Today on the Winning with Shopify podcast.
So I kind of made a conscious decision for myself just to do
some digging and, you know, things that I was buying, you
know, to make sure that as much as possible, I could ensure that
people were treated. Wow.
The school playground almost became your marketplace.
It doesn't bubble, it doesn't fade, it doesn't drink.
You know, it's actually, it's really good and it's ethically
made. We got more money on that one
phone call on Friday than we got from the whole Expo that we did,
and it was 2 days. The entire team were there.
Cost 10 to 1000 lbs. I plant trees, so I plant a tree
for every. You're mentioning so many good
things that you seem to be doing organically.
Once said you're faster than the local Chinese take away.
Hello and welcome to another episode, Winning with Shopify
Podcast. If you've never tuned in before,
Happy New Year, welcome to the show.
And if you haven't checked out any of my Tuesday episodes, go
and check those out. I'm going to give you a teaser
today with the thing I've been teasing for like 2 months.
I'm going to talk more about it on Tuesday next week.
We might do a whole session on it depends what else is going on
the Shopify world this week and heading into next week and over
the weekend. We are going to run done.
The biggest, this is our target is the biggest.
This is where you guys come in, the biggest Shopify summit
online that has ever happened. That's our target.
It's going to be launched in the 1st of September.
We haven't worked out yet if we're going to roll content out
week by week. It's going to be all rolled out
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we have a whole new website coming out in the next week or
two. There's going to be a page in
there where you can sign up. As soon as you sign up, it's
completely free to attend. You'll be the first to hear
about what's going on. I'm going to tease in
information, I might even get some of our speakers, some of
the sponsors on the show in advance as well to tell you guys
what's going on and what kind of things we're going to be
covering. And we're going to have a whole
set of different stages from acquisition stage about
marketing and other things to fulfilment and legal accounting,
all the things you need to know to help run your business and
make things as profitable as possible.
And what's going to be cool is it's going to be live for a full
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in September the 1st on 2027. I'm still trying to remember
what year it is at the moment. 2027, we're going to run another
one as well. We're going to update it every
single year. So if you want to sponsor, we
have so many opportunities to get involved from small little
start up apps to big headline sponsors.
We've got some amazing global, global thought leaders on
e-commerce signal on the mainstage as well.
And no, I'm not one of them. I might be interviewing some of
them, but I'm going to be interviewing some of the best
people in the e-commerce industry from some of the top
brands, some of the top speakers and some of the top agencies as
well. But anyway, enough about that.
We're gonna talk more about that on Tuesday.
Today, I'm delighted to be joined by a very special guest.
His name's Liam, and he's the founder of Ethical School.
Where, Sir Liam, welcome to the show.
How are you? I'm good, Nick.
Thank you very much for having me on.
So it's a pleasure to have you and you're a fellow UK based
business, which is always fun. I think almost half our guests
are, but I'm super excited for today.
You're a very different type of company to the other kind of
companies that we actually have had on the show.
You're quite unique in terms of who your customer are and how
the business operates. But if anyone's listening, going
ethical school wear might be able to work out what that is.
But tell us a bit more, you know, what is the business?
How did you get started and what do you guys sell on your store?
And so ethical school wear is kind of exactly what it says in
the tin. It's ethically produced school
form that's available online through Shopify and we get a
pound no. We don't we.
Don't. Yeah, thank you, Shopify.
And so, yeah, a few years ago I was living in Manchester, UK,
not New Hampshire. And I was working for Manchester
City Council in the Commons team and on my route to work and I
walked past a very well known family owned business, let's
just call them that, don't get food.
And I, I, their head office were the most phenomenal super cars,
Bentleys, Rolls, Rolls Royces, just parked on the pavements.
You can sometimes you couldn't even get past them.
And around that time there were some kind of exposes coming out
about how workers were treated and the conditions in their
factories. And it just, I kind of clicked
something in my brain that, hang on a minute, some people are
doing incredibly well out of this business.
How come the people at the bottom are being shafted?
And so I kind of made a conscious decision for myself
just to do some digging and, you know, things that I was buying,
you know, to make sure that as much as possible, I could ensure
that people were treated well. And I kind of realized that we
don't know. We have no idea unless a company
has kind of gone through third party, you know, audits, kind of
inspected and awarded various things.
We have no clue. We're completely blind.
And I didn't really think much more about it.
I just kind of continued with my own thing and we adopted our son
and then school uniform became yeah, yeah, of course in my
life. And the school that he went to
had one single provider. So I dropped him an e-mail.
I was like, oh, hello, you know, can you tell me about, you know,
production processes and the workers and the name on the
label was the name above the door.
So I was like, oh, they obviously, they obviously make
their own or it's a white label. So surely they would know the
answer. You know, they've done some
diligence and they had no answers whatsoever.
Yeah, that's a bit weird. And so I I feel like.
I feel like I should be surprised, but I'm not.
No, Twins he is. Yeah.
Like, ah, that's a bit of a red flag.
So I did some digging and I find a company based in Manchester
that has factories all over the world that's B Corp, certified
trust, ethical trading initiatives, certified,
certified carbon neutral, living wage employer, blah blah blah.
And they are just lovely, really old business that were set up in
the 1930s and they were taken over by the board so that now
employee owns all the profits are shared by employees.
And then we adopted our daughter who has chronic lung disease,
and she was born very prematurely.
And gosh, I'm sorry. To hear that, yeah.
She's fine now. She's, you know, you would never
know. She's an absolute whirlwind and
amazing. So we were living in inner city
Manchester and around that time there was a report on the air
quality in Manchester, which apparently was the worst in the
UK or like. I remember the report, I
remember looking at where my like hometown and stuff was on
the report and thinking good, I think I'm in the clear here, but
a lot of people are not like, this is not OK.
And right at the bottom of our street was just a road that was
constantly congested with lorries.
And I was walking, you know, our eldest to school with her in a
pram and they all these cars and lorries and vans and buses were
just stationary pumping out. You know, I was like, oh, I need
to, I need to get her away from here for Reluns.
And so we decided to move to Northern Ireland, where I'm
from. And when we moved here, the kind
of school uniform thing came back into my mind.
So the school that my son started, I said to the head, I
was like, look, I found this company.
They're really nice. And the only thing is they don't
sell direct to consumer. They're only would you mind if I
set up? Because I really want stuff for
for our kids. Would you mind?
And she was like, yeah, yeah, fine.
Get me some samples and we'll have a look.
Got her some samples. She was really happy.
Started supplying that school. And then literally just through
word of might. So people, I think initially
people bought because they knew me.
They were like, OK, we'll buy your stuff.
Just, you know. Yeah, so the school playground
almost became your marketplace of like, what school does your
other kid go to? Be like hey, what about some
school do for and? People say market traders are
dead. They just changed form is there.
I love that that's. Like opening a big coat.
Do you want to tie? Do you want to poke?
And. Drive in a big van and go like,
yeah, it's a walk in showroom. Yeah, grab what?
You need there's a till in the. Way it open few boxes in the
back. Hey, what do you need?
Couple of gold watches. And then people realize, oh,
actually this is really good stuff.
It doesn't bobble, it doesn't fade, it doesn't drink.
You know, it's actually, it's really good and it's ethically
made. And the random guy who sells it
me plants a tree for every order.
So we stupidly, completely stupidly, and bought a farm.
So we were moving from inner city Manchester where a four
bedroom semi with a decent garden was half a million.
We came to look at this house here and we're like, oh, oh, so
that's what you can get in Northern Ireland for way, way
less. I think I could buy a small town
in Wales instead of having my house like I I found.
I found eight houses for sale all side by side and they're all
three bedroom in a street in Wales.
It's like I could buy all of them.
Do you ever find that in your warehouse?
You have dead stock. You can't sell it, no one wants
to buy it and you can't get a refund on it.
Or alternatively, you're missing inventory in your warehouse that
you need, you've got sales coming in and you're low on
stock and you haven't ordered more stock in time.
All these things hit profit. And I've been there.
I've run my own Shopify store and had exactly that problem.
But we've partnered up with Inventory Planner who have the
most incredible app to help you manage that and forecast exactly
what products, what skews even down to what colour of products
you need to order in advance to make sure stock levels remain
consistent throughout. They're also running a seven day
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that, it's 7 emails every seven days and it takes the same
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And in seven days, like me, you can become an inventory
management. Pro.
Both links are in the description.
Enjoy like tiny mortgage and sell my house.
I can buy all of them. Yeah.
The problem is the nearest bus stop is like a 22 minute drive.
So to give you an idea of how rural it was.
But yeah. We're not too bad here.
We're half an hour South of Belfast.
We've got villages 3 or 4 miles away.
We do have access to people and to civilization, but it's very
much, you know, it is rural, rural.
And when we were looking around this place, so it's just a
little, it's just a little cottage.
It's very cute. The bet that I'm in here is 200
years old. The walls are like that thick,
insane. And when we're walking around
like it's got 1/2 acre forest, 1/2 acre pond.
It's 6 1/2 acres in total. And we, we were just completely
stupid. We're like, oh, wow, this is
amazing. I didn't know I needed a forest
or a pond. And then we've now I've got 1.
What are we going to do with this?
Like really, it's like it's far too much.
And so I plant trees. So I plant a tree for every
order and customers can name their saplings.
And I do little things on social media.
And that gives aids the opportunity to see that their
purchases have an impact. And when everything has an
impact, hopefully they take that into their adult life knowing
that, you know, my decisions can create good in the world.
And the only downside is that with the rate of growth, I might
be running out of space. But there are other places to
plant trees and just on your farm as well.
So it's a good problem to have. I think I'm going to look into,
there are organizations that specialize in kind of
reforestations or areas that have estimated any unnamed trees
can be planted there. And then I'll keep the named
trees here so I can still do my little videos and stuff.
So yeah, that's that's how it started.
Just word of mouth, more schools on boards.
I know I do 15 schools across Northern Ireland and I've got
one in Shrewsbury and one in Nottingham.
And then there's a number of schools that buy directly from
me for their own and school shop.
And so yeah, it's got. That's amazing.
And so when we, when we talk about schools then so if you
supply a school, is that every single student in that school
like because every school always has like 2 or 3 preferred
suppliers. Don't they have uniform?
I mean, I I'm at the worst age where I'm like probably the
furthest point from school uniform is in school was like
like nearly two decades ago for me now and then looking at when
my little one's going to start school.
She's probably still 3 or 4 years away.
But once it once you sign a school, how much of A like AI
guess the word really is. I don't want to use this in this
in relation to ethical because it's a dirty word because
everywhere you almost get a monopoly in a way.
There must be a level of like they only buy stuff through you.
So you're like, great, they got 600 students.
I got 600 customers that will need multiple items.
Yeah, no, it doesn't work like that.
OK, so schools across the UK are told that they should have
multiple suppliers. I would prefer.
I love competition, I love when I'm off you've.
Got some good USPS like then you can fight hard.
And my, the stuff that I sell is such good quality and my, in my
head, you know, like kind of pricing structure for the
embroidered stuff. My, my kind of my pricing has
been based on what I would be willing to pay, how I felt
having bought, you know, a really expensive, you know, crew
neck sweater went bobbly after, you know, two weeks, you know,
what, what, what price am I happy to pay?
And, and so that I think a lot of people maybe come to me for
the price, some for the ethics, some for the trees.
I, I really know which and but I I love it to have a wee bit of
competition. So the schools not have do they
do they all, do they all abide by that and have multiple people
and you're one of two 35 or do you find that actually they have
like 1 preferred supplier and then a kind of these are the
other places you could go or how do they end up structuring that?
How much do you get promoted by the school?
I guess is is my. Question.
Actually all the schools that I have are very fair.
So they'll have a list of suppliers and generally actually
haven't. That's a good point, I'll check.
I think they're in alphabetical order and then also.
You need to change your business name to begin with.
A1. We, we did that with our agents
here and Shopify partners a while ago, but it doesn't work
anymore. But it used to be alphabetical.
So we're called spec digital, but we changed it to like A1
spec digital. A asterisk to say we were like a
star spec digital. We're like we've had an A star
service and Shopify eventually realized we had about eight
people beginning with a that weren't actually beginning with
A and it shouldn't be alphabetical.
And so, yeah, there's. But how funny in business, and
you've probably seen more than just one of these, how funny in
business that you find the odd little thing like that that
makes such a difference to the business, which in one way it's
good. It's an easy thing to do that
generates lots of revenue, but in the same time it's easily
undone and it's completely out of your control if they change
the rules. So you don't want to rely on it.
But I do find it mad all the hard work we all put into like,
like we did a big Expo last year, 2 days cost me 10s of
thousands of pounds, huge amount of money.
And the day after the Expo, I got the phone just rang in the
office and some local business was looking for local agencies.
And we've now got a new biggest client.
And it was just like, if I knew that phone call was coming on
Friday, you wouldn't have gone to the Expo.
I told it was, it was. We got more money on that one
phone call on Friday than we got from the whole Expo that we did.
And it was 2 days. The entire team were there.
It cost 10s of thousands of pounds.
And it was like we're making 10s of thousands of pounds on that
one phone call that came in per month.
It was just like, oh, OK. But there are always these
little nuances in business, aren't there?
Where it's like you just changing the name or I'm not
saying you have changed the name, but if it is alphabetical,
it's like going and checking them and going, Oh no, I'm the
bottom of five because they all begin with a letter before the
letter E, you know, in the alphabet.
It's yeah. Yeah, there is.
There's one school where I found like this year that.
So I'm listed on that. They have a page on their
website for school uniform and I'm listed there and there's a
live link straight through, but then actually on there.
So all schools have to have APDF, you know, policy of yeah,
yeah, yeah. Bullying, drugs and alcohol.
That school uniform and I wasn't listed on it.
And so of all my schools, it is the biggest, but I sell the
least. And I was like, OK, well,
obviously that's why so people are going I, you know, the
school uniform policy. And if that's the only school
uniform shop that's listed, will go there to be fixed.
Thank you. I was going to say, can you call
foul on that and say there's a rule on this and you're not
following that rule so you need to by adding me in or hello
politely. Politely have been missed.
Yeah, too much apologies. If I sorry to waste your time
but. I know you're very busy, but.
Well, sometimes that's the first conversation.
The last one is right. I'm phoning the government.
I'm getting you know you need to be doing this and you're not,
although you don't get kicked out by them.
Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah, you don't cut off the hand
that feeds you. It's sometimes what I'm thinking
in meetings and I won't say who with or where or when, but I've
got a question about this word of mouth because I think more
businesses will be hearing that going.
Oh, it all sounds so Blase. Liam, you just, yeah, you just
created some cool stuff and people went, oh, that's cool,
let me buy it. Whereas I'm in a competitive
industry and but you are as well.
You must have done some things over time to instigate more word
of mouth or to have an immediate as soon as someone says, oh,
where is that from? Have a an immediate like, well,
this is where it's from, like the elevator pitch and, you
know, very passively because I think that suits your
personality and brand. But still having that kind of
concrete like, OK, here's an opportunity for word of mouth to
grow. Is there anything businesses
could do? Would you advise any other
companies to get more word of mouth things happening?
Like how do you instigate more of that on the basis that's the
way you've grown to where you are?
Yeah. It's a funny one because I'm
really lucky in that parents talk to each other and they all
have an opinion on the school uniform.
It's a grudge purchase. I'm sure I will have seen Oh.
Absolutely, and it will be the number one topic of
conversation. First, wash and.
I'll be like it wasn't always. This Yeah, yeah.
Get ready for that. And they all, you know, people
are at, you know, stay. You will be going to stay in
place soon. Are you?
Yeah. Have you ventured into any yet?
We've been to some like sensory groups and stuff.
We've just decided not to do nursery just yet.
So like we're, we're going to take that, that, that leap.
We're like, we don't need to pay for it.
And actually we, we don't need it.
It was more of her to engage with kids.
So we're going to do that another way.
But so we've done lots of the, the classes and to be honest,
the main, the main bit of feedback I get is when I go to a
class, I, I, I try to give my wife some free time.
So I'm at work and she's looking off.
So I tried to say so, you know, go to the gym, go and see some
friends, have have a few hours to yourself away from baby.
You know, you'll you'll need to pump milk and other stuff might
go there, but go and have some time away.
So the main bit of feedback I get is wow, a dad out with an
under one year old on his own and I'm like what?
Like I've got a bottle of milk nappies like this isn't
complicated and I love it a bit. It's like this is fun.
But I'm always the only dad only there's always dads with mums or
there's granddads with, you know, mums still.
And so mums attached to the baby.
Oh, the class they're going to be.
Yeah, we've done stuff like that.
But we know we've not been to a stay and play kind of like
nursery environment yet. We've not, we're not quite made
that leave. So when you go to many stay and
play, which I did because I took adoption leave.
When you're in a room with lots of people that the only thing
you have in common with is the fact that you have a child
there, finding things to talk about is quite tricky.
You can talk about the weather and then you get on to school.
So where are you thinking that one round there, that one like
and then school uniform always comes up.
So parents talk about school uniform a lot, not necessarily
always good. And so my job is to make people
actually feel good about the school.
You know, they're buying, that people are treated well, that
the environment is looked after, that they're paying a fair price
and then it comes quickly. That's if I believe that then
I'm winning. What I find should user
generated content, while incredibly hard to get once
you've got like a a nice, especially a new testimony or.
I saw the video on your homepage I mentioned to you before we hit
record like so powerful just showing your stuff versus
someone else's for the same school.
And it was evident from, I think you said she just works at the
school or one of the parents or something.
But she it's just evident you've got a better quality item than
other people. It's incomparable.
And it's not you saying it, it's totally authentic.
I would never say it. No, they don't come from it and
and that video is like it's been so well received because it's an
actual human being who has real life experience of it.
And she says, look at these, Look at these.
The quality's uncomparable. Alan.
It was I, I I don't think she mentioned a few of the USPS as
well. Yeah.
My, my issue when I first go into a school is that like, I'll
put out a little display at an open evening and you know,
people will feel it and they'll take a leaflet, whatever.
Until you've bought something and you've washed it 20 times.
You don't know, you know, if am I, am I taking a risk with this?
And because, you know, school uniform, it's has to be durable
and it has to last, you know, that kind of early adopter
thing, you know, it can be a bit tricky.
So generally I find that when I take on a school year one, I
sell a few and generally I get the sense that those people, for
them, it's the ethics. And they're like, yeah,
absolutely. It's a no brainer.
Then year 2, they go into their class scripts and they say
actually this washed really well, hasn't lost its color,
hasn't shrunk, hasn't bubbled. And then year 2 is when I, you
know, see real sales then. And so yeah, it's, it's high,
high, high. Can you you know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear you.
I mean, the only thing you just did purely an idea.
And this is not my my world of standing at parents open
evenings. Again, it hasn't started yet.
It's coming. And but I wonder if you almost
just get one of your garments and wash it like 100 times, just
like wash it dirty wash it and just have that to say to them.
Here's one of our garments. Been through 100 washes?
Or like even one of your kids, they've worn.
Those I've I've got them feel it.
Yeah, exactly. Take that and say here's one
that's like this is 3 years old and it's been worn.
It's been worn at least two, maybe three days a week for
years. Feel it and compare it to the
one your kids wearing right now. Like compare the quality and how
much was that one? Well, this one was there.
Is this one cost? Like it's really competitive.
I love that pricing because it's the try before you buy, isn't
it? It's like like if you see skin
care products, it's like my skin did look like this and now it
looks like this. You're like, I want that.
Like I saw one of the other day that said, like, like, I've lost
this much weight. It's an alternative.
It's a capsule you take instead of the new weight loss jabs that
everyone's banging on about in the UK.
And I was like, for a second I was like, that's interesting.
And like, I've got a secret weapon at home called my wife,
who's AGP. And I said to her, like, it's
all right, you're a, you're a doctor, honey.
What, where they should like close it.
They're all nonsense. It will probably give you this
and this, but I want to ask you a question about delivery.
So you, you just touched on something.
I'm basically, I'm writing a small business plan in my for
you of like how you operate your business.
I don't always do this, but you're mentioning so many good
things that you seem to be doing organically.
But delivery, I think you've touched on a really big like key
point here is you must get so many people ordering in an
emergency. It's like my kid was in the
playground wearing their normal school uniform that we bought
from you. Someone slide tackled them and
they ripped it. And I need another one.
I need it quick. Like I've got one that's come
out the wash today and it's probably going to be dirty
tonight, so dirty tomorrow night.
So I need like next day delivery stuff that short.
That must be again, it might feel normal to you because you
are the customer. You are a parent at the same
time. But I just want to interrupt
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That must be one of so many touch points you've been able to
cover because you have this physical digital but also
endorsed like marketing plan. You've got the website, you go
to schools and show things at parents evening and open days
and things, plus the schools endorsing you.
You've got so many touch points to customer that so many of my
listeners don't have these kind of like almost like a dark
kitchen bit of e-commerce where it's like we just have a
warehouse full of stuff. People order on the website, we
send it out and we only know what the customer tells us or
phones us or emails us or reviews us on review platform.
You must have this advantage where delivery must be one of so
many things that you meet parents and you are a parent,
you talk to parents, the playground and going, yeah, we
could solve that. We could solve that for free and
we could just become part of our DNA or we could offer that as a
premium me a next day delivery service or there must be so many
of these things you've come across with that direct
interaction. And so my favorite thing to do
is have doorstep chats. If, if an order come from within
15 miles of my house, I, I will deliver it.
I will. I love that I've heard other
founders say the same thing as such.
So what's the best thing you've learned to ask you a question?
What's the best thing you've learned on Door to Door?
The polos. So I, I, I don't consider polos.
I'm like, it's a polo, you know, it works, it's fine.
It washes OK. They love the polo.
As in a polo. Shirt polo.
Yeah, polo shirts. They love them.
Like, that's that's cool. Like, you know, OK, yeah, no, I
So like, for example, yesterday someone, someone placed an order
and emailed and said the school is basically a black hole.
All the jumpers just disappear. I have no jumpers left.
Can you get the jumper? I was like, yeah, I'd be with
you this time. You don't put yeah, you don't
put air tags on them, do you? I feel like your jumper's
currently in the gym. Your jumper's currently in the
boot of my car and will be there in 5 minutes.
Yeah, yeah. So we, we've got some clients,
for example, we've got one that does same day delivery before
midday in London and they sell jewelry.
So we have something on the website that detects it doesn't
actually talk about it. I think, I think it talks about
it on some pages. If you search like jewelry shop
London, it says like you can't come in here with just the
warehouse, but it is next day delivery in London.
So they've got some clout and SEO authority on keywords like
that. But if you put London into the
Shopify carts, they're using Shopify plus, it automatically
interjects and says, would you like free same day delivery?
Because we are in London and we can do that.
Or it might, there might be a small charge in it, but they
basically use like Uber or delivery or someone to send it
out. And actually if the orders
because it's jewelry, some of the stuff starts at like 10 lbs
for a sterling silver item. It's all very cost effective and
very much driven on kind of price and availability and a
sort of, you know, have six different pairs and choose one
you want to wear each day rather than buying one nice one that
costs you hundreds of thousands of pounds.
But the more expensive items, they're just like, this is a,
you know, this is a diamonds product.
So actually, let's just put it in an Uber and send it out right
now. Like literally just send it
straight to their door. Imagine someone, imagine the
review we'll get from these guys and say to the Uber driver, like
when you take it to the front, at least you order an Uber on
their phone, Send it when the Uber driver arrives, say to the
Uber driver, like, can you say as well, like they've sent it
straight here because they're based in London.
Like I understand you placed the order at 1:00 PM and it's
currently like 2:10. Could you leave us a review
saying that, you know, and they enhance them like a business
card with the QR code on it. Just super slick stuff.
But it's that, it's that interjection saying, are you
home now? We can get it delivered in the
next two hours. If it's over like 200 lbs or
something, they're like, we'd happily pay £20 for an Uber to
get that review or if it's over 500 or 1000 or something.
So I, I love that you're doing that and getting that speed of
use. What are people's responses when
you phone them or e-mail them and say, like, I can, I can drop
it off this afternoon. I'm only 10 miles away like.
No, they're amazed. Someone I've had a couple of
people say once said you're faster than the local Chinese
take away. I'm all the police.
And then someone else, someone else like you're faster than
Amazon. I was like, OK, I'll take it.
And on the website you would never know that.
OK. That is you picking up on the
addresses then, yeah. Maybe, you know, that is kind of
my secret weapon, you know, don't, don't tell my
competitors. And because I, I always over egg
it, I would rather people. Yeah, I, I like to manage
people's expectations. Yeah.
Yeah, of course. I because the company that I
use, they, you know, they don't do drop shipping at all.
So I have to hold all the stock. Thank you.
We avoid buildings here, so I've got loads of stuff on the
website, it says please allow up to 14 days for delivery.
So when they get it within 24 hours, they're just amazed.
And it's like, yeah, now that people kind of realize that,
yes, it could take up to 14 days if I have to order stocking.
But generally, if it's available on the website, you're going to
get it really quickly. And then I have on Shopify I
have the Trustpilot integration. So.
A few weeks after, so I always I wanted to leave it a few weeks
before they got the invitation to leave a review because I
wanted them to get a chance to. Yeah, of course.
Use it wash. It a few times and use all your
keywords. Yeah, exactly.
So I think I've got like over 105 star reviews.
Like because people are getting it so quickly, they think it's
going to take 14 days up to 14 days, and they get it within 24
hours. And they're, you know, five
stars. Amazing.
I'm like, yeah, thank you. There's only one caveat to that
is I, I left a five star review, but I put in it something which
might have ruined their delivery policy.
And the irony is we are pitching to this brand right now.
I've been buying from them for like 3-4 years.
So I've desperately tried to find my review to delete it in
case they see my name on it. But I gave them five stars.
What I said is I said I've always, I've always done
standard delivery, which says like 2 to 4 business days or
working days or whatever. And it always arrives in under
2. It's, it's either, it's if I
would have like 9:00 AM, it'd be next day.
And if I order like 5 PM, it will be two days.
So it'll be like next day once it's been dispatched the next
day kind of thing. And I put like this, so there's
no point paying for next day. Love their delivery policy and
stuff. But now we're now we're pitching
to them. I've said to them like lots of
people saying the delivery is too fast because they do have a
next day option and it's like another 5 lbs and standard is
free. So it's like I've been, we sort
of said as part of the pitch, like you should probably like do
a 24 hour dispatch rather than immediate dispatch or just to
manage the expectations. Say it's not just next day
delivery, it's it's same day dispatch, next day delivery or
it's next day dispatch and then two to four day delivery
afterwards sort of thing just to manage those expectations.
And they said the software cost of trying to work out how to
delay it in the warehouse, have a queue of like just let it sit
somewhere and Shopify for 24 hours and then go right, we're
off. But I think it's an amazing
topic that you bring up about managing customers expectations
about things. I mean, we we provoke so many
brand now. I think I'm well into the
thousands. I've seen so many nutters in the
like comment sections on Trustpilot leaving reviews and
saying all sorts of things saying like this product, you
know, I tried to use this rope to tow a car and it failed.
It's like, yeah, it's a belt, like it's genuine example.
And it's things like that where it's like, yeah, this was never
supposed to pull like a three ton Tesla.
Like this is ridiculous, but I want to I want to come in to
land on something that's obviously, you know, right in
right in my heart, which is SEO and it's all over our notes.
You've done a huge amount of SEO work.
Talk us through just headline. You know what, what's the
strategy been? Where's the success come from?
What have you focused on? How do you do SEO when it's
probably less product focused and more school focused, I
imagine. But you know, tell us.
Tell us how you've had to approach SEO in your specific
space. So I I came to this with 0 SEO
knowledge and just reading through blogs and things it was,
you know, just be descriptive. So you know, black cotton,
V-neck boys, school jumper, you know they it'd.
Be amazing. Many people miss that.
I know it sounds obvious to you, but so many people miss it and
they start putting fancy names and stuff and it's like, it's
charcoal and it's like, no, no, call it black.
The cuts of things. I want a charcoal school jumper.
Well, I find that so that my supplier.
They have lots of fancy names for the colours in their tie.
Racing green, it's. Like a green A.
Dark, dark green. Cobalt And I'm like, what is
cobalt? Who uses cobalt?
So I like I googled what colour is cobalt and then it's like,
oh, cobalt blue and whatever you know at the tie ecoscope.
So you start. Really descriptive.
Really, really descriptive. And then so like everything is
labeled within an inch of its life.
You know the alt alt tags, and I've tried to get my head around
kinda H1 and H2 headers. Yeah, yeah.
I don't even know if I've got them right at all.
Now you're talking my language, yeah.
I'm like what is this? And then sometimes within a blog
post like you've got the option like the little drop down make.
This and you choose the one that looks good, not the one that the
SEO guy told me to use. Yeah, or you choose one and it
turns the whole thing into like bold or something.
And I'm like, what have I done? I don't know.
It's. Because it's using the star
sheet, Yeah, just just on that before I get like 50 emails.
So you want one H1 and a page, everyone that's your main
keyword introduces the whole content, the page.
You want one H2, which is your subheading.
And then you want to use H3's like in your content down the
page. And you only want to use AH4 or
H5 onwards. If you're breaking down the
section with the H3 and there's like 4 columns of info or
something, use H3 for the headings in those.
But it's got to be sequential. Sort of go H1H2H3H4.
But we see people all the time, especially on blog posts go well
the H6 look the nicest. It's like it goes H1, you know
H2, then you've got H3 and then AH 6.
So you can use AH one, then H2, then H3 client.
But you can then override the styling to look like you want.
But Google then when it calls, the page goes right, that's the
whole page, that's the subheading for the whole page.
And then the H3's break the content down.
So it might be like, here's the product details, here's the
product specification, here's the product reviews, use H3's
for all of those. And so it's like it makes sense
logically, but then it's like which one of those you want to
learn the most about because there's a million of them in SEO
so. Because I have 0 technical
knowledge, I'm like oh that looks OK, that'll be.
That's fine. Which which I was literally
assessing one of our team when people have been here for three
months, I'd take them out for three hours just this morning, 3
hour assessment. I grill about SEO or PPC or
other service. What have you learned?
And one of the things I talk so much about is the customer.
And so often we get so stuck in like what works for me as the
brand, like having, calling it charcoal works because that's
what my supplier calls it. That's convenient.
But no, the customer calls it grey.
So like 1 brand would say this is charcoal, this jumper I'm
wearing, another brand would say this is far too light to be
charcoal. I mean, I work at a steam
railway shoveling coal. Charcoal is black.
I don't know why people think it's grey.
It is black and I can anyone's got a fire in their house knows
it's black. It's just coal and it's just
coal made from wood. It's quite simple.
But the, it's all those nuances and you do it for the customer.
And actually, that's why I always ask people in the
assessment. I asked my colleague today about
this as well. I always say, why do sometimes
you click on #1 listing on SEO for really competitive keywords
and you get a horrible website. Like I bought a new hinge for my
gate, my side gate on my house recently.
It was a blue background site, yellow text in Comic Sans.
Why was he #1 because he said we do loads of hinges.
We've been doing it for 190 years.
Just pick up the phone or send us a WhatsApp picture of what
you need with a tape measure on the hinge and we'll make that
hinge for you and it will cost £20.
And you're like, that's an incredible offering.
That's why Google's got it at #1 So forget page B and everything.
We've got the best offering and we're exactly, as you say,
you're doing it. We're being super descriptive
for the customer because we understand the customer.
So you've done a lot of this. I'm going to come back to you
now. I can go on so many tangents in
real space here. I'll come back to you.
So you've done a lot of being very descriptive.
You've been trying to work out some of the technical bits as
well in terms of data and profit and and and revenue.
What's worked like what pages rank well for you?
What products sell well? What's been the big biggest
success from what you can see? And so three things.
And cotton items, obviously. Kids with allergies.
Cotton. And it's ethical, it washes well
compared to wool. Yep.
Yeah, and it's light. Made that mistakeable.
Perfect. And striped school jumpers.
So V necks with a stripe. So pretty much every school
uniform shop sells the same sorts of V necks.
Striped school jumpers. In the colors of the skull.
But they list them as, you know, blah, blah, town high school.
But it might just be a Gray jumper with a purple stripe.
So I just list it as Gray V-neck stripe school jumper.
And people aren't searching for, you know, Saint Bartholomew's
school jumper. They're searching for Gray
school V-neck jumper with a purple stripe.
And then there's only, you know, there's only a few of us that
actually and. Like I was going to say,
dishwasher, washing machine proof, Yeah.
There it is, there you. Go and cool.
Is that the second thing And. Ties.
OK, so a lot. And how much of your so I guess
jumping right back to my very first question about what you
guys see, how much of your stuff then is like anyone from any
school could find the right shade of purple and grey combo
for the jumper compared to you have to find exactly the right
combo for, you know, the right exact colour palette for this
school or the school endorsed uniform.
Like could you stock any school basically is what I'm saying.
Can any parent buy from you, not just the ones that are school
suppliers? So I need a school's permission
to stock their uniform. It's their copyright, you know,
it's it's mainly about the badge that like that, so.
If it's got a badge on, you need the school endorsement if it
hasn't. If it's just a plain black
jumper. Plain back jumper is a plain
back jumper. And so in theory, you know, and
thankfully lots of schools will allow kids because it's not, you
know, people have different budgets.
Yeah, yeah. So we at school, I mean, it was
black trousers, white shirts, black blazer.
And then you put the we, we, my mom used to just to save money,
put the logo on the blazer for me.
And then the official school tie and our school ties were just, I
think, I think when they they rebranded our school halfway
through it, they just put it was just a purple tie because they
wanted the logo on the blazer, not on the tie.
My mum then went, well there's one in Marks and Spencer's that
looks, you know, you've wrecked yours but I've still got it.
So she just took it to Marks and Spencer.
That's the same kids tie and it was elastic because save time,
although I got bullied for that. So I got real one eventually.
It was such a. Thing as good bullying it did
force me to go go on I. Think YouTube had just come out
and it was go by the official stuff.
Yeah, my uncle who worked in the city, it was like Windsor Knot.
It was like I did a half Windsor Knot, which is the only one I
still know for weddings, but. So I I my dad.
So in in first year my dad did a Windsor knot on my tie and I
liked it so much because it was a perfect.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That I had the same knot right
to 5th year because I just used to loosen it and washing machine
and then I still I'm 42 and I still can't tie a tie.
But if I'm going to a wedding, I'll go to my dad and be like
right, can you do me a wins or not please?
Thank you very. Much.
Yeah, it takes me about 5 goes to get the right length and I
always get the one at the back slightly too long and it sticks
out and yeah, it's so difficult. All right, last question for me
then. Let's come into land with this.
Where are you going as a business?
Like what does expansion look like?
Is it more of the like these are just plain items and we want to
sell more of those? Is it more schools?
Is it a combo? Are you have you, you know,
you're going to need more space for trees at some point as well.
Like, you know, what is, what are some of the challenges
coming up for you this year in the next kind of five years of
growth? So it's a bite.
So up to nigh it's been organic the growth so it's high.
I can sort of catapult that and you know, and actually so I've
never done sales and it kind of gives me the ick a bit and be
like, hey, we. Are opposites.
When I get a pitch, I'm like, I'm like, when can we do it?
Are you free now? Let's go.
I I just. I just kind of shy away from it.
I. See, we're all, we're all
different. It makes the universe amazing
and it yes. It makes the world go round.
And like recently, just before Christmas, the school contacted
me. And when I sat down with the
head, I brought in some samples and he was like, yeah, so it
turns out that my one of my teaching assistants follows you
on Instagram and a member of the Board of Governors and heard
what to do. And I was like, so you know,
there is obviously. How do you nudge more of that I
guess? As you're you've got no way of
knowing you know who's talking about you and how you know.
Can you talk about me a bit more please so.
I guess, I mean, could you even do referrals and say to us like
do you give a kickback to the schools at all?
Or is it like they just have to have preferred suppliers?
Is that because there's a lot of regulations in the UK?
One school and did ask about a kickback and I said, yeah,
that's fine. I can, I can, I can give you a
kickback, but I will have to put because I'm, I'm really, really,
really competitive. Like I'm embroidered stuff.
I am the cheapest. Around, yeah.
You couldn't just have one school that was suddenly more
expensive. It would look odd compared to
the rest of your range. Prices would have to go up, and
I would have to make that very clear on the website.
Like the margins in school uniform are so tiny, like it
really is. And they were like, oh, then it
would be more expensive for the parents.
Like, sorry, no, OK, it's fine. Leave it.
Yeah, yeah, which I think it's the honest conversation.
Just one thing I've learned in business.
Well, two things again. One I was talking about in the
assessment this morning. There's two things to learn in
business. 1 is be honest. They say it in all sales
training schools and books. And everything else is like just
be honest. If you can't do something, just
say no. Or just say I can, but these
ways to and explain why and people can't argue with a
logical why. The second thing I've learned in
business, and I think you've absolutely nailed this on the
site, which is why I think it's so effective and why I think
it's going so well, is everybody assume everyone is lazy and
ignorant. Sorry, anyone, because we all
buy stuff online, but we are lazy and ignorant.
Which is like, if it's not easy to click the button, I'm not
clicking it. And it's like Google have
actually even rolled out updates saying if it's like a bit of
text on a page and you have to try and click it on mobile and
it's really small, that's an accessibility fail because it's
not accessible to someone who's got thumbs as big as mine.
Trying to click it on an iPhone in the rain whilst paying for a
bus fare and listening to music at the same time.
Like that's the world we live in and Google's responding.
So I think make everything easy, Make it simple.
So if somebody wants to buy a uniform from a certain school or
exactly as you've done with your products saying like this is a
black cotton and just list all the things V-neck, list all the
things about it. You're making it simple that
just the product title alone, the parent goes, that's the one.
And also like, oh, and there's some cool and then they got more
time to read your USPS to understand why they buy it from
you and why you might be a pound or two more expensive, but
completely worth it. You know that whole you'll save
money in the long run because it doesn't bubble in the wash.
You know, it's more times too much dying.
Again and again and again. I used to hate Ida.
I was this there and I hated hand me downs because like
they're from girls which I've got grown up it.
Was. Always stuff that she tried to
give me a school bag at one point I was like, I'm not
wearing that. It was literally like Ron on
Harry. Potter, you know when.
He gets there the robes for the ball.
And actually like, it's completely counterintuitive and
maybe I'm not like very businessy, but in June I always
say to people, now is the time to go into your school, get into
the second hand box and get the best things.
Most school uniform shops do a sale early in the summer to try
and, you know, ensure August isn't absolutely crazy.
So what's you know what's in there that you can grab and then
you know what you need, get it in the sale and and then you're
done. You can enjoy your summer
holidays and not worry. But that's why people subscribe
to that is that's really good use of device and it's very
selfless and probably then leads to like they get one of those
second items. And when it does RIP apart or it
starts bubbling, they're on your e-mail list and they're hearing
from you say, I think playing that long term game.
And I mean everything you described about when you get a
school and it takes time to get XYZ and build that trust and
everything, you're playing the long game and it's it might take
longer to get to where you want to be.
But I need to finish with this stack because it probably has
made its way into the title if you're watching this.
But you mentioned as well, you're pretty much doubling year
on year at the moment, which is fantastic doing all the things
you're doing. So if anyone's listened to this
episode and gone, when are you going to mention that?
It's like what Liam's described to you is all the things you're
doing to make that happen. And yeah, if you, if you're in
the business of trying to, you know, grow a business and scale
it overnight, there's only one in a million companies that do
basically what Gym Shark did. And they and they are, they are,
you know, sort of flatlining now because they've reached market
capacity. And it's about market cap, not
growth, which is fine, but it gets a bit boring and it gets
very corporate at that stage. And we went with lots of brands
in that space. And they're, they equally as
important to us, but far less fun than working with a nimble
startup. So we get to see the whole
breadth. But I mean, Liam, thank you so
much. Like, it's been great hearing
from you. I appreciate your honesty.
And and it's been really fun just talking to you today.
So yeah, thank you so much. Appreciate your time and I wish
you all the best with everything going on.
And thanks for joining the show. Thank.
You very much thank you for having.
Me, of course, it's been good and yeah, if anyone wants to
reach out to Liam as well. Last question, Liam, website,
social handles, how can people follow you and try and help help
them do what what you're doing already?
How can they get in touch, find the website, that sort of thing?
So if they go to anethicalschoolwear.co.uk and
the social handles are at the bottom of the home page, yeah,
drop me a line and if anyone would like me to supply those
skills to you. Of course I will be phoning you
in about. Three years time don't contact
me, send the link to the heads and see what the head thinks and
if they are you know that way inclined.
You should offer a referral scheme and say if you see if you
CC me in when you or BCC me, you're into the head.
I'll give you a free uniform if they go ahead or something like
that, That can be the kickback scheme or something, but I'll
leave you to decide. That's that's not a thing guys.
I'm just missing the heart before they start emailing you.
Anyway, thank you to Liam. Thanks to everyone for tuning
in. If you haven't already, please
hit that subscribe button. Leave us a review.
And yeah, listen to Tuesday tea break talks.
So the next few weeks will be explaining a bit more about that
summit we're going to be doing online from September onwards.
And if you want to sign up to that as well, I'll let you know
as soon as the new sign, it's live.
It's sitting on my To Do List to check it, change some content
stuff on it, and it'll be going live.
And that is wwspodcast.com. Go subscribe to the newsletter
now. And you can get 2 emails a week
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And we put other bits and pieces from suppliers and sponsor
things on Tuesdays, as well as a few free offers and other bits
and pieces in there. So thanks so much for tuning in.
Hope you tune in on Tuesday and hope you guys have an amazing
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