This article was taken from the April issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online
Build your business around a mission
You'll find Howies hoodies on skaters, cyclists and coders alike. But for a fast-growing brand with an international following, its base in Cardigan is surprisingly compact. The warehouse which dispatched over 55,000 packages to customers last year is tucked underneath the offices where the contents were designed, marketed and sold.
The howies T-shirts, still the biggest sellers, are printed in "the Shed" across the car park by Paul Anderson and Mike "Tidy"
Pearson. The twin presses look like pairs of amorous robot starfish -- each holds five shirts, so five turns make 25 one-colour prints or five five-colour designs. Between them, Anderson and Pearson turned out 32,885 tees in 2009.
Clare and David Hieatt started out printing T-shirts from home in London. They founded howies as an escape plan from urban life, and in 2001 moved back to Wales, to the mouth of the river Teifi.
The terrain and the fine conditions for surfboards, bikes and kayaks set the tone for howies' unusual approach. It's an "organic company" -- not just because its clothes are made with organic materials, but because the business aims to function as an organism, with a conscience, a local community and a wider body of loyal customers who will pay for quality made the right way.
Things have moved on since the husband-and-wife operation was bought by Timberland in 2006. The days when the whole office might desert to the beach on a sunny day are gone. In 2003, when Levi Strauss & Co threatened legal action over the placement of the tab on howies-branded jeans Hieatt suggested they settle it by arm wrestling.
That might not work today, yet this is no corporate subdivision.
The management insisted on maintaining creative control, remaining in Cardigan and keeping up their commitment to good causes -- such as the one per cent of turnover donated as an "Earth Tax", which is given over to grass-root environmental and social projects. This funded the first Do Lectures, now an annual series of weekend of talks in Cardigan Bay inspiring action and activism.
Then there is the firm's activist marketing: its catalogues are filled with what they call "rants". The winter 2009 edition mixes product shots and windswept Swedish landscapes with short essays on the benefits of higher tax and the challenges of living without the National Grid. As a small business, unable to afford ethical audits, the Hieatts flew in the slipstream of bigger players, finding factories used by companies they respected and fitting their own small orders around the edges of production.
Now they have Timberland's audits and their own supply-chain specialist, who balances the competing ethical and cost demands of different approaches. She explains that "made in Britain" sounds good, but with cotton it involves large, heavy rolls being shipped over, instead of more space-efficient clothes. Bamboo grows like a weed, but turning it into cloth takes a lot of water, and so on.
A range of clothes made with quality and conscience, combined with canny marketing, has helped howies to punch above its weight: it often comes in above much bigger names (such as Nike) in "cool brands" lists, and its annual turnover is well over £4m. It still has a small business feel, though.
As I leave, the press officer who has been guiding Wired is trying on a range of clothes; she's the reference model for one of their sizes. Clare Hieatt wants to keep growing, but with control and without too much compromise. "We're a company that set out to do business in a different way. We're still learning and trying. We share that story with our customers, and they come along with us for the ride."
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
