A Year In The Life Of Brian - 2011
What an extraordinary year! 2011 saw the launch of our little tripod brand, 3 Legged Thing. We schedule the launch for 1/1/11, because we thought it would be cool. In reality, it was a bit of an anticlimax...
The Beginning...
In December 2010, we soft launched 3leggedthing.com as the website went live. It was a further week before we were actually able to take payments on it, but that didn't really matter because nobody had heard of us. Our first batch of stock was due in on December 29th, but, as fate would have it, the world was batter by snowstorms and blizzards that ground not only the UK, but many parts of southern China, southern and western Europe, all of which were crucial to our trade line.
The vessel that held our stock joined a queue to get into Felixtowe on January 4th. The end of the line began 40 miles south of Portsmouth. It took two more weeks to get into port, and 9 days in port being scrutinised by Her Majesty's Customs and Excise people, before finally being delivered on 28th January - a whole month late.
At this point, we starte to get nervous. We had no idea how the brand would be taken, if the marketing would be too gimicky, and even if we'd sell any. To be honest, we'd set the brand up as a "pocket money project" - a way of me getting my staff, friends and family to be a part of their own company, each of us equally investing in the project. Our expectations were low. The sister company, Elemental Europe LTD, was trading at an all time record high, even in the current financial climate, and so 3LT really didn't need much in the way of resources to run. So we thought. We'd done the hard part by designing the goods. Now we just need to sell them, and even then, we didn't expect to sell that many. Maybe 40 or 50 tripods a month, if we were lucky...
What Happened Next...
...The world went mad! Our first batch, which landed on site on January 28th 2010, was sold out by February 3rd! How was this possible? Our little "project" apparently had more appeal than we'd anticipated.
It wasn't long before we started to take calls from various magazines and media entities, asking us about review samples and an opportunity to discuss our development with them all. We had expected this to a certain extent - being the new kids on the block, rumours were rife that we were just a rebrand with a funky identity. All gimick and no actual invention. The very brands that we were purported to be rebadged versions of, suddenly found themselves up against us in peer reviews and magazine comparison tests. What surprised the industry most was that we stood up to the established brands, and in nearly all cases surpassed them.
What DID surprise us was that the enquiries were not just from the UK. In fact, more than 50% of meia enquiries hailed from continental Europe, Australia and the United States of America.
We were in an unprecedented situation. We'd made a few hundred tripods and sold out in 6 days. People had purchased them from 18 different countries across the globe. We had dozens and dozens of media enquiries. At this point, we were the most talked about, most advertised, and most unavailable product on the market. Being a small company, we simply didn't have enough money to but the levels of stock required fulfil the demand.
We started looking for help from the UK banks, but that just drew a dead end. In fact, Barclays, who were our bankers at the time told us we weren't viable. At all. Not even a little bit. Apparently, launching a new brand of tripods, into an already saturated market, in a time of global financial crisis - the worst on record - and outselling your production capability by about 8 to 1 didn't bode well.
We begged to differ. We sold everything we had, between us. Literally, cars, family heirlooms, children, to try and scrape enough money together to produce enough stock to meet the ever increasing demand.
Then, it got really bad...
After committing the shirts from our collective backs to producing more stock, the Chinese Government, in its infinite wisdom, chose to cut the power to the industrial regions of south east china by 40%, to stem the growth of the economy. Our production times went from 35 days to 120 days over night.
At this point we were literally shipping across two dozen tripods every other day to try and keep up a trickle of demand. It was just impossible.
In April, we had a crisis meeting, which took place in Ye Three Fyshes Pub, in the local village of Turvey. We'd been courted (for want of a better word) by a UK distributor who wanted our brand. Not only that, but since March we'd taken calls from over 40 UK photographic shops, who'd had enquiries about our products. We'd also been invited to present to the two American retail giants, Adorama and B&H.
To put it simply, we designed an amazing product, backed up by an awesome brand, which everybody wanted, but nobody could get. We had no money, no stock, and no idea what to do next.
The 2nd Generation...
It is in times of desperation, of seemingly impossible odds, that Humanity best displays its awesomenessness. Backed into a corner, with wolves fighting over us we did the only thing we could. We mortgaged everything. In a single moment of madness, we took the biggest risk available to us.
We needed:
1: A new factory, capable of meeting the growing demands of the brand, with the skills and engineering capability to match our work ethic.
2: A redesign, so that we could better stand out against the other brands, particularly those with whom people had unjustly, and incorrectly associated us.
We hired a new young designer, Chris Clark. To be fair, we hired him as a warehouse boy. We had no idea he had design skills until he overheard us talking about new designs, and decided to leave some sketches on my desk! So Chris got to work on turning the pathetic crayon drawings that Sean, Jess and I were capable of, into real 3D renderings. We find ourselves a new manufacturing base and got to work on the 2nd Generation.
We had a plan, sort of.
We commissioned the new designs in May 2011. From May 25th 2011 until the launch of our 2nd Generation we worked for free. We had no income, and tonnes of overheads. We flew to New York, and met with Adorama, and B&H. They loved it, and had placed orders by early July. We were designing new parts every day - the release plate, the AirHedz, new designs for tripods.
It has taken 7 months to realise the 2nd Generation. Our flagship tripod, Brian, has 168 different components just in the tripod, and we were designing every single one of them, so that we never had to rely on 3rd party components.
We set a launch date for 1st November 2011. In August, we suddenly found ourselves being accepted by different banks that we'd approached. "We can't help you" became "What can we do for you?"
As the launch date approached, we started to get really nervous. We'd spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on a guess.
And then the first production issue - we'd measured the cases incorrectly, and now had 1000 cases 4cm too short in the warehouse. The 1st November became 14th. And then as the 14th approached we accidentally anodised 2000 release plates in the wrong colour. An easy mistake to make. And so the 14th became 29th. Our 2nd Gen was finally ready.
We know it took a long time to get here. We can't believe where we are now, when we look back just as far as April. For you, the consumer, it's taken a few months. For us, it felt like 10 years. We wondered if we were ever going to launch at one point.
The Future...
My team are the lifeblood of this company. A small group of incredible photographers that undertook a project to reinvent the wheel. We did with passion and integrity, and with every minute available to us, whatever the hour. This little company, based in a Chicken Shed on a farm in the beautiful Bedfordshire village of Stagsden, has grown beyond anything we ever imagined.
Why? Because of you. All of you. Every customer, every retailer, every distributor, every magazine, every blogger, each and every person that took the time to say hello to us on twitter or facebook, or mob us at the UK trade shows - each of you is responsible for our drive and commitment.
I wrote a line in our instruction books, which I will always hold close to me:
"That you've bought into the concept, seen the inspiration gleaming in our eyes and committed your hard earned cash to our brand, in a time of global financial instability, is more than we could ever expect."
All I can do is make this promise to you. We will continue to develop tripods for photographers, as we, photographers, would like to use tripods. We will use all our energy to bring to you even more incredible products in 2012 and beyond. We will never compromise on engineering or quality control. I think we have already demonstrated that we'd rather make the biggest launch of our lives, two months late, than send our tripods in bags too short, with lime green release plates.
It's New Years Eve, and I'm so tired I can't even be bothered to proof read this blog post. For me, 2011 has brought me the joy of a son, but it has also forged deeper friendships, and a considerable amount of pride in those people whom I am lucky to call my team, but who are, first and foremost, my friends, and photographers that inspire me each day.
And so I end this relentless diatribe with gushing emotion, and well deserved praise.
My inspirations:
Jess Boothroyd, Sean Perry, Sarah Brown, Mark Turner, Tim McEwan, Chris Clark and most of all, my Mum, Penny Woodall, who believes in me, and this, and us.
Happy New year to you all.
CEO, 3 Legged Thing LTD
