My Favourite Failure: How House of Holland was forced to bring in the administrators

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1:21No one gave a shit. That's Henry Holland, the man behind the fashion brand House of Holland. Henry had to call in the administrators at the start of the pandemic. So we're here to find out what happened, because failure is our best teacher. Henry today is very content. He's now onto his second company, Henry Holland Ceramics, which is where we recorded from, so you're going to hear the sounds of a ceramic studio in the background. How did Henry end up here?

1:54Henry had always dreamt of being in the upper echelons of the fashion industry, but that's not what he was doing when he got his shot. I was working at the time in teen magazines. One of my first jobs was the fashion editor of Smash Hits magazine, which people might remember. And I was working as a fashion editor. I was wanting to be a part of the fashion world, not the part that I was in at all. And I was kind of, quote unquote, sort of considered myself a fashion groupie. I was obsessed with the kind of upper echelons of the London fashion scene and I wanted to be a part of it and managed to become a part of it in some ways by being on the dance floor of many parties and, you know, on in the kind of on that scene, as it were.

2:44So I created a series of t-shirts which kind of professed my love for lots of these designers in quite a sexually explicit way, I guess you could say, where they were the rhyming couplets about some of the designers that I loved and adored and really admired. cause me pain Hedy Slomain, do me daily Christopher Bailey, get your free con Giles Deacon and you who Gareth Pugh and they were really bold kind of it was a very specific time in fashion luckily for all of us it was a period called new rave when everything was fluorescent and we walked around looking like a pencil case most of the time and so they were you know very obnoxious and in your face as big as the slow big as the lettering I could get and the brightest neon colors I could find and yeah I started these t-shirts just as a something for me and my friends to wear to club nights like boombox and other things that were happening at the time like nag nag nag and all of these electro clash nights that were happening and initially that was just my thinking you know I had no plan I had no strategy I had no kind of forward thinking on this this was a sort of hobby of mine that I was just doing for myself and my friends.

4:04And yeah, it resonated with a lot more people than I anticipated and really quickly exploded into pretty much, I'd say, yeah, within the first three months, a global business, which was incredible, petrifying, exciting, thrilling, all of those things. They winged it and grew fast because Henry is driven, impatient and ambitious. But these characteristics would also contribute to their downfall. Within the first year we'd expanded into sunglasses, we did with Linda Farrow, we did handbags with Mulberry, we did shoes, we did denim, we did dresses. So it was a full, it was a full kind of ready to wear commercial fashion brand.

4:54In the sort of terms of the industry, it was a contemporary fashion brand. So, you know, you've got the sort of super high and luxury brands like your Givenchy's, your Versace's, and then your more kind of streetwear brands and the contemporary markets, it's somewhere in the middle. As a reference point, Kenzo or something like that, which probably kind of one of the big global brands at the time that was really huge in our space and so yeah by the time the brand had closed we were you know a global business we'd you know we'd grown and shrunk again so at some points we had over 100 stockists around the world and we worked in all of the different categories that you could think of within fashion I'd done collaborations with many many different brands in different categories as well from product design to packaging design from food to drink to hosiery, underwear.

5:44You know, we'd really worked in a lot of different spaces within the fashion scene. Henry couldn't believe people were excited by what they were doing. He was living his dream life. But that was the beginning and middle of the company's life cycle. Over time, it became harder and harder to keep the magic going. It's a tricky industry fashion because by nature, if you're in fashion, you're at danger of being out of fashion and it goes in waves. So if you create a really strong aesthetic and a really strong brand that resonates at a certain period of time, if that brand is strong enough, then it's hard to evolve it to match the time, the trends of the moment, I guess.

6:35So you can kind of be a victim of your own success in some ways because if you create such a strong aesthetic and brand, then it's not always going to be what's in style. When Henry started, it was just fun. The t-shirts were an expression of fun, so it became part of the brand. But as things went on, Henry found himself having less fun, but still having to pretend he was. Having to go out there being like, everything's great, you know, we're having so much fun and, you know, this collection's better than the last one and everything's bigger and better and stronger in reality. That was what I found the hardest, was almost like not being authentic and true to, you know, the outside world.

7:21I found that, you know, that kind of duality of just like professing everything was perfect, which is, again, is something that the fashion industry is guilty of. You know, you're always... You're selling a dream, so you're always having to sort of continue to do that, even though things maybe, you know, are not as great. So where did it all go wrong? What was the turning point? I think it was probably just my being too ambitious, maybe and kind of wanting to grow too big too quickly you know expanding to different categories I think probably when we launched into menswear um you know because we hired a new team to deliver that we you know we spent so much more money we instead of doing you know two huge marketing events a year which was the fashion shows we were doing four um you know everything sort of doubled and the revenue didn't double along with it.

8:23And, you know, to facilitate that growth, we took out a business loan and so it added more financial pressures and, you know, we hired more staff and all of those things that we were anticipating would give us the return and then they didn't. And I think maybe not shrinking back quick enough, you know, due to kind of ambition and all of the other things that many entrepreneurs suffer from. is like, you know, a positive mental attitude and all of those things that you think it's going to turn itself around. Problems have been brewing for a while, but at the start of the pandemic, Henry found himself at a crossroads.

9:01I could see that, you know, financially we were, we were, it was going to be hard for us to carry on. We were going to have to go through another fundraising round, you know, and I'd only ever done one fundraise after 13 and a half years. You know, we were fully self-funded and independent up to that point. And I found it really hard and really challenging. And I just, I think in myself, I knew that I'd come to the end of the road of kind of my sort of real love and joy for what I was doing. You know, it become hard for me personally and emotionally and all those other things. And I think when you're a creative working in a creative field, me personally, I'm not Adele.

9:45I can't write a smash hit out of heartbreak basically I just I need to create from a space of fun and joy and happiness and that was very much what the brand was about so trying to create something that you know was instilling joy in other people when you were miserable was really really challenging um and so I think it was a combination of those things you know it was like it was okay we either go out and do another fundraise and you know continue on this path or you know it's time to to call in the call in the administrators essentially and um i i made that decision for myself that i wasn't ready i wasn't ready no i didn't want to you know go forward and do another fundraiser and i found it um the the times leading up to that was were really uh painful and hard and then the minute that i'd made that decision it felt like a release and a relief and And then, you know, looking back now, I have zero sort of, I just have fondness to look back on.

10:49You know, I feel like I stepped away at the right time. I never look back on it like with anything other than, you know, absolute excitement and love for everything that we achieved and pride and everything that we achieved as a team. The business is still going, but Henry's no longer involved. He doesn't have any equity. he didn't make any money out of it. They brought in the administrators to make sure their suppliers got paid as much as possible. So Henry walked away, wondering how he'd pick himself up. Definitely there was a crisis in confidence at the time. And you feel, you know, obviously there is so many things wrapped up in this.

11:29You feel like you've failed in trying to do something. At the same time, I had that balance of feeling that relief and also feeling that pride and kind of no resentment. And, you know, I'd got to that point on my personal journey by the time this happened. Because I think I started to have all of those feelings as the business started to kind of struggle a bit. You know, those feelings set in. And then again, because, you know, I had the luxury of not having to be out there in the world for two years and people asking me questions about it. it really gave me a period of um of healing that i could go through in private and you know not have to answer questions about what's going on um and of all the things going on in the world at that time the world was on fire in many ways you know no one gave a shit about what was going on with me and my my brand which was in many ways a real blessing the thing that stands out about Henry is how genuinely happy he seems to be for this experience in spite of how it ended.

12:33And there are lessons in that if you've just experienced a big failure too. Reflect on all of the great things that happened and all of the things that you did achieve. It's really important because they just disappear. Because all you can think about is the most recent part which is potentially the failing. Like remember why you did it in the first place, you know however far you got on that journey like you got there you got way further than so many other people that just sit in their bedrooms or around their kitchen tables being like I've got this idea and they never actually do anything with it so like you know you're miles ahead of millions of other people um and also I mean for me I'm so fortunate in that both of my businesses that I've started have come off the back of me just finding something that I love to do and I've then manage to create them into a business.

13:24And so then my part of that sort of advice would be just go out and find something else that fills you with happiness and joy and, you know, and use that and channel your energies into that.

13:44Henry Holland, watching about in his studio, happy for all the good times, however they end. Thanks for listening to this episode. I've been your host, Dan Murray-Surter. If you liked the episode, please hit follow or subscribe. See you next time.