{"id":166036,"date":"2020-04-01T20:13:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-01T20:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theindustry.fashion\/the-interview-george-graham-ceo-and-co-founder-wolf-badger\/"},"modified":"2021-08-06T12:05:17","modified_gmt":"2021-08-06T12:05:17","slug":"the-interview-george-graham-ceo-and-co-founder-wolf-badger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theindustry.fashion\/the-interview-george-graham-ceo-and-co-founder-wolf-badger\/","title":{"rendered":"The Interview: George Graham, CEO and co-founder, Wolf & Badger"},"content":{"rendered":"
Global online marketplace Wolf & Badger<\/a> is celebrating its 10th<\/sup> anniversary this year and, though it has had to temporarily shutter its London and New York stores, and put its plans for a new store opening in LA this year on hold, 90% of its business is still from its online platform, which supports young brands who have sustainable production ethics. CEO and co-founder, George Graham, remains positive, despite the current coronavirus crisis having such an instant impact on brands and retailers alike.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Has being forced to close your stores really impacted on your business?<\/strong><\/p>\n Well, obviously we\u2019ve had to temporarily shut our big store in London, which is 12,000 sq ft in Coal Drops Yard, King\u2019s Cross, and also our store in SoHo, New York. We actually closed them before being directed by the authorities as we thought it was the right thing to do for our community as a whole. Our first priority is to keep our team and our customers safe. That\u2019s obviously been very impactful for us and for our brands, who are all small businesses. We work with just over 1,000 of them. So, we\u2019ve just really ramped up our support for those brands online and we\u2019ve been continuing to push on our digital marketing channels, and look at new ways to connect brands with customers. Argent, who are the landlords at Coal Drops Yard, have suspended rents for three months, which is very good of them. And equally the Chancellor has put a hold on business rates for retailers for the coming tax year, so at least that\u2019s been some relief. It should allow us to make sure we can come back stronger when we do re-open. In New York we are still discussing with our landlord. There\u2019s currently less government support there, but we hope that situation will change.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n How are online sales currently performing?<\/strong><\/p>\n So far, our online sales have been holding up robustly. We have a strong partnership with DHL and have had no issues in terms of logistics. The goods are actually despatched by the brands themselves, but we organise the shipment. We have a team of 60 people in total, which is not huge, but it\u2019s enough to offer the marketing, customer service and operational support that the brands need. We are actually currently hiring, because we are still building up our technology, and we intend to come out of this all the stronger for it. In terms of business, we\u2019re 90% online, but the stores act as showrooms and event spaces where we can really engage with our wider community of brands and customers, as well as our team and our partners.<\/p>\n Are you seeing a sales spike in any areas?<\/strong><\/p>\n Ultimately, I think overall there\u2019s a drop off in demand as people adapt to the new ways of living and working, and come to grips with the new \u2018normal\u2019. But customer demand has now all shifted online, and we\u2019re very well positioned to serve that demand. I won\u2019t say we\u2019ve seen a spike, because everything is challenging right now, but certainly we\u2019ve seen demand not waning online. It\u2019s remained relatively consistent. We have a diverse group of really fantastic independent brands who our customers are still keen to shop for. We recently saw a huge spike in sales for a \u2018hero\u2019 product on one of our regular emails we send out to customers, which were slippers from a brand called Laines London. We\u2019ve seen a drop in certain categories, but we\u2019ve seen a big rise in others, like homeware and beauty products. It\u2019s just shifted around a little. Homeware sales have actually risen by some 43% online, as people stay in and want to make their homes nicer places to be in. It\u2019s a real mix of things, with a lot of interior decoration pieces such as cushions to make the house more comfortable as people are now having to spend more time at home. Candles, prints, blankets, mugs and other kitchenware items are performing well, also items to help people work from home.<\/p>\n How have sales been of clothing and footwear?<\/strong><\/p>\n Footwear has actually been strong and clothing has been pretty consistent, with perhaps a bit of a shift away from party dresses and holiday outfits, but people are still wanting to look and feel good \u2013 even while they are at home. The classic pyjama top from Les Boys Les Girls is proving popular at the moment. Fashion brand wise Cosel<\/a> is selling well, as well as NoLoGo-chic<\/a>, Cliche Reborn<\/a> and Primrose Park London<\/a>. Both online and instore our customers are primarily female, it\u2019s about 75-80% of the business. But we do also have a strong men\u2019s offer and we are continuing to build that up. Men\u2019s is a big growth category for us and it\u2019s been performing particularly strongly in King\u2019s Cross recently, and equally online it has seen significant growth. We\u2019ll be pushing that further this year. Homeware and beauty are the other categories that we\u2019ve been growing recently.<\/p>\n What\u2019s are the London and New York stores like?<\/strong><\/p>\n We have a restaurant partner on the top floor of our Coal Drops Yard store, called Hicce, and it\u2019s fantastic. On the other two floors we have books and magazines, a flower shop and a caf\u00e9, as well as an event space, and about 100 brands from our online marketplace are represented in the store at any one time. We opened there about a year and a half ago. The New York store, which we\u2019ve had since the beginning of 2017, is 2,500 sq ft, so a smaller space but still substantial, and in a great location on Grand Street. It has a jewellery room in there, and a stationery concession partner called Greer from Chicago. It\u2019s a great space for us to really engage with customers in a different way, and host a lot of events. We\u2019d been running our online business quite successfully for a number of years and we found that a lot of customers, quite organically, were coming from the US and particularly New York, also from the west coast. From day one we\u2019ve always had the intention of building a truly global business and a worldwide marketplace to connect independent brands from wherever they may be, with customers from wherever they may be. We\u2019ve been in New York longer than we\u2019ve been in our store in Coal Drops Yard, but prior to King\u2019s Cross we had two smaller London stores \u2013 in Notting Hill, which was our first store, and one in Mayfair, on Dover Street.<\/p>\n How did you start out in 2010 and how did you get to where you are now?<\/strong><\/p>\n We started off in 2010 with both an online business and the store in Notting Hill at the same time. We shut both the Notting Hill and Mayfair stores in 2018 when we moved to the one large location in Coal Drops Yard. We\u2019ve found we\u2019ve been selling better per square foot there than either Notting Hill or Mayfair, and it\u2019s a much larger space, so we\u2019ve been very happy with our sales performance. We have a very prime position within the development and we find that most visitors to Coal Drops Yard tend to come in to our store because of our location, whether they be Londoners coming along the canal \u2013 particularly at the weekend \u2013 or a lot of tourists coming in from King\u2019s Cross off the Eurostar. Tourism will, of course, now be majorly effected now, and it will have an impact in terms of store performance, but we have so many events \u2013 and we will be resuming those as soon as it\u2019s safe to do so \u2013 that drive so much traffic online, so we don\u2019t rely on passing footfall. We can more than make up for the lack of tourism through our own activities.<\/p>\n