- Tell us a little bit about your business/organisation…
Echor is a personal wellbeing company focussed on aiding peoples’ relaxation and sleep through curated products and content.
- How did you get into the industry?
I’ve been in the consumer goods world since 2012, when my business partner, George, and I first started buying and selling sports equipment after graduating from university and co-founded our successful sports equipment business, SAFEJAWZ.
Being entrepreneurs with young families, our sleep often suffered and we realised the negative effect that this had on our mood, health and productivity. Once we realised this was a shared experience for multiple demographics, we decided to put our focus on improving sleep and end of day practices for people. This coincided with the UK’s first lockdown during March 2020 – which also temporarily stopped our sports business in its tracks – which gave us ample time to focus on building and growing Echor.
- What are the biggest opportunities and challenges in your industry?
The Covid-19 pandemic has advanced the e-commerce space by more than a decade in just over a year, with more people than ever now choosing online shopping by default. This provides a great opportunity for all online-first businesses – especially those who can offer something unique – with hassle-free processes.
Largely due to the impact of Amazon and its pioneering approach to online shopping in recent years, the 2021 consumer wants a slick process with quick delivery and easy returns: therefore, just having a great product isn’t good enough anymore. In terms of the wellness market, sleep is very much a trending topic at present, which is providing lots of great opportunities to be innovative with our approach to both product development, messaging and customer service too!
When considering that sleep is so integral to our daily routines – and the fact that it takes up around a third of our lives – it’s vital for us to get it right! Looking ahead to 2022 and beyond, we think that there will continue to be opportunities for businesses who can help us to optimise and improve our sleep, whether that’s through nutrition, tech or luxury goods: the key is to bring something effective and memorable to the table.
- How would you describe your leadership style?
I have always been an empathetic leader of my team; due to the nature of building up a bootstrapped business, I’ve worked in almost every role in the company at some point so have a really clear understanding of the business – and its challenges – as a whole. This puts me in a great position to understand any staff challenges as they occur, as I’ve likely faced similar issues myself, and helps me to build genuine rapport and trust with the team.
- How do you get the most out of the people who work for you?
I’m a firm believer that if a team member isn’t performing well, it is almost always down to one of two reasons: motivation or ability – which can be simplified as they don’t want to, or they can’t. The solution for addressing ‘motivation’, or a lack thereof, is different for individual people, but often includes recognition and proper remuneration.
With this in mind, it’s really important to have regular staff 1-2-1’s so that we can identify each employee’s motivations and blockers, to be able to ensure you can meet these needs as an employer and can therefore get the best out of your team throughout their career path within your company.
Secondly, when addressing ‘ability’, it has been vital for us to have a proactive approach to training to ensure that the team is constantly challenging themselves and progressing with their development. We always welcome bringing in useful, specialist consultants to support staff and will happily put them on relevant courses for a specific skillset and are also happy to fund books and other learning resources tailored to their individual areas of interest.
- What are the most crucial elements to your business/organisation running smoothly and being successful?
With the fast growth we’ve experienced within the past 12 months, operations and logistics have become more and more important. The pandemic and Brexit have caused unprecedented difficulties in manufacturing and shipping and nothing can derail a growing consumer goods business quicker than running out of stock. For this reason, we’ve invested in new ERP software as well as the operations side of our team to ensure everything within our control is running as smoothly as possible.
- How have the past 12 months been for you?
It’s been turbulent, as it has been for many, but it has been extremely valuable for us to be able to step back, reassess our goals and rebuild the business to last. We dipped to 5% of our forecasted growth in March 2020, but since then, we’ve invested in the back office team, managed to grow Echor consistently and with the return of sporting events helping SAFEJAWZ to bounce back, we have now quadrupled our pre-Covid monthly revenue and are still growing!
- Is there anything you’ve learnt during the pandemic that you’ll take forward in your business/organisation?
I’ve always been a strong believer in the power of face-to-face communication and having a full office for collaboration and team culture reasons; so was initially resistant to the increase of virtual meetings. However, the last 18 months have made me realise that there are many benefits to offering a hybrid work model and most of our staff now are split between home and office, which will continue to be the case going forwards regardless of any future pandemic-related developments.
- What will the next 12 months look like for your business/organisation?
We are still very much in the early stages of growing Echor and have a long way to go to make it the world’s leading specialist relaxation and end of day self-care brand. Having developed a strong internal team structure and robust processes, as well as developing some fantastic products, we are looking forward to using the next 12 months to take Echor to the next level by investing heavily in multiple areas of marketing to both raise brand awareness and to drive sales.
- What are the highlights of your career so far?
For me, it was the moment that I could take a liveable salary from the business and realising that it was now my full-time career and passion. During the first 4-5 years in business, I had been working multiple jobs whilst simultaneously building the business: first as a doorman and then as a firefighter. However, this wasn’t sustainable long-term, so when I finally got to the point where I could afford to focus solely on my own business ventures was such a special moment.
More recently, I’ve also been really proud to be able to start internally promoting within the company and giving more day-to-day responsibilities to the team which has freed up a lot of my time to allow me to focus more on growth and future strategies.
- What’s the biggest business mistake that you’ve learnt from?
Taking too long to take an important action. As a bootstrapped business, it is always been easy to delay a large expense or brush it off as frivolous – whether it is a new hire or a new mould investment. However, I have definitely learnt that if something is clearly going to be valuable for the business, it needs actioning as soon as possible: even if that means accessing temporary external finance to support this.
When running a business, a year can disappear with the click of a finger; so if important actions are delayed, then it can have negative implications for both profitability and overall growth for many years to come if not addresses promptly!
- What’s the best piece of business advice you’ve been given?
Entrepreneurship is a long game and burnout is real, so it’s incredibly important to create balance in your life and to not neglect yourself or your family life. Prioritising your wellbeing is the only way to still be doing anything with a smile on your face 20 years from now.
