that can kill businesses as quickly as as make them i think so i was there um kind of set up their product team and that that was that was my role and then transferred that over to my protein so you know a huge huge group there but as part of like the hut group and obviously a huge brand my protein's a massive brand um but the clothing element side of it was very very small so we um I again set up that team kind of did a similar thing and allowed the the business to kind of see the growth that it needed to to so I think when when we then acquired Hera my background is already in product so I already that was my skill set that's what I knew what to do I didn't necessarily know how to be a CEO even though that was my title um so I've had to kind of learn around my skill set of kind of product being the thing that I can do very very easily very very well and um when you have a when you're acquiring a brand I think you've you've got to kind of nod to the existing customer but there's obviously a reason why we acquired the brand it was kind of stalling in its evolution I think and we wanted to make sure that we could also then move it on in a in a sustainable in a sustainable way yeah I guess you're buying that potential on that upside right yeah yeah I want to just you touched on each of your previous roles there and And I guess I can imagine, from maybe being in each phase of that growth myself, or seeing brands at those different stages, that close one-to-one engagement with the founder into Gymshark, which I imagine at that time must have been very scrappy.

6:54It must have been a mindset of like, we just make things happen. We solve problems. We do a lot with very little. And then moving maybe into the Hutt Group, which perhaps had more of an org structure and more of a formalized system. Do you think having those very distinctly different experiences has really helped you progress into a CEO role?

7:15Holly Beadle:Definitely. I think having, it's allowed me, because I mean, I'm now co-owner of Hera as well, so own and run the business alongside my sister Georgia. And we, the roles that I've had have almost, they felt almost like I've been owning and running the business as well because I've been Gymshark I was in so early you know it was it was flying so you felt like you were part of this kind of crazy journey even when it was really really early and then you know my protein was definitely was different but we were really fortunate that we were we had the infrastructure you know the um the kind of the the backup of a really big business and a big group but actually the clothing element was we kind of ran on our own and it was almost like it was our own individual little business entrepreneurial almost yeah and i was really fortunate actually to have a lot of kind of one-on-one time in like range reviews and things like that with um matt who obviously founded the whole group and he almost viewed clothing as this real opportunity for growth within my protein overall and wanted to kind of work very closely with kind of me and the team I guess to make sure it was aligned with what he wanted because he was very involved in lots of elements of the group so even though it was a big org it was still quite scrappy great breeding ground for like learning and development though yeah like I feel like when I look at even our business like the guys who have progressed to like c-suite positions that were there really early on just looking at their progression over a short space of time it's been crazy the Hutt group is very very good at that like taking very young talent you know seeing it and promoting it and you know the this kind of the CEO when I when I left the CEO was Lucy Gorman and she was um ceo of my protein and she'd just kind of like flown up through kind of from being i think a graduate there and within like two to three years she was running a 300 400 million pound business i always think when i look at their like talent and like almost their alumni so it's so strong but it must be so frustrating that they're just such a poach like people just poach their staff so aggressively yeah it must be such a difficult business to run in that sense Yeah, and a lot of them also go off and do their own.

9:46Holly Beadle:Because I think they are so entrepreneurial within that kind of organisation that ultimately they're learning and feeding something that then gives them the skill set to be able to go and do it themselves. So it's, you know, in a way it's frustrating for them, but actually they've... It's a testimony to their ability to do that consistently and find those people and develop those people consistently. It's a hard place to work. you know really really like difficult place to work and then you have to give it everything you've got while you're in there um they don't really kind of settle for much less than that so um but you reap yeah yeah 100 which is perfect yeah looking at um here specifically and or hera i was either or either or when you came into to the brand and completed the acquisition and stepped in as ceo like what was your view of how you wanted to take it forward from from where it where it was um you mentioned like retaining some of what it made it yeah it what made it that brand but also like yeah how did you approach evolving it beyond that point so when we took over obviously the business was kind of struggling quite a bit um it had got to a point where it had hit its kind of ceiling of growth and had stayed there um for quite for a good couple of years and i think the The first thing we really noticed when we went in is actually that the customer had been neglected for quite a while, the existing customer.

11:17Holly Beadle:And whether that was just kind of communicating them through customer service or making sure kind of refunds were done on time. You know, the experience that I think customers expect, customers expect a very high level these days. It wasn't really being met. So we obviously we took over in the October and then had Black Friday a month. Baptism and fire. A month later. So our main goal was fighting the fires, really. Implementing some structure where we could, the foundations of kind of processes or systems that we needed for us to then give the customer the level of experience that we believed that they should have.

12:00Holly Beadle:or that was a kind of a best practice in the market. So whether that was just a well-functioning site experience or that they could return the product easily, they could expect their order the next day from us. Like, you know, we wanted to over-deliver because of the way that we felt like it had kind of been left for the start of that year, I would say, definitely. So that was our focus, really. Outside of that, we started to test product, I would say. I actually now, in hindsight, feel like we should have taken a little bit longer to really, we went very big, very quickly. And that's in the same as, you know, the growth we wanted to achieve, the team that we brought in, the, even to the 3PL partner that we've partnered with.

13:00Holly Beadle:we were with black men who are with gymshark and represent and you know some huge huge brands and we then we went very professional very quickly and actually i think what me and georgia talk about now is just allowing some time for things to settle i think when you take a business over obviously you have to keep the kind of the wheels turning um but allowing the time for us to really figure out what we wanted the brand to become we didn't necessarily give ourselves that time we just ran full steam ahead so i think then what's happened is in the last i'd say 18 months specifically we've almost pulled ourselves back again um the range went very big and we tested a lot of product without necessarily knowing why we were trying to test it and I think you have to market that product to be able to sell it and you know learning that budgets don't kind of go that far yeah this in this day and age was um you know we've learned a lot over those the first two years and I think now implemented much more focus in actually the direction that we want to go in with the brand but also then um how that then filters all the way down to the people you hire the partners that you partner with you the the product that you produce the way that you market everything so um i guess the the real answer is we didn't really know what we were going to do um and we had to prioritize what we thought was the the fires at the time um and you know a lot of the we've got some fantastic people around us in terms of like consultancies or um people that have been in these unicorns that have just kind of grown but not necessarily been there from the start and kind of seen maybe how you need to we almost needed to go back to start the brand from scratch in a way um to allow it to have the growth that we wanted it to have makes sense makes sense um and i do think that fashion i always say fashion is such a difficult niche i think it's like the hardest vertical yeah especially in those early stages because every decision you make is can almost be like life or death if you get a collection wrong if you get a stockholder wrong yeah make the wrong investment in a marketing decision yeah and you're you know for stock and development of product if you want to do really good product takes time yeah you have to operate two years in advance we're kind of 12 months really from idea to to launch which is actually relatively quick when you're developing your it's completely your own product obviously you can do things much faster when they're more off the shelf um but we you know you're making those decisions on the brand and then have to six months down the line your vision may have have kind of altered like the path that you want to go on may have altered and you've got to adapt then to where the product the product that's actually kind of coming that you've that you've worked on so yeah constantly tweaking and changing how are you approaching that sort of development cycle from a high level um i think that's something that we haven't really spoke about on on any of our previous episodes like the from sort of research identify identification of opportunity through to to finalize products and even like take to market is that yeah just a is that a fully fleshed out optimized dialed in process yeah we um fortunate to have um platform called wgsn which is just like a trend platform really yeah um so we stick we do stick quite closely to that because it is um i guess everybody thinks that let me give an example like the brown chocolate color that's in every store at the moment just magically happens yeah or butter yellow in some ways my girlfriend was telling me last year that was on wgsn two years ago in terms of like a color that was coming so everybody's kind of following along a similar path and that's how it all comes into the store in every store um as a trend i guess the what something that we've done recently is to actually when when i say kind of pull back we've started to focus less on kind of new categories but actually focus on we say like what we do well do more of what we do well yeah and you know we're we're known for denim as a as a brand um also known you know in the men's space specifically for your logo kind of branded t-shirts and hoodies and kind of more of that oversized fit so but the brand was founded on denim and we have really lent in into that definitely on the on the women's side because i mean women's wear didn't really exist within the brand before we took it over and we wanted to align the men's and the women's product even though they're kind of separate socials almost they feel like separate brands um because to market to men and women you have to do things very differently um but still those product areas we we basically picked like three categories and we were like they're the categories that we're going to focus on we're a small business we've got a small budget we've got to do those really really well and almost at the end of it the customer has to know us for those three categories one at least but hopefully all three um so i would say that's you can have the research element to support you but there's also a real um uh really it's really important to make sure that you focus on the things that are actually going to give you a point of difference in the market when it comes to clothing we we take the research we'll take the trends and then it's kind of translating them into actually what's going to work for our customer um and also what we can feel like we can truly be involved in at the size of brand because it's great to think that we can do everything but it all costs money costs money to buy the product yeah it costs money to market the product so that's why we've kind of pulled back so much i guess to to focus yeah i saw on one of your previous episodes that i watched prior to this like that just you reiterated a phrase that we always speak about internally to to brands because we we work with many brands in that sort of early to mid phase of growth yeah and it's that i did that just that concept of doing less better just like constantly and i think it's that founder mindset it takes a lot of restraint to not do new things yeah it's dopamine it's just like the fun like new things and you we talk about like the 80 20 rule yeah when you're kind of developing product for us like majority of brands you know there's some really big brands out there doing fantastic things in our categories but the majority of their revenue is going to be coming from hero skews like a small small range and obviously you don't want the revenue to be coming from one product because there's a huge risk in that you're gonna you've got to kind of diversify into probably over a few categories but in a similar um in a similar range and that's where you can drive you know your your margin and your relationships with suppliers and um really unlock some of the things that are actually going to make the business p &l work um whereas that kind of 20 percent of newness nice exciting different colors different fits that might be the thing that grabs the attention it's i always say there's um someone you say it's like the red handbag versus the black you get the attention with the red handbag and the woman's going to buy the black yeah makes sense yeah and i guess that do you do you look at that through obviously you mentioned that and i think you can you can see from the outside looking in that the brand has a very like strong and distinct identity and a quite a loyal following across customers certainly now that i imagine you've developed with the work you've put in since taking over the brand do you find that when you're looking at product development you're thinking through the lens of like acquisition versus retention driver um or do you see any like differences in how things play out there yeah i think i get it's exactly that rule of the 80 20 because you're trying to you know maybe i mean from a menswear perspective our brand was known for the super spray on skinny jeans which i'm not sure many people would be kind of dead in now but you know there's been such an evolution of what that customer's wearing um we still sell them and they still sell so there's there's people that are buying them and and are still kind of in that in that era and are comfortable with it but our customer has definitely evolved like to a slim or a relaxed or you know they're not necessarily to a carpenter baggy kind of level now um yet but i think you know we are there to kind of open their eyes you know if they trust us and they've they've worn our slim fit for for four years now they're probably going to come to us to start to wear something a little bit more relaxed and that they're seeing people around in and they're kind of thinking oh do i want to try it so our slim fit is our best seller that's what kind of like is our core revenue driver but our relaxed and then our carpenter are the is the 20 that we start to feed in and hopefully we get it right and as our customer moves in that direction or even a new customer may be acquired through those new products um as well but we we make sure that we're kind of offering something that might kind of grab their attention to i guess it's both retention um because they could be existing and be on their journey with us but then there is a new an acquisition level of where the market is moving.

23:41Makes sense. Makes sense. I guess just before we switch gears, if you're like a brand owner watching, like what, I always want to try and leave with like actionable takeaways that they can implement into their business from like a product development perspective. Have you got like any three like key tips or nuggets that people can take forward

24:03Holly Beadle:that may help their process or just allow them to make better decisions i guess i would always um we always develop more and produce less so constantly be developing new products new ideas to kind of have in your back pocket i think when you you never know when you're going to want to kind of switch something on and that means you can be a little bit more agile but make sure that you've kind of got your core in work and kind of they're the things that you know are going to kind of be the cash drivers and the and the things in your back pocket will probably more be an opportunity um so i definitely say the the focus on those on those things and kind of the over development and then go with a bit more focus i your suppliers are so unbelievably important as a small business and I think gone are the days of just drilling down on price and getting exactly what you want for one order and then because it's a very small world and you will run out of people who will produce for you very very quickly um really I've built some incredible relationships the people that I work with at Gymshark I'm still working with today and they've kind of come with me you know into my protein and still do business for my protein and you know and then have kind of come along the hera journey as well and you know you you it's a two-way thing you have to make sure that you're giving them as much as they're going to give you because you never know when you're going to need them whether that's a I really need this product really quickly can you put me ahead of whoever it is on the line or um when they might need you with maybe a pricing increase or a payment slightly earlier you know things like that that you can support each other on so I would say kind of focus on your range suppliers and the product is the thing that's going to get the customer to come back if the customer has receives a product it might be like the most sought after thing in the market if they get the product and it's not great if it washes once and the colors run or the print starts to peel off or crack or something like that or it doesn't quite fit right or the fabric feels cheap they're just not going to come back to you so i'd say focus on actually creating a product that you'd want to wear i think six months down the line i think both the supplier piece and that relational aspect is i think is is so important um a lot of our best brands are the ones that have that and have been able to to build the most like flexibility or maybe flexibility is the wrong word but it's support i think yeah the ability yeah support the other way yeah as well as um yeah to to give them the ability to maybe capitalize on demand when it comes out of nowhere or plug a gap if they have an issue with another supplier and then on the product the the product experience i just think is is is so true i feel like brands sweat like the one percent retention plays in crm which are important but yeah and don't spend enough time just obsessing over like how is this going to show up at someone's door yeah how does that because that's the biggest driver of ltv yeah like how is it going to wash how is it going to iron how is it you know all of those things that you just is a seam going to split is it it's those things that actually will get a customer to come but actually first they'll feel great in the product when they put it on but second it will actually last and then they'll feel like they've got value for the hard earned money that they've spent um and i just think you to have a long-term brand that grows and involves and establishes itself you've got to have that otherwise you're just a flash in the pan 100 percent um i think that is that almost a residual base of repeat revenue is just so important more important now than it ever has been yeah acquisitions getting harder and harder and it builds that also builds that word of mouth as well like a customer you know someone who feels great in it and it's washed well they're gonna go like tell their friend you know that yeah actually like i've had this for a while now it still feels like brand new yeah i always think it's interesting to get like i like to take a look at brands like referral traffic like direct referral traffic is that increasing month on month there's like a measure of like are we just doing good and and like are we seeing this this organically spread yeah definitely um and i think yeah that product side is just so important in that i wanted to ask a couple of questions on that intersection of like products and marketing um certainly feels from our viewpoint that product development release schedules and timelines are accelerating like brands are trying to get more into market um i across all categories whether that's like supplement brands um athletics greens who have been known for doing one skew for years yeah a couple more flavors huel bringing out greens it's like there's this category diversification and velocity of releases just seems to be increasing i feel like in some orgs It's like that intersection between taking products and really executing our marketing well is becoming quite a point of friction.

29:39How do you guys do that well in Perra?

29:43Holly Beadle:We definitely learned, like I said, we made that decision to kind of pull back and really focus on specific categories. And a big part of that was because we just felt like we couldn't do the launch justice. Like so much goes into developing the product And, you know, if you're not talking about it and delivering that message, then ultimately how are people going to find it and be able to sell? And I think you've, it is a real, it's a real bottleneck. And I think it's, it feels like a little bit of a waste because there's obviously some great product out there that gets very lost. And that actually we've seen, we've definitely seen it and we're like, well, it's a great product.

30:30Holly Beadle:why hasn't it worked it hasn't had enough air time to to you know get it out in front of eyes to in such a saturated market allow it to give it have a have a chance um it's like compounding that you need to give it a time time to like compound learnings from creative from messaging perspective often don't you feel like and i think there's always ultimately there's always a new customer you know unless you're completely you've completely saturated your territory let's say in the uk and there's obviously so many people that are in your market that could be buying your product that even if you're repeating the same message if you've got a great product you can sell that to someone new yeah so it's almost some i think sometimes um kind of on like a brand marketing team they want the new and exciting to talk about and actually don't necessarily realize that that core product is new and exciting to someone yeah because they might have never seen it before they probably haven't seen it before yeah going back and thinking like how can we sell this to maybe a different persona or a different angle yeah to a different identity um i think is yeah do it again it goes back to doing less better i guess rather than just chasing volume if you're selling millions of a legging as an example versus like if you're selling thousands of a legging you've not you've got a lot more customers in your bank that you could you could acquire if you're selling millions i understand that you've then got to kind of start to diversify because there's only a certain amount of times that someone's going to buy a black legging as an example um you know and you start to go into different styles or different colors or um even different territories like in terms of like geography you know there's there's that as well yeah i heard and again reference to the podcast i said i heard that's a big focus for you guys yeah yeah how's that journey been in terms of so only i guess only kind of just getting started really we don't see a huge amount of um organic growth in another territory kind of like out performing any of the others if that makes sense so we're majority uk and that has been our focus for the last since we took the brand over and i think we're at a point where we feel confident in the brand the product we've kind of got all of our ducks in a row that then to enter a not enter a new market because we are in we we sell globally but to actually give it some focus and put some investment behind it whether that's from kind of a paid perspective or a um activation perspective influences or anything like that um we wanted to make sure we felt comfortable first with actually what we were um i go into the story we were going to tell and the brand we were going to deliver to that to that customer and also make sure that the experience that they were going to have like i said we worked really hard in the beginning to make sure that we had a really great fulfillment partner and we had a great returns partner and our website is decent we want that customer in another territory to have the same experience so not have their parcel stopped at customs and go through the headache of trying to like sort all of that not be surprised at checkout with a ridiculously high delivery fee things like that so it's taken a little bit of time to cross all those t's dot the i's and um i feel like we're in a we're in a good position now to kind of push forward with some of those should become so much more challenging with all the brexits post-brexit hasn't it it's just such and everything in the us as well at the moment you know it's um you know we've actually switched off um the u.s as a market not it wasn't big for us it's not a big impact but all down to that customer journey of what is the customer going to experience now with our product going in there and having to pay duties and taxes if they're not aware of that um and it's hard because we've had customers email in saying i can't buy from you anymore like what can i do and i'm like we need to figure out how first how to give you that experience that you had before again yeah it's just been such a feature of this year it's just a lot of our brands have done the same just had to kill the market until we can find a better way to re-enter yeah being a founder of an e-commerce business is a constant grind as a lot of our listeners will know you're the marketer you're the accountant you're juggling many, many things.

35:08And one of the biggest problems that we see in most econ brands is cash flow. So let's say you've got an ad campaign that's absolutely crushing, but you don't have the capital to be able to pour more money into it. Or let's say you're about to run out your bestselling product and you needed to restock like yesterday. We know so many founders that have tried the traditional route. They've gone to banks and been told to come back in a couple of years when they've got more history. Or they go to traditional investors and they spend more time pitching than actually running the business. They thought there was no other option and that funding always meant giving up control.

35:40That's where Wayflower come in. They understand the speed and unique needs of e-commerce. They give you the funding you need based on your business's performance, not endless paperwork. And it's non-dilutive financing, which means you don't have to sell a single share of your company. No one wants to give away their equity and you get to keep all of it, which is something you've worked so hard for. Plus to give you more than just cash, to give you access to insights and analytics so you know how to best spend your newfound capital to drive growth. I think I can speak on behalf of Ollie and I here.

36:10So many of the brands we have worked with have used Wayflyer at inflection points within their business to help them scale to multiple eight or even nine figures in revenue. It's not just a loan, it's a partner in growth. so if you're a founder looking to scale up without giving away equity it's time to check out wayflyer.com in the description below that conversation around new markets is a nice segue on to growth in general how have you seen the marketing mix develop for the brand since acquisition um i guess it's quite a broad question but um yeah and i like have you seen any like big winners big losers in terms of like channel splits in that time or is it relatively similar

36:55Holly Beadle:i would i'd say we at the beginning we've had a lot of changing from like a marketing perspective whether that was we had a kind of a paid agency that we inherited at the start um we then moved to a different agency we then took it back in house we then we're now kind of working with a consultant but he's kind of more um within the business than um out of the business if that kind of makes sense so a little bit of a best of both um so i think because of that the channel mix has evolved with the focus um we've we definitely had a bigger reliance on paid very early on and one of the other things that we really realized was more the profitability around the revenue and really focusing on actually well you can you can spend whatever you want ultimately but actually what are you going to get back from that and not necessarily chasing the growth number chasing the profitability number um and that has been definitely over the last 12 to 18 months we've seen some real kind of step changes of efficiency being so much better on paid um and it's altered our channel mix definitely because of that as well definitely less reliant on paid specifically um the the organic channels i think with the focus and the um clear kind of brand identity that's been built on socials has supported social channel um so it's definitely going in the right direction um but it takes a really long time to to switch from a heavy reliance on paid to less of a reliance and more kind of through crm or social um or even just kind of organic organic search it's um it's a longer journey than you think that it's going to be so yeah i mean it's moving in the right direction for us and it's been really positive um but it's uh yeah it's a it's a long journey yeah definitely i think that that you've that that switch from top line growth to bottom line profit is a big focus is is it's something we've done as a business as well it just changes your all-even decision making yeah completely i think it's been a function of the market over the last few years with that shift from heavy funding to yeah it's a real profit focus but also we you know paid digital marketing is not kind of my skill set but the the back end of the business sits under under me so actually that I mean that kind of it didn't originally and it's one of the biggest things that you spend your money on as a business is basically paid marketing and stock yeah those are the two big numbers every single month and we weren't kind of getting enough of what we needed to so I actually being kind of slightly more of the commercial mind out of myself and George and my sister she's chief brand officer so she'll look more she looks more after the creative and the front end I actually took the the paid exec that we had under kind of my reporting and worked with her really closely and kind of, I guess, like learn what it was.

40:24Holly Beadle:You know, it wasn't in my skill set, learn and asked a lot of stupid questions. And over those kind of six months of really working with her really closely, we really kind of have seen the efficiency improvements of going for quality and efficiency on that bottom line rather than just spending to get the growth yeah i think that it's really interesting that you've made that change at an org chart level because i think that we see where we can whether it's us or whether it's within a brand that we maybe support the closer that those the commercial or the financial function can work with the acquisition function yeah we almost the better the result usually yeah more the better the feedback loop the more granular that that is i think as well it's a benefit that I have a bit more of like a helicopter view and you know there's an element of the creative side in there from a product perspective and I could see things that were coming from a product or I could question why we were putting a specific ad out like why wasn't that working well you know we're not we're not tapping into anything that a human wants in that ad so there's no reason why they're going to click on it unless um you know you're giving something that's going to grab their attention you know so there was there was quite a good mix i think of then behind that the commercial mark the commercial side of things looking after the p &l and the accounts and knowing what we're spending every single month yeah um really makes you especially when it's your own business you question everything that you're spending um when you're going through that kind of growth journey especially 100 % yeah so you've recently done well over the last sort of 12 months done a variety of bigger influencer collaborations uh Rachel Daly and Matt Armstrong being the two that I noted down specifically yeah how have you found that um to go is that how many have you done now have you seen significant variations in performance any learnings yeah some very different kind of very different learnings um very different levels of performance none of them have been um specifically kind of sale return kind of driven um very much everybody that we've partnered with is more from a brand awareness perspective um when we we We decided to work with Rachel.

43:00Holly Beadle:We'd launched our women's wear collection. And also, like, I spoke, I've spoken a little bit about where the brand was at. And we wanted to really establish trust within the brand again and equity in the brand, I think. So partnering with someone who, you know, in the female space as well, but also, you know, in women's football has seen substantial growth. It was a growth kind of market. She was a growth name in a sense, but also a real kind of pioneer in advocating for women, advocating for the people that are going to kind of follow her. and it really aligned with who me and Georgia are behind the scenes I guess and also gave us the ability to establish a bit of a stamp of trust on the brand especially from a women's perspective and so from a also from a male's perspective as well.

44:03Holly Beadle:Our kind of partnership with matt so we we aren't actually officially kind of in partnership with them um with matt himself um he loves the product he loves her um perfect he's worn it loads and you know we really appreciate the them and the guys the whole team are fantastic we actually then got into partnership with their his merch brand so hwbt is his kind of clothing brand and he'd um partnered with someone else um i think struggled with kind of the supply chain side of things and they really wanted to just do what they do really well sell sell the products awareness build the brand um didn't want the headache of what comes with working with suppliers and developing product and he loved our product and the team approached us to produce their merch in kind of collaboration so it's it's hwbt but it's supplied by hera so it's all of our our t-shirts our hoodies are kind of labels to an extent they're just it's our product with his design on um which has been really great it's uh it's kind of bought i guess the two teams together we're actually doing a Herra and HWBT collaboration next month, which is really exciting.

45:33Holly Beadle:And yeah, we're just very aligned as kind of brands of where we want to go and especially kind of our male customer as well. So it's a real kind of, it's an interesting partnership because it's not kind of an official one between the two brands. Sounds like there's a lot of depth to that though, which I think is almost like how I see a lot of the best partnerships work almost. It's like that depth. We really kind of want to support each other. I think like we do things from the product side and, you know, take those headaches away and can deliver a service. Obviously, they're purchasing the goods from us.

46:10So it's, you know, we're achieving sales in that way,

46:16Holly Beadle:but we're also giving them great quality product that they're not going to get the returns on, that they can, you know, work with our team. And then vice versa, they're very supportive when, you know, we have launches and, you know, we did a collaboration with Pepsi earlier in the year as well. You know, we sent literally a car full of Pepsi cans. um matt's one of matt's favorites is cherry cherry pepsi sent him like literally a car for a very nice car of um pepsi with the hoodie in and um you know he was really supportive and you know got the hoodie on and and is uh yeah it's a really nice it's a really nice partnership between the two of us and you know who knows where it can go as well where do you see like looking forward maybe into the end of this year in 2026 where do you see like the biggest opportunity for further growth across the channel mix is there anything you're really hanging your hat on in terms of a strategy that you're able to share i guess that maybe is yeah we've seen incredible growth on our women's denim so we are honing in on that we've got some really great product coming that's going to feed into that category um so from a product perspective i think that is really kind of where where we're focusing from a women's side on the men's side it's we're within the categories that we've already got equity in um so there's building on that with kind of new designs and new fits over the kind of autumn winter season um i guess the biggest element of growth outside of kind of the new the new year on year for women's will most likely be territory i think it will be kind of focusing on some of those those other markets that we're kind of dipping our toe in at the moment and pushing into those and seeing what kind of what clicks nice you mentioned i want to get on to kind of team and culture because i think there's got some really interesting questions to ask there but final final question with with us coming up towards black friday i think we'll be like maybe six seven weeks away from the chaos very long yeah i wanted to ask a question because i think it's um certainly one of the areas that we see brands go wrong but how are you retaining that like focus on efficiency and profitability into that period because yeah i think where we always see i think one of the things that brands become super susceptible to even over that period more than ever is that obsession with revenue and overspending and then coming to the end of the month and looking at the pnl and being like yeah where's all where's all your returns come back in january as a compound's issue and the ltv cohorts less it's a it's a i mean january is a really tough month and it's everything so in you know you're looking at a pnl it's then you your vat bill comes at that point it's it's all of those things that you just you have to be really really conscious of you've got to be able to pay for um and we we definitely have like ambitious targets for black friday but i feel like it's more of an opportunity for us you know there's there's an element of you're able to clear through some products that um you know frees up storage space and allows you to kind of have the the the stock target at the end of the year that you want to have um it's it's good for pieces like that and you know maybe that's acquiring customers that maybe necessarily wouldn't buy into you at a full price um moment but we do see them being really valuable further down the line as well especially if that product's not bad product it's just the end of the season or it's a couple of colors that were in a couple of seasons ago that you know we've still got a few pieces of so the product's not bad and they're still going to have that same experience um we really kind of focus more on what we can do in the well this year specifically is really what we can do within the market at that time to create awareness with the brand because everybody's looking to shop it's like this surge in everybody's mind goes to I'm going to spend my money and if we can kind of do some slightly different things in a from like a brand or creative marketing perspective or even from a paid perspective to get more eyes on the business when appetite is high or intent is high then you know acquiring that customer at that time and still delivering the experience that they're expecting you know we we switch off next day because we don't want customers to be disappointed we kind of but pretty much all orders are delivered next day or um and that comes back to your partner as well so if you're with a fantastic fulfillment partner who can actually deliver on the on the growth that you're going to see um it works so yeah i would say we're not kind of obsessing over the the number that we can bring in it's more how can we capitalize on the moment in the that's happening in the industry yeah it makes a lot of sense like thinking really strategically from from what you need to achieve yeah than just yeah i think that's i think there's more maturity around that and yeah brands now than there was maybe a few years ago yeah yeah sorry i think it's like some brands kind of can kind of go completely opposite and go we're not going to participate yeah because it becomes too much of a reliance and you want to hit those numbers every single year and um i think it's just doing it in a slightly more measured way there's a there's a there can be a middle ground that you can use it to strategically try and do what you need it to do for your business and that's going to be different for everybody 100 % it's also just getting longer it's like there's a there's some saturday to google sent something over to the other day and it was like super saturday or something i was like i know where's that come from i know there's just days and don't it's like what else can they add into the calendar singles day from china that we've now capitalized on yeah which is another one um well yeah um i wanted to touch on obviously um your role within the team and i guess the culture that you've built in the business um how many people are you up to now 12 12 yeah I had 12 down but I didn't know if you hired somebody between me getting that information 12 I think um how have you approached I guess that org build out and and then the the culture um within the team and the business it's something we obsess around in our business it's culture and team development um yeah so I think I I've mentioned it a little bit but going I felt we did go very kind of big very quickly um and I think through that process you you learn who's right who's not right what it is it the right seat or the right person and there's just not kind of a fit between those um so we've definitely had some learnings and I think with the size of business we are we've not necessarily now anyway don't necessarily hire for specific skill set we hire more for attitude ethic like who do i want in the trenches with me next to me when we're gonna be black friday goes wrong do you know what i mean like it's those people that are going to if I ask something of them that is a little bit crazy they're gonna go yeah of course like how do we do it what do you need me to do scrappy we always use the words it always comes back for us we're trying to find a better word for it because it doesn't sound right but just like scrappy people yeah I think it's just built people who have it built into them to just make things get stuff done and solve problems yeah and it's a it's a yes I just I'm not really sure like how to do that it's not going to work and ultimately those people don't kind of fit I think it's taken us I've heard a lot of kind of leaders in business you know have learned that journey and almost it's the higher fast fire faster type mentality of you have to figure out who you're what your business is and who are the people that you need and I think it feels like a journey that most kind of CEOs or founders go on and it's almost like you have to go on it to realize it in a weird way yeah but you need to see enough examples of good and bad yeah to build a reference point yeah this is especially when it's not in your skill set as well and I think that's why I refer to me and George are saying actually now we wish we'd given ourselves like a little bit of time to understand the business but that's actually understanding what roles we needed what what does it take to um you know we actually had our our crm exec um left actually to go traveling kind of last year and georgia took on crm and it was actually one of the best things she said that she's done in the business because she actually learned how and why and what we needed to do she didn't she wasn't trained in it but and we had some support from kind of um consultancies as well just to kind of make sure that things were kind of happening um but it's almost like that's what we wish we'd done so at least we had a frame of like reference of who we were bringing in what was great what their skill set was um and actually that it's maybe not that important to have a have crazy high skill set at the size of business that we are but actually a person that's just going to be like yeah i'll do whatever you need me to do is so much more valuable at this stage.

56:46Makes sense. Do you foresee any shifts or changes in how you're building out the team and the org with AI in mind? It's a big topic for us. It's a big topic for everybody. But is it something you're utilizing a lot? Is it something that you expect to...

57:02Holly Beadle:Yeah, we do utilize, but in a very basic way, I would say at the moment. But it is becoming part of our teams every day. um you know using chat gpt you know using the resources that are out there to make us all more efficient um sense check you know just add that level of um something that would take a person a really long time we you know obviously you can now do in a matter of seconds or minutes um in a lot of cases I think we will be looking to kind of see how it can really support the business from like a headcount perspective you know being a small business we do need to be as lean as we possibly can and you know our team all of our team wear multiple hats it's then their role isn't just one area of the business or one channel um and it's seeing how ai can support them to be able to do more in in other areas that their ai can't support in so um whether that's within kind of cs and really kind of ramping up how ai is going to support that area of the business are we've got fantastic people in cs so they can then put their skill set into other areas that you know may actually drive um hopefully drive more revenue yeah i think cs is a really interesting one because it's like it's not there to replace the team but it's there to or like it's easy to sort of see how it automates a lot of the yeah niggly repetitive yeah 80 of the tickets that just can be yeah whipped in and whipped out with a quick response and then gives them time to go deeper on really changing someone's experience that makes them into like an advocate yeah i think is really interesting selfish question because it's something i'm trying to do better myself at the moment but like what is a typical day for you as like a ceo and how are you looking how are you structuring that to be super effective oh a typical day if there is a typical day probably yeah I don't think it's a typical day um but I I think the I guess the biggest learning I've had since becoming a CEO is to focus on the things that you physically have to be involved in so I also I've got um I'm a mum of two and I had my daughter she's just turned one so I had my first little boy he was six months old when we acquired the business and then I have yeah had my my second a year ago you know I didn't necessarily have I I was fortunate to be on mat leave when we acquired the business and very quickly came off it um and then having my second I didn't really get any mat I didn't really have mat leave um it was my own business and um but what I did have to do was go like seriously what do you have to be involved in because I had to have a bit of time to recover and you know bring my baby up um you know and I think I had around four months of not physically being in the business and then came back in kind of full time but I was still available I made sure it was like certain times or specific things I had to almost wouldn't happen without me and that was more when you're forced to do it it becomes very clear on what those things are and And for me, that is spending time on the strategy and where we're going with Georgia.

1:01:06Holly Beadle:The more time that we spend together as kind of co-owners and leaders of the business, the better the business is. and the more time we spend on um you know figuring out having two heads looking at what product we've got coming what range um what our website looks like what our performance is on on from a channel split what um brand activations we've got going on we have an incredible way of getting a better result when we're together and i yeah i mean i honestly don't know what i would do without having her by my side through the journey with it and i that's how i've um started to now structure my time is those things that are really important that kind of almost can't happen without me and delegate as much else as you possibly can there's still things that come in you know you have people off you have at the moment i've got most of my product team off so my product head i'm the one with the experience i step back into to kind of support and keep that ticking over but it's just the nature of a small business and a team yeah really really interesting i think that that what you've just said there is like that difference between like being busy versus effective as well yeah that's really difficult sometimes to to retain that because everything can feel like it needs attention yeah all the times i was listening to a podcast um a few weeks ago and and the guy was talking about like focus versus noise and he was like the the incredible visionary kind of entrepreneurs of our time like a steve jobs or um you know are able to shut out the noise and focus on the vision ultimately but what they're trying to achieve and the more that you can do that the more that you know he was saying like jobs was at like a 90 percent of shutting out all the noise but you know he was also saying like the noise is your family your friends your social media your um and and it's almost like if it's not going to fuel your vision then it's noise and it's a really difficult thing especially when you do you become a parent like none of my team um have kids so to my decision of whether I stay in the business or go home at like four o 'clock is literally whether I see my children or not and you you really have to make sure that you are efficient with that time that you have um so the best best possible forcing function in life I guess yes kids they sure are yeah i guess that like steve jobs been 90 i think when you've i think everyone would say he was probably a bit too yeah that's it it's like it's very i guess that's an introspective decision isn't it like what what yeah what's that right what's right for you there's only going to be a few of those people like i think um i think the guy was actually saying like elon musk is almost at 100 and it's like it's like nothing else matters and and you know those those people will have the friends that they have have the family that they have you know you can't can't do it all you can't have it all if you're going to be kind of that focused on something but it's more kind of saying the more that you can do the more you're going to kind of achieve in that so hopefully with some balance in there as well yeah definitely um perfect well final final thing i wanted to touch on was i guess looking forward um and it's i have down what what's the vision for here over the next three to five years which is a very big question but um yeah how are you thinking about taking the brand forward and um establishing it um within the category where do you want to get to over the next few years i feel like we um are at a really good point where, like I said, we feel more comfortable now, like comfortable enough to be going into different markets.

1:05:25Holly Beadle:I would hope that within the next, you know, three, five years that we become more established in some other territories to the UK and see some good growth there. And also I think within, you know, it's going to be continuing to establish ourselves in the UK as well. um i think we've got a really good opportunity within the women's wear side of the business that there isn't many brands kind of doing women's wear in a really real way in that more of the um independent everyday clothing space you've got your high street stores you've got your kind of um there's a couple of kind of other brands in that space but i think there's that's a really good opportunity for for us to create something that feels very kind of personal and real um to our to our customer and that's where we're seeing the green shoots at the moment um i think the men's side of the business is really now we feel like we've really found where our customer is and what products they want is really delivering that and building on that growth to more consumers, I think, within the UK.

1:06:44And then, yeah, you don't know what's going to happen

1:06:47Holly Beadle:alongside the territory growth. Hopefully we'll have some more in real life moments there as well. And the team are working really hard to make that happen for the rest of this year within the UK. But it's exciting. It feels like the world's our oyster. We can do whatever we want to do. Super exciting. I think the women's expansion of women's revenue, was it over 30 %? Yeah. Yeah. It's getting more towards that kind of 40%. I mean, depends on the month. If we have a fantastic women's wear launch, it can get to the 50%. But our denim year on year is just phenomenal growth on women's. It's crazy.

1:07:32Exciting.

1:07:32Holly Beadle:Something we can't keep in stock, which is great. Good problems are in some ways. Good or bad. until you have it tell the team i'm like you give me that problem to solve guys i don't mind solving that problem yeah definitely yeah well yeah thank you very much for coming i personally really enjoyed speaking to you thanks for having me through a lot of a lot of very different things to normal so thank you um where can people where can people find you uh obviously heraclothing.com that's the website uh i do have an instagram um i kind of have a a work one that's just holly beadle you'll find it if you search that perfect thank you very much thank you on the next episode guys thank you