By Georgia Wyatt-Willsmore, founder and director of Wyatt and Jack
We make canvas bags from redundant deckchair and beach materials. We’re based in Bembridge, with a team of two, bringing in other seamstresses and manufacturers at times. We’re now into the fifth year of our business, with our products stocked in department stores across the UK and we’ve also produced a special range for Jack Wills. A loan from the Isle Of Wight Lottery helped us to scale-up our business, enabling us to take on slightly larger orders and start wholesaling products on a wider scale.
What people don’t tell you, but we’re finding now, is that you have to move quickly and have the financial backing to respond to the marketplace. When people start to want your product or brand you have to make sure that you can meet the demand and scale up quickly. With all the will in the world (and I was working 70 hour weeks at first) it still comes down to having the money to keep the business moving.
The first time I applied for an Isle Of Wight Lottery loan I didn’t get it. It made me look at my business inside and out. If you’re more of a creative person than a business person (like me) you have to wise up to the business side of things because the people you are dealing with are very business savvy and you have to know what you’re talking about. I can’t lie – applying for the loan was quite frightening at first but I realise that’s because, at the time, I didn’t know enough about my business. I didn’t feel as nervous the second time because I knew I could answer all the questions and that’s really important. I meet a lot of people who think that they know their businesses inside out, but when it comes to the final details we are often too busy doing it to analyse it. I was awarded the loan in February of this year, and even if I had been turned down the second time I still wouldn’t have minded because I needed to learn all those things about my business.
Last year were offered a contract for 40,000 units. At the time we were still a small company and we were going through the loan application process. We had to narrow that contract down to 1500 units at first. Now we’re going to be employing a couple of full-time seamstresses when orders come in. If I hadn’t approached the Isle of Wight Lottery and had to talk about upscaling, unit prices and things like that then I wouldn’t have been able to even consider an order of that size. For us it’s enormous.
One of the most important things the Isle Of Wight Lottery loan has done is to take us from a small business to a brand. The loan allows us to attend a tradeshow, where we can present our products to all the big department stores and we wouldn’t have been able to do that otherwise.
First published in the August 2014 issue of Island Business magazine.
