Latest / Earn Your Leisure / EYL #187 Swim Cap Line Designed for Black Women Disrupts Olympics
Transcript
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- 1:00Speaker 2: read the I mean based on it right all the
- 1:03Speaker 2: capital silicon.
- 1:04Speaker 3: They actually said that because you use more material, it
- 1:07Speaker 3: actually might be a disadvantage for swimmers.
- 1:09Speaker 4: That's the thing we just wanted people to have the option.
- 1:12Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying.
- 1:13Speaker 5: We weren't saying that yo, like everyone's gonna goun buy
- 1:16Speaker 5: a soca and use out the Olympics, right, That wasn't
- 1:18Speaker 5: what we were saying. But what we what we were
- 1:20Speaker 5: saying is actually wanted people, if you were a competitive swimmer,
- 1:23Speaker 5: we wanted you to have the option.
- 1:26Speaker 6: My graduates from my school being forts bad drop drop
- 1:32Speaker 6: drop drop.
- 1:45Speaker 7: All right, guys, welcome back e y l u K.
- 1:48Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 1:49Speaker 7: Division. This has been a great, great run in the
- 1:53Speaker 7: United Kingdom, London, Europe when we went to France. So
- 1:59Speaker 7: a first foremost shots to everybody in London, after everybody
- 2:02Speaker 7: that came to our event. Sorry for anybody that get
- 2:07Speaker 7: any event, but we are coming back. We're gonna do
- 2:10Speaker 7: something way, way bigger.
- 2:11Speaker 2: That's a fact.
- 2:11Speaker 7: Accommodated everybody a much more suitable situation. But this episode
- 2:16Speaker 7: is going to be a dope one. First of all,
- 2:18Speaker 7: shot to my god Jack Jones, who we actually talked
- 2:21Speaker 7: to a few days ago and who I've connected with
- 2:24Speaker 7: years ago and super good dude, good job. Yeah, so
- 2:29Speaker 7: he referred me to one of his good friends talks
- 2:33Speaker 7: I met, who I said, correctly, actually is a very
- 2:41Speaker 7: very interesting story. So he's an entrepreneur from London, from
- 2:45Speaker 7: Nigeria originally, but I grew up in London and it's
- 2:50Speaker 7: a it's a very interesting niche business where they do
- 2:54Speaker 7: swim caps, so it's called soul cap. So how it
- 2:59Speaker 7: really got a lot of a tension on like a
- 3:01Speaker 7: global scale is that I believe it was banned from
- 3:04Speaker 7: the Olympics. Right, So we'll talk about this whole thing.
- 3:06Speaker 7: But it's a very interesting concept and idea where it's
- 3:11Speaker 7: not just for women though, right, No, but that's like
- 3:14Speaker 7: where it became a narrative on it, right, exactly like
- 3:17Speaker 7: black Well, you can speak about it better.
- 3:19Speaker 8: Yeah, Now I think it's dope like because we've obviously
- 3:22Speaker 8: highlighted a lot of black brands and when I heard
- 3:25Speaker 8: your story, it reminded me of the East Side golf
- 3:28Speaker 8: story where there was a sport that black spot kind
- 3:32Speaker 8: of excluded from, right, and swimming is one of those
- 3:34Speaker 8: sports as well. I think Robbers reported that out of
- 3:37Speaker 8: the seventy three thousand registered swimmers, competitive swimmers, like six
- 3:42Speaker 8: hundred and fifty are black crazy, So it's like, this
- 3:45Speaker 8: is not something that we're doing and a lot of
- 3:47Speaker 8: the reasons, especially with all women, is they're here. Yeah definitely,
- 3:51Speaker 8: So like you guys come into a space and it's like, okay,
- 3:54Speaker 8: let's make this an inclusive thing. So I think it's
- 3:57Speaker 8: going to be an interesting topic. It's gonna be a
- 3:58Speaker 8: great episode for sure.
- 4:00Speaker 7: It's a swim cap that's made for you know, yeah, everybody,
- 4:05Speaker 7: but like for black women's hair, afros leaves, and that's
- 4:09Speaker 7: not something that like a regular swim cap can't really
- 4:13Speaker 7: accommodate that situation of vib So it's one of these
- 4:17Speaker 7: things where it is a very niche product, but it's
- 4:22Speaker 7: widely used. It's like something that you don't really think
- 4:24Speaker 7: about too much, but if you go swimming, you know
- 4:28Speaker 7: you wear swim caps, especially on a competitive level. Absolutely women,
- 4:31Speaker 7: especially black women who don't want to get their hair wet.
- 4:35Speaker 7: So black owned business out of London. Very interesting conversation.
- 4:39Speaker 7: I'm sure we're gonna have so first and formal thinking
- 4:41Speaker 7: of joining us. Appreciate it.
- 4:41Speaker 4: Thank you for having me, guys, appreciate that for sure.
- 4:44Speaker 7: So all right, let's get this going. How do you
- 4:48Speaker 7: because you actually come from actuary background, right, yeah, yeah,
- 4:52Speaker 7: exactly are you still doing that now?
- 4:54Speaker 5: I'm still doing it. I'm still not Turvey. I still
- 4:56Speaker 5: want my life of London, Alloyd's London.
- 4:59Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 5:00Speaker 7: So Lawyers of London one of probably the biggest insurance
- 5:02Speaker 7: company as far as insurance, not how we looking at
- 5:06Speaker 7: it in America, like they ensure like artwork. They ensure
- 5:11Speaker 7: pretty much everything, like a lot of like even football
- 5:14Speaker 7: players in America. In college they got like Lawyers of London,
- 5:16Speaker 7: like disability policies, like anything that you can really think of.
- 5:20Speaker 7: Lawyers of London insurance one of the largest insurance companies
- 5:23Speaker 7: in the world.
- 5:24Speaker 8: So I think I won't William hearn that after he
- 5:26Speaker 8: has spring, is uh his full that Duke had an
- 5:30Speaker 8: insurance policy?
- 5:31Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, but you're in the actuary.
- 5:34Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I'm a qualified actual fellow.
- 5:37Speaker 7: I know what the actuary is, but can you explain
- 5:39Speaker 7: to the people who might not know the.
- 5:40Speaker 4: Actual essentially, you know, the day job.
- 5:44Speaker 5: What it is is that I use like mass and
- 5:46Speaker 5: statistics to try and calculate risk. Essentially, so if I
- 5:50Speaker 5: can work out how much if I can price a risk,
- 5:52Speaker 5: or I can work out how much I think, you know,
- 5:55Speaker 5: a particular policy might cost us, and then I can
- 5:57Speaker 5: work out essentially how much we need to charge so
- 6:00Speaker 5: and like make profit essentially pay all the bills, expenses
- 6:03Speaker 5: and that kind of stuff. And then also the other
- 6:05Speaker 5: side of it is how much money you need to
- 6:07Speaker 5: hold in reserves as an insurance company in case things
- 6:11Speaker 5: go wrong.
- 6:11Speaker 4: So yeah, high level.
- 6:13Speaker 7: Yeah, it's the math side of it. And that's something
- 6:16Speaker 7: that a lot of times people don't understand how insurance
- 6:18Speaker 7: is priced. But when you look at the actual, like
- 6:22Speaker 7: let's take life insurance, they'll look at how many people
- 6:25Speaker 7: die in a particular year, how long people live, how
- 6:30Speaker 7: many people get a policy, and it's all one big
- 6:33Speaker 7: math equation, and then they can say, okay, fo a
- 6:35Speaker 7: hundred thousand dollars policy for a preferred rate, it's going
- 6:38Speaker 7: to cost one hundred and fifty dollars exactly, not just
- 6:41Speaker 7: a random number that's thrown out there. It's actually done
- 6:43Speaker 7: through actual yeah, actuarial Yeah, actual areal math equations. So
- 6:47Speaker 7: you you must be a very very smart guy, young
- 6:51Speaker 7: math when it come to the math work where you
- 6:54Speaker 7: passed alge I never I never passed.
- 6:56Speaker 5: That you could if you wanted to, all right, so
- 7:01Speaker 5: that's your day, jaut.
- 7:02Speaker 7: Yeah, But when you decide to become an entrepreneur.
- 7:06Speaker 5: So to be honest with you, like me and my
- 7:08Speaker 5: business partner Michael, like even from young we've always been
- 7:11Speaker 5: kind of on the business thing, always trying to like,
- 7:14Speaker 5: you know, make a little hustles and stuff like that.
- 7:15Speaker 5: And I think, you know, I was working in the
- 7:17Speaker 5: city and I just felt like, you know, I was
- 7:22Speaker 5: I think about twenty six twenty seven at the time,
- 7:24Speaker 5: and we were like, we need to get this side
- 7:25Speaker 5: hustle popping, like we need to do something. We spoke
- 7:28Speaker 5: about it, you know, around the time, we're sort of
- 7:30Speaker 5: dabbling in a bit of crypto all that kind of stuff,
- 7:32Speaker 5: and we were like, let's make let's make a more
- 7:35Speaker 5: sort of conscious efforts to effort to start a business.
- 7:38Speaker 5: But nothing really popped to us, nothing really kind of
- 7:42Speaker 5: you know, came to us that we thought, Okay, cool,
- 7:46Speaker 5: we could do this.
- 7:46Speaker 4: And this is incredible.
- 7:47Speaker 5: It's not overly competitive, but there's a big enough market
- 7:50Speaker 5: and all that kind of stuff.
- 7:52Speaker 4: And then sort of, you know.
- 7:54Speaker 5: We we both grew up not knowing how to swim, essentially,
- 7:58Speaker 5: and I don't know if the same goes for you guys,
- 8:00Speaker 5: whether you can swim.
- 8:01Speaker 7: Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit because so
- 8:05Speaker 7: you're from Nigeria originally, Yeah, Legos, right, yeah, shout out
- 8:09Speaker 7: to Legos. So I'm not sure how it is on
- 8:13Speaker 7: the continent in Africa, but in America it's a very
- 8:17Speaker 7: weird dynamic where a lot of majority of black people
- 8:21Speaker 7: don't know how to swim, and it's become like a
- 8:24Speaker 7: whole stigma of black people don't swim. Like you'll see
- 8:27Speaker 7: like these memes where it's like a white pool party
- 8:31Speaker 7: and like everybody's in the water. A black pool party,
- 8:34Speaker 7: nobody's in the water. Everybody got geen shorts on, like
- 8:38Speaker 7: they're not even thinking about going in the pool. So
- 8:41Speaker 7: it's interesting that you start a swim company because a
- 8:44Speaker 7: lot of black people can't swim. Yeah, you can't swim.
- 8:48Speaker 5: You couldn't swim as adults who became that was it
- 8:51Speaker 5: So for us, that's how it kind of it kind
- 8:54Speaker 5: of went. It was a bit magical in ways the
- 8:56Speaker 5: way it happened. So, like me and Michael grew up
- 8:58Speaker 5: not learning how to swim. Right, my mom can't swim.
- 9:01Speaker 5: Michael's mom can't swim. I grew up with tow older sisters.
- 9:04Speaker 5: They can swim, but they didn't really because of the
- 9:06Speaker 5: hair issues and all that kind of stuff. So you know,
- 9:09Speaker 5: we we were like twenty six, twenty seven, we were like,
- 9:12Speaker 5: you know, we should learn how to swim.
- 9:14Speaker 4: You know, it's limiting just in case.
- 9:16Speaker 7: Yeah yeah, yeah.
- 9:17Speaker 5: Even even you know, not even the necessarily just the
- 9:19Speaker 5: drum prevention side. But at them times we're thinking, you know,
- 9:22Speaker 5: you're go on holiday, people are all like you know,
- 9:24Speaker 5: jumping into and yeah off the boat with that, and
- 9:28Speaker 5: we couldn't do it, you know, and we were like,
- 9:30Speaker 5: now we shuld we should actual learn how to swim.
- 9:32Speaker 5: So obviously looked into it, got some adult swimming lessons.
- 9:35Speaker 2: So you decided to take class together.
- 9:36Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, so we took.
- 9:37Speaker 8: We took Yeah, I said that you be up, we
- 9:42Speaker 8: can't swim, but yeah.
- 9:44Speaker 5: I mean there's the venus, there's there's lots out there. Yeah,
- 9:46Speaker 5: you know, we didn't we just didn't really look for it.
- 9:48Speaker 5: But again, like you say, it was the it was
- 9:51Speaker 5: it was the feeling that swimming wasn't for black people. Really,
- 9:54Speaker 5: you know, black people don't really swim like you like,
- 9:57Speaker 5: you know, when I was you know, I.
- 9:59Speaker 4: Was taught in school.
- 10:00Speaker 5: Essentially, we did school lessons but I wasn't that good,
- 10:03Speaker 5: and the teachers didn't be pay any attention. And if
- 10:05Speaker 5: you couldn't, they kind of just sort of said, okay, cool,
- 10:08Speaker 5: like forget the guys and pay a bit more attention
- 10:11Speaker 5: to the people who were good.
- 10:13Speaker 4: So I did lessons, just never really took onto it.
- 10:15Speaker 5: And I think because my family didn't encourage it, I
- 10:19Speaker 5: didn't do it, whereas maybe another.
- 10:20Speaker 4: Family might have encouraged it more, you know.
- 10:23Speaker 5: So anyway, we did these adult lessons as a woman
- 10:25Speaker 5: in a swimming class, and she didn't have like a
- 10:27Speaker 5: particularly big afro. She had just like a small kind
- 10:29Speaker 5: of like you know, afro classic you know, hairstyle, and
- 10:34Speaker 5: her swimming cap was just coming off all the time.
- 10:37Speaker 5: Literally her hair was soaked, like you know, and we
- 10:40Speaker 5: had weekly lessons and she would say, it's obviously a
- 10:42Speaker 5: fath effort. Got girls gotta wash her hair chlorine. It's
- 10:46Speaker 5: damaging because she wanted to learn to swim, you know,
- 10:48Speaker 5: she was willing to make that sacrifice. And then I
- 10:51Speaker 5: think that was when it sort of clicked to us, like,
- 10:53Speaker 5: hol on a minute, how come you don't get swimming
- 10:56Speaker 5: caps that are come in different sizes for different different
- 10:59Speaker 5: hair types. You know, when you often buy a swimming cap,
- 11:03Speaker 5: you'll see it has one size fits packaging, which isn't
- 11:07Speaker 5: the case. So we looked into it and we were like, no,
- 11:10Speaker 5: there's nothing really out there that's like, there's definitely nothing
- 11:12Speaker 5: out there credible, and this could be an opportunity. Because
- 11:16Speaker 5: we were both on trying to hostitle and trying to find,
- 11:18Speaker 5: you know, little side things, we were like, why not go.
- 11:21Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been through that, man.
- 11:22Speaker 8: Like my daughter was in swimming and it was always
- 11:24Speaker 8: the one size fits all, and by the time she'd
- 11:27Speaker 8: swam twice, either the cap would rip because I would
- 11:31Speaker 8: we would try to make sure that he wouldn't get wet,
- 11:33Speaker 8: or it would be the opposite. We put the cap on,
- 11:35Speaker 8: her hair still got wet. Yeah, just because it didn't fit. Yeah,
- 11:38Speaker 8: it didn't matter if I braided her hair or if
- 11:40Speaker 8: she had her hair natural. But like you said, one
- 11:42Speaker 8: of those reasons why we don't get in the pool
- 11:44Speaker 8: or black women's for sure, is that the damage that
- 11:47Speaker 8: it does.
- 11:48Speaker 7: So let's talk about I want to I'm gonna ask
- 11:50Speaker 7: you all the business questions, but for people that might
- 11:52Speaker 7: not be fully educated, what is the issue with black
- 11:55Speaker 7: women going swimming. Is it the chlorine that messes up
- 11:58Speaker 7: their hair?
- 12:00Speaker 2: What?
- 12:00Speaker 7: What is the what's the whole problem with that?
- 12:02Speaker 5: I mean, I think definitely that's a barrier, like that's
- 12:05Speaker 5: something that you know, discourages black women, I.
- 12:07Speaker 7: Believe, because they get their hair done.
- 12:09Speaker 5: I think they get their hair done and then if
- 12:11Speaker 5: I need, if I want to go swim, my hair's
- 12:13Speaker 5: gonna get wet and then it's going to ruin my hair.
- 12:15Speaker 7: You know when you say what is that? What does
- 12:17Speaker 7: that mean? Like it ruins it if it's straight right, Well,
- 12:21Speaker 7: I think as an afro's not gonna get wrong.
- 12:23Speaker 2: But the chlorine.
- 12:25Speaker 5: Has damaging effects on on the hair. So there's that
- 12:28Speaker 5: there's that issue as well. And I think also to
- 12:30Speaker 5: be honest with you us as black people, you know,
- 12:33Speaker 5: you go swimming and you come out and your skin's
- 12:36Speaker 5: will dry and do you know what I mean and
- 12:38Speaker 5: all them kind of things. So I feel like, you know,
- 12:41Speaker 5: there's a few different layers to it, but we definitely
- 12:45Speaker 5: saw that the swimming caps was at least one of
- 12:47Speaker 5: these barriers to entry for people.
- 12:50Speaker 4: And you know, I think.
- 12:51Speaker 5: When we when we first started the business, you know,
- 12:53Speaker 5: we kind of just took a punt. We spoke to
- 12:55Speaker 5: our moms, sisters, friends, and we were like, you know,
- 13:00Speaker 5: would you if you had a swimming camp that fit
- 13:02Speaker 5: your hair, would you potentially go swimming? And they were like, yeah,
- 13:04Speaker 5: you know, actually that is definitely one of the top reasons.
- 13:07Speaker 5: It's not the only reason, but one of the top
- 13:08Speaker 5: reasons why why we wouldn't go. And we took a
- 13:11Speaker 5: punt And to be honest with you, like our first
- 13:14Speaker 5: order we always referred to it. We ordered one hundred
- 13:17Speaker 5: and fifty black excel caps and fifty burgundy right, and
- 13:21Speaker 5: I'll get into sort of the colors and stuff in
- 13:23Speaker 5: a bit, but they just started selling, and it was
- 13:26Speaker 5: the reviews and it was the feedback we were getting
- 13:28Speaker 5: from the customers that really reaffirmed the fact that actually,
- 13:32Speaker 5: like this is we've got something here into something.
- 13:34Speaker 2: So when you ordered that these are the prototypes, obviously.
- 13:37Speaker 3: You're just looking at it like, all right, well that
- 13:39Speaker 3: one size for all is not going to work.
- 13:41Speaker 8: We'll get an excel or were you looking at actual text?
- 13:43Speaker 8: Were like, all right, those were made out of silicon.
- 13:46Speaker 8: Silicon we need to make so what was that process?
- 13:48Speaker 4: Like, oh, yeah, exactly, So you know, if I take
- 13:51Speaker 4: a step back.
- 13:51Speaker 5: The initial process was, you know, we were looking at
- 13:54Speaker 5: the different sizes that were out there. We were trying
- 13:56Speaker 5: to research, okay, cool, if we were to make to
- 13:59Speaker 5: launch a bigger cap, what kind of size would be
- 14:01Speaker 5: a good size, you know, And we had to play
- 14:03Speaker 5: around a lot, like did some testing with our sisters
- 14:05Speaker 5: and stuff, looking at the materials.
- 14:08Speaker 4: You know, okay, you get.
- 14:10Speaker 5: Latex swimming caps, like it was deep get latex swimming caps.
- 14:13Speaker 5: You can get neoprem swimming caps, and you know, okay,
- 14:16Speaker 5: keeping your hair driver is one of the key things.
- 14:18Speaker 4: So neopream was out of the picture.
- 14:19Speaker 5: But Latex we found from the research we're showing people
- 14:23Speaker 5: can get like allergic reactions to it, like people you know,
- 14:26Speaker 5: could have issues. So silicon just outstandingly seemed like the
- 14:30Speaker 5: best material to go for nontoxic you know.
- 14:33Speaker 4: People don't have allergic reactions to it and stuff.
- 14:35Speaker 5: So so we went for silicone and yeah, and that
- 14:39Speaker 5: was that was kind of like the early process had
- 14:42Speaker 5: a few prototypes, a bunch of different samples, and we
- 14:45Speaker 5: just tested and we thought, okay, that one size that
- 14:47Speaker 5: we that we initially started with before that hopefully will
- 14:51Speaker 5: work for kind of like the.
- 14:52Speaker 4: Early, the early phase.
- 14:54Speaker 2: And what's the industry is made in silicon.
- 14:56Speaker 4: Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, its dominant.
- 14:58Speaker 2: You didn't have to reinvent the whale.
- 15:00Speaker 5: No, no, exactly, they're using that acid. We're going to use that,
- 15:03Speaker 5: but we're going to make our own interpretation and.
- 15:04Speaker 4: We're going to change the size exactly exactly.
- 15:07Speaker 2: That was it.
- 15:08Speaker 5: And you know, it's funny like when we first started,
- 15:10Speaker 5: we didn't really have money, Me and Michael. We started
- 15:12Speaker 5: with two thousand pounds, two thousand pounds to start a business,
- 15:15Speaker 5: a thousand pounds each at the time. Obviously it's a
- 15:18Speaker 5: lot of money, but we were kind of like, we'll
- 15:19Speaker 5: take the risk. We'll take it here. If it doesn't
- 15:21Speaker 5: work out, then, you know, kind of so beat it.
- 15:25Speaker 5: And yeah, we managed to order these hundred and fifty
- 15:27Speaker 5: black caps and these fifty burgundy and yeah, literally the
- 15:31Speaker 5: reviews and the ratings we were getting from women.
- 15:33Speaker 4: Who were like, I wish I had this when I
- 15:35Speaker 4: was growing up.
- 15:36Speaker 5: If I had this, I would have, you know, swum
- 15:38Speaker 5: buying one for my kids, like so on and so forth.
- 15:41Speaker 5: And then that was like, okay, cool, Now we need
- 15:42Speaker 5: to keep pushing, we need to keep going, keep reinventing, Yeah, reinvesting, reinventing,
- 15:48Speaker 5: and then from there obviously now we've got like a
- 15:50Speaker 5: different broader range, so we've got like Excel double, Excel,
- 15:54Speaker 5: medium and large, and we've also sell regular side swimming
- 15:57Speaker 5: caps as well.
- 15:58Speaker 2: Because you're doing a nine to five, right, Michael's also
- 16:01Speaker 2: doing So.
- 16:02Speaker 5: Michael's actually studying and he was working whilst also studying,
- 16:06Speaker 5: so he's finishing university at.
- 16:07Speaker 4: The time, but he was also working at a bank. Yeah.
- 16:10Speaker 7: So you sold over one hundred thousand swim caps today. Yeah. Right,
- 16:13Speaker 7: so you start with two thousand pounds and that gets
- 16:17Speaker 7: you AMUS one hundred and fifty.
- 16:19Speaker 4: One hundred and fifty black and fifty Burger.
- 16:23Speaker 7: So two hundred caps to start. Yeah. So all right,
- 16:27Speaker 7: what is the actors? The process you got you had
- 16:29Speaker 7: those made from scratch. Yes, it reached out to a
- 16:33Speaker 7: manufacturer and said, look, we want swim caps but bigger.
- 16:36Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 16:37Speaker 7: Is there any difference other than it's just being bigger?
- 16:39Speaker 4: No?
- 16:40Speaker 5: Not not it really, to be honest with you, the opening,
- 16:42Speaker 5: so the size of the opening and also it's like
- 16:44Speaker 5: women talking about bigger.
- 16:45Speaker 4: The proportions were different from depending on.
- 16:48Speaker 7: What normal size cap. Yeah.
- 16:50Speaker 5: So like, for example, like the opening, you can make
- 16:52Speaker 5: the opening smaller or bigger. You can get the kind
- 16:56Speaker 5: of size of the volume of the cap as well, bigger.
- 16:58Speaker 5: So those were kind of like the two main parameters
- 17:00Speaker 5: we had to play with.
- 17:01Speaker 7: So it's like a mushroom.
- 17:03Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah kind of.
- 17:04Speaker 7: So all right, so you get that, you get the
- 17:06Speaker 7: inventory in what's the next step? How do you decide
- 17:10Speaker 7: the price? How do you sell the first two hundred?
- 17:13Speaker 5: So for us, really what we what we did we
- 17:16Speaker 5: kind of our initial strategy really would actually started out
- 17:21Speaker 5: as like an FBA Amazon FBA type approach.
- 17:24Speaker 7: Can you tell them if they don't know what that is?
- 17:26Speaker 5: Yeah, So basically what we do we get the caps,
- 17:30Speaker 5: you know, we find a manufacturer that will have with
- 17:32Speaker 5: we brand it. You know, so obviously sol Cap was
- 17:35Speaker 5: a brand. Were just you know, the company trademarks all
- 17:38Speaker 5: that kind of stuff. Michael designed the packaging, and you know,
- 17:42Speaker 5: we're liaising with our factory in China. They basically make
- 17:45Speaker 5: the products, they put it all together like and then
- 17:48Speaker 5: we can get them to send it to us, and
- 17:50Speaker 5: we can send it into Amazon for filming centers and
- 17:53Speaker 5: then when we get orders, basically Amazon ship those those
- 17:57Speaker 5: those those products to the customer.
- 17:58Speaker 7: You know, because that's interesting because we did an episode
- 18:02Speaker 7: on Amazon selling probably two years ago.
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- 19:18Speaker 7: So what he was saying is obviously yours is you know, labeled,
- 19:21Speaker 7: But he was saying, there's a lot of products that
- 19:23Speaker 7: you can sell on Amazon which you can white label,
- 19:25Speaker 7: And he was like, nail clippers, nail filers, no white
- 19:30Speaker 7: really ever cares who actually makes those? Right, you just go.
- 19:34Speaker 7: And I'm thinking swim caps is kind of similar, like
- 19:37Speaker 7: you have a niche thing where it's made for si pers,
- 19:39Speaker 7: but Amazon would be a good place to sell that
- 19:42Speaker 7: because you're literally just going online typing in swim cap. Yeah,
- 19:46Speaker 7: you're not necessarily just trying to buy like a specific brand,
- 19:50Speaker 7: so you're not It does not really a lot of
- 19:52Speaker 7: competition in the space.
- 19:53Speaker 4: I would say.
- 19:53Speaker 5: I think for us as well, we knew that early on,
- 19:56Speaker 5: like trying to acquire customers for kind of ret our
- 20:00Speaker 5: website would probably be too expensive, you know, trying to
- 20:02Speaker 5: go hard with the Google ads the market and yeah,
- 20:05Speaker 5: and the Facebook ads and the marketing and that kind
- 20:06Speaker 5: of stuff, and we felt like, okay, cool, if if
- 20:10Speaker 5: we if we can go through Amazon people who were
- 20:13Speaker 5: looking for a large swimming cap or a swimming cap
- 20:15Speaker 5: for dreadlocks, or a swimming cap for you know, braids
- 20:18Speaker 5: or long hair and those kind of keywords that hopefully
- 20:21Speaker 5: they would come across our products and they would make
- 20:23Speaker 5: that purchase.
- 20:23Speaker 7: So what was the all right, so you when you
- 20:27Speaker 7: put it on Amazon, but you put keywords in there
- 20:29Speaker 7: or in the description, how did you separate your product
- 20:32Speaker 7: from the other podcast?
- 20:33Speaker 2: Yeah?
- 20:33Speaker 5: That was it really, I mean the product description. Like
- 20:36Speaker 5: I said early on, you know we when we sort
- 20:39Speaker 5: of first first started, we didn't even have pictures of
- 20:42Speaker 5: you know, models using them. So when we first first started,
- 20:45Speaker 5: we've got the caps, we sent them in, we have
- 20:47Speaker 5: the packaging.
- 20:48Speaker 4: Cool, and we were like, okay, we need product pitches.
- 20:50Speaker 5: You know, we ain't really got big budget to get
- 20:52Speaker 5: you know, some some some big you know, photo shoots going.
- 20:55Speaker 5: So we sent them off to a product photographer. Came back, Okay,
- 20:59Speaker 5: what weren't great? Okay, do you know what we think
- 21:01Speaker 5: we need to invest the money and and and put
- 21:03Speaker 5: some trying and try and get some models together and stuff.
- 21:06Speaker 4: So it was our very first photo shoot. It was
- 21:09Speaker 4: you know, it was an interesting experience.
- 21:10Speaker 5: But we got some models who we thought, Okay, this
- 21:13Speaker 5: is someone with big hair, you know, voluminous. We no
- 21:16Speaker 5: one on Amazon was using black models at that time
- 21:18Speaker 5: in that category, no one. So we were like, cool,
- 21:21Speaker 5: like we want to actually get some black models, get
- 21:23Speaker 5: some women who like you have long hair.
- 21:25Speaker 4: We had.
- 21:26Speaker 5: We had men as well in that very first photo
- 21:28Speaker 5: shoot who had like dreads and stuff. And we just
- 21:32Speaker 5: any any money we were getting in from sales, even
- 21:35Speaker 5: a little bit we were getting in, we were reinvesting back,
- 21:37Speaker 5: do you get me. So we were so we're making sure,
- 21:39Speaker 5: like the photoshoot cool, like let's try and get a
- 21:41Speaker 5: proper photographer. Let's try and get a proper like little
- 21:44Speaker 5: studio unit. We had like a little container in Box Park.
- 21:47Speaker 5: It was literally a container unit. Got a few models
- 21:49Speaker 5: and stuff, and we've got some shots and you know,
- 21:51Speaker 5: a lot of I was like the person who kind
- 21:54Speaker 5: of tried to you know, creative direct it. It wasn't great,
- 21:57Speaker 5: but we got we've got a few shots in there.
- 22:00Speaker 5: And to be honest with you, when we actually then
- 22:02Speaker 5: had model pictures.
- 22:04Speaker 4: That was when their cells really started coming consistent.
- 22:06Speaker 8: So the name soul Cap, I mean it speaks to
- 22:10Speaker 8: a specific demographic. Right when I hear that, I'm thinking,
- 22:12Speaker 8: so I feel like there's black culture. Yeah, so who
- 22:15Speaker 8: came up with the name? And then you said the
- 22:17Speaker 8: colors three times already, But I'm trying to figure out
- 22:20Speaker 8: my head, like all right, black burgery, Yeah, why would we.
- 22:23Speaker 7: Choose those two?
- 22:25Speaker 5: Okay, so the name I have to take credit for
- 22:27Speaker 5: that one. Michael will tell you, well, I take credit
- 22:30Speaker 5: for the name that came up with it. I mean
- 22:32Speaker 5: to be honest again, I just yeah, we were just
- 22:34Speaker 5: trying to brain someone with your names, and we kind
- 22:36Speaker 5: of just felt like so Cap just had the feet.
- 22:38Speaker 5: Like you say, it's a feeling. It's like it just
- 22:40Speaker 5: feels right. It bodies what we're trying to do essentially,
- 22:44Speaker 5: So we went with so Cap and then the colors.
- 22:47Speaker 5: So what it was for us when we first started
- 22:50Speaker 5: again before cool if if someone's gonna wear a swimming
- 22:54Speaker 5: I think people a lot of people don't find swimming
- 22:56Speaker 5: caps cool. Definitely not at a time like swimming caps
- 22:59Speaker 5: won't cool, you know what I mean? And people wear
- 23:01Speaker 5: them because they're necessity and so on and so forth.
- 23:03Speaker 5: And we were like, okay, and we're going to launch
- 23:05Speaker 5: a swimming cap. We wanted to feel premium. We wanted
- 23:08Speaker 5: to feel nice. We wanted to kind of look stylish.
- 23:10Speaker 5: We don't want to like put some brash, you know,
- 23:13Speaker 5: crazy branding, you know, like with mad clip art, you know,
- 23:17Speaker 5: logos on it and stuff, you know. I mean, we
- 23:19Speaker 5: wanted to do it like look clean, look nice. So
- 23:21Speaker 5: you know, we had we worked with we worked to
- 23:24Speaker 5: get the logo, we had the little branding. Okay, cool,
- 23:27Speaker 5: we just put the logo on it nice black because
- 23:30Speaker 5: to be honest with you, that's just safe. And I
- 23:32Speaker 5: think I feel like people would buy black in terms
- 23:36Speaker 5: of the color of the swimming cap and some of
- 23:38Speaker 5: the research that we had done showing that black was
- 23:39Speaker 5: actually like a good color to go with, and then
- 23:42Speaker 5: we knew we wanted to launch it additional colors and
- 23:44Speaker 5: other variations, but we thought burgundy was.
- 23:47Speaker 4: Just like it just felt premium. That was really a feeling.
- 23:51Speaker 5: Now there's nothing really I could say on it, but
- 23:52Speaker 5: it just felt premium, and people loved it. We dropped
- 23:55Speaker 5: it and people loved it, and those were the two
- 23:57Speaker 5: first colors we launched, and then after that we also
- 24:01Speaker 5: dropped a navy, and then we dropped like a kind
- 24:04Speaker 5: of racing green. So it's like a deep blue and
- 24:06Speaker 5: a deep green. And again it's more just like a
- 24:09Speaker 5: premium feeling.
- 24:10Speaker 2: You know.
- 24:10Speaker 5: I feel like if you go to a pool and
- 24:12Speaker 5: you've got a bright, I don't know, pink hat, and
- 24:16Speaker 5: your hat is enormous, it just made draw attention to you,
- 24:19Speaker 5: and you may feel like, actually, I don't want it
- 24:21Speaker 5: to just feel too brashingto in your face. So that's
- 24:23Speaker 5: why we launch them colors. But then go and speak
- 24:27Speaker 5: speaking further on that. Actually, as time has gone on,
- 24:31Speaker 5: you know, on our community has grown and more people
- 24:34Speaker 5: know about a brand. We get people who swim outdoors
- 24:37Speaker 5: and they're like, oh, we love your products, we love
- 24:39Speaker 5: your brand, but your colors are too dark for outdoor swimming.
- 24:42Speaker 5: We need you know, if you're swimming on the out
- 24:44Speaker 5: and outside, you need bright colors essentially. So then when
- 24:47Speaker 5: you waunch an outdoor range where we've got the bright
- 24:48Speaker 5: the pinks, the yellows, like the bright reds and that
- 24:51Speaker 5: kind of stuff.
- 24:51Speaker 7: So yeah, so all right, when does this scale? So
- 24:54Speaker 7: you start at two hundred. But eventually you get big
- 24:57Speaker 7: enough to actually, you know, have a situation with the
- 24:59Speaker 7: Olympus we'll talk about. But what happens in between it
- 25:02Speaker 7: what is the driving force to take you to success?
- 25:07Speaker 4: So really it was mad.
- 25:09Speaker 5: Like I said, I was obviously just nine to five,
- 25:12Speaker 5: come home at like six or seven pm, and I'm
- 25:15Speaker 5: just on FaceTime to Michael to like ten or eleven
- 25:18Speaker 5: o'clock every night. So I'm sign in my living room
- 25:20Speaker 5: on FaceTime. He signed his bedroom or living room on FaceTime.
- 25:23Speaker 5: And what we found was okay, cool. We were getting
- 25:27Speaker 5: some sales through and early on we didn't really have
- 25:29Speaker 5: high expectations, but we just wanted to just keep pushing. So,
- 25:32Speaker 5: you know, for example, trying to advertise, so putting a
- 25:35Speaker 5: little bit of budget behind ads on say Amazon, for example,
- 25:38Speaker 5: and then call your product and start getting a better ranking.
- 25:42Speaker 5: Amazon starts learning that people who are looking for large
- 25:44Speaker 5: trimming caps are often buying your product, so then they
- 25:48Speaker 5: push your product up the listing, up the up the
- 25:51Speaker 5: ranking on the search term. And then I think the
- 25:55Speaker 5: issue that we found was that we didn't have enough
- 25:57Speaker 5: money to like the business, wasn't making enough money to
- 26:01Speaker 5: meet the demand, and that was like one of the
- 26:03Speaker 5: early challenges that we faced that Okay, cool, we got
- 26:05Speaker 5: these one hundred and fifty and fifty caps and they're
- 26:08Speaker 5: selling out and if we need to place a new order,
- 26:11Speaker 5: we need to place it now otherwise we're gonna we're
- 26:13Speaker 5: gonna sell out. So luckily, because I was still in
- 26:17Speaker 5: the nine to five and Michael had his bank job,
- 26:18Speaker 5: we were like, cool, let's put some more money in.
- 26:20Speaker 5: Lets you keep putting money in it, keep putting money
- 26:22Speaker 5: in it to keep propping up the business, to make
- 26:24Speaker 5: sure we can stay stopped.
- 26:26Speaker 4: So that was kind of how it started growing.
- 26:28Speaker 5: And then essentially we started just in the UK, but
- 26:31Speaker 5: then we were like, actually, let's lunch this in the
- 26:33Speaker 5: US as well. So there was when we were coming launched
- 26:35Speaker 5: in the US where again like obviously the market is huge.
- 26:38Speaker 5: It's like on average people say it's about five times
- 26:40Speaker 5: the size of the UK markets on Amazon, So we
- 26:43Speaker 5: launched on Amazon in the US as well, and then
- 26:46Speaker 5: that was.
- 26:46Speaker 7: When things there's a separate Amazon.
- 26:48Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 26:48Speaker 7: So okay, so the Amazon you started with just Amazon UK, yeah, yeah,
- 26:52Speaker 7: and then you went to Amazon US and same strategy,
- 26:55Speaker 7: same strategy, so you never but how do you sell
- 26:58Speaker 7: now on your website is to do Amazon.
- 27:00Speaker 4: Pro website predominantly. Yeah, so war site.
- 27:02Speaker 7: But when did you transition have enough traction to just
- 27:05Speaker 7: start being a gene brand? That was it?
- 27:07Speaker 5: Really so I think, you know, I mean, you can
- 27:09Speaker 5: still buy our products through Amazon now as well, but
- 27:13Speaker 5: we wanted to get to a kind of critical mass
- 27:16Speaker 5: of the business. We wanted to make sure, like you know,
- 27:18Speaker 5: the business was self sufficient. So now the business can
- 27:20Speaker 5: pay for its own orders. If we're running low or
- 27:22Speaker 5: if we need to like launch a new products and
- 27:24Speaker 5: stuff that new product strain, the business can can manage that.
- 27:29Speaker 5: And then we had a website early on as well.
- 27:32Speaker 5: But again, like I said, weren't getting the traffic that
- 27:34Speaker 5: Amazon was getting. Do you know what I mean? We
- 27:36Speaker 5: weren't getting the traffic. Google wasn't ranking us high. You know,
- 27:40Speaker 5: if you searched long hair swimming can, Amazon products were
- 27:43Speaker 5: coming up.
- 27:44Speaker 4: They were like the first link.
- 27:45Speaker 5: So that's I think one of the key things with
- 27:47Speaker 5: in my opinion, with e com brands is like.
- 27:51Speaker 4: Either you've got enough budget to.
- 27:53Speaker 5: Try and market hard and you know, heavy social media
- 27:56Speaker 5: all that kind of stuff. You know, early on it
- 27:58Speaker 5: was just us doing social media. So we looked at
- 28:02Speaker 5: Amazon really because Amazon had the traffic. That's what helped
- 28:05Speaker 5: push the business. And there are ways that means, even
- 28:08Speaker 5: with Amazon, to put your brand across So like you know,
- 28:11Speaker 5: making sure you're listing obviously the pictures, but then like
- 28:14Speaker 5: telling the brand story within you within your listing.
- 28:17Speaker 4: You know, people were like, cool, I can this is
- 28:19Speaker 4: sole cap? You know, we get it.
- 28:20Speaker 5: So then next time when people see us, say on Instagram,
- 28:23Speaker 5: they were like, yeah, cool, I remember that brand.
- 28:25Speaker 7: I see that telling a brand story like in a bio,
- 28:27Speaker 7: like a bio.
- 28:28Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, so you can kind of like put I
- 28:30Speaker 5: know sometimes you might see on Amazon you scroll down
- 28:32Speaker 5: and we see the description and there's a bit more
- 28:34Speaker 5: about the brand and stuff like that, founders and stuff.
- 28:36Speaker 8: So yeah, so once you get to your own website,
- 28:41Speaker 8: now you're not having to pay a fee to Amazon
- 28:43Speaker 8: because they're getting a percentage of every time every sale.
- 28:45Speaker 2: Yeah, so it makes sense now you're gonna make more
- 28:47Speaker 2: profit to put it on your websites.
- 28:48Speaker 8: Actually learn in the early stages, how did we come
- 28:51Speaker 8: up with pricing? Because that's key, right, because there's a
- 28:55Speaker 8: lot of competitors that sell these caps. Yeah, you Actually,
- 28:57Speaker 8: I'm assuming have to use more material because this.
- 29:00Speaker 2: Caps were a little bit larger. Yeah, so how did
- 29:02Speaker 2: you have determined pricing?
- 29:03Speaker 5: So for us, really it was kind of just we
- 29:06Speaker 5: we we wanted to do something like we wanted to
- 29:08Speaker 5: have like a margin which was reasonable obviously to help
- 29:12Speaker 5: the product product you know, grow and all that kind
- 29:13Speaker 5: of stuff, but then at the same time something that
- 29:15Speaker 5: was reasonable for the customer. You know, we didn't want
- 29:17Speaker 5: to if we were the only credible choice for the products,
- 29:20Speaker 5: we didn't want people to have to pay through the
- 29:22Speaker 5: nose for it essentially, so we kind of did a
- 29:24Speaker 5: bit of research. We looked around at what some of
- 29:26Speaker 5: the other long long hair swimming caps were selling for,
- 29:30Speaker 5: and we kind of just pitched it around there. To
- 29:31Speaker 5: be honest, like you say, we wanted to be competitive,
- 29:35Speaker 5: but also we need We knew that we needed the
- 29:36Speaker 5: margins to come through and then you know, making sure
- 29:40Speaker 5: that you can basically got.
- 29:42Speaker 4: A sustainable business model.
- 29:44Speaker 5: Really, so that was it. How much is your gaps
- 29:46Speaker 5: so you need our caps for like I don't know
- 29:48Speaker 5: if I say pounds or dollars in London we can
- 29:52Speaker 5: say both. Actually, yeah, if you know, get numbers for
- 29:54Speaker 5: both get them for like twelve to like eighteen pounds,
- 29:57Speaker 5: you know, sixteen dollars, twenty eighteen dollars.
- 30:00Speaker 4: Yeah, run now. Yeah, So what.
- 30:02Speaker 8: About like sales throughout the year? Other high seasons, slow seasons.
- 30:06Speaker 8: Obviously the summer the other kids are going to the
- 30:08Speaker 8: swimming pool, but in the colder months, those are specifically
- 30:12Speaker 8: tied for people who are competitive. Like we said earlier,
- 30:15Speaker 8: most people that we're trying to target aren't in.
- 30:19Speaker 3: Competitive swimming exactly. So what do you guys do in
- 30:22Speaker 3: those parts of the year.
- 30:23Speaker 5: Yeah, I think for us, you know, it's a funny
- 30:27Speaker 5: one because actually December and January is usually quite busy
- 30:30Speaker 5: because I feel like New Year, you me like, okay.
- 30:32Speaker 2: I'm trying something.
- 30:33Speaker 7: Yeah.
- 30:33Speaker 5: Yeah, you learned to swim, which is great and we
- 30:37Speaker 5: love it and obviously we just always try to encourage it.
- 30:40Speaker 4: There's also a big movement.
- 30:41Speaker 5: Outdoor and wild swimming now in the UK, and I
- 30:44Speaker 5: think also in the US. So I feel like the
- 30:48Speaker 5: crazy seasonality, obviously, someone's always going to be the big
- 30:51Speaker 5: big time, but I feel like it has leveled out
- 30:53Speaker 5: a little bit where people are actually getting more interested
- 30:55Speaker 5: in sort of outdoor wild swimming and swimming in the
- 30:58Speaker 5: winter months and also the new year. So yeah, I
- 31:01Speaker 5: don't know. I think we just I don't really know
- 31:03Speaker 5: how we manage it, to be honest. But you know,
- 31:06Speaker 5: obviously for us as well as as a swim brand,
- 31:09Speaker 5: like we've been kind of making that move to just
- 31:12Speaker 5: expand our product.
- 31:13Speaker 4: Range as well, you know, expand our product offering and stuff.
- 31:15Speaker 2: So it's called Guard's point.
- 31:17Speaker 7: So have you done any marketing hate marketing at all.
- 31:22Speaker 4: Or in terms of like like.
- 31:25Speaker 5: Influencer Not really, not really, So actually I told you
- 31:28Speaker 5: what we did. Do you know, again, early relatively early
- 31:31Speaker 5: in our journey, we've probably been a couple of years
- 31:33Speaker 5: in and we knew were getting traction, and we came
- 31:35Speaker 5: across a young lady called Alis Steering and she was,
- 31:40Speaker 5: you know, like a junior swimming champion. She won like
- 31:44Speaker 5: a junior swimming championship in the UK, and she was
- 31:47Speaker 5: basically the only personal color who swam for Great Britain
- 31:52Speaker 5: and at that to that point, there was you know,
- 31:55Speaker 5: no woman of colorhood Fronto Olympics representing Team G. So
- 32:01Speaker 5: we came across her story and you know, it was
- 32:03Speaker 5: nuts because we were kind of just pushing off in
- 32:05Speaker 5: we decided like marketing a bit more using social media,
- 32:08Speaker 5: you know, trying to push our website a bit, and
- 32:10Speaker 5: we came across her and we reached out and we
- 32:13Speaker 5: were like, actually, you know what, we want to try
- 32:14Speaker 5: and support you on your journey because what she was
- 32:17Speaker 5: doing was you know, so aligned very well as verisnonmous
- 32:20Speaker 5: what we were doing. So we kind of struck up
- 32:22Speaker 5: a bit of a sponsorship type partnership type of arrangement
- 32:25Speaker 5: where we could support her training and stuff for the Olympics,
- 32:30Speaker 5: and then you know, she could.
- 32:31Speaker 4: Also like rock our products and like you know, talk
- 32:33Speaker 4: about it and stuff.
- 32:34Speaker 7: Soah, because in my brain, like there's like a lot
- 32:37Speaker 7: of especially in the States. I won't aer is out here,
- 32:39Speaker 7: but one of our friends has like a festival called
- 32:42Speaker 7: curl Fest. Yeah yeah you heard of it.
- 32:44Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, I've heard of it.
- 32:45Speaker 7: Yeah, And it's like a whole movement of like natural hair.
- 32:49Speaker 7: So I'm thinking maybe partnerships with something like that would
- 32:52Speaker 7: because that would be you know, yeah, hand in hand. Yeah,
- 32:55Speaker 7: it's about here already exactly. It's a natural fit to
- 32:58Speaker 7: be like, okay, now if you want to go swimming,
- 33:00Speaker 7: this is a product that you should be using.
- 33:02Speaker 4: Yeah, we have, Actually we did.
- 33:03Speaker 5: We did do Like there was a big festival, a
- 33:06Speaker 5: handcare festival here called Curly Treats as well. I mean,
- 33:11Speaker 5: you know we went to that and you know, along
- 33:13Speaker 5: the way we've done loads of things, reached out to people.
- 33:16Speaker 4: You know, the influencer thing. We looked at it early
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- 35:11Speaker 1: An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child
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- 36:11Speaker 4: Security like commony afforded.
- 36:13Speaker 5: So yeah, but it's been it's just been organic, to
- 36:17Speaker 5: be honest, And I feel like a lot of it
- 36:19Speaker 5: has just spoke for itself because it's just the product,
- 36:21Speaker 5: which I think was just needed. And given that we
- 36:24Speaker 5: just came through and we put something incredible down, it
- 36:27Speaker 5: was always gonna it was always going to work.
- 36:29Speaker 7: So what happened with the Olympic situation.
- 36:32Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 36:32Speaker 5: So with that, I mean again that was like for us,
- 36:37Speaker 5: it was we okay, let me let me run it back. Actually,
- 36:41Speaker 5: so we did a shoot. We invited some customers to
- 36:44Speaker 5: photo shoot photo shoe. Yeah, we're gonna do a little
- 36:46Speaker 5: photo shoot and we invited some of our customers to
- 36:49Speaker 5: come through and like we wanted to do like a
- 36:51Speaker 5: parent child kind of shoot and stuff.
- 36:54Speaker 4: And there was a woman who who actually met us.
- 36:57Speaker 5: We came across us all at Curly Tretes Festival and
- 36:59Speaker 5: she had a daughter who's eight years old called Anaya.
- 37:03Speaker 5: And Anya was swimming for her local county in London,
- 37:07Speaker 5: like London Borough of New Them something like. And she
- 37:10Speaker 5: was like she bought the product for a daughter. And
- 37:13Speaker 5: when we saw her this photosoo, she was like, I
- 37:15Speaker 5: love my soul cap, I just love it. Like the
- 37:17Speaker 5: swimming had I had before just didn't work for me,
- 37:20Speaker 5: Like my swimming lessons were disruptive, you know, the cat
- 37:22Speaker 5: was always coming off. She had to get out of
- 37:24Speaker 5: the pool to get someone to help her get her
- 37:26Speaker 5: cat back on. All this so when we spoke to
- 37:29Speaker 5: her that photo shoot, we were like, if she if
- 37:33Speaker 5: she wants to keep swimming and keep training and get
- 37:37Speaker 5: competitive and gets to a certain level. Eventually they'll come
- 37:40Speaker 5: a point where she has to use a competition approoved
- 37:43Speaker 5: swimming cap, right, and we were like okay cool, and
- 37:47Speaker 5: we knew about like Feena, you had these like Feena approves.
- 37:50Speaker 5: You know, Feina is basically like the world government body
- 37:53Speaker 5: for swimming essentially, right, so.
- 37:55Speaker 4: They're like the Olympic like world body. They decided, you.
- 37:58Speaker 5: Know, if you want to use if you want to
- 38:00Speaker 5: use like competitive like swimwear, goggles, that kind of stuff,
- 38:02Speaker 5: your product, it has to be Feena approved.
- 38:06Speaker 8: Bringing them up when Michael Phelp started breaking records, what
- 38:10Speaker 8: what technologies is he wearing fast?
- 38:13Speaker 2: Everybody's just moving faster?
- 38:15Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, that's it. So we were like okay cool.
- 38:18Speaker 5: So same way with the swim suits, they had to
- 38:20Speaker 5: get approved by the you know, commite. Swimming caps also
- 38:23Speaker 5: have to be approved by the comedy So we were like, okay, cool.
- 38:26Speaker 5: This young girl wants to keep using our product. But
- 38:28Speaker 5: then she gets to a certain level where they say, okay, sorry,
- 38:31Speaker 5: that that's products not proved, you can't use it. Then
- 38:35Speaker 5: then she would have to choose between that sport that
- 38:37Speaker 5: she loves and like you know, hair or that is
- 38:40Speaker 5: worked for her. So we were actually, she shouldn't have
- 38:42Speaker 5: to make that choice. Let's just apply it and let's
- 38:45Speaker 5: get our caps approved.
- 38:46Speaker 4: So me and.
- 38:47Speaker 5: Michael like were we really like methodical characters. So we
- 38:51Speaker 5: went online. We looked at the FEENA website, we looked
- 38:54Speaker 5: at all the criteria for swimming caps to be approved,
- 38:58Speaker 5: and we looked at him that that's fine, like caps
- 39:00Speaker 5: meet all the criteria, and so we were like, cool,
- 39:04Speaker 5: let's just apply for the caps to be approved, like
- 39:07Speaker 5: business as usual. We didn't really think anything of it.
- 39:09Speaker 5: We didn't think it was gonna get We just was
- 39:10Speaker 5: going to go through, pay the fee, call approved, keep
- 39:13Speaker 5: it moving. And then obviously the initial response we had
- 39:18Speaker 5: was that, you know, the swimming caps, we're not going
- 39:21Speaker 5: to be considered or we're not approved for use for
- 39:25Speaker 5: the for the Olympics.
- 39:26Speaker 4: So we were like, okay, that's kind.
- 39:28Speaker 5: Of weird, like what what's the reason, you know? And
- 39:30Speaker 5: I think the reason said, yeah, like it doesn't the
- 39:32Speaker 5: cap doesn't meet the natural form of the head.
- 39:36Speaker 8: That was the quote literally the quote for being did
- 39:38Speaker 8: not match the natural form of there.
- 39:40Speaker 5: Yeah, so and then and you know what's not actually,
- 39:42Speaker 5: do know what's mad when? Because because we saw all
- 39:45Speaker 5: the criteria, so that was one of the criter you know,
- 39:47Speaker 5: one of the criterias about the fitness, like the material,
- 39:49Speaker 5: all this kind of stuff.
- 39:51Speaker 4: And when I saw the the that the.
- 39:54Speaker 5: Cap has to meet the natural form of ahead, my
- 39:57Speaker 5: interpretation was that you know, you get like decorative swimming
- 40:00Speaker 5: caps for like children, like sharp things and stuff.
- 40:03Speaker 4: That was my interpretation.
- 40:04Speaker 5: So I was thinking, oh, that's cool, Like we don't
- 40:06Speaker 5: have sharp things, we haven't got anything crazy, like, you know,
- 40:08Speaker 5: it's just like a swimming cap.
- 40:09Speaker 4: Yeah, when we saw the natural form on.
- 40:11Speaker 5: The head criteria, we thought that it meant okay, if
- 40:15Speaker 5: your swimming cap has like sharp thins anything like that,
- 40:18Speaker 5: that it wasn't going to be approved.
- 40:19Speaker 4: Obviously our caps don't have that.
- 40:22Speaker 5: So then we went back to them and we said,
- 40:25Speaker 5: you know, I think my feeling initially was just that
- 40:28Speaker 5: they've probably only ever get applications from the big brands,
- 40:33Speaker 5: the Nikes added ass Head Arena, like all the big guys,
- 40:36Speaker 5: and they've heard like some some bran called soul Cap
- 40:39Speaker 5: coming through trying to apply, so they probably just thought
- 40:41Speaker 5: like just snub it or whatever. That was my initial
- 40:44Speaker 5: feeling and then so I went back and we said,
- 40:46Speaker 5: you know, how can we appeal the decision? How can
- 40:49Speaker 5: we kind of just appeal that process, maybe having a conversation,
- 40:52Speaker 5: explain to you what we're doing. And they basically come
- 40:56Speaker 5: back and they said, okay, cool, you can't appeal because
- 41:00Speaker 5: the application hasn't gone in front of the panel approval panel,
- 41:03Speaker 5: we're not actually going to even put that application forward
- 41:06Speaker 5: because you know, basically, like to me, it felt like
- 41:10Speaker 5: they were just like, we don't want it, like so,
- 41:12Speaker 5: so we couldn't appeal and it wouldn't approve it. So
- 41:14Speaker 5: our hands were tired. We couldn't do anything do Yeah,
- 41:17Speaker 5: I mean, like what do you do that in that situation?
- 41:19Speaker 5: You can't appeal it. They're saying you can't, you can't
- 41:22Speaker 5: run So okay cool. So then that was when basically,
- 41:25Speaker 5: you know, obviously, then eventually like the story got out
- 41:29Speaker 5: and yeah, everyone had an uproar and we were overwhelmed,
- 41:32Speaker 5: like we didn't even anticipate.
- 41:34Speaker 7: So how did you get out out of the story?
- 41:35Speaker 2: You know?
- 41:35Speaker 5: So we had we had spoken to like a few
- 41:39Speaker 5: kind of like journalists and stuff, and we were kind
- 41:40Speaker 5: of just saying, you know, people would like Women's Health
- 41:43Speaker 5: had reached out to us from before what to do
- 41:45Speaker 5: an interview with us, Like we were, you know, featured
- 41:48Speaker 5: on like the Independent, Like we've been featured and we're
- 41:51Speaker 5: getting a bit of press press attraction. And then and
- 41:54Speaker 5: then when this thing happened, like our brand manager like
- 41:58Speaker 5: had a few contacts and she was just talkard to
- 41:59Speaker 5: his person and they were like, na, like we need
- 42:01Speaker 5: to we need to get this story out, like it's
- 42:03Speaker 5: it's nuts. So and really just for ourkay call, like
- 42:06Speaker 5: you know, just run it. And it went nuts.
- 42:09Speaker 2: Man.
- 42:09Speaker 5: We didn't anticipate the level of like people were just
- 42:14Speaker 5: on onto it, you know, and everyone was riding for us.
- 42:16Speaker 5: And that's what we really appreciate the fact that people
- 42:18Speaker 5: actually like wrote out for us and people said no,
- 42:20Speaker 5: like they say right, because we didn't think it was right,
- 42:22Speaker 5: you know. And sometimes I think when you're in when
- 42:25Speaker 5: you're in that situation, you can't tell whether maybe you're
- 42:28Speaker 5: just like in too deep to see you know, to
- 42:32Speaker 5: see it. But I think with the reaction that kind
- 42:34Speaker 5: of story got, it felt like yeah.
- 42:36Speaker 4: No, it was completely it was completely justifying.
- 42:38Speaker 8: So after this is like July through the Tokyo Games, Yeah,
- 42:43Speaker 8: they apologize, They apologize, Yeah, but did they lift the band?
- 42:48Speaker 2: No?
- 42:49Speaker 5: No, so essentially because we still hadn't gone through that
- 42:51Speaker 5: prove of process. We want a proved for use essentially.
- 42:54Speaker 5: So I know the media kind of run the word
- 42:57Speaker 5: band and all that kind of stuff, but really, you know,
- 43:00Speaker 5: the real facts, Amar was that they weren't allowed to
- 43:03Speaker 5: be used because they hadn't been they weren't approved.
- 43:06Speaker 4: Yeah, so they have to be approved for use to
- 43:09Speaker 4: go through.
- 43:09Speaker 5: But obviously, like you know, it's like the reporters like,
- 43:14Speaker 5: that's what sells exactly. So we never actually set our
- 43:16Speaker 5: caps were band, and we just said, you know, they
- 43:18Speaker 5: weren't approved or they wouldn't be approved, and they won't
- 43:21Speaker 5: they wouldn't be considered. But then yeah, so so then
- 43:25Speaker 5: everyone went no, it's obviously. I was on the phone
- 43:28Speaker 5: with Brent no VICKI, who is like, you know, the
- 43:31Speaker 5: chief CEO of FEINA. You know, I was on a
- 43:35Speaker 5: phone call with the you know, CEO of British Swimming.
- 43:42Speaker 5: You know, we're the Black Swiming Association. Jumped on this
- 43:44Speaker 5: call and we're all on it and they were like, yo, Brent.
- 43:48Speaker 5: Brent said, you know, to be honest with you I'm sorry.
- 43:51Speaker 5: Like he'd actually have come in after, so he was
- 43:56Speaker 5: he was actually new, so he'd come in after this
- 43:58Speaker 5: decision was made and he saw the blown up about
- 44:00Speaker 5: soul Cap and he was like, what's so cap?
- 44:02Speaker 4: You know, who's so cap? What's going on?
- 44:04Speaker 5: And he said he looked at the file and it
- 44:06Speaker 5: wasn't clear to him why the application wasn't put forward.
- 44:09Speaker 5: He was like, to be honest with you, it wasn't
- 44:11Speaker 5: clear to me why he didn't get put forward. And
- 44:15Speaker 5: you know, I can only apologize for for what happened.
- 44:17Speaker 5: And you know, to be fair, it was quite supportive
- 44:19Speaker 5: if he was like, you know, we can work together,
- 44:22Speaker 5: we can help you guys, Like, let's look at the
- 44:24Speaker 5: situation and see if we can get approved.
- 44:25Speaker 4: And currently we are actually going through the process.
- 44:29Speaker 7: So it's about that. As that was my next question,
- 44:31Speaker 7: like where does it stand right now with them?
- 44:33Speaker 5: So as it stands now, I mean we'll wait. I
- 44:34Speaker 5: mean we've been waiting for it a little while, but
- 44:37Speaker 5: I keep pushing them. Hopefully I think we should get
- 44:40Speaker 5: a response and hopefully in the next next couple of months, more.
- 44:42Speaker 2: Years to the next or two more years to the
- 44:44Speaker 2: next summer Olympic.
- 44:45Speaker 5: Yeah, we've got time, but then we've got the Commonwealth Games,
- 44:47Speaker 5: been working on World Games and all that.
- 44:49Speaker 8: Yeah exactly, Yeah, yeah, I mean I read the I
- 44:51Speaker 8: mean based on it right, all the the capsule silicon.
- 44:55Speaker 3: They actually said that because you use more material, it
- 44:57Speaker 3: actually might be a disadvantage for swimmers.
- 44:59Speaker 4: That's the thing.
- 45:01Speaker 5: We just wanted people to have the option, you know
- 45:03Speaker 5: what I'm saying. We weren't saying that yo, like everyone's
- 45:06Speaker 5: gonna go and buy a Solca and use that the Olympics, right,
- 45:08Speaker 5: That wasn't what we were saying. But what we what
- 45:10Speaker 5: we were saying is actually we wanted people, if you're
- 45:12Speaker 5: a competitive swimmer, we wanted you to have the option,
- 45:16Speaker 5: you know it, rather than you say, okay, cool, well
- 45:19Speaker 5: that's it. I either just quit swimming or I have
- 45:22Speaker 5: to like just completely like forgoing my hair or anything
- 45:25Speaker 5: like that. So we kind of wanted people as they
- 45:27Speaker 5: were progressing through them competitive ranks, as they were getting
- 45:30Speaker 5: to them levels, to have the option.
- 45:32Speaker 8: And it makes sense right, Like I've been like, if
- 45:34Speaker 8: you watch swimming, you watch the Olympics, yeah, you start
- 45:37Speaker 8: to notice that like most swimmers and that they're wearing
- 45:39Speaker 8: two caps. Yeah, so I'm thinking, like, if they're wearing
- 45:42Speaker 8: two caps, obviously there's a size issue, and obviously there's
- 45:45Speaker 8: an issue with not keeping whatever your hair dry.
- 45:48Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, so there's there's I mean, that's the thing.
- 45:51Speaker 5: There's so many there's so many things, and it runs deep,
- 45:53Speaker 5: like it does run deep when you sort of start
- 45:54Speaker 5: going into it and stuff. You know, I think probably
- 45:58Speaker 5: I imagine the culture maybe if you're to speak to
- 46:00Speaker 5: most super competitive swimmers, the culture probably is you like,
- 46:05Speaker 5: you sacrifice whatever.
- 46:07Speaker 7: You cut your hair.
- 46:07Speaker 5: You cut your hair. You know, that's that's what's expected.
- 46:11Speaker 5: You have to cut your hair. If you want to
- 46:12Speaker 5: get to this level, you have to cut your hair.
- 46:14Speaker 5: But I feel like, still there may be points along
- 46:17Speaker 5: the way.
- 46:18Speaker 4: You know.
- 46:18Speaker 5: Alice Stairing has said herself to me that she's always
- 46:21Speaker 5: so regularly she would say, ah, like I feel like
- 46:25Speaker 5: I've got to sacrifice my hair. I want to keep
- 46:27Speaker 5: doing it, blah blah blah. And you can imagine for
- 46:30Speaker 5: like a young you know, a young person, especially when
- 46:34Speaker 5: you just don't really see that many black people swimming,
- 46:37Speaker 5: you know, potential future Olympic grades out there who just
- 46:41Speaker 5: don't think the sports for them.
- 46:43Speaker 7: So how how big can like, what's the largest size
- 46:47Speaker 7: that you have?
- 46:48Speaker 4: A larger size is a double XCEL.
- 46:51Speaker 5: So if you've got dreadlocks, if you've got dreadlocks down
- 46:54Speaker 5: to your back like full on, Like yeah, yeah, yes,
- 47:00Speaker 5: big band and they stretchy and yeah they're big.
- 47:02Speaker 7: So what's the scaling model, Like, what's what's the plans
- 47:06Speaker 7: to actually take this to the point where it's moving
- 47:10Speaker 7: millions or unions a year? Like what do you what's
- 47:12Speaker 7: your what's your plan?
- 47:15Speaker 4: Your vision?
- 47:15Speaker 5: Yeah, So for us to be honest with you, what
- 47:18Speaker 5: what we think is, we see ourselves as a swimming
- 47:21Speaker 5: brand for everyone. You know, throughout our journey, we've always
- 47:24Speaker 5: kind of wanted to support the community, you know, give
- 47:26Speaker 5: money back, run like initiatives to get people, you know,
- 47:30Speaker 5: at grassroots level into swimming, working with you know, we're
- 47:34Speaker 5: cool guys like tank Proof in the US, who they
- 47:36Speaker 5: offer through swimming lessons for children in the disadvantage to areas.
- 47:39Speaker 5: You know, we've worked with Swim them Crow in London.
- 47:42Speaker 5: So so we always we always want to give back
- 47:44Speaker 5: and we want to keep that community feel make sure
- 47:46Speaker 5: that we're always giving back to the community. But we
- 47:49Speaker 5: want to be the best swim brand in the world,
- 47:51Speaker 5: to be honest with you, and so you know, obviously
- 47:54Speaker 5: like now I've got our own comm you know, soul
- 47:58Speaker 5: cap dot com website. You know, we're expanded our product range.
- 48:01Speaker 5: So we've got swimming goggles are landing very soon.
- 48:04Speaker 4: We've got much.
- 48:05Speaker 5: As you can see, towels we've got we've got a
- 48:07Speaker 5: head we've got the head towers, we've got body towers.
- 48:10Speaker 5: Swimming goggles are landing. We've got training aids as well,
- 48:13Speaker 5: so like pool boys and kickboards.
- 48:15Speaker 2: You know, we've got suits. Suits.
- 48:18Speaker 5: Yeah, well that's the swim where is the is the
- 48:20Speaker 5: is the thing that's actually we're working on as well,
- 48:22Speaker 5: which we think is going to be our big ticket
- 48:24Speaker 5: and for us as well, the swim where we just
- 48:26Speaker 5: wanted to be like inclusive.
- 48:28Speaker 4: We want it to work, you know, work for everyone.
- 48:29Speaker 5: We're gonna you know, we're going like plus size on
- 48:32Speaker 5: the women, plus size and the men. We're gonna have
- 48:34Speaker 5: the small staff, we're gonna have kids stuff, and we're
- 48:36Speaker 5: just really looking to expand and scale. But again, to
- 48:39Speaker 5: be honest, it's awfully funded by ourselves. You know, we
- 48:43Speaker 5: haven't got to that. We've not we've not sat there
- 48:45Speaker 5: into that. Cool, Let's let's bring in some external capital.
- 48:48Speaker 5: Let's bring in some equity to help scale things. So
- 48:50Speaker 5: that's why it has to be managed at the same time, you.
- 48:53Speaker 3: Know, after after the ordeal with Fena, how is the
- 49:01Speaker 3: business right?
- 49:01Speaker 2: Do we do? We see it?
- 49:03Speaker 3: Obviously an increase in sales. Yeah, but what you guys
- 49:06Speaker 3: prepare for that at the time, we.
- 49:08Speaker 4: Weren't at all.
- 49:08Speaker 5: We weren't at all, to be honest with you, if
- 49:10Speaker 5: we knew how big that story would have got, we
- 49:11Speaker 5: would have made sure we were way more prepared, and
- 49:13Speaker 5: we weren't. We were like, you know, we were selling out,
- 49:16Speaker 5: Like as fast as we could get this stuff in,
- 49:18Speaker 5: it was going out. And you know, to be fair,
- 49:21Speaker 5: even for us, we realized our back our back office
- 49:24Speaker 5: operations weren't good enough because we couldn't meet that demand.
- 49:27Speaker 5: You know, people some people had bought caps and they
- 49:30Speaker 5: had to wait like, you know, a few weeks before
- 49:32Speaker 5: they were getting their orders and stuff.
- 49:34Speaker 4: And for us out, you know, that's not good enough.
- 49:36Speaker 5: So we were telling people, you're like, you know, if
- 49:39Speaker 5: you have any issues, reach us.
- 49:40Speaker 4: You know, people's stuff was getting lost in the post.
- 49:42Speaker 4: It was all mad.
- 49:43Speaker 2: You know.
- 49:45Speaker 4: So now obviously we're making sure that back end processes
- 49:47Speaker 4: are proper.
- 49:48Speaker 5: We've got good partners making sure that we can stay stops,
- 49:52Speaker 5: you know, keep everything in place to just essentially promote
- 49:55Speaker 5: that growth.
- 49:56Speaker 7: Yeah, I had the supply chain like you get manufacturer
- 49:59Speaker 7: like China. Yeah, as a supply chain issue affected.
- 50:02Speaker 4: You, Yeah, it has. We had.
- 50:05Speaker 5: We've had a few moments, to be fair, and apparently
- 50:07Speaker 5: that the price of raw silicon was going going through
- 50:11Speaker 5: that was like obviously a big one. But you know,
- 50:13Speaker 5: when we have things like that, we make sure we
- 50:15Speaker 5: don't want to try and we don't want to pass
- 50:16Speaker 5: that cost onto the customer if we don't have to,
- 50:19Speaker 5: So we just absorbed them kind of things, you know.
- 50:21Speaker 5: But that's why I think now if we diversify a
- 50:23Speaker 5: product range, then hopefully, you know, we're not going to
- 50:27Speaker 5: be so reliant just just the swimming caps. And to
- 50:31Speaker 5: be honest, we see now ready man, people are going
- 50:32Speaker 5: on the website and there buying like the hair towel.
- 50:34Speaker 5: The hair towel is crazy for anyone who looks out
- 50:37Speaker 5: anyone who's into haircare anything like that. If you want
- 50:40Speaker 5: get get a sole cap hair towel, trust.
- 50:42Speaker 4: Me, what's a headtel. It's a microfiber hair towel.
- 50:46Speaker 5: But it's like different different, different level, yeah, trust me,
- 50:51Speaker 5: different level. Any any any like women who are into
- 50:54Speaker 5: that haircare type stuff, if they swim and they do
- 50:56Speaker 5: have their hair hair care watch, they use our hair towel.
- 50:59Speaker 4: Trust me, it's crazy.
- 51:00Speaker 8: I mean that's like I said that, that's great if
- 51:02Speaker 8: you're swimming or even if you're nuts women.
- 51:03Speaker 2: Yeah, because most of.
- 51:05Speaker 3: Times when women get their hair done, or prior to
- 51:07Speaker 3: getting their hair done, they washed their hair.
- 51:08Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and before they blowed right, yeah, they have
- 51:11Speaker 2: the hairtail.
- 51:12Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- 51:13Speaker 7: It's like I got something you go to be like
- 51:16Speaker 7: the Sakah Yeah.
- 51:18Speaker 5: Man, I think for us, we just want to be
- 51:20Speaker 5: We just want to be like a swimming brand for everyone.
- 51:22Speaker 4: We want to be to go to where for example, you.
- 51:26Speaker 5: Know, people who have previously felt excluded from the sport
- 51:29Speaker 5: can say, actually, our soul Cap is a brand that
- 51:31Speaker 5: represent us.
- 51:32Speaker 4: They rep us. You know what I'm saying.
- 51:35Speaker 7: So let me ask you this. How has COVID the
- 51:37Speaker 7: COVID effect? Yeah yeah, yeah yeah, Covid couldn't cutting your product?
- 51:42Speaker 4: Yeah, couldn't you get product?
- 51:43Speaker 7: Pools were closed pools were closed. Also.
- 51:45Speaker 5: Yeah, it was hard, man, it was what you're gonna do,
- 51:48Speaker 5: you know, so just you just right, yeah, yeah, we
- 51:51Speaker 5: went into when that happened, we went into defense mode.
- 51:53Speaker 5: So we were like, for example, if we had plans
- 51:56Speaker 5: to launch new products, you know, to start opinion, you know,
- 52:00Speaker 5: for example, on new website, all this.
- 52:02Speaker 4: Kind of stuff, all that stuff just was on the
- 52:03Speaker 4: back burner.
- 52:04Speaker 5: You know, ad spend for example, So if you're spending
- 52:06Speaker 5: on ads and stuff like that, to scale it back,
- 52:09Speaker 5: because because we knew that cash was cash was was
- 52:13Speaker 5: going to be king at that point.
- 52:14Speaker 7: So what's what's your biggest market UK?
- 52:16Speaker 5: Or I think it's about it's probably about fifty percent US,
- 52:21Speaker 5: maybe like forty percent UK and then about ten percent
- 52:24Speaker 5: rest of the world.
- 52:26Speaker 4: Yeah, so and we get orders from everywhere. It's nuts.
- 52:28Speaker 4: We get ordered from like orders from all over the
- 52:30Speaker 4: world and it's where you know.
- 52:33Speaker 2: So, I mean it's swimming like this. This is a
- 52:35Speaker 2: this is a big business.
- 52:37Speaker 8: So you guys are kind of like the little fish
- 52:39Speaker 8: coming into this business at the time. Are there any
- 52:42Speaker 8: sharks out there that saying, you know what, we want
- 52:45Speaker 8: to acquire you that.
- 52:46Speaker 2: Has that happened to you guys.
- 52:47Speaker 5: Yeah, we have had we have had some kind of
- 52:51Speaker 5: people approach us in terms of like these are more
- 52:56Speaker 5: like aggregated type companies, so you can get these companies
- 52:59Speaker 5: that buy up brands that do well on Amazon and
- 53:02Speaker 5: stuff like that. So a few of them hit us
- 53:04Speaker 5: up and they've been trying to hit us for acquisition.
- 53:07Speaker 5: We've had I don't know, if you guys have heard dragons,
- 53:09Speaker 5: then it's like it's right, no, no, no, no, no, it's
- 53:14Speaker 5: it's like a there there's a TV show called like
- 53:17Speaker 5: sharp Tank, it's like a UK equivalent that, And they've
- 53:19Speaker 5: been onto us. Man, they've been hitting us lowly saying
- 53:21Speaker 5: I'll come through, like you know, want wanted us to
- 53:23Speaker 5: go forward for the application process.
- 53:26Speaker 2: But yeah, I can see it. I can see that.
- 53:27Speaker 4: But yeah, I don't know.
- 53:29Speaker 7: Man.
- 53:29Speaker 4: For us, we just feel like, okay, let's keep doing
- 53:30Speaker 4: our thing. Let's keep pushing.
- 53:32Speaker 7: You know.
- 53:33Speaker 5: We've we've had emails people just emailing us saying you
- 53:35Speaker 5: guys looking for you know, investment and stuff like that.
- 53:39Speaker 5: People asking out where can we buy your stock? Obviously
- 53:42Speaker 5: we're not listed on any stock market, but.
- 53:44Speaker 7: So yeah, your air tie investment, right.
- 53:46Speaker 5: No, no, no, not not not anti definitely not. I think
- 53:48Speaker 5: we just need to make sure the time is right
- 53:50Speaker 5: we can get Yeah. I mean with me and Michael,
- 53:52Speaker 5: we want to get the push the value of the
- 53:55Speaker 5: business as much as we can before we then start
- 53:58Speaker 5: looking for that outside capital. And I think we're close
- 54:01Speaker 5: to that point now. You know, like things like product
- 54:05Speaker 5: range is like relatively low hanging through, Like we know
- 54:08Speaker 5: how to launch sick products, so I mean we know
- 54:10Speaker 5: how to put together like great products and market them
- 54:13Speaker 5: and put them out nicely. So we're thinking, cool, let's
- 54:16Speaker 5: do what we're good at. And then when we get
- 54:18Speaker 5: to that level where okay, cool, we can start getting
- 54:21Speaker 5: other people in, getting other people's expertise and stuff.
- 54:24Speaker 4: Crowdcube is another one who's reached out to us.
- 54:26Speaker 5: A Crowdcube one of them kind of websites where you
- 54:28Speaker 5: can part up like a campaign and then people can
- 54:31Speaker 5: subscribe and buy some shares in your company and staff.
- 54:35Speaker 5: Crowd crowdfunding, yeah, like basically crowdfunding. Yeah, I think it's
- 54:39Speaker 5: the company that hit us. Maybe it's Crowdcube, but yeah,
- 54:41Speaker 5: like crowdfunding, and that's something that as well, we thought
- 54:44Speaker 5: because it's a kind of community based brand that that
- 54:47Speaker 5: could be also a potentially good option as well. But yeah,
- 54:51Speaker 5: so I think there's definitely exciting things to come.
- 54:53Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 54:54Speaker 2: Yeah, so you obviously it's you and Michael.
- 54:56Speaker 8: Yeah, who else is part of the team to make
- 54:58Speaker 8: sure that the execution is at a sign because even
- 55:00Speaker 8: when you were talking about the deliveries, you said that's
- 55:03Speaker 8: not good enough. Yeah, and so obviously it can't just
- 55:05Speaker 8: be YouTube, So like, who else? And yeah, when did
- 55:09Speaker 8: you decide that we need to get these specific people
- 55:12Speaker 8: to help us scale?
- 55:13Speaker 4: Yeah?
- 55:13Speaker 5: So, I mean it was just me and Michael for
- 55:15Speaker 5: quite a while, to be honest. My fiance, my now fiance,
- 55:21Speaker 5: she's like working in that fashion and stuff.
- 55:22Speaker 4: So she's helped us massively with.
- 55:24Speaker 5: Like on the photo shoot side, you know, making sure actually,
- 55:27Speaker 5: like the product looks really good that what you did
- 55:29Speaker 5: it doesn't saying I did the first one and it
- 55:32Speaker 5: was it was it was bad. It was really bad woman, Yeah, exactly,
- 55:36Speaker 5: So so she's helped. Then we were like, cool, let's
- 55:39Speaker 5: get a brand manager in. So we found a brand
- 55:41Speaker 5: manager who who was sick like she she got.
- 55:45Speaker 4: The brand really well and she helped us push it.
- 55:47Speaker 5: And then outside of that, it's just loads of freelancers
- 55:49Speaker 5: to be honest, So wherever, like you know, we've got
- 55:51Speaker 5: people who we can lean on for like copywriting, We've
- 55:54Speaker 5: got people we can clean on who are specialists in
- 55:56Speaker 5: like PPC advertising and you know Google Ads and kind
- 56:00Speaker 5: of staff. You know, we lean out to designers when
- 56:02Speaker 5: we need design work done in on package that kind
- 56:05Speaker 5: of stuff.
- 56:06Speaker 4: So that's it's really lean. It's it's a lean team
- 56:08Speaker 4: pretty much.
- 56:08Speaker 5: We've got me Michael brand manager and like we've we
- 56:14Speaker 5: there's like a government scheme now as well where you
- 56:15Speaker 5: can get people in who are like you know, young
- 56:19Speaker 5: people who want experience and stuff. So we've leaned on
- 56:21Speaker 5: a guy like who we want to keep on now.
- 56:24Speaker 5: He's a content creator and he does video and he's
- 56:26Speaker 5: really good.
- 56:26Speaker 7: For like social media.
- 56:27Speaker 4: Yeah, just like some social staff.
- 56:31Speaker 5: We've not really mentioned into TikTok, but Jax was telling
- 56:34Speaker 5: me about he said, it's TikTok doing these days.
- 56:36Speaker 7: Tiktoks the wave. Yeah, TikTok's the way you definitely got
- 56:39Speaker 7: to get on TikTok.
- 56:39Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 56:40Speaker 7: Yeah, So what's the goal? Like, when do you do
- 56:43Speaker 7: this full time? Have you thought about that? Like you
- 56:45Speaker 7: have a number that you need to hit what he
- 56:46Speaker 7: was like, all right, I need this has to be
- 56:48Speaker 7: doing this month, this much in revenue for me to
- 56:51Speaker 7: leave the actuary world.
- 56:52Speaker 4: You know what, I haven't got a number.
- 56:54Speaker 5: To be honest, like, I think for me, the reason
- 56:57Speaker 5: why I didn't make that leap, and I could have done,
- 57:02Speaker 5: but the reason why I decided not to is because
- 57:05Speaker 5: I just felt like it puts more pressure on the
- 57:06Speaker 5: business unnecessarily.
- 57:08Speaker 4: I think as long as I'm able to, you.
- 57:11Speaker 5: Know, fulfill my kind of duties in my nine to
- 57:12Speaker 5: five and also assist on the on the business, I
- 57:15Speaker 5: will because I feel like, okay, cool, if I if
- 57:18Speaker 5: we could hire, you know, another person who's great at
- 57:21Speaker 5: whatever it means, we could like accelerate the launch of
- 57:25Speaker 5: our goggles or our website, then we should be doing
- 57:28Speaker 5: those things rather than me coming in and say cool,
- 57:30Speaker 5: like I got mortgage to pay and I've got a
- 57:32Speaker 5: kid down and do you see what I'm saying. So
- 57:35Speaker 5: that was kind of the approach that I've taken to it,
- 57:39Speaker 5: to be honest, that Michael's full time. So Michael's been
- 57:41Speaker 5: full time. So Michael's full time in the business. We've
- 57:44Speaker 5: got on office now as well, so we've got people
- 57:46Speaker 5: in there all the time and then I'm just coming through.
- 57:48Speaker 7: Like, you know, it's good. It's good to know for
- 57:51Speaker 7: people to hear, because a lot of time people think
- 57:53Speaker 7: that you can't do both or you have to like
- 57:56Speaker 7: and like you said, you know, it puts a lot
- 57:57Speaker 7: of pressure not only on the business but on you
- 57:59Speaker 7: personally too. But you know, if you you know, just
- 58:02Speaker 7: relying on just the business to make money for you,
- 58:05Speaker 7: for you to survive and live, then you might do
- 58:08Speaker 7: things that you might not want to do. Yeah, but
- 58:11Speaker 7: if you got that cushion of having you know, there's
- 58:14Speaker 7: a job also, it takes less pressure off exactly. So
- 58:17Speaker 7: you know, it's one of these things. A lot of
- 58:18Speaker 7: time people are scared to become entrepreneurs. But tell people
- 58:21Speaker 7: all the time, you can definitely do both. You don't
- 58:23Speaker 7: necessarily have to just jump out the window and quit
- 58:26Speaker 7: your job. You can manage both.
- 58:28Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 58:28Speaker 3: For example, I'm a problem example of that, And I
- 58:30Speaker 3: started looking at it like the school my school district
- 58:33Speaker 3: was my investor.
- 58:34Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, until I can own my own company.
- 58:36Speaker 4: Yes.
- 58:37Speaker 8: And so when you start thinking like that, it's like, yeah,
- 58:39Speaker 8: you get paid every two weeks, but every two weeks
- 58:41Speaker 8: is an investment.
- 58:42Speaker 2: It's an investment. It's just a mindset thing.
- 58:45Speaker 5: And I feel like for me personally as well, my
- 58:46Speaker 5: feeling is that you know, if obviously Michael was full
- 58:49Speaker 5: time and we make sure that okay, all the pucks
- 58:52Speaker 5: I get in my nine to five so you know, salary, pension,
- 58:56Speaker 5: health cover, all that kind of stuff, we make sure
- 58:58Speaker 5: Michael is getting that from the business as well, do
- 59:01Speaker 5: you get me? And I think that's that's the beauty
- 59:05Speaker 5: of it. And if things were to go left, and
- 59:07Speaker 5: if you know, things were to you know, I don't know,
- 59:10Speaker 5: not work out. They won't touch woods. But but you know,
- 59:14Speaker 5: then at least even between us, I could say, yeah, okay, cool,
- 59:17Speaker 5: there's this as we were a job here and I
- 59:19Speaker 5: can help support until he's you know, at a point,
- 59:22Speaker 5: do you get me where where he's back on his
- 59:25Speaker 5: feet whatever, But that's not gonna happen. Like, trust me,
- 59:26Speaker 5: he's a beast and I'm sadly he couldn't be here today,
- 59:29Speaker 5: but he's a beast.
- 59:31Speaker 7: So what's the percentage of the product that yourself on
- 59:34Speaker 7: Amazon versus website?
- 59:36Speaker 5: I'd probably say now, like we recently launched a new
- 59:39Speaker 5: website recently, and we were on Squarespace before using Squarespace platform,
- 59:45Speaker 5: which like it's not built for commerce like that. So
- 59:48Speaker 5: we've moved over to Shopify now, Yeah, we Shopify and
- 59:52Speaker 5: like it's it's it's you know, it's taking it to
- 59:54Speaker 5: the next level.
- 59:56Speaker 4: And so i'd.
- 59:56Speaker 5: Probably say it's probably around maybe like thirty percent Amazon
- 1:00:02Speaker 5: and the rest on the website. So which obviously, you know,
- 1:00:06Speaker 5: I'm happy if it means a customer can get products
- 1:00:09Speaker 5: quicker from Amazon, do it. That's fine, so long as
- 1:00:13Speaker 5: the customer is happy, the customer can get the product.
- 1:00:15Speaker 5: You know, Amazon is really good in that. From that regard,
- 1:00:18Speaker 5: if we wanted to launch in a new market, say
- 1:00:20Speaker 5: for example, Amazon, you know they've set up Amazon Australia
- 1:00:24Speaker 5: now and for.
- 1:00:25Speaker 4: Us to get either you get this kind of weird
- 1:00:31Speaker 4: spot when you're in e commerce.
- 1:00:32Speaker 5: So it's like you either get like a fulfillment center
- 1:00:36Speaker 5: like a warehouse or something in the country or like
- 1:00:38Speaker 5: in the region which you want to be in, but
- 1:00:41Speaker 5: you have to be kind of be doing enough, getting
- 1:00:43Speaker 5: enough traction there or ready to do that. So if
- 1:00:45Speaker 5: we wanted to sell to someone onto Australia, they can
- 1:00:47Speaker 5: buy direct from our website now and they might just
- 1:00:50Speaker 5: have to wait because it will come from London probably,
- 1:00:54Speaker 5: or if we're set up on Amazon Australia, we can
- 1:00:57Speaker 5: just send our product into the into the warehouse is
- 1:00:59Speaker 5: there and people we've got like next day access to
- 1:01:01Speaker 5: our products through that.
- 1:01:03Speaker 7: So that was gonna ask you, so your products where
- 1:01:05Speaker 7: your products kept? Now you're in your warehouse?
- 1:01:07Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, so we've.
- 1:01:08Speaker 7: Got third party warehouse. Are you at your own?
- 1:01:10Speaker 2: So?
- 1:01:10Speaker 5: Yeah, So in London we've got in our office, we've
- 1:01:12Speaker 5: got office a studio like photography studio as well, and
- 1:01:16Speaker 5: storage in that unit, so we hold a lot of
- 1:01:18Speaker 5: stuff there.
- 1:01:19Speaker 4: Then we also hold stock in Amazon UK, Europe.
- 1:01:22Speaker 7: And US and that's like Amazon Center.
- 1:01:25Speaker 5: Yeah, so we'll Amazon Film centers. But we also got
- 1:01:27Speaker 5: third party, a third party logitics company.
- 1:01:29Speaker 7: As well, so you do like three different types of stuff.
- 1:01:32Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 1:01:32Speaker 5: So what we'll do typically is like we'll say, you
- 1:01:37Speaker 5: know with Amazon now as well that they can be
- 1:01:39Speaker 5: a bit funny with like inventry limits like how much
- 1:01:41Speaker 5: you can store there in their warehouses and stuff, So
- 1:01:44Speaker 5: we might send our product to our third party partner
- 1:01:47Speaker 5: in the USA and then cool, if we think we're
- 1:01:50Speaker 5: running down on a bit we'll get them to ship
- 1:01:52Speaker 5: a few boxes over to Amazon and then Amazon will
- 1:01:56Speaker 5: fulfill the orders to the customer.
- 1:01:57Speaker 8: You said earlier that you have community givebacks, yeah, and partnerships.
- 1:02:03Speaker 2: When I'm swimming community centers.
- 1:02:05Speaker 8: Yeah, it's part of that, the giveaway of the caps,
- 1:02:09Speaker 8: because I could see especially schools where it's predominantly black,
- 1:02:13Speaker 8: with women and men cut of color, having that as
- 1:02:17Speaker 8: the official cap of the team or the school. Now
- 1:02:19Speaker 8: you have contracts with school districts, yeah, universities and eventually,
- 1:02:23Speaker 8: like I could see countries yeah, right where you're the
- 1:02:27Speaker 8: official brand of the country.
- 1:02:29Speaker 4: Definitely. That's that's the hope and that's the plan to
- 1:02:31Speaker 4: be honest.
- 1:02:31Speaker 5: Already, like there are swimming clubs just like small clubs
- 1:02:35Speaker 5: or like you know, affiliates where we would just give
- 1:02:37Speaker 5: them the caps for free and just say yeah, like
- 1:02:38Speaker 5: you know, do your thing, like you know, give them
- 1:02:40Speaker 5: to people who need them and stuff, you know, obviously
- 1:02:43Speaker 5: like financial donations as well, where we can donate to
- 1:02:46Speaker 5: some of these kind of non profit organizations to help
- 1:02:49Speaker 5: push what they're doing. And it just builds a community,
- 1:02:52Speaker 5: builds it, you know, builds the brand, and I feel
- 1:02:55Speaker 5: like we feel it's our duty to not just sit
- 1:02:58Speaker 5: there and say, run an inclusive a brand and we're
- 1:03:01Speaker 5: for everyone, but then we're not actually putting our money
- 1:03:04Speaker 5: in our mouth is and actually like back in that
- 1:03:05Speaker 5: and supporting it.
- 1:03:06Speaker 7: So yeah, interesting. Yeah, I just like one last question
- 1:03:11Speaker 7: about this fulfillment Oh so can you just explain that
- 1:03:15Speaker 7: to me again? So you have a fulfillment center in America? Yeah,
- 1:03:20Speaker 7: but then and actually singing the they're just actually when
- 1:03:22Speaker 7: the order gives made, it gives to the fulfillment center,
- 1:03:25Speaker 7: and then the for filming center centers to Amazon.
- 1:03:27Speaker 5: So yes, so basically sorry, what I meant was, Okay,
- 1:03:29Speaker 5: if we've got like a logistic company in America, so
- 1:03:33Speaker 5: if we get an order for our website, say for example,
- 1:03:36Speaker 5: then they could fulfill that order director directly.
- 1:03:39Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 1:03:39Speaker 5: But then obviously if we were like, okay, cool, we
- 1:03:41Speaker 5: need to get product to Amazons, we're running low.
- 1:03:44Speaker 7: They have they have enough, they have enough product where
- 1:03:46Speaker 7: they can send it to Amazing.
- 1:03:47Speaker 5: Yeah exactly, So we'll have this out where they might
- 1:03:49Speaker 5: be able to just send the box over the gap.
- 1:03:51Speaker 7: And stuff you just buy you just buying bulk. Yeah,
- 1:03:54Speaker 7: by like you know, three thousand caps.
- 1:03:57Speaker 5: I mean yeah, I think last year we'd ordered like
- 1:04:01Speaker 5: fifty two thousand.
- 1:04:02Speaker 7: Two thousand cares, keep some in UK in your spot
- 1:04:07Speaker 7: that you can send out yourself in the UKA, some
- 1:04:10Speaker 7: in America for the American customers, and then you send
- 1:04:13Speaker 7: Amazon whenever they need it.
- 1:04:15Speaker 4: Yeah exactly.
- 1:04:16Speaker 7: You just check the numbers to see you you run
- 1:04:18Speaker 7: and low.
- 1:04:18Speaker 5: It's essentially but that's I mean, that's one of the
- 1:04:20Speaker 5: hardest parts as well of managing the b the logistics
- 1:04:23Speaker 5: does that Michael predominantly, he is the guy. But to
- 1:04:27Speaker 5: be honest with you, man, that's you know, I've been
- 1:04:29Speaker 5: speaking to other e comm guys you know that I've
- 1:04:32Speaker 5: met just through like communities and stuff, and everyone seems
- 1:04:35Speaker 5: to be having the same issue where it's like cool,
- 1:04:37Speaker 5: getting the stock in and getting it back out is
- 1:04:40Speaker 5: such a challenge for everyone when you've got we've got
- 1:04:43Speaker 5: eight different colors now across you know, five different sizes,
- 1:04:46Speaker 5: and now we've got a bunch of other products and
- 1:04:49Speaker 5: it's a bit of a juggling.
- 1:04:50Speaker 7: Acts managering everything. You running low here, yeah, yeah, it
- 1:04:53Speaker 7: doesn't selling, yeah, yeah.
- 1:04:55Speaker 2: Exactly, not putting that line pink out anymore.
- 1:04:59Speaker 7: That stuff that things given with us like for our merchants, like,
- 1:05:02Speaker 7: all right, the T shirts always do good, a hoodie
- 1:05:05Speaker 7: might do good, but one color might not do good.
- 1:05:08Speaker 7: The crew neck might not. You're gonna know because you
- 1:05:10Speaker 7: don't want to just have a bunch of random stuff
- 1:05:12Speaker 7: that's not selling exactly. Then you gotta do flash shills
- 1:05:15Speaker 7: to try to get rid of it. Yeah, you do
- 1:05:17Speaker 7: Black Friday sales.
- 1:05:18Speaker 4: We haven't yet. We haven't.
- 1:05:19Speaker 5: I think next year is going to be I'll probably
- 1:05:21Speaker 5: be altory. This year even will be our first proper
- 1:05:24Speaker 5: Black Friday. I think, yeah, we've never done one. We
- 1:05:26Speaker 5: never really do like I've done like flashlsthing like that.
- 1:05:29Speaker 5: But I think it's it's probably something that we will
- 1:05:32Speaker 5: look at.
- 1:05:33Speaker 7: You have a high ticket cost.
- 1:05:34Speaker 5: I don't high cost iron well. I think when we
- 1:05:39Speaker 5: hit the swim where that will probably be. That will
- 1:05:43Speaker 5: probably like bathing suits, yeah, you know, looking at kind
- 1:05:47Speaker 5: of like yeah, things like wet suits and stuff you
- 1:05:50Speaker 5: can't really get people struggle with get wet suits for
- 1:05:52Speaker 5: biggest sizes and stuff.
- 1:05:53Speaker 2: You know.
- 1:05:55Speaker 5: The much is like we want to do it for
- 1:05:57Speaker 5: night so like this is like organic cotton.
- 1:06:00Speaker 4: Want to do nice stuff. So the price points they're
- 1:06:02Speaker 4: not crazy.
- 1:06:03Speaker 5: Like for what we have to pay for them, but
- 1:06:05Speaker 5: you know, it's probably a higher price point for you know,
- 1:06:10Speaker 5: in general, but for what it is, it's not crazy compared.
- 1:06:13Speaker 7: Yeah, man, it's dope.
- 1:06:16Speaker 9: Man.
- 1:06:17Speaker 7: Yeah, I appreciate you taking the time and come sit
- 1:06:19Speaker 7: with us.
- 1:06:19Speaker 4: I appreciate you.
- 1:06:20Speaker 7: Guys. Everybody go support how can they purchase? Talking about
- 1:06:24Speaker 7: the social media, the website or that stuff.
- 1:06:27Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
- 1:06:27Speaker 5: So the social media is sole Cap Official. The website
- 1:06:31Speaker 5: is soul cap dot com and you know, yeah, you
- 1:06:34Speaker 5: can go through there those that's where you can get
- 1:06:36Speaker 5: the products. So check out our stuff, check out our socials. Yeah,
- 1:06:39Speaker 5: appreciate that.
- 1:06:40Speaker 7: Support the black entrepreneurs.
- 1:06:42Speaker 2: You might have solved the problem in my household.
- 1:06:45Speaker 7: How is the pub with black entrepreneurship community in the
- 1:06:49Speaker 7: UK and London.
- 1:06:50Speaker 4: It's great, It's great.
- 1:06:51Speaker 5: I think, Like to be honest with you, I'm like
- 1:06:53Speaker 5: I said, I've recently just had a kid, So I'm
- 1:06:55Speaker 5: not like thank you. Yeah, I'm not like out and
- 1:06:58Speaker 5: active and that kind of stuff. So and like with
- 1:07:01Speaker 5: the nine to five and the business, I'm not busy.
- 1:07:04Speaker 5: But for me, like I always just want to connect
- 1:07:06Speaker 5: with people. I always if I see people who have
- 1:07:08Speaker 5: got businesses, we are doing stuff, I'll always be like, yeah,
- 1:07:11Speaker 5: let me support Share buy their products.
- 1:07:13Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying.
- 1:07:14Speaker 5: I always want to support you know other not even
- 1:07:17Speaker 5: just black man, any entrepreneurs where people are trying to
- 1:07:20Speaker 5: do stuff, people are trying to do good things as well,
- 1:07:23Speaker 5: Like definitely always want to support that.
- 1:07:24Speaker 7: So yeah, Troy House, keep it on.
- 1:07:27Speaker 2: Yeah, man.
- 1:07:28Speaker 3: Shout out to everybody across the world, all our earners everywhere.
- 1:07:32Speaker 8: Man, we are indebted to you. Y'all have spread the word.
- 1:07:35Speaker 8: Y'all told a friend to tell a friend. That's why
- 1:07:37Speaker 8: we're able to do things like this, come to the UK,
- 1:07:39Speaker 8: go to Legosgeria, egy of Jamaica. It's because of all
- 1:07:43Speaker 8: the support that you have been given us. So shout
- 1:07:45Speaker 8: out to y'all and shout out to SOCAP. I will
- 1:07:48Speaker 8: definitely be getting a few. Keep rocking with a shout
- 1:07:51Speaker 8: out to everybody. That's personal. I merged so we spoke
- 1:07:54Speaker 8: about it here. So yeah, man, lovers love.
- 1:07:56Speaker 7: Yeah, shout to my god Jacks again trying to tape
- 1:07:59Speaker 7: London for for facilitating us in the hospitality.
- 1:08:02Speaker 2: And shout out to the art being Shout them out.
- 1:08:04Speaker 7: Yahres Art and Parry Uh Thank you guys for rocking
- 1:08:09Speaker 7: with us. We'll see you next week.
- 1:08:10Speaker 2: Peace pease.
- 1:08:13Speaker 6: My graduates from my school being forced back drop bag
- 1:08:18Speaker 6: drop my drop backdrop drop.
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