Felix: Today I'm joined by Paul Forkan from Gandys International, which is a sustainable outdoor travel clothing brand that gives back to underprivileged children by building kids' campuses all around the world, and was started in 2012 and based out of South London. Welcome, Paul.
Paul: Hi, Felix. Nice to be on your show.
Felix: Yeah. So the idea behind the business was really born out of a tragedy. Can you share more of your story with us?
Paul: Yeah. Me and my brother, Rob, were pulled out of school at a young age. I was 11 and he was 13. Well, we actually went to India on holiday at Christmas, and we came back and our parents asked us and our other siblings, so we altogether, and they asked us how we find the holiday. We said, "Oh, it was amazing. A real eye-opener. One of the best holidays we had ever been on." The culture in India's so vast, and the people are so friendly. It's just sort of a magical place.
We went back to school after our holiday, and then our parents said, "We're going to reduce the price of our house." The house was currently being sold, and they reduced it, and then within a few weeks they said, "Pack your bags. We're moving to India." Then I went into school and told my teacher. I said, "Miss, I'm moving to India at the end of the week."
This was 22 years ago. She thought I was joking. Then it got to the end of the week and I had my shirt all signed with signatures, and it was the last day. She said, "What have you done to your shirt?" I said, "Oh, it's my last day today, Mess. I'm going to India tomorrow." She thought I was joking, so she rang up my mother, and she said, "Yeah, did he not tell you?" And that was that.
We sort of packed one bag, we stopped off in Jordan, and traveled around a bit of the Middle East. We were going to go for six months, and it ended up being four years, four and a half years of living like hippies and traveling all around. Whilst we were traveling, we did volunteering work, we went and visited mosques, temples, and other things. They homeschooled us for a bit, and we went to school for six months. We kind of had this free-spirited life, living on a beach, just traveling around. My dad had a Lonely Planet book, and he would read places out, and we would say, "Oh, yeah, that sounds good. Let's go there."
Then, unfortunately, 2004 came, and we were in South India. He said, "How do you fancy going to Sri Lanka?" Me and my brother, even to this day, we love going to new countries, and ticking them off, go and have a look and experience their culture. We went over to Sri Lanka. We traveled down, and a few days and we settled somewhere, and it was Christmas. The next day, our life was turned upside down. We were caught up in the Boxing Day tsunami.
I was quite lucky that my brother sort of grabbed my arm and helped wake me up. I'm not a morning person. So, he kind of saved my life. My mom and dad put my little brother and sister on their shoulders and got them out of there, and basically sacrificed their life. Unfortunately, our parents didn't make it.
I was 15, and had a little younger brother and sister, at the time they were 11 and seven. We had no money or food, and the trains were down, because they ran along the coast and all the petrol stations were wiped out, and we had to hitchhike all the way back up to Colombo, the capital, and get to the embassy to be stitched up and stuff.
We got them back to London, and our older sister basically adopted us. The reason why we started Gandys was because we love traveling, we were brought up traveling, and we did all this volunteering. We wanted to give something back to the people that helped us in Sri Lanka. Since starting Gandys we've built our kids campuses around the world, and we've built one for the 10 year anniversary of the tsunami, in honor of our parents, and the 235,000 people that also lost their lives and it.
Felix: Thank you for sharing that story with us. I think certainly, obviously, a very inspiring turn, where you took this experience of yours and you took this desire of your life to travel and still be part of the world community, and found ways to give back. At the time, when you thought about, "How can I give back? How can I contribute back?" What did you think this would look like? Did you plan out that it would be these campuses? How did you first see what way you'd be giving back?
Paul: Well, we love traveling. We would always do volunteering stuff even after the tsunami. But what we always used to find the problem would be, we would go to a place, we would help for a few weeks or a month volunteering, and then we would then go back to work, and we would feel so bad and guilty that we're then back at work.
I was in Australia, living over there, and even my brother would come back to London to work, and what could we do? We need to leave a legacy in honor of our parents, and we thought by doing these kids' campuses and sort of the developing world as well, our money goes a lot further, and they need the money the most and the help the most. That's why we chose to do our work there.
Felix: Can you tell us more about what the kids' campuses, what they entails? What is exactly the experience of someone that would be a part of this kids campus?
Paul: They're heavily focused more around preschool. And every campus is slightly different as well. We've got one in Rio, and Brazil, that's in the Favelas. They all have their different problems that we're working towards to help them. The one in Rio is near loads of gangs and stuff, so we're trying to break the cycle. Giving the children and education, so they don't end up going into that cycle.
Our project in Malawi's in a rural place in Africa. That's really one of our poorest projects, in the sense of people really struggle for food in that. And then our Sri Lanka one is in a rural space, but they're a bit more developed than Malawi. But the main focus is to get their preschool, and get them up to speed so that when they go to the bigger school, they don't feel like they're behind with other students that get more help from their parents and that. So, we want to try to just teach them the basics in that. Otherwise, if a kid feels like they're starting school two years behind the other kids, they're more likely to go on and not do well.
And the campuses are used as well. Not just for school, but for a safe community place for the children to go. And they have IT labs as well, so they can go there and learn about IT. The sports and stuff's great as well, because it gives them a place to go. Not hang out on the street and end up going down a bad path.
And then we have partnerships, where some of the older kids at some of the campuses will also, we will help them with getting into university, getting a job. So you have partnerships, like corporate partners and stuff. It's a thing we do toe just help the whole community as a whole basically.
Felix: Yeah. It's a whole other organization. We didn't even really dive into the business that powers a lot of this. But the organization of running these kids campuses all throughout the world, lots of logistics, expertise, it sounds like requires to start a campus like this. How do you even start one? When you decided maybe for your first one, or any new ones that you're opening these days, how do you even begin to set up a campus?
Paul: I'm quite lucky. We now have a big set up around us. But when we started, we started small. When I was sleeping on my brother's sofa, and we had no one working for us, the first few months our goal was to always build a kids campus, but it took us a couple years to get the money and to learn. With our first project, it was basically funding the utilities and a teacher for a few years.
We basically just did more bits like that. We came across a project as well that was basically on the verge of coming to an end. It was already a school that was existing, and they just had no money coming in. They couldn't afford to turn the lights on. We basically helped fund them for a few years. Whilst doing that we were learning how they operate.
That then helped us when we built our campus by making sure there's the stuff that we saw, and we try to get our projects to be as sustainable as possible. The one in Malawi has a food program, so the children can learn about farming, and harvesting. We also then have less money to run them. That comes down to electricity, everything. So, we tried to be as efficient as well as possible, and having partners and stuff helps as well.
Felix: How do you manage these from a distance? Because you mentioned one in Rio... Where are all the locations of all these campuses?
Paul: We've got one in Sri Lanka, which was our first one. We've got one in Malawi, in Africa, and one in Mongolia. It was meant to be finished in November, but due to the pandemic that's going to be hopefully now April/March time. And then we've got one in Rio that opened this year in March.
Felix: Got it. How do you manage these-
Paul: Oh, we've got one in Nepal as well, sorry. Sorry.
Felix: Okay. How do you manage all this from a distance, from all these campuses spread throughout the world? How do you make sure that you have a good grasp of what's going on in all these places?
Paul: I have a lot of WhatsApp groups. I'm on the phone every few days for each project. We're always getting videos, pictures, updates and stuff around them. Some of them it's been a strange year for us. We would normally be helping all the children, but this year we've been helping the families, because they've not been able to go to work.
Here in the UK we're lucky. There's a furlough scheme, the government's been very good at handing money out. Whereas over there, the governments don't have the money to hand out, so they have lockdowns, so people have been struggling for food. So, our kids campuses have kind of turned into... we've fed tens of thousands of people throughout the pandemic in Brazil, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. They've kind of change how they were operating, and some of them, they've open back up now, and we're hoping that they now stay open. Because it's so important for the children to be going in and physically being there at the campus.
Felix: Are there a lot of legal or governmental bureaucracy that's involved in setting up a campus? When you decide That's where you want to open one next, how is the government involved?
Paul: We don't physically open them ourselves. We use a small charity on the ground who is already registered in the country, because of the red tape. If we were to turn up there, some countries, they would charge us an arm and a leg to do stuff, and we would get caught out on a few bits. Whereas, someone that's been there years knows it off the back of their hand, and every country has different rules and regulations.
We want to piggyback off their expertise, and their network as well. So we will go to them and speak to a few charities in the country, or even in the consonant. We have a few things around the criteria of the projects. A big one for me and my brother Rob is making sure that the project's going to still be running in 20 years time. We don't want to just open a project up and then in a couple years because it's not run properly.
So, we're quite strict on all of that, and the charities and stuff that we work with are all vetted, and we do background checks on them as well. Our trustee will go out and visit once a year at least, and so will me and my brother.
Felix: Yeah, I think lots of listeners out there might also want to find ways to incorporate a way to give back from their business. At a smaller scale, if they are also looking to choose to work with a charity to help fund and partner with, like you, or to get to may be a smaller scale, smaller degree, how do you determine what charity is a good fit, or one that you would want to work with? You mentioned one of the criteria around longevity, and whether it's going to be run well. How do you vet that? Especially for someone that's never done this before, how do you vet that a charity is a good choice?
Paul: Well, there's a few of us that make the decision. We get them to do a pack for us. We aim to meet them a few times, and speak to their trustees, and people that have worked with them over the years. It's kind of like if someone was looking for a job, you get a reference on them, and you see that they worked somewhere a few years. It's the same with the charities. We need to make sure they haven't just popped up in the last 12 months.
Another thing that's quite big for us as well is, we don't like working with big charities, or charities that don't need us. Because we like being on a journey with someone that's really passionate about what they do, and helping and saving the world. A charity that really needs us, and we know that every penny that we give them will go into their cause, and go to helping people.
Felix: Got it. If someone wants to go on the same path as you, can you give us an idea of the resources or capital needed to... I guess, how expensive is it to run something like a kids campus, or any kind of campus? At a small scale, or to the degree that you build these days.
Paul: Africa would probably be a lot cheaper than some of the other places. Like Sri Lanka, the land can be quite really expensive. So if you are starting on a small scale... And Africa's very needy as well. Yeah, it depends where as well. But you could look somewhere really, really tiny. And it depends if you get volunteers to run it as well. We have teachers that run them. But you could start off with building a really, really tiny school classroom for around 25,000, 30,000 pounds.
But then it depends if you want to make it bigger. You can go all the way up to 150... You could go up tomorrow. You could go up to around the couple of hundred thousand pound mark. In Rio's quite expensive.
Felix: An annual cost, or just the initial start up?
Paul: That would be the initial start up cost. And then annually, it depends how many teachers you have. The food, medication. Then you could spend around 30, 40,000 pound per one running it as well.
Felix: Got it. Now, let's talk about how does the business, Gandys International, fund the development, the running, the management of these campuses. To take it all the way back to the beginning, when you knew that you wanted to start something like this, a campus, or some idea around starting a campus for kids, how did you decide what kind of products, what kind of business to start to fund this endeavor?
Paul: We started off with flip-flops. We were selling them on our website, and through department stores across Australia, Thailand, literally everywhere. Europe, Germany, the UK. The reason why we started with flip-flops was we used to live in flip-flops as children, and we thought, "What's a universal product that everyone can afford, and help solve a universal problem of making sure everyone has an education?" That's why we chose flip-flops.
But then, I don't know if you've been to the UK, Felix, but you only get two weeks of summer a year. So we stopped making flip-flops, and we branched out into jackets and bags, and we've now become a full lifestyle brand basically.
Felix: Got it. Okay, so I think this is a good lesson learned here. But first thing, you started with flip-flops, I'm not sure what the experience or connections or your background, but how did you get into these retailers internationally? Because you mentioned Australia, and basically a bunch of different places besides the UK. How did you get into these retailers?
Paul: I went to trade shows, looked at the buyers on LinkedIn, and buying directors, and CEOs and stuff, and got distributors as well. But if I was starting a business now, that's still so old-fashioned. The future is doing it on Shopify, and reaching the customer yourself, and owning the customer as opposed to using a third-party.
Felix: So, you recognized that there was difficulty. There wasn't a good kind of fit between the product and the actual need. At least in the UK, there wasn't a fit. How long did it take for you to realize, "Okay, we should probably pivot and have different products in our catalog?"
Paul: It was about two and a half years.
Felix: During that time was it just losing money, or how did you... What made you make that leap to say, "Okay, it's time for us to switch it up?"
Paul: We were literally selling, we had sold a few hundred thousand pairs. We thought when doing that then it would just kick off then go. It did end. The reason why, we were looking at it, and the flip-flops we were making were really good quality, but they were the ones that you don't spend loads of money on. Sort of the basic rubber style. By the time you use a distributor, and then the department store takes money as well, they take the most money...
And we used a factory that makes loads of big corporates, so we were in the factory there. So by the time everyone took their money for being involved in the process of our flip-flops, we were like, "Oh, there's not actually much money left for ourselves." After all of the hard work, the marketing, we had literally so many celebs, Richard Branson, this was when One Direction was big, they were all in our flip-flops. Royals, literally... We had Kate Middleton, Prince William, Richard Branson was giving them to everyone who stayed on his island, and he was wearing them.
We were looking at it and we were going, "Okay, we need to look at our business model." And I'm glad we did. Because as you've seen, I know the pandemic's sped up a collapse of the high Street, but the future is online, and that's for the last sort of three or four years, that's what we've been working towards.
Felix: So, it sounds like two key lessons here. One was around how you got your products to your customers. You mentioned going from retail high Street to selling online direct to consumers. But then also something around this idea of selling a product that's at a low price point and low margin, it sounded like, product. What was the lesson around that one, specifically around how to find another model, a business model, or a price point that works with your business?
Paul: Yeah. Now, for example, we're bringing flip-flops back this year. We have a rule, that we like to aim for a 60% margin on our products. We're not the first retailer aiming for that, but every retailer will have what they aim to make on their products. By not using any department store or retailer, we can do the 60%, and our stuff's still priced really competitive, really good. We can undercut loads of our competitors, and that's whenever we're making a product, we look at can we undercut our competitor with a better product at a better price?
Felix: How do you answer yes to that question, about how can you, or can you undercut your competitors with a better product? What changes can you focus on to make sure that you are taking both of those boxes, that you can charge less, but then also offer a superior product?
Paul: Well, it comes back to loads of competitors out there making outdoor apparel. I don't want to name drop any, but loads of the big ones that you see people wearing every day. They sell in department stores or other retailers, so they have to put their price up, so that they both make good margin on their products. By us only doing online, we don't have to pay any rent as well. So, we don't have to pay any rent or any landlords, and we don't have a partner who's after margin for themselves. So it makes it quite easy to undercut them.
Felix: Got it. Okay.
Paul: With a better product.
Felix: That makes sense. So easy to undercut them. But tell us about the product development process. How do you make sure that you are creating a superior product? What goes into choosing... You mentioned coming back into flip-flops, but then since then you've mentioned jackets and bags. How do you decide to... Or once you make a decision on what to focus on next, what kind of product to offer next, what goes into the development process?
Paul: Me and Robert are very, very involved in the product, and we both love design. So, we have a signature map print that we put inside the lining on our products, it's quite important. If you look at some of our products, if you cover our logo, you know that it's from us, because it's got our signature cut. We have our own colors as well we use and we stick to them. We don't use loads of colors.
And all of our stuff, we have loads of things saying it has to be timeless. So, you could get it back out the wardrobe in five years time, and it doesn't feel like it's dated. And it needs to be hard wearing, long-lasting.
We're not 100% sustainable. We try and make everything we can with a sustainable mind, and do stuff. So, we don't use feathers from live animals, because we think that's wrong. Even though companies say it's ethically sourced from them, to take a feather off an animal is not ethical in any way whatsoever. You should not buy a jacket with it. Because I speak to our suppliers, and our suppliers say, yeah, they're getting these certificates that they're from somewhere ethical, but they're like, "We've been to pick feathers up, and where they're coming from is not ethical."
So, we're really always looking into that. Using fabric where stuff's made from recycled plastic, plastic bottles. And consumers, especially younger consumers, that's their sort of only buy, trying to buy to that. And all our products have to be distinctive, desirable, and different as well to our competitors. We're making jackets and stuff, so we're all making the same stuff. We're not reinventing the wheel. But we always make sure it's distinctive, desirable, and defendable as well. We make it so good, and the best. No one can make a jacket, or some of our rucksacks and that is better than what we do.
Felix: One thing I heard and there was that a lot of your differentiation is this uniqueness, this design. You mentioned that they covered up your logo, people would still recognize it as a Gandys product. How do you test, or do you test designs out before manufacturing? Do you test it with existing customers, or prospective customers? How do you make sure that it is a design that's going to be desired before launching?
Paul: Me and my brother, and loads of people in the product would test stuff. We did a polo jacket this year, and on that, it flew out and sold out. But we brought a small amount in, and we saw that it got a good read, and then we backed it with even more. So, we'll dip our toes, and anyone starting out, I think it's really important to start off small.
When we started, we did some stuff where we were like, "Oh my God, we've ordered so much stock, too much stock." So, it's important to do stuff slowly, and take your time, and grow organically, and don't overstretch or push yourself.
Felix: Makes sense. So now when you decided to make this pivot online rather than going through retailers, what was that transition like?
Paul: We started off selling directly to consumers. But whilst doing that, we also were getting ourselves stocked in retailers as well. So it wasn't new. Yeah, ever since the start it was quite cool. You get a relationship with the customer, whereas if you do it the other way you don't get a relationship. The customer just picks it up when they're in that store or on that other person's website.
So, it's quite cool, being able to email them, and you can do the notify as well on the Internet, on Google and stuff. Social media, it just feels like you have a constant relationship. It's quite amazing, how you can do and Insta story of a product, and then it's just completely sold out.
Felix: Got it. Okay, so now once you've fully made the transition online without any retailers, what were you doing to drive attention and awareness to the website, to the brand?
Paul: We worked with a lot of content creators around the world, because it's hard for us to go visit all of these amazing places, national parks, tourist hotspots. So, some of these content creators will have hundreds of thousands, sometimes a few million followers. We would basically want them to produce us with some high quality content that we can use to our community. And once we use it to our community, they would also post it to their community. That helps bring people through the door onto our website, and that's where our traffic comes from.
Felix: Okay. Got you. So working with a lot of content creators, almost like some sort of influencer marketing. How do you decide on whether a content creators going to be a good fit or not for your brand?
Paul: You look at their wall normally. If their style is... ours is kind of a wanderlust adventure vibe. So if they take the boxes of that and what we're after, then we know that they'll work for us. And sometimes it's not about sales. Sometimes we'll use some, they might have a few hundred thousand followers and don't get many sales from it. But you get some really good content, that then is good for us, and we then sell to our community.
It's not always about the sales. Because I've spoken to people who have started out, and they think if they get a few Instagramers with a million followers it's just going to send their website crazy, and it's going to crash, and they're going to make loads of big sales. So you have to just do as many as possible, and take your time and not think about the sales. The sales will come later.
Felix: Yeah, I think that's a good point about how sometimes even if you don't get the sale, the content is still valuable in itself. Now 30 years of experience, and you've done this a bunch of times with different content creators, is there a way to determine, or to at least have a better feel for whether a content creator is going to lead to the sales?
Paul: Yeah. You can look at their audience, who's commenting and stuff. You can get really granular. We get ones that work well for us, American and the Canadians, and then the British, German, Irish do well. But South America ones, for example, don't do well. Some of the ones in Asia for us don't do well. Some of that is because they can get products cheaper with less... They have high taxes in some of these countries, so it's super important to... We use mainly UK ones, because it's cheaper for us to also post products out to them with no import duty tax. And mostly, normally most of their followers, with all of the influencers, are normally in their own country first. So by using British ones, it helps, because we know that we can deliver it to them basically for free the next day.
Felix: Oh, so you're looking at basically the geographic location of the audience of these influencers and content creators. Do you just determine that based on the location of the content creator, or are there tools that you can use to determine that 80% of their followers are in North America or in the UK? Is there any way for you to determine that through any kind of data?
Paul: Yeah. I'm not sure what my social media guys use. But when I used to do it, there where software tools out there. But we never thought it was worth... Some of them were charging, I think it was 500 pound a month. I just found it easier to... You could pretty much tell from all of the comments and stuff on their wall-
Felix: The language, yeah.
Paul: Yeah. Then also, you get a lot of influencers as well where they have poor engagement in that sometimes, because they've brought loads of followers that aren't real. So, it's important to sort of check all of that. And you can see if they're getting good engagement regularly.
We did stuff as well, we were using people. We took amazing pictures of landscapes, and then we would gift them the product. They would be based in the UK as well, for example. But when they do their pictures, you wouldn't really see our product. Because they're so far away in the landscape. So then, there is no point gifting them. Even though you've got lovely content for ourselves, it was kind of like a balancing act as well. Because you need to be sustainable, you can't just gift everyone if you're starting out.
Because I know some people that are starting out, and they can't really afford to... and some people still have a high price point product. It's jewelry or something and you're starting a jewelry business, that makes it really hard to do. Because you can't really give them the product.
Felix: Makes sense. You had mentioned that there's lots of value in the content itself, not just the exposure that you get through the content creator's followers. What do you do with the content, the photos and the maybe videos that they produce for you?
Paul: We would then use it on our social media. Sometimes it could be turned into adverts as well. So, it gives us creative assets, that helps us bring people onto our site.
Felix: Got it. How many are you usually working with at a time, these content creators?
Paul: At the minute, we probably have about 50 a month that are producing stuff for us.
Felix: Got it. Makes sense. You had mentioned to us too about these celebrity endorsements that you've been able to get. One thing you had told us in the pre-interview was around how there's this attitude with the sky's the limit with how far you can take the brand and they eat those. Particularly, again, around these celebrity endorsements. You mentioned Richard Branson, One Direction, the Duke and Duchess wearing your beanies. How do you even get in front of these celebrities to showcase your product?
Paul: Well, I think we're quite lucky, because we have a good product and we have a good ethos with what we're doing with our kids campuses. Some of the celebrities, you just say to them, "Would you like to wear one of our products?" And they're wearing another outdoor brand, they're going to use the one that does the good, and also looks good on them. So, we're quite lucky in that sense.
But even with that, some of them are still hard to reach and to get a product on. But I'd say that's what's really helped us, is having a mission they also feel passionate about.
Felix: That makes sense. If you do have a product like that, and it's built into the DNA of the product that there's a good story around it, there is something that the celebrity also believes in, how do you get in front of them? Is there a particular way of outreach that gets you at least in front of the celebrities?
Paul: We've done some wacky stuff to get a hold of some. We've done music festivals where we've had a stand at them, and it's been raining the whole weekend, but then you managed to get a celebrity, a big musician, and then they come into the brand, and every six months or something our stylist will get in touch and, "So and so's after some product from you."
We've just managed to get out of say yes to everything, be at loads of events and stuff, and we've just been really lucky that me and my brother have pushed ourselves to do that. That's kind of helped us, it's led to collaborations. Every celebrity, or influencer, or every little bit of piece of work you're doing with building your website and your product and business, it always leads to something.
The first few years were some of our favorite years, because everyone was new and we were sort of buzzing. It's so simple, and it's so tough, and it's quite scary. We just kind of kept going and going and going, and each time that led to something else.
Felix: Got it. So basically there's really no direct or formal path that you took to get in front of the celebrities. You mentioned just saying yes and being open to everything, and hoping that the pieces fall into place. So I want to talk a little about the website. Can you tell us more about any kinds of tools or apps that you'd recommend to help run your business?
Paul: Apps and tools.
Felix: Or anything that you rely on that you use on a daily basis.
Paul: Oh, Collabio, we do our email on. That could be a good one for listeners. I'm sorry, just thinking out loud, whichever ones the guys use. I'll go with just Collabio for now. They use another one, Stocky, for our stock. So yeah, the good thing about working with Shopify are all these apps out there, it's endless. Whereas on our old previous website, Magento, there was hardly any apps, no apps.
And we use Collabio for our email, which is really good. We used to be on MailChimp, and moving to Collabio our open rates and email conversion has gone up, which is great. And we use another app for our stock management, called Stocky, that's really good as well.
Felix: Awesome. So, GandysInternational.com is the website. I'll leave you with this last question. What do you think has been the biggest lesson that you've learned in the past year that you want to apply moving forward?
Paul: Biggest lesson in the last year? Well, it's been a strange year, with COVID. But it's kind of taught us, like yourselves as well, how you guys are all working remotely, we don't need to be in the office every day. We used to do more photo shoots ourselves, but now we're using more influencers and people around the world.
So we're getting, instead of paying for these big photo shoots, we're now putting the money towards more people around the world, so we're getting more content back than what we would get. We've kind of land a new way of operating, which is quite cool, and we'll be saying that will now be instilled in us forever.
Felix: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your experience and story, Paul.
Paul: Thanks as well, Felix. It's been a pleasure.