The Interview: Rise & Fall founders Jed Coleman and Will Coulton on creating a new model for fashion

It's always interesting when founders come into fashion retail from the outside. They often challenge the accepted orthodoxy with new approaches and new thinking, and the co-founders of DTC lifestyle and fashion business Rise & Fall are no exception.

They are fashion and retail outsiders who have shaken up the market with Rise & Fall, which aims to elevate the every day, from bedding to fashion essentials and, even, olive oil. Fed up with overpaying (and reasoning that others were too), the pair came together to launch the business pre-pandemic. They then relaunched it afterwards once they'd worked out exactly what the proposition should be and how to navigate complex supply chains.

Jed Coleman and Will Coulton are both New Zealanders and both former lawyers, who were introduced by Coleman's brother-in-law. When they met, Coleman had long since walked away from his high-flying corporate career and had already made a name from himself in the world of entrepreneurialism, while Coulton was ready to do the same.

"I found law very restrictive," Coleman says of his time as New York lawyer. "I saw the lifers that were wandering the corridors; they were all very rich, but they didn't seem very happy." He reflected on what he wanted to do and decided he wanted to "do something in coffee". This lead to the establishment of the highly successful Caravan Restaurants & Coffee Roasters in London. Coleman subsequently sold his stake in Caravan and temporarily headed back to New Zealand, where he was introduced to Coulton, a lawyer turned management consultant and an entrepreneur in waiting.

"Both my parents have run their own businesses all through my life," says Coulton. "So that was sort of the thing I grew up around. I just thought that's what you did. I always wanted to start my own business, do my own thing. Management consulting was kind of like a step for me in that direction; being paid to learn the figure-it-out skills, new subject matters, new projects... after a few years, I thought 'I guessed I've built up enough confidence and some savings to go and do this'."

The pair decided to "dive into" the world of DTC retail without really having any relevant backgrounds in the market but they were armed with a strong sense they could do things differently. Just as Coleman had felt the pull of coffee before establishing Caravan, creating excellent bedding was what drove the founding of Rise & Fall (the fashion came later).

Rise & Fall SS26: Bedding

"I was an awful sleeper and, I mean, I still am not a great sleeper. I was looking for sheets that were engineered for sleep and I couldn't find them. Bedding wasn't sold on that basis; it was thread count and a bit of fashion, and it was just a bit confusing. So we tried to make the most high quality sheets we could. Also from a purely business perspective, [bedding] was the right price point for selling online," Coleman explains.

Rise & Fall version 1.0 was therefore launched in 2018. The business spent time at the start working out how best to make, market and sell its product. Being digitally native brings its challenges for any business; customer acquisition can be expensive and having a product range that encourages repeat purchase is also key. While bedding was a good price-point for online selling, it isn't a frequent re-purchase, so the pair decided to expand the range to include fashion and other lifestyle products. The unifying idea across these categories was that they wanted to sell the best quality products – at the fairest possible price – that people use in their everyday lives. This was the basis of Rise & Fall 2.0, which launched in November 2021.

The pandemic era was an opportunity on one hand for the business but a massive challenge on the other. Rise & Fall had found it pretty easy to acquire customers, but meeting demand was the challenge. "We only had one supplier," explains Coulton, "and they had lots of issues, they kept getting shut down [for lockdowns] and we couldn't access more product. We were scrambling around trying to find a new supply chain. So while [the pandemic] was good for e-commerce businesses, there were challenges as well."

These challenges also fed into the new iteration of the business, as Coleman explains: "With Rise & Fall fall 2.0, we've broadened the product offering, we've changed the way that we build our supply chain, we've changed the way that we deal with manufacturers, we've changed our pricing strategy and really focused in on this core concept of 'Materially Better' and that means the best materials at the best price basically. So it's quality and value, and that transcends everything that we deliver."

Jed Coleman (left) and Matt Coulton

In effect, Rise & Fall is a marketplace for the best manufacturers around the world for any given products. Coleman and Coulton tracked down the best suppliers of suede & leather, jersey, knitwear, denim and linen etc. They then work with those manufacturers (initially placing small MOQs) to create products, based on designs and specifications, provided by Rise & Fall. In common with fast fashion retailers (and it should be stressed this is the only point Rise & Fall has in common with fast fashion retailers), it operates a "test and repeat" model on its fashion products. Styles that are successful are re-ordered and the quantities are upped, while those that aren't, are not. It dabbles in trends (barrel leg jeans are a best seller for instance) but essentially it offers elevated daily essentials, such as cashmere and merino knits, cotton shirts, t-shirts, jackets, jeans and other separates for men and women.

Rise & Fall SS26: Women's

"We want to be demand-driven, rather than supply-driven," explains Coleman. "We don't want to be sitting around with some merchandisers 18 months in advance trying to predict, you know, how many green items of this are going to sell – we might as well be trying to read tea leaves. So we don't know and we're trying to test and we're trying to react quickly. It has limitations because it is physical product and it gets made in far-flung places, but it is the future to be agile. The factories, interestingly, understand us as well and so they are much more receptive to working with us in this way, as they got burned during the pandemic following the failure of [many] big retailers."

One of the key selling points is price transparency as Rise & Fall does not apply the usual retailer mark-up. On its site and in social posts, Rise & Fall tells is customers how much it charges and how much a comparable item would cost from another brand. For instance, a best-selling suede jacket is priced at £350 at Rise & Fall. and it is indicated as costing £750 at Zadig & Voltaire. A mid-weight cashmere crewneck costing £225 at Rise & Fall would be priced at £395 at Pringle.

Coleman admits some customers don't enjoy the comparison but for the most part, it works and it helps to contextualise what may be a new brand to a new customer. "It's Marmite," he says. "I think some people love it and some people hate it and we get loads of trolls on our digital channels about our form of marketing, which is very transparent and with lots of comparison. I think we're trying to retrain people a little bit. You know, that old adage that 'you get what you pay for', this works against us because we're saying, 'no, you don't have to pay that'. And so we need certain certifications or certain signals to say to the customer that this is good quality because we're a digital brand and you can't come in [to a store] and feel it."

The elevated creative presentation of the brand is also designed to drive home the quality message. This refined brand positioning is thanks to the expertise of Creative Director of Brand and Product Natalie Hasseck, who joined the business in 2022 when it was easing into its 2.0. phase. Hasseck has a strong background in visual identity and fashion, having worked as a brand strategist for clients including Topshop, John Lewis and Chloé Eyewear, among others. She also spent time as an art director for globally renowned fashion photographer Mario Testino. She wasn't brought into the business not just for her fashion expertise, necessarily, but to "lift the aesthetic" of the brand, which has done with great success.

Rise & Fall SS26: Men's

A final piece of the story-telling is around sustainability and ethics. Rise & Fall is B-Corp certified but, these days, it's not something the brand shouts about. Coleman and Coulton believe it was important to get the independent certification to send a trust message to consumers. Again, being a digital brand and perhaps not well-known to some potential customers, means that having this stamp of approval is important.

Clearly one of the best ways to overcome the challenges of being a digital business is to open a physical store. So is that on the agenda? "Look we want to do it. It's just bandwidth," says Coleman. "We're doing a lot because we're still small, but we've got a pretty broad product offering [to fill a store]. When people feel the product they truly say 'oh I get it now' and so having that physical presence is necessary. So absolutely it's on the roadmap, it's just kind of a question of when." It's also a question of where, as the pair have done a lot of pavement pounding and have yet to convince themselves of the right location, with the right footfall, the right target market and the right price.

Besides, the brand has done pretty well without any stores so far. Turnover has more than doubled every year since it started and is now into "eight figures" with the next target set to get to nine figures, as well as grow the brand internationally. The US in particular has a strong appetite for Rise & Fall. "The concept should travel really well, it's really high quality stuff at a great price. It's not jurisdiction specific," says Coleman.

Having gone through the pain of the pandemic, reassessed their model and proposition, and found their groove, these fashion outsiders have achieved impressive success at a time when others, with vastly more experience in the market, have failed. And they're not done yet.

Says Coulton: "It wasn't an overnight success, that's for sure. When you listen to podcasts or read about some of these brands that pop up, mostly in America, blow up and get well funded straight away, we're certainly not that. We're certainly outsiders and that has been beneficial in some ways, but it has almost meant that things that may have come naturally to others founders, haven't come naturally to us. But we're just about getting better every day, every quarter and every year..."

Will Coulton will be speaking at TheIndustry.fashion Summit: Fashion [Un]Bound on 15 October at The Forum, Leadenhall in London. To hear more about the brand's inspiring story and to listed to other founders and CEOs from brands including H&M, ALIGNE, Jigsaw, Toast, Albaray and more, book your ticket here.