It’s Not Unusual
Why Challengers See The Extraordinary in the Ordinary. By Julian Aldridge, Founder, Enact Agency
“Blessed are the curious for they shall have adventures.” — Lovelle Drachman
A few years ago, on one of our first visits to London as a couple, Karen and I were wandering through the streets of Soho and Covent Garden en route to dinner. It was a lovely English summer’s evening, warm, but not hot, and the streets were packed with Londoners doing what we love to do best — enjoying a swift pint or three outside our favorite hostelry.
With some bemusement on her face, Karen asked me: ‘why does everyone stand outside and drink. Aren’t there seats in English pubs?’
It was a question that, at the time, had me laughing uproariously, but it was perfectly legitimate, seen through the eyes of a foreigner.
In France, Italy and Spain, most people sit at tables and drink and smoke. In America everyone’s inside because to drink the sinful substances known as alcohol on the streets is strictly illegal (oh, and in most places it’s too hot, too cold, too wet, or too polluted to stand outside anyway). But, in Britain, we like to stand outside our beautiful pubs that are full of very uncomfortable seating and stunning 19th century or earlier interiors and take in the view of passing buses, taxis and buskers.
Karen’s Question Is Typical Of A Challenger
As readers of this blog know, all Challengers look at life through the lens of intelligent naivety. They question everything, and, in so doing, create new value, new ways of doing things, and new expectations. They don’t accept today’s norms as the given. They rebel against lowly standards wherever they see them; and they innovate to create enduring change.
Here are three Challenger companies founded by a normal couple, a nasty gal, and a couple of geeks, who did just that.
Bol & Branch. What happens if you mix one part third-grade teacher, with one part digital marketer with a penchant for gaming sites? Well, naturally, you get a company that makes and markets luxury organic cotton bedding.
The only obvious thing about Missy and Scott Tannen’s business success is that neither knew anything about the bedding industry, and neither were subject to reams of assumptions about what could, and could not, be done.
Founded in 2014 Bol & Branch set out to turn the conventional supply chain on its head — starting with the farmers who grew the cotton, and, in so doing, sowed the seeds of their own demise. At the time, conventional cotton farmers in India had a life expectancy of 36 years, less than half that of even the poorest European country. Not because of malnutrition, but because of the pesticides they sprayed on the cotton fields in order to ensure their growth.
By partnering initially with a Dutch NGO who worked with small Indian farmers to convert them to organic farming, Scott and Missy created a sustainable, chemical free, supply chain that rewarded everyone in the chain and cut out the middlemen, leading to better prices for the farmers, and better margins for Bol & Branch.
Finally, conventional wisdom says you need VC funding to really grow a business. VC funding that comes with loss of control of the business, endless investor meetings and compromises at every turn.
If there’s one thing that Challengers hate, it’s loss of control. Which is why Bol & Branch self-funded for the first three years, before taking selective minority finance to allow them to expand into mattresses and the retail space.
Today, Bol & Branch revenue is estimated at over $100 million.
Nasty Gal. No, that’s not a comment on Sophia Amoruso, rather the name of her brand founded in 2006 to provide fun, flirty, fast fashion to young women across the world. Although the brand, like many other Challengers, has not been far from controversy its entire life, it has served as a beacon of self-expression and rebellion for, as they say, the ‘modern woman’, far removed from the likes of J Crew, GAP, and Brandy Melville.
True to form, Sophia Amoruso had zero experience in launching a fully-fledged fashion line when she set up Nasty Gal, having initially sold vintage clothing on eBay whilst working at for-profit Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
From humble beginnings, Amoruso moved the nascent e-tailer to its own site in 2009, and grew the brand rapidly to $23 million in sales by 2011, and $100 million a few years late. However, not all Challenger stories have perfect endings. In 2016 Nasty Gal filed for Chapter 11 protection, only two years after Sophia published the iconic book #girlboss.
Still located in Los Angeles, Nasty Gal continues to sell provocative clothing, with a headline of: ‘embrace your inner bad girl’, but is now managed by BooHoo Group who purchased the assets in 2017 for a mere $20 million.
WhatsApp. There’s nothing like circular karma to make a good story great. Jan Koum’s story, like so many other successful entrepreneurs before him, was founded on struggle, isolation, and determination. As an immigrant child from Ukraine, arriving in Mountain View California in the 1980s, he was instantly an outsider. He and his mother relied on government aid and low-paying jobs to survive.
As a geeky, shy, kid Koum became obsessed with coding — a skill that saw him work for Yahoo! before taking a year-long South American sabbatical, prior to forming a start up with long-time friend Brian Acton.
However, it was his experience living in what was then still part of the USSR, that shaped his desire to change a small part of the world. Back then in the days of soviet control, everyone knew everything about everyone. Privacy was not a thing, and the government (as today in Russia and many other totalitarian countries) controlled pretty much everything through eavesdropping, surveillance, and a network of informants. Additionally, after arriving in the US, free (or remotely affordable) communication with his homeland was impossible.
Hence the formation of WhatsApp in 2009, designed to provide easy, free, and securely encrypted messaging to anyone, anywhere. In the early days they sought funding from friends, and the Silicon Valley community — with Facebook being one of the notable firms to turn them down. Fast forward just five years, and the same company purchased the app for a cool $14 billion.
When I emigrated to the US in 1996 I had a reasonably good idea of what to expect, particularly in California. However, on my earlier trips, not so much.
Landing at LAX in 1988 and being driven to Newport Beach by our host at the Adweek Advertising Softball World Series, we marveled at the wide open freeways, the malls that seemed to go on forever, the bright blue sky and the size of, well, everything.
The World Is A Marvelous Place Viewed Through Fresh Eyes
A year later in Florida I remember standing, mouth agape, in the entrance of the biggest sporting goods store I’d ever seen — and was then transfixed by a wall of softball mitts. In England, for context, there were zero stores selling softball equipment. I felt like I’d landed in heaven.
In 1990 in Dallas on another softball trip, we took at taxi to the local mall to shop for clothes and sporting goods — only to find that the journey took us 50 minutes, across a city the size of England — and cost us a month’s mortgage.
What is expected, taken for granted and not even thought about in one city, country, or culture, is extraordinary in another’s.
And that is the beauty of life, and of looking at everything from with fresh eyes, be those things pubs, fashion brands or the art of communication. All of which, funnily enough, go rather well together.
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Julian founded his agency, Enact, to help brands of all sizes discover, define, articulate, and amplify their Challenger Story. Illuminate is published weekly, and his new book Illuminate: A Challenger’s Handbook, Volume 2 is now available on Amazon. He can be reached at Julian@EnactAgency.com
