Rob Abrahams and Rob Green: Co-founders of COAT

0:00Welcome to the Jazz Shapers podcast from Mishkondorea. What you're about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM. However, the music has been cut due to rights issues. The world's greatest jazz, soul and blues. From the world's greatest artists. This is Jazz FM. Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss. In partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with a musician shaping jazz soul and blues. My guests today are Rob Abrahams and Rob Green, two Robs for the price of one, co-founders of Coat, the climate-positive paint company.

0:41I never thought I'd say that, but I just did. Having met while working as marketing interns at BMW, as they say, basically washing posh cars for a year, the friends' careers took them in different directions with Rob Abrahams marketing luxury brands and high-growth tech, and Rob Green, a project manager at Show & Williams, the largest paint company in the world. But having spent their 20s and early 30s moving house and seeing many half-used paint pots, and you've seen some of those too, and the paint industry's lack of care for the environment, Rob & Rob saw an opportunity to challenge the status quo and make paint more accessible and sustainable.

1:13Launching Coat in 2020, they put money raised from friends and family towards a little unit in Camberley, a couple of paint machines and some stock, and then they began experimenting. Coat is the first B Corp certified climate positive paint company with raw materials all sourced in the UK and their water-based, low-toxin, low-odour coat range made entirely to order, avoiding waste and overproduction. Rob Abrahams, Rob Green are here with me, looking at me straight in the eye. And it's great because they're just both called Rob, so I can get it completely wrong and I won't know anything. But you and I, we know, the three of us know.

1:45We know the right ones. Absolutely. Thanks for having us along. Absolutely. Pleasure. So that is the voice of Rob Green. Hello. Hello. And this is the voice of Rob Abrahams. Rob Abrahams, yeah. Excellent. Who is the other one? Yeah, exactly. Who is the other one? Yeah, who's Rob 1 and Rob 2? Just depends. Keep it fluid, don't we? Who leads on what? Good question. So we kind of cut the cake in half really well. So I'm sales and marketing, and your operations and paint, that's kind of how it's been since the start. From day one on the whiteboard, cut it in half, and that's what we enjoy, and that's what we've sort of stuck to, isn't it?

2:17Was it two mates looking for an idea, or was it an idea that found two mates? okay interesting yeah so i mean we've been friends for a long time and you know throughout throughout the years you always have those conversations in the pub don't you what could you what could you look at how could you like try something out and i think it's just a bit of serendipity coming together at the right time is when we actually sort of chose to take the plunge with with cope um it was the first one that felt like our both of our skill sets made sense but we'd kind of discussed other stuff but what other stuff have you discussed do you remember I mean, there's quite a lot.

2:52Even various levels of seriousness. I think we probably, both of us, throughout school life and university, have always done bits and bobs on the side. So a bit of, you know, whether it's selling products, setting up websites, whatever it might be. So we always had that little bit of, I guess, that flair and interesting business. I tried to replace the CV. That's what I was doing before. Yes. And what was the idea? It's called off paper. So the idea, it's a very big, lofty idea, which I still stand by, which was that CVs are a terrible way to represent a human but we still use bits of paper so I decided it should be all about psychometric profiling and kind of matching people to come it was big, I couldn't quite make it into a thing but we were looking at different things and painting our houses and all these kind of things it was the first one where I was like you know paint I know sales and marketing and growth makes some sense so it sounds like there was openness between the two of you to do something and then timing is really important in this right because if you rob g yes were were in and you were in the paint business at the time if you happen to be really into it but then you rob on the other side rob a were like well yeah that's great but i'm i'm really loving what i do right now this wouldn't have happened so was there a magic little moment i mean when you obviously you said let's try and do this but why was it right for both of you in that moment well it was born out of the personal experience of going through the colour choice and paint buying process.

4:18So both of us were going through our first homes, renovating, sort of starting young families and just didn't enjoy the experience that we were having going into retailers. And at the same time, back then, 2020, you could get a sofa the next day, you could get your Deliveroo in half an hour. Ah, the heady days of COVID. Was this just when the pandemic had started? It had started. Yes. We didn't launch a business until the sort of end, so September 2020, but we started working together like Q2, middle of the year, mid-pandemic. It's a paint company. So just give me the... But I don't think I've interviewed many people that have founded paint companies, but it's with a difference because two young people, you are young, well, you're ish, two young people, young families going through that whole thing, and then you've created something that you couldn't find in the market.

5:14Just give me the description of Coke from your own mouth. Do you both say the same thing? Are you both highly polished? It's a good test, mate. Let's go for Rob G first. For us, it's curating that experience. So it's such a personal thing, choosing color and creating the space in your home, which is what we went through when we were first trying to renovate and create a space for a young family. that we really wanted to help people curate that experience and make it easier for people. And we find a lot of our customers just don't have the time or find it difficult to visualize. So that was the area where we thought, do you know what, Coat can step in here and really help people inspire and go on that decision-making journey to find the color that they like and then live it and love it.

6:00So that's what a lot of our customers are getting out of Coat. It's just a real great feeling and experience that they can live with. And where do both of your design aesthetics come from? Because if you do go to the website, it doesn't look like, you know, you're not looking, you don't look like a manufacturer. You look like someone who is part of the design experience. And, you know, even your, again, I'm massively into typeface. Your typeface is interesting. Yeah, very deliberate from day one. Thank you. Very, very interesting. I don't know what it is, but you can tell me unless you've made your own one.

6:28No, it's a bespoke one. It is a bespoke one, right. So I couldn't quite place it, which is why, because it's bespoke. But even just your, it's very open. you've thought about space which again websites which normally sell stuff are full of stuff this is the opposite I think that's kind of the point to what Rob was saying you describe us as a paint company we don't think we sell paint so the idea of selling paint is you go to a store and you grab a tin of something off the shelf we realised quite early on based on our own experience that people are looking for something else they're looking for a feeling or they've been inspired by something, there's an aspirational side to building a home.

7:07So we treat the business much more as a lifestyle brand than a paint retailer. There are plenty of paint retailers, but I think if you're buying coat, you're looking for something different. Otherwise, just go down to the store and grab one off the shelf. And then the colors, all these colors and the names of them, where does all the ideas come from? Is it from you, Rob G., Mr. Product? Yeah, so the colours come from a combination of trend analysis and generally our feeling of the team, we've got such a supportive and amazing group of people that we've all brought together that have joined us on the journey and have come with us some really talented people that help us on the colour decision making.

7:45And then once we've got that selection, we've gone through, we've done the testing, we've got this colour palette that we love in some really useful scales that make it easy for people to choose. Then you go to the naming. The question that people are always asking is, how do you name these? and that's just a bit of fun to be. Well, I remember just as you were talking, I was thinking about Thea Green, who's the founder of Nails Inc., who I had on the program a while ago. And it was that, so how do you know what the trends are? How do you know what the colors are? What about the names? And it was, she said, we don't know.

8:12We just sit around and we kind of have, we know and we have some fun. It's kind of the same for us. I'd love to say it was really scientific, but most of the time it's just, these are nice and we play around with stuff. We have data, so if you want to make it more analytical. If we want to pretend it's empirical. If you want to pretend, there is a bit of that in there. But the trend thing, is that from inside the team or do you have people coming from outside? So we rely on our instincts an awful lot and just looking at social media, the environment. The data point is interesting because we sell direct to customers.

8:43Customers tell us a lot of if we're missing stuff or if they're looking for something that we haven't got. So there is an element of being DTC. We get that feedback the other way. So it's a combination of, I think, that and gut instinct. And then the names are just, you know, what we feel this color does for you or what resonates with us and what we know will resonate with our customers. You start sounding like sommeliers, though. You know, ah, there's a whiff of... I know, I didn't think that. Yeah, we try to... But it's okay. We try to step out of the... We're winging it, basically. I'm not judging you, it's okay.

9:15No, a couple of glasses of wine into the naming. It's not... And it's a badger one for the team, isn't it? And then there's obviously one big thing in this, which is the sustainability piece. Now, where does that come from, apart from being a good idea from a business point of view, which I'm not meaning to sound cynical. Is it from something deeper than that for the two of you? I think it's just personal experience of going through corporate life and then having children and then being really interested to starting afresh, starting a business from scratch. You have, in a way, the luxury of being able to set the foundations right to begin with.

9:47So just being able to bring those morals in from day one and we could happily stand in front of anyone and answer any question about the business because we've given it that stable footing. So sustainability was important for us from the very start of Coat. And it wasn't there in the industry. So it was something that we really wanted to push on with and bring others with us to be able to challenge and make sure that the paint industry is moving in the right direction. I'm going to tease out a bit more about that because I think that's exactly it. It's Killsworth being the number one pusher of a new way of making paint.

10:16Much more coming up from my guests today, Rob Abrahams and Rob Green. They're not in the paint business. They're in the lifestyle business, I think we've just decided. They'll be back in a couple of minutes to talk much more about that. Right now, though, we're going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Innovation Series, which you can find on all the major podcast platforms. Lydia Kellett invites business founders to share their practical advice and industry insights for those of you thinking about starting your very own thing. Maybe you'll be talking in a pub later about doing your own thing, too.

10:40In this clip, we hear from Paul Beesel, CEO of HutanBio, a technology company aiming to decouple long-distance transportation from fossil fuels with HBX, their zero-carbon biofuel. the mishcon innovation series inspiration from founders of cutting-edge businesses in association with jazz shapers with mishcon durea what advice would you give to those who wish to bring a new idea to to the energy industry i think parts of the energy industry are quite closed they do what they've always done they tend to be very safety critical and actually if you're worried about and you need to keep people alive you have to be cautious about new So you need some resilience.

11:21You need the ability to navigate obstacles. But I would say I think the tide is turning. I think the energy industry as a whole is seeing lots of new opportunities. They're used to spending capital on large projects. They're used to going large. So if you can convince them what you're doing is good, there's a big opportunity. And I think the final thing is actually the energy sector needs people to not avoid it. I talked to lots of new graduates who are saying, I don't want to work for oil and gas. And I kind of get why they take that position. But the only way you can evolve an industry is by actively engaging and moving it along with them.

11:54The Mishcon Innovation Series. In association with Jazz Shapers with Mishcon Derea. This is Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss. In partnership with Mishcon Derea. It's business, but it's personal. You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast. And you can catch this program again if you pop Jazz Shapers into your favorite podcast platform. My guests today are Rob Green. I'm looking at Rob Green. Yes, good. Hello. Hello. And I'm looking at Rob Abraham. He's the other one. Am I officially the other one now? You are now. I think that's happened. It's market here. When you chat to the team, you'll be like, ah, finally.

12:34You've put a voice to what we've been thinking. They are the co-founders of Cope, the climate positive paint company. So let's talk about being climate positive. What's the problem with the reputation paint has? I think it's been around for a while. So this idea, there's two parts to it. There's the product parts of the paint itself and this idea that back in the 90s there was a lot of oil-based and solvent paints that everyone can probably relate to that strong smell you get when you've painted the space. But high levels of what we call VOC, so volatile organic compounds. So there's a product side of it.

13:08And then the side that we really leaned into beyond having kind of clean products was essentially how it's made and distributed. So we saw that as kind of the biggest opportunity to change and improve how the paint industry operates. So going from millions of liters of batch produced stuff being shipped around to locations all over the place into we will make it when somebody orders it. And we've stuck with that from the start. So really cutting out mass production, a bit like fashion, overproduction, overdistribution, flip that on its head. And when you were experimenting in the early days, was that always in the back of your mind?

13:46other Rob. Yeah. Was that because there's one thing experimenting and playing and there's another thing saying, but actually when it comes to delivery of this, we're not going to be making massive production line volumes of this stuff. Yeah, that was critical for us to be able to ensure that we could run a zero waste process and made to order but at scale and be able to scale that and grow it quickly. That's quite tricky, isn't it? It was tricky. How do you do that? I mean, do you have a factory where do you not own the factory but you use other people's? No, so we have our own facility where we support that.

14:19And it's just, it's grown with the team. We've always been planning ahead. You've got your own factory. Yeah. That's like saying you've got your own zoo. I mean, that's fun, right? It is very fun. Is it? Do you know what I mean? Do you ever kind of look and go, we've got a factory. We make something. I mean, that's quite new. We outsourced it for a while and we've just outsourced it quite recently. And we always say earlier, it's a roller coaster. So yeah, absolutely. Like the journey of the founders. The highs are highs. Highs are highs. and then there's always challenges. I want to come to that as well, but it's just the notion of suddenly, you know, when I worked in my first career in advertising, I used to walk around factories.

14:52In fact, a Mercedes factory, and you get to see the cars being made, and you go, oh, look, now they're using the goose feathers to polish it at the end of the production line. I found it really exciting, and I'm not scientific at all. I just enjoyed the experience. Yeah, and we just love products. But it's yours. It's our background as well. It's actually yours. And then taking that joy of the experimentation at the beginning, and then going and asking family, hello, we'd like to raise some money. What was that like? How did you explain to grandma? Whose grandma's on the cap table? Your grandma.

15:24My grandma's on there? No, she's not. Grandma on the cap table, that's the thing. What did you say to grandma? She's the best investor. She's the only one that's ever said to me, I don't want it back, basically. I don't care. I trust you. I don't want to know. What a great shareholder. But no, incredible. and so there's I think 23 of our brothers, sisters, mothers, grandparents, friends of family with money in so it's a reasonable amount of pressure It's a massive driver as well isn't it? Do they ask you if you go for tea or something you go hey how's it going? We update them all sometimes I mean obviously they still support us and we speak about it regularly and to have that from essentially a pitch deck in lockdown one for them to be able to support us in that way.

16:12Why do you think they did say yes? I think we were convincing. I love how in front of it, Elliot, we were convincing. We've got a good story. We're building a business. What do you mean? Was there an element of, well, it's Rob and he's family and it's Rob and he's family. Was it that? Or do you think they actually saw something a bit more than that? I think they saw what we saw in the idea, like the conceptual thing of paint still sold loads online, nothing else is, it's moving in this direction. I think people got that. I think my grandma just wanted to support us and be kind. But no, I think they saw the business, but then they also saw two people that knew each other broadly inside out with complementary skill sets going, we're going to leave our jobs and do this.

16:54And I think that probably convinced them more than anything, I'd say. Yeah, I agree. I'd be convinced by that too. You mentioned Rollercoaster, I think, Rob. Yeah, Rob G. And I've read some funny stuff and watched a few interviews about pallets of paint sitting outside of your house and all the other things. Tell me about the first big hit, low hit for you, Rob G. Wow, the first big low, first one. I think it probably was around in the early days where we were literally doing everything. So producing the product, shipping it out, having the customer service conversations, you name it, as well as trying to bring those first customers in.

17:34Was it just overwhelming? It was a lot. It was exciting, but also having a very young family at the time. How old were the kids at the time? I think at the time they would have been. My son would have been two. Yeah, so really early doors. And was your partner supportive? So supportive, has been all the way through. I think all of our family, we've been very lucky that we've had that supportive network. But yeah, I think it was pallets of paint being dumped at the side of the road next to Rob's house on a bank holiday. when we had customers waiting for their product and it had been totally moved to the wrong place.

18:10What does it trigger in you when that happens? When you see this outside and you think, I'm trying to be a professional, I'm a founder, I'm running a business, and that's outside. I have no idea how I'm going to move it. That was just like, I don't know how to deal with this. I remember looking at it. I think it's a bit of our superpower. Those things happen, not that ticklish. These challenges turn up all the time and resilience, we've definitely learned a lot of resilience all the way through. So you just get on with it. I think in that instance, we literally called a mate with a van and we just sorted it out.

18:41Oh, we handballed it into the back of a van on a one-way street. Yeah, yeah. And do you think, looking back on both of your lives, that actually you've been preparing for this for a long time? Were there things in life that had happened to you, looking at Rob A now, that you go, oh, actually, yeah, maybe that wasn't the very first time I had to do something awful? I think in hindsight, yes, but I wouldn't have said it was something I'd ever thought about really. But clearly, to do this job, and the resilience part and the kind of flexible, like mental agility and all that kind of stuff. Definitely must have learned that from somewhere.

19:11But then both of us had quite traditional, if you want to call it traditional, go to school, go to university, do a business degree, get a grad job at a big company. We both kind of went through the traditional steps, which you don't always see from entrepreneurs that kind of drop out of uni and go and do it. So I think we put a lot of value on learning the corporate role, you know, how to behave, how to talk to people. Yeah, we talk about it as a corporate education. So we had that, which probably gave us more structure to the way we did things later on. Nothing prepares you for just quite how much stuff that's thrown at you.

19:45And still now, that's really hard. Bouncing from HR to commercials to legal, so whatever it is. And do you still find the joy? Because obviously there is that stuff. That's the fun, yeah. That's the fun. What's the fun? The variety. For me, still, the variety, the projects we can take on, the control, and having still daily such a significant impact on the business in our direction. Yeah, that's the fun that we can work on together and we can control that and take it forward. And the fun of being located in Soho as well, by the way, which I've just learned. That must be quite a lot of fun. Final chat camera with my guest today is Rob Abraham with Rob Green and we've got some Ezra Collective for you too.

20:21That's in just a moment. This is Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss in partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. That was Ezra Collective with No One's Watching Me featuring Olivia Dean. And by the way, that is Rob Green's song choice. We've got two songs because there's two Robs. Normally we only give you one, but again, we are spoiling you. Well done, Stuart. Stuart the spoiler. Stuart producer. Amazing. Rob Green, why did you choose that song? It's a bit of a coat soundtrack now. So yeah, a lot of it is sort of loosely jazz inspired, but also quite sort of chill out as well.

20:58So we always have that on. so we're in the office and the vibe again, we're talking about what I started with which is you're a paint company Rob but there is a vibe so why is vibe and story and brand important obviously we started off saying we're not a paint company we're a lifestyle company, how does that work in the world of actually experiencing it as the consumer yeah, this idea that we sell paint clearly we sell paint, that's how we make money but it's always been much more than that and everything from where we put the office in Soho and what kind of talent and creative energy that creates to the product itself, to the marketing initiatives like giving models empty paint-ins at London Fashion Week and just doing things that paint companies wouldn't traditionally do to kind of pull ourselves out of that world and position ourselves as thought leaders, There's trend, I don't like the word trendsetter, but kind of be front of mind as an interesting brand with a story to tell rather than just another tin on a shelf.

22:02That's how it should feel when you buy from Coat. So it's not quite you're a fashion brand, but essentially you're a brand that's important in the world of design. Yeah, I think so, yeah. And we're so agile with color development. We change our palette all the time. We do edits with influencers. We're doing a cool one in a couple of weeks with Margate House. you know Margate is a great cool up and coming creative hub you know we're tapping into that creating some colors around it telling stories there so I guess it is like a like a fashion brand in that sense I'll flip that around and say we we focus on timeless colors so we don't do you know bright pinks if you look at look at the kind of colors we do we don't do flashy stuff we do stuff that's gonna sit well in UK lighting.

22:44It's meant to live it's meant to there's obviously a couple of other posh brands I can think of in the world of paint I'm not I'm saying you're posh, but all the brands that, you know, aren't your regular Dulux. And that's Dulux is obviously probably the market leader still in terms of percentage of market. Those colors and you've got, you know, color consultants. And I even know the name of the color consultant at one of your competitors because that person is quite famous. Is that the space you're in or is it something slightly bigger than that? Yeah, we want it to be a bit more democratic and be able to help people make those decisions or be on hand to support them to do that.

23:19So I think that posh heritage was not what we resonated with. It's not our background. That's why we wanted to create Cote to bring something different. So making the online experience and that decision-making journey easier and supportive so that anyone can hopefully go on that with us and help them to visualize it. Because I'm not a very visual person. I need that support myself, which is one of the initial problems that we're trying to tackle. Well, yes, and I think that fits in with that radically open thought I read about somewhere when I was reading about U2. It does feel like even the brands I'm alluding to, without mentioning, I mean, how clever is that?

23:58Without mentioning that they do feel a bit more elite. So is that what's going to happen over the next few years, Rob? Is that what you're going to do? You're going to continue to democratize having a lovely home because why shouldn't you? Yeah, that's kind of what we... So the product quality is great, but we looked at existing players when we think luxury's changed. Even the word luxury itself kind of makes us cringe a bit, but it's gone from kind of status-driven, slightly elitist, slightly kind of there to much more democratic, humble, sustainable. It's another big part of it. But our view is we don't have color consultants.

24:32Our entire customer service team is trained in color psychology and color theory that will talk to anyone on the phone when they want it. So it's a difference in how we've productized that and how it lives in our business. I've really enjoyed talking to you two I appreciate it it's really cool and as I said I've mentioned the website a few times if I don't say something it means I probably don't think it's very good I've mentioned it because I think it's really fabulous and I think you're genuinely presenting your wares in a very very different way just before I let you disappear we've had yours Rob Green because you got in there first so the other what's your song choice and why have you chosen it so it's Talk to Your Daughter by Robin Ford and it's kind of a special one to me.