Bellroy | Andy Fallshaw
Conversation with Andy Fallshaw
The team behind Bellroy are a cool swag of creatives, tech heads and travellers who create pieces to help the world carry with greater simplicity and ease. Andy Fallshaw is the Co-Founder behind the brand. Bellroy’s mission is a big one - to inspire better ways to carry, use business as a force for good. We chat to Andy about how the business does just that.
“When you think about how do you move through the world effortlessly low friction to focus on the moments, the way you carry starts to just free you and unlock you and let you pursue whatever it is you want to pursue with just less of that sort of mental bandwidth being consumed with trying to juggle things that aren’t designed for the way you want to use them.”
The team behind Bellroy are a cool swag of creatives, tech heads and travellers who create drool worthy well-designed carry goods to enhance your everyday. The range includes wallets, key covers, phone covers and bags for the conscious traveller.
Bellroy kicked off in Bells Beach Australia as Andy, his brother and sister-in-law and a few friends saw a gap in the carry market. Andy himself was a product engineer, and having explored everything from making his own wallets out of sailcloth to becoming one of the youngest employees ever to attain a Global Chairperson position for surf brand Rip Curl.
He knew that there was a big opportunity in the market for better carry goods. The brand has gone from strength to strength while remaining a conscious and environmentally sustainable business. They’ve been a certified B Corp since 2015, focused on minimising environmental impact, improving animal welfare, and helping their people flourish.
Pru talked to Andy online from our Byron Bay studio and Andy from Bells Beach as a wild swell ripped up Australia's east coast.
You can clearly tell that Andy is incredibly passionate about what he does, there was something in this shared love of good business, lifestyle, and a spirit of adventure that aligned for a great fireside chat. So pour yourself a cuppa, and join us for the adventure of bringing Bellroy to life.
Mentioned in conversation…
The early years of Bellroy and establishing the right gaps in the market to target
The product lines, the changes and challenges that all lead to making a truly great product
How the company lives and breathes their mission - Inspire better ways to carry. Use business as a force for good. Help the world, and our crew, flourish.
Effective altruism and how it all works
Follow Bellroy here:
Bellroy Website
Bellroy Instagram
Bellroy Facebook
Bellroy Youtube
Full Podcast Transcript - ANDY FALLSHAW, BELLROY
Pru Chapman:
Welcome back to the One Wild Ride podcast, I’m your host Pru Chapman.
My guest today is Bellroy co-Founder and CEO Andy Fallshaw.
If you haven’t already come across Bellroy, it’s a place where design meets carry. The team behind Bellroy are a cool swag of creatives, tech heads and travellers who create pieces to help the world carry with greater simplicity and ease.
Their wallets, accessories and bags are drool worthy for the design and functionally conscious traveller.
Bellroy kicked off in Bells Beach Australia as Andy, his brother and sister-in-law and a few friends saw a gap in the carry market. Andy himself was a product engineer, and having explored everything from making his own wallets out of sailcloth to becoming one of the youngest employees ever to attain a Global Chairperson position for surf brand Rip Curl, he knew that there was a big opportunity in the market for better carry goods.
Not only that, but the founding team also knew that business could be done better, and they’ve been a certified Bcorp since 2015, focused on minimising environmental impact, improving animal welfare, and helping their people flourish.
Andy’s a cool cat.
I really loved this interview that we did online with me in Byron Bay and Andy in Bells Beach, as a wild swell ripped up Australia's east coast. You can clearly tell that Andy is incredibly passionate about what he does, there was something in this shared love of good business, lifestyle, and a spirit of adventure that aligned for a great fireside chat.
So pour yourself a cuppa, and join us for the adventure of bringing Bellroy to life.
Pru Chapman:
Hey Andy, and welcome to the show.
Andy Fallshaw:
Well, thank you Pru. Good to be here.
Pru Chapman:
I'm so glad that you're here and I'm pretty sure that's going to be quite a juicy story that we tell today because you are the founder of Bellroy. But as I kind of had a little dig into your past, you've certainly done quite a number of interesting things. I kind of wanted to set the scene for our listeners and kind of take I guess everyone back a little bit. And that is that you are actually a product design engineer by trade. And from what I understand it was very early in your studies that you became interested in carry. Now for our listeners, can you give them a bit of an oversight into what carry means?
Andy Fallshaw:
Oh, you bet. I think I've always had an interest in traveling and sort of moving through the world and experiencing everything I can. And back in the day, people would refer to bags and accessories or travel gear or luggage, but there wasn't really a term people were using to describe the products you use to carry your everyday things, your travel things, your trip things. And when we were looking at the space, so it was like, well, it's carry, that's what these items are about. And so there was a really early passion there for how do you move through the world, bring the things you need with you every way you want to go and do it in a sort of seamless and low friction way. And so the term carry, we'd seen it used in its literal sense in many places, but to define the category as carry felt like the right usage.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And having being quite the traveler, I am quite the traveler, but particularly in my younger years. I agree that was kind of this, it's a bit of a void there, isn't it? It hadn't actually been identified as it's own category or given the kind of attention that it deserved really when you're lugging either a surfboard or a snowboard halfway around the world and back. There wasn't always the best options out there to do it.
Andy Fallshaw:
No, and I think the options were so specialized only in an area. So luggage has had all this investment, world luggage, but the second you try and take wheels over the sand or the snow, they seize up. They're too small, you get tripped up. Even when we started, we could see massive bulky wallets, which is about carrying around those credit cards, your driver's license and bills. And we could see that no one had really thought about how that needs to integrate into your everyday life. So many people keep a wallet in their back pocket. And so you could see them sitting on a slant. You could hear the stories of chiropractors sort of decrying how evil these were at people's bodies.
Andy Fallshaw:
And so the more you sort of think about how do you move through the world effortlessly low friction to focus on the moments, the way you carry starts to just free you and unlock you and let you pursue whatever it is you want to pursue with just less of that sort of mental bandwidth being consumed with trying to juggle things that aren't designed for the way you want to use them.
Pru Chapman:
Exactly. Juggle things and lug things. [crosstalk 00:03:27] that I would commonly use, lug things, so uncomfortable. Obviously you spent some time at university and then you moved on to Rip Curl, which for all of our listeners I'm sure they know Rip Curl, but just in case it's a very iconic surf brand, definitely with the travel culture as well. Can you tell us a little bit about your time there and what you kind of got up to?
Andy Fallshaw:
Oh, absolutely. I was quite fortunate really. My then partner, now wife, Miyo and I had just come back from a year in London designing and we had both grown up in Melbourne, but very much I always had a yearning for the outdoors for coast and mountains. And so we decided we really wanted to move down to Torquay area. We had lots of friends down here. And I was quite fortunate at the time [Milbridge 00:04:18] was their head of HR. And I interviewed, I went up and said, "Look, I love the brand. I think I could bring some value to you. Is there any sort of role you could find for me?" And she was fascinating because we talked a lot. I showed her the way I try and think about the world and opportunities and ways to design for it. And she was like, "We have nothing."
Andy Fallshaw:
And then two days later she's like, "We've got a junior accessories designer position. It's paid almost nothing. I know it's below your skill level, but do you want it?" And I was like, "Yeah, you bet. Let's sort of jump in and see what will happen." And so I started in a junior accessory designer role designing caps and belts and all sorts of things for Rip Curl. But I do that design work through the day. And then at night and the weekend I'd start working on the gaps in Rip Curl, the opportunities, the things that I thought they would be able to push into.
Andy Fallshaw:
And so I had four years at Rip Curl and it was a beautiful journey. I was really lucky, they could see my passion for the space. And so I do the job through the day and then I'd do the next job I wanted at night and the weekend. And so I started some pretty rapid promotions and I ended up the global chairman for equipment division, so that handled all the bags, luggage, accessories. It handled a lot of the hardware sort of stuff outside of surfboards for Rip Curl. And then I also ended up the head of global board shorts. And in a surf brand, board shorts is sort of your main advertised product, because it's one of the only products you can see other than a surfboard when people are in tropical waters and doing great things. It's where a lot of the great sort of graphic story telling is built in that board short team and then rolled out to other parts of the business.
Andy Fallshaw:
So I ended up, yeah, four years all up, and just an incredible time. Your world meetings were in Bali and Hossegor and Hawaii and all the drain destinations and you got sort of flying around and put up and in great accommodation on the beach and you got to sort of work hard through the day. But certainly there were more than a few little sneaky surf sessions amongst it. It was a really fun time of my life.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. Incredible. And I mean, then it begs the question, why did you leave? It sounds like a dream.
Andy Fallshaw:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think I it felt like one of the most indulgent careers I could have pursued. And I think I just started to realize that in life I wanted more than indulgence. I wanted to try and leave a positive mark on the world in any way I could. And so I realized that there was just an opportunity in a different style of business to perhaps have an even bigger impact. And I was lucky, my brother and his partner, Lena, had been consulting in management supply chain. They're both engineers as well. And at the same time they were starting to think about the next move for themselves as well.
Andy Fallshaw:
And we'd worked a little bit in our family business, which is wheels and castors. And we'd loved working together, huge amount of respect for each other. And so we realized that perhaps we could start a few businesses and sort of see if one of them would take off. And each of those businesses was focused on areas where we thought we had a bit of an insight into that market and what the gaps were and where people were doing it in not the best way. And so yeah, I fled Rip Curl and started what was I think about nine businesses with Matt and Lena.
Pru Chapman:
Nine?
Andy Fallshaw:
It was so stupid. Don't do that. Don't ever do that.
Pru Chapman:
All the listeners at home, don't do that. Nine businesses, who thought that that was a good idea? I mean, you all thought that that was a good idea, that's why you did it.
Andy Fallshaw:
We've been reading the research in start-ups, at that time they were saying about 10% of start-ups succeed really. And so we're like, "Well, if we're to find the successful one, maybe we should start 10 businesses and maybe one of those succeeds." And I think we were even fouled at getting to 10. I think we only got to nine before we started to buckle under the weight of them. And I had to start trimming back again.
Pru Chapman:
I love that. Give us an insight, I mean, of course we're going to go on to talk about Bellroy, but what was one of the other ones that you started in there?
Andy Fallshaw:
We continued two businesses. One of them was electric drive, which made powered materials handling. So that was a business we understood from the will and cost of business. And so we ran that for a bit before selling that. Another was a friend of ours, a radiologist, Frank, he'd seen that there was this major issue in radiology education that a slightly scary company went around and bought up all the textbooks and jacked the prices. And so radiologists weren't getting access to the cases and the articles that would actually build great expertise.
Andy Fallshaw:
And he'd had this little hobby business idea around something like Wikipedia, but for radiology, where professionals could upload cases, they'd be shared free people around the world, especially in second and third world economies could get access to an abundance of cases. There could be educational tools around it. And my brother's software developer is one of his many skills. And so we realized that we could get involved in this and just help sort of shape that into something really interesting that would serve a good part in the world. And that's a business we're still involved with in a small way.
Andy Fallshaw:
But amongst those as well was Bellroy which was, Bellroy and Carryology were the two areas where that was very much my passion space. And I guess in hindsight it's hardly surprising that they were the ones that really got traction because it was an area that it wasn't just the head that we could apply to it, it was also the heart. And so that was certainly the one that always had the biggest passion spot for me.
Pru Chapman:
Ah, isn't that fascinating? And I think we talk about that a lot these days. I don't think we talked about it as much back then. We talk a lot now about, really doing the thing that lights your fire, that gets you really excited. And this is just case in point of looking back. They probably all had great merits, all of the businesses, but it was the one that your heart was really in and your interest was really in that you saw through to what it is today.
Andy Fallshaw:
I absolutely agree, and something I just love to add to that discussion around passion. Cal Newport is a great author and thinker and he talks about building passions, not finding passions, and it's an area I think growing up in Torquay the love of surfing is not in people's DNA. The love of surfing comes because your community loves it. There's a lot of expression in it as you build skill in it, and an art skill you get more reward for that passion, you see the benefits of it. And so I think it was an area that there was a seed of better carry helps me pursue the life I want to live. And then the passion was developed in it as we could start to build more expertise and more of a sort of high level understanding of the space and how to navigate it. Then that starts to sort of reaffirm and sort of it's a positive feedback loop into that passion cycle.
Pru Chapman:
Oh, I love that. And I'm going to pull that out for all of the quotes. I'm actually listening to Flow at the moment. It's by the author who is known for it. I always [crosstalk 00:12:40], I can't pronounce it.
Andy Fallshaw:
You wouldn't be able to pronounce the surname, none of us could. [inaudible 00:12:46].
Pru Chapman:
[inaudible 00:12:46]. And I'm just back to the part where he's talking, I mean, I've heard it many years ago and I've just come back to it and this is a big part of what he says. It's that, yes, it's something that feels when you have an interest in it, but you progressively get better at it. And you can see the more that you do, the closer the steps become to what it will eventually be. And so I agree, I don't think anyone really finds or certainly doesn't realize their passion by sitting on the couch. It's really, it's an active pursuit of living out your passion.
Andy Fallshaw:
I absolutely agree. And that sort of skill acquisition in the community reinforcement and all those sorts of things are such an important part of that as well. I think if people go looking for their passion, they can spend a lifetime with it.
Pru Chapman:
I couldn't agree more. Okay. Well, let's hone in a little bit. I'd love to talk about Carryology because Carryology kind of laid the foundations for Bellroy as I understand it. Can you tell us a little bit about Carryology and how that came about? I mean, in one of the nine businesses you've launched.
Andy Fallshaw:
Yeah, absolutely. I think when we were thinking about the space, there's that ... Charlie Munger talks about this a lot. It's like, look at success and then reverse engineer it. And when we were thinking about this space we could see, I think sneaker culture was certainly a big influence for us where we could see there were all of these sort of closet collectors of sneakers. But it wasn't until there was campfires like Sneaker Freaker, which is an incredible Melbourne based publication that helped bring people around the campfire to talk about it, share their passion, sort of develop it, build knowledge and learning in the space.
Andy Fallshaw:
And we could see that there was probably an opportunity for that same thing with this notion of carry and how you move through the world. And so we thought, "All right, well, 10 20, 30 years from now, if Bellroy has become what we think it has the potential to become, what would it look like?" And we're like, "We'll have to have stoked this passion. We'll have to sort of lit this spark that kind of takes off for the whole area, not just one brand within it." And so we were evolving the idea of Bellroy and Carryology in unison. And that thing about bringing a community together to share learning, to discuss, to kind of stoke the passion. We wanted that to be a fundamental part.
Andy Fallshaw:
We already had some friends in design who were designing across this space. I worked for a couple of brands in the space as well. And so we knew we could get a few people together to start writing about it, sharing, learning, doing that sort of thing. And as we started to do that, we posted first in November, 2009. I can remember it because our first post went up on the day my first daughter was born actually. And it was, so that was one year before Bellroy launched. But we'd been toying with the ideas of both. And initially Bellroy was going to be a bag brand foremost and then have some wallets and some other carry parts to it.
Andy Fallshaw:
But that first year of working with Carryology and really starting to push into the market and the learning and what was around, we actually started to see that wallets were the most obviously neglected part of carry. We could see that they were fundamentally broken, they were bulky. They were optimized to be easy to make rather than to create a great user experience. And so they've evolved together I think throughout their history, but they've each influenced each other. We borrow resources from Bellroy to help with Carryology. But then the community, the discussions, the learning through Carryology helped sort of pivot those early days of Bellroy and helped us realize the biggest gaps in the market and the first parts we should put our attention to. And so it's been this incredible journey.
Andy Fallshaw:
Carryology now is a community of many contributors, fans, audiences around the world, millions of page views. It's become a really influential space. And I think one of the things I love most about it is we have deep, genuine friendships with so many of the people you would call our competitors. But we each are pushing at a different need, a different gap in the market. We're each pushing for a subtly different solution to the space we can see. And so we've ended up creating a very collaborative community. And I think there's probably not many industries where there's as much collaboration between brands as there is in carry. And I think a part of that is the Carryology audience and connection and openness and transparency that that sort of community has fostered.
Pru Chapman:
What an incredible space to create.
Andy Fallshaw:
Yeah, and it's still happening. It's still nowhere near the potential. There's still so many people carrying horrible carry solutions through the world. Whether they get our product or one of our competitors, we don't care so long as they start to just feel a bit more liberated, a bit less encumbered and a bit more able to just go straight at their goals. And so we still feel like it has so far to play out.
Pru Chapman:
I love that. And also just this kind of living example of, when you get, if you get past the ego and the competitiveness, you're a community of values aligned folk. You like great design, you love to travel, you like to move about like you say, in this effortless and frictionless way around the world. There's that real values alignment that exists in that community that goes above and beyond competition.
Andy Fallshaw:
I really agree. I think even from my youth, I sort of moved away from competitive sports pretty early and started climbing and I'd go up ski racing and then ski touring and then surfing became such a big part of my life. And I think all of these pursuits have that same aspect of it's about your own journey. It's not about how your journey compares to others. It's not about beating others or out competing them. It's about like, how can you all just have a fuller life, a richer experience. And I think I'm delighted to see how many others sort of could see that genuine motivation and realize that, you know what? Sharing some tips with a competitor who's actually a good person trying to do good stuff, there's nothing wrong with that.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. Far outweighs the cons, doesn't it?
Andy Fallshaw:
It does, it really does.
Pru Chapman:
Right. Now, and you've hinted in the beginnings of Bellroy, you thought it was going to be a brand company, but that's not actually how you brought it into the market, is it?
Andy Fallshaw:
Yeah. That initial focus on bags was the thought because they were the most obvious carrier item. Except I think when ... It was actually funny, we'd sort of done this whole deck on, okay, what will Bellroy be? And Hadrian, one of our co-founders and I had really worked on a whole series of designs, many of them were bags. There were a couple of wallets in there. And then I actually, we're doing a trip to US and Japan where I was catching up with a number of friends, and one of those friends is very senior in Nike design these days and another one runs his own design consultancy.
Andy Fallshaw:
And I sort of, I arrived there in Portland and sort of showed them this deck and was like, "Okay, I'm about to sink a chunk of my life savings in this. If it looks like a dumb idea and you don't tell me that, then I'm going to hate you forever."
Pru Chapman:
No pressure.
Andy Fallshaw:
Like, "Just tell it to me, what do you think?" And these two friends, James and Paul were instrumental. They looked over it and they said, "There's a lot of really interesting stuff here, but the bags market's noisy. I don't know if there's enough to cut through. What else do you have?" And that was at that same time that through Carryology we're really understanding the market. And we're like, "Well." We sort of almost went back to the drawing board and went, "Well, okay, wallets, they were in there, we can say they're broken."
Andy Fallshaw:
One of the good things about wallets is there's not as many ingredients that go into them. It's leather stitching, lining. But bags have multitudes of components and materials and all these different things that all have to interact with each other. And so when we then looked at that wallet space, we're like, "All right, well, gosh, we know how to make a much better wallet." And 10 years earlier when I was studying in Glasgow, I did a year of product design at Glasgow School of Art. I'd stitched up these little prototype wallets out of sailcloth and some were a simple one section wallet, some were bi-fold. And all of them were thinking about wallets in quite different ways, ways that would slim them right down and reduce the bulk.
Andy Fallshaw:
And back then I was doing it because I couldn't afford to buy a wallet. But then in doing that I sort of solved a couple of problems. And then H and I kind of really said ... Whoa, sorry, Hadrian, the co-founder. "Where else could we take that? What else is fundamentally flawed in wallets?" And so then we iterated a lot. And in August, 2010, we launched Bellroy with five wallet designs. And so it was always that wallets were going to be the first thing and then we'd start to roll it out. But yeah, as the story played out, we stayed on wallets for longer than we'd initially planned to just because we discovered we really could solve a lot of problems in that space.
Pru Chapman:
Incredible. And where did you launch them to? I'm always fascinated, where did they first land in the world?
Andy Fallshaw:
Great question. In 2010, direct to consumer wasn't really something most people were talking about. Some of those great pioneering DTC brands like Outlier had sort of been starting to formulate, starting to get out there. But back then if you were to build a brand, you generally ... the map looked like a wholesale brand where you sold your product to retailers and then the retailers sold it on. There was always going to be this wholesale component to the business. But one of our other businesses at the time, tricycle developments, which was dynamic language programming to solve complex sort of website application solutions. We had a number of good geeks in our stable, my brother included.
Andy Fallshaw:
And so at the time we were like, "Well, of course we'll also have a website and have direct sales." And it was fascinating from the very first day we launched, we sold wallets around the world. On that very first day we were selling to Korea and Japan and the US and Australia and many markets. And that's been something that has been with Bellroy from that very first day and almost defined Bellroy these days. Our market is truly global. We're selling in probably 140 countries every month. We have retailers around the world. It's always been a global market. And I think part of that had to be that we wanted to specialize to start, we wanted to focus on wallets. And when you're a real specialist brand, it's hard to be a specialist brand in a small market like Australia. I think we always thought we're going to need a global audience to be able to realize kind of our hopes for what this brand might become.
Pru Chapman:
Absolutely. And just so everyone heard that correctly, this is 2010. I think that's the same year around roughly that I started my business, and it's like social media wasn't a thing really back then to sell products and e-commerce wasn't really flying higher. So to launch and be able to be selling internationally is really quite incredible. And I mean, was it Carryology that was kind of fueling some of that? I mean, even just brand awareness at that stage.
Andy Fallshaw:
It had certainly helped, yes. And then back then, you try and get in the media, you try and get on the blogs.
Pru Chapman:
Yes, the media of course. Yes.
Andy Fallshaw:
[crosstalk 00:25:46]. And so I think that helped as well. And then just a lot of word of mouth from there. I think from very early days what we were trying to do seem to resonate with designers, architects, creative audiences. And so I think people could sort of see that from quite early on. And the benefit there was a lot of the creatives were some of the earlier adopters into online e-commerce and those sorts of spaces. I think we were quite fortunate without overlap.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah, absolutely. And also that attention to design for an everyday item, I think that's ... like you say, being quite specialist, coming out with wallets and it is, it is an everyday item. And I remember back then wallets were Velcro. Yes kids, that's right, Velcro. And so as you say it now, it's no wonder that those kinds of more design minded folk would pick it up and would really embrace it into their lives.
Andy Fallshaw:
Yeah, I think that's right.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. Cool. I mean it sounds like you came out of the gates kind of swinging. When did things really start ramping up or was it just on from the day that you pressed live?
Andy Fallshaw:
No, so we had initial successes early, but it was lumpy. We'd have a little run on things, but it was still a smallest audience. And I think that first 18 months after launch, it was tricky. We still thought wholesale was going to be the major anchor for the business. We had salespeople trying to open up retailers. We had a couple of successes, but there was a bit of friction. We were getting those initial sales, but they weren't at the volume that would let us really build the business. It was a very slow, organic sort of word of mouth spread.
Andy Fallshaw:
And then about 18 months in, we'd had some of the gates had tricycle developments working with some of the friends Lincoln and Jimmy, who were two friends who were helping very early in Bellroy days, that were really sort of brainstorming around how we could communicate the difference with Bellroy much better. And so they started to build out these landing pages that took you through this story of why, when you open up this wallet, it looks like there's only two card slots. And that's because they're the cards you reach for every day, but then there's all those cards you only use once every month or so.
Andy Fallshaw:
But what if you could store those together in a small section behind and really take all the bulk out, you don't have to separate each of them. We had these wallets that looked so different to what else was out there that we'd been having trouble communicating that without the word of mouth spread. But that sort of collaboration and that experimentation that some of the programmers were doing with some of our creatives. They started to get this landing page format that really took you through that journey and explained the difference and got you to understand the insight.
Andy Fallshaw:
And so then they tinkered with a few Google Ads and they ... you're right, social media, commerce still wasn't a thing back then. And so they started to work out how to advertise on some blogs through Google platforms and then take people through this journey of what it was. Sort of that first 18 months was actually a bit of a grind. We had a lot of different businesses we're working on. It was really hard to get enough attention. Bellroy had bits of traction, we could see that users loved these wallets when they actually got them. But it was too hard to spread that audience quickly enough, until we got this landing page, until we had started to understand the advertising algorithms. And it was then that it really actually took off. That first 18 months was a lot of challenges. It was resolving quality issues. It was doing all sorts of things. It was hunting, hunting, hunting for the traction. And then about 18 months in was when it actually started to really take off.
Pru Chapman:
Incredible. I quite often talk here on the podcast about the start-up phase and then the scale up phase, and I usually mention that it's around that kind of 12 to 18 month mark. And it's always really interesting to hear what happens around that point because I think if your business continues how it is, you can't just continue the grind forever. So it's kind of like you sink or you swim around that 18 month mark because you can't keep going how you were unless something kind of shifts or changes, and you sort of uplevel the game, you start to get a bit of push through into those markets. So that's fascinating to hear that it was, combination there of storytelling and the tech, the storytelling and the advertising really all coming together.
Andy Fallshaw:
I really agree with that and I've generally found all my favorite jobs like career moves as well. If it's an ambitious enough move, it takes about 18 months to get your head around the space and it's like, the world is increasingly complex and to understand it enough to then find those simplifying paths through it usually does take a bit of time and a bit of juggling, and you've got to make sure that you'll actually have the runway to do that, that you don't have to be able to scale it up from day one. You should really be tinkering in that product market fit and learning the space and learning what's resonating and what's not. And being open to changing your strategy as you find things out through that process.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. From that 18 month mark where things started to really take off for you there, was it then just about getting more products into market and kind of keeping up with the growth and hiring the people? Did it sort of ... was it all systems go from 18 months then?
Andy Fallshaw:
Well, we were lucky in that we could sort of drag people in from the other companies we were working on. We had a more diverse skill set there that we could draw on from early days. But certainly from 18 months was where we sort of really saw the first uptick, and growing at hundreds of percent a year, really good traction. But then we actually, we didn't want to spread too thin too quick. We wanted to keep the fewest products possible and just keep evolving them and refining them. We still didn't like explode the range. We kept the fewest wallets we could and we just kept going back and iterating on them and making them better. And we're working on the sustainability stuff. We were trying to progress that.
Andy Fallshaw:
We just kept trying to refine those first ingredients and get them going. And actually we then hit, the next issue was we became production constraint. We only had one supplier. It was a supplier we're still with today, a beautiful Indian company that we really have grown together all through all of this. But we were finding we couldn't scale up fast enough with them. And so then we sort of hit this next plateau where we just couldn't make enough product for the demand. And so the next phase was actually solving that. We then had to find a second supplier.
Andy Fallshaw:
And our wallets are incredibly challenging to make. Most suppliers aren't capable of it. And so then we had to really work with another Indian partner and it was a long process to take their excellent skills but adapt them to the way we think of things. My brother Matt and Lena have come out of supply chain consulting. And so we have a lot of theories around how supply chains should work, theory of constraints, lean manufacture. There's a lot of principles we use about how to eliminate waste out of the supply chain. And so we had to come in with suppliers that were willing to rethink the whole process, the entire supply chain and educate them, and work together on building a better way to build a product.
Andy Fallshaw:
And so then it was once we could actually bring that second supplier on them, we had the next big uptick and many hundreds of percent growth a year, and all of that that followed. And so it was many years of just making wallets and not that many, but learning to take them into global markets, learning to have a supply chain that could reach around the world and provide for customers wherever they were.
Pru Chapman:
Fascinating. It's interesting as you're talking, I can really hear that by keeping the product range slim almost, and that also aligns with the values of the company obviously with what you're trying to achieve. It does allow this space to kind of grow everything around the product range as well. I think that's what people sometimes don't quite understand in business that the craft or the content or the product, it's a small part of what the whole business actually looks like, when you put all of the marketing and the team and the financials, everything else around it. So yeah, that's interesting to hear. Now, did you come across any, it sounds like it was, like you say, a bit of lumpy growth, but you're out of the gates now. Were there any particularly challenging times? Did it ever go really pear-shaped on you where you didn't know whether you're going to get through. Or should I ask, was there one time? Was there a few times?
Andy Fallshaw:
Well, I think, we're making mistakes every day. There's a lot of experimentation within Bellroy. And I think what we try and do is make a lot of very small experiments or containable experiments. And some of those go right and some of those go wrong. There's things going wrong constantly. One of the things we try and make sure is that they don't go wrong for customers, instead they go wrong for us. But I think probably that first 18 months of Bellroy, it was the hardest period. It was a slog. I was working long hours. We had a newborn kid. My wife was also building her own business, which was taking huge demands on her. And I think we ... It was hard work. It was not a fairly tale.
Andy Fallshaw:
I think that probably the first 18 months. And once Bellroy started to get traction, we could then start to say, "Okay, all these other businesses, what can we sell? What can we close? How can we start to really sort of bring the whole team's focus back to the one that's sort of seeing the most potential." But it was long hours, we were stretched, the house fully mortgaged. It was definitely tricky. Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
All the things, and because you guys were funding this yourself obviously, and I know that there's a lot of talk nowadays in business about getting capital. But back then it was really about making a good go of your business yourself, wasn't it? Putting your own money behind it and seeing how far you can get.
Andy Fallshaw:
Absolutely. And also for us, we knew we didn't want to shape a normal business. We knew we wanted to change the nature of it and that meant we wanted to be in control of the business. We didn't want to give up control. And I guess that's a selfish thing where when you have a different vision to the normal cookie cutter vision, it helps to be in control of it enough. Last year we actually did take in our first external investors ever and we didn't have to, we were still in control of the business, but we sort of, we've hit the stage of the next size of growth with the next challenges of complexity, with expanded product ranges, other things where at that point we realized we could bring in investors without really giving up too much control.
Andy Fallshaw:
And at that point it made a lot of sense to get their expertise, their networks, their sort of experience of having taken companies through this stage of growth that it became worth it. But early on when there was so much tinkering, when we didn't have a five year business plan, we just had directions and themes and we were moving with a sense rather than with a crystal clear clarity. It meant we wanted to maintain control so that we could experiment with a different shape for a business.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. Incredible. And that's actually a perfect segue into talking about the sustainability that you've woven through Bellroy. And I love your mission statement there. It is, inspire better ways to carry, use business as a force for good, help the world and our crew flourish. Such an incredible mission statement. And so I guess I'm curious was ... as you're talking about now, wanting to have the control and wanting to do business differently, did you set out with the vision of using business as a force for good right from the beginning?
Andy Fallshaw:
It wasn't phrased that way for us. I think, we're pretty heavily involved in non-profit world. We've always wanted to have a positive impact on the world. But I think back then it was a vibe. It wasn't this sort of crystal clear mission statement. It wasn't any of that, that came later. And so I think we were always moving in a direction of that, and we knew lots of things we wanted to stay away from, a singular focus on profit, has got so many businesses and parts of society into travel.
Andy Fallshaw:
We had a vague direction, but then we've sort of been progressively clarifying that. As we've seen, not only our own understanding improve, but also our comparative advantage. Like what is it we're better at but others aren't? What are the things we should push harder on that others struggle with? And then what are the areas where there's experts that we should just leave it up to them? And so I think it was this sort of progressive movement where we're just here, a little more clarity each day, each week, each month, each year. But it's still in that vague direction we've always wanted to push in.
Pru Chapman:
And so how has that affected your decision making along the way, kind of focusing more on the kind of sustainability element to the business?
Andy Fallshaw:
I think so many ways. An example, when we started we were all vegetable tanned leathers. Because we believed that was the lowest environmental impact in the leather we could do. And then as our knowledge started to really increase, we realized bad chrome tanning was the villain, not chrome tanning totally. And so it's like we had these sort of areas we were pushing on. And then as we've learned more and more, we've actually built I guess more sophisticated maps for where are the biggest changes? What are the biggest ways we can impact change and progress that and influence it? And so I think it's more just that we haven't locked ourselves in like that mission statement, it's like that might keep evolving, and if it doesn't, something's gone wrong.
Andy Fallshaw:
And so it's been very willing to keep a set of values that have driven us from day one, but to gain increasing clarity on how those values will express themselves in the world as it is today, not the world as it was when we first wrote that mission statement. I think it's a willingness to continually check every assumption, continually update how we go and never become too aligned to one thing. Leather's still a big part of our brand. We're doing huge amounts in the animal welfare space in more sustainable tanning techniques. But we might also move off leather in the future. We're now experimenting with a whole number of non leather alternatives, and seeing if we can get them to a level. We've never sort of logged an ideology or logged a flag in the sand say, this is exactly what we do and we will always do. We've instead been driven by the values and then been willing to update the strategy as we get more understanding and clarity.
Pru Chapman:
Oh, I love that. I love that, because that's what true sustainability in my opinion really is. It's constantly reevaluating and it is really always with the intention to improve and always to do better, but not to get to a particular destination, plunk the flag in the sand and say, "All right, we're here, we've ticked the box. We're a sustainable company." But to continue to investigate, to continue to inquire about how these things can be done better.
Andy Fallshaw:
And there's basically no such thing as a sustainable company yet. There's lots of companies moving in the right direction and progressing so quickly, and phenomenal companies sort of really kind of moving the bleeding edge of what's happening forward. But so many practices, like we're still all so far from it. So anyone that tries to say slightly achieved it, it's like, "Eh, sorry, I don't really believe that."
Pru Chapman:
I'm not buying it.
Andy Fallshaw:
They're all just trying to be less bad.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. And I mean, until really humanity becomes sustainable then I don't know whether it's possible for businesses to quite become sustainable.
Andy Fallshaw:
But it's so important that we're all trying and we're constantly moving in that direction.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah, absolutely. And was that a driver behind you guys becoming a B Corp, because you've been a B Corp for a few years now.
Andy Fallshaw:
Yeah. It was probably sort of 2014. I'm showing my age here, but our generation had come out of the Enron scandal and all these things. And I don't know if anyone's ever gone back and looked at those Enron company values, but they had communication and respect and integrity and excellence. They had these highfalutin company values, except then the only thing they actually measured people on was profit. And so you could see no matter what you put as your values, if you don't have a check in place, people are going to go back to their incentive and the loudest incentive. And if that's profit, then you'll probably end up in trouble.
Andy Fallshaw:
And so we knew we wanted a system that kind of called bullshit on just the mission. And it was like, "How are you actually going to show that? Like, show me." And when we looked around we've had a friendship with the Patagonia team for some years and they were already a B Corp. And we looked at all the systems out there that we believed could achieve something like that triple bottom line approach of what are you measuring beyond profit? What are you doing for the planet or for the people or for the animals? What else is there?
Andy Fallshaw:
And so in 2015, we were first certified a B Corp, and that's been something which has delighted to see that platform growing. I think there's more and more exciting businesses able to now also come in line. Last year, early this year maybe, Burton just joined the B Corp community. And that's so exciting, because again, they were a company that was always doing interesting things in blue sign materials space and several other things. And then they've realized they also just need this framework to make sure they have a way to check that they're following through with those promises and those desires. And so yeah, Patagonia and Burton, and there's so many great brands in that space that it's a community that now we think just can help businesses that want to do things for beyond the profit motive, kind of put a bit of a framework around it, network, understand, learn from each other. And so that's certainly a group that we're delighted to be a part of.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. Incredible. And it's definitely a certification. It feels like it's exploding right now, which is just so wonderful. And I really feel like consumers are really looking for that B Corp brand now. Sort of it was under the radar for a few years and then it's been picking up speed. And I feel like in the last 12 months, it's really exponentially grown in brand awareness which is, like I said, just [crosstalk 00:47:18].
Andy Fallshaw:
It's pretty exciting, isn't it?
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. It's awesome. It's awesome. All right, I know Andy that you're quite involved in effective altruism. And all our listeners here, I mean the reason they listen to this podcast is because they're interested in contributing to positive change, but in the world that we live in now, this can be quite overwhelming to know exactly where to start. Can you tell us a little bit about effective altruism and how it works.
Andy Fallshaw:
Yeah.
Pru Chapman:
Should we start the podcast again? [crosstalk 00:47:50].
Andy Fallshaw:
I think the mission of effective altruism is right there in the name. It's like, how do you do good better? And I think so much philanthropy and non-profit work has been motivated by the heart. But it's really saying how do we unite the head and the heart together? So whatever you care about, whatever area cause thing you want to push on. How can you do that in a more effective way? How can you have the biggest impact, the most effect? And the thing I really like about it is it's almost more a question of how can we do the most good. And so the whole movement has ... it doesn't have a dogma, it doesn't have a seven steps. It doesn't have any of that. It's about constantly questioning what are the biggest issues? How can we have the biggest impact on those? And how can we make the most difference that we're personally motivated to make?
Andy Fallshaw:
And so it's normally easiest to say, it's kind of like what the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation kind of really pioneered where it's like, okay, rather than just giving away money, how do you set up programs that have feedback loops, that check the effectiveness? How do you make sure it's actually doing the good? And what are the unintended consequences that might come out of that? And how would you spot them and then address them and then update? And so we're lucky some of the communities we'd already been involved with moving from sort of philosophy departments over in Oxford to sort of rationalist and sort of quite applied rationality communities in the Bay Area.
Andy Fallshaw:
It was sort of the coming together of these two sets of these really analytical, challenging effectiveness focused people with this sort of the big questions of life and the big questions of change and thinking beyond yourself. And so it's quite a vibrant community. It's global, it's been growing at an amazing clip. And it's not inventing things as much as helping people navigate that space and helping them work out how they might have an even bigger impact by kind of concentrating on certain things and doing it with sensible waves.
Pru Chapman:
Fantastic. And what I'll do in the show notes is I do have a link to the website, which is worthwhile taking a trip over there to the website to have a look at, yeah, to dive even deeper into it and also see how you can be involved. So for everyone after you finished listening, I'll pop that into the show notes, it's definitely worth checking out. Now, and I have to ask, what's next for Bellroy? Help me out of COVID, that can improve.
Andy Fallshaw:
True. Helping people emerge from that with more confidence. I think there's many things we're pushing on. But I think perhaps in this sort of next six to 12 months, I think people are going to start seeing all the hard work we've been putting into materials. When you look at the impact of products like ours that aren't laundered, tumble dried, those sorts of things. It looks like about 90% of the energy of the impact of the product is before it ever gets to the consumer. And so for us really understanding how to reduce the impact of our materials whilst also unlocking new possibilities without giving up performance, without having kind of end of life consequences. And so we've got a team now that's incredibly focused on sort of pushing sustainable materials in new performance ways, and we've been working with some incredible partners around the world. And so I think that next sort of six to 12 month period, you guys will start to see the fruits of that. I think that's something I'm very excited about.
Pru Chapman:
I was just about to say, this sounds really exciting, like really pioneering.
Andy Fallshaw:
Yeah. And when you're a tiny company, you can't do a lot of these things. You can't have a full-time materials developer. You can't have full-time teams focused on this. And so you have to sort of make the best of what's available. But then as the size grows, you get to start investing in this stuff and working with incredible partners. And that's the part that really jazzes me.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. Very exciting. And again, actually I'd encourage our listeners, head over to the Bellroy websites. You guys do a fantastic job there and now actually knowing a little bit more of the history and some of those growth spurts that you had, it's no wonder that it's such a wonderful experience on your website into the storytelling that's in there and the information. So yes, everyone, please do head over and check it out, it's incredible. Andy, I actually could sit here all day and talk. I feel like you and I are on the same page about many, many things.
Andy Fallshaw:
Absolutely.
Pru Chapman:
But in being mindful of time, I will lead us into our final rapid fire questions that we ask all of our one wild ride guests here. So for you, tea or coffee?
Andy Fallshaw:
Both.
Pru Chapman:
I like that. Why have one when you can have both? Paid or free will?
Andy Fallshaw:
Two thirds free will.
Pru Chapman:
Do you have any kick-ass daily habits in place?
Andy Fallshaw:
Always mix a little play into the productivity.
Pru Chapman:
Oh, that's good.
Andy Fallshaw:
And maybe if motivation is waning, don't push through it, stop and work out why.
Pru Chapman:
That is sage advice. I like that a lot. Now, hypothetical question for the times, if you could jump on a plane tomorrow and go anywhere in the world with anyone, where would you go and who would you go with?
Andy Fallshaw:
Probably a surf boat charter in the remote tropics with a few unreal families.
Pru Chapman:
Nice. And then finally, who else would you like to see me interview on the podcast?
Andy Fallshaw:
Well, an interesting one is Andrew Davis who heads up B Corp in Australia. He's fairly new into that role, but he's a sharp mind. He's right at the center of so many of Australia's for purpose businesses. He's got incredible energy and yeah, I find him a fascinating person.
Pru Chapman:
Excellent. Well, I have been in touch with him in the recent few weeks, so I will make mention that there has been extra request for him. Awesome. Andy, thank you so much for your time today, it's been an absolute treat. Thank you for sharing, not only the story of bringing Bellroy to life, but also your incredible values and curious mind that sits behind it all. Thank you.
Andy Fallshaw:
Oh, thank you Pru. And thank you for doing this. Thank you for sharing inspiration from others, trying to sort of carve out a better planet and a better world and thank you for trying to spur people to live life in a better way.
Pru Chapman:
Yeah. All little pieces of the puzzle, aren't we?
Andy Fallshaw:
Absolutely.
Pru Chapman:
Awesome. Thanks Andy.
Andy Fallshaw:
Cheers. Bye.