On Design Podcast - Justyna Green

Kirsty:

I’ve always been really creative. My dad was an engineer by trade but he actually started off as an apprentice boat builder. So when I was little I was always in the garden with the nail and hammer, building boats and planes and stuff like that.

Justyna:

That’s Kirsty white and this is the On Design podcast.

Hi everyone, and welcome to the new episode of the On Design podcast. I’m your host, Justyna Green.

Today, I have for you a conversation with the talented Kirsty Whyte. She’s the creative and product director at Soho House and also a founder of Freedom to Exist. She’s a busy woman with many talents and still found time to meet me at the co-working space for a quick chat. Enjoy our conversation.

Justyna:

I have to say, I’m not sure where to start now, because I think what will be the best way of starting, I want to know even more how you got into the industry first. You mentioned Milan, designer’s block, what has been your journey?

Kirsty:

Yes, you want like a little potted history of me.

Justyna:

Yes, please.

Kirsty:

Okay. Deep breath in.

So I’ll start back. Cast your mind way back. It’s kind of like when you have harp music and go back in time.

I’ve always been really creative. My dad was an engineer by trade but he actually started off as an apprentice boat builder. So when I was little I was always in the garden with the nail and hammer, building boats and planes and stuff like that, with my mum shouting in the garden, “Harry, is she okay?” and he’s like, “Yeah, she’s fine. She’s fine”. So I’ve always been making stuff and my mum is super creative as well. I’d always end up winning best costume for the book day.

I’ve always been making and drawing and designing without really knowing it. So after school I took decorative arts at Nottingham Trent University. It’s glass, ceramics, metalwork. It’s a great University and I specialized in glass design actually and so did kiln for glass and then after that I got invited to be a guest student at Kalmar University in Sweden.

They were doing an Erasmus scheme. It’s like a tester and so I went over to help beyond the course and see whether it worked which was amazing. So it was a whole semester of learning how to blow glass, meet famous designers and they’re so open to working with students over there.

I made a lot of really wonky Christmas presents and then also got a whole collection made by one of the glassblowing places there and had a range made that was launched at Stockholm Furniture Week, which was amazing.

Justyna:

What that was from finishing Stockholm Furniture Week?

Kirsty:

They exhibited for me, made all the moulds. It was amazing and from that was my first proper portfolio product.

Then I moved back to London and I started working at habitat.

I wanted to get a job being in London. I wanted to be around nice design. I started off at the Tottenham Court Road flagship store there, as a sales assistant.

I ended up working for Habitat for about five years in total. From being a floor manager at the flagship store that was on Regent Street, to getting into the head office working for the franchise and wholesale department. While there I also got in with the design team. I worked on a few design briefs as well, which was amazing.

After that they restructured so I took a redundancy. With that redundancy money I set up my own design studio, paid off half my student loan and also launched my first collection at Designers Block, which was three ranges and as part of Milan Furniture Week, which is amazing.

From that I’m at my own Design Studio. I freelance for various people. I had products licensed by Heels, made.com, Norman Copenhagen. I also ended up freelancing for BHS for quite a long time. I was the right-hand lady for the creative director there at the time so I did everything 3D.

From that I ended up doing some freelance [unclear]. My other half, Paul, who is also a Furniture and Design geek, was one of the early employees at made.com. They were looking for a designer and product developer and he was like, “I know somebody”. They interviewed me and then we ended up moving to Shanghai and work for them from China for over a year, working directly with the factories—designing, developing, buying, working on that. So the team by the time I left was actually 300 employees from 30 when I started.

Justyna:

What an incredible journey.

Kirsty:

Yeah, it was amazing and it was a really great opportunity to see how a business can grow so much and when it was a start-up it meant that I would work on photo shoots, work on some of the copy, work on designing the products. I got a really good 360 view of how the business works. I think it really helped me in good stead in my own business as well.

I then moved back to the UK and then got approached by Heels and ended up working there as their product and design manager for about four years. That was designing internally and working with the design studio, managing the design studio there. Also working with external designers and developing ranges over the next couple of years.

Justyna:

How did you find it, the difference between being in house and managing product development and being a freelance creative license?

Kirsty:

Well, it really is different. It is really quite good working in-house in a way, because you have a brief to work to and, you know it’s going to happen and you know that it’s going to get made.

The good thing about being external and doing your own thing is you have a little bit more freedom and you can maybe go in a slightly different direction. You’re not constrained by as much of the parameters, by a price-point or a particular manufacturer. They both have their pros and cons.

Then I also managed Hills Discovers, which is really amazing. It’s an important initiative that’s been running for over 10 years now, which is about picking and choosing up-and-coming designers and mentoring them and developing ranges to be launched at Heels. I was actually Heels Discovers 2010, so it was really nice to then give back and help and manage and work with those designers as there’ve been some really great ones, we’ve had some products.

Justyna:

Who do you remember that you found and you helped them?

Kirsty:

Jacqueline Colley, an illustrator. She’s really really talented. Sam Lloyd who’s a furniture designer. Will Ball, an industrial and furniture designer as well. They’re all people that you’ll see up-and-coming.

I’ve had other products launched since as well. Part of the alumni, there’s Benjamin Hubert, Russell Pinch, Ali Broom, me.  It shows you that it’s a really good launch board and platform, and they spot people really well and it’s a really nice product mix as well

Justyna:

I’m very curious, how do you go about spotting the talent? It might be a very obvious question.

Kirsty:

It’s a real mix, so we need a pen. It depends on how much time you’ve got. I did all different things. One year I approached various tutors that I knew from different universities and they did a short list for me. Then I went to each of the universities and interviewed maybe 10 designers with their work and what they wanted to present and selected from that.

Another time we did an open call. Another time it was about sustainability and materials.

It really depends. But it really is about I’m really immersed in the design world. And I love geeking out, as [unclear] holiday season, go to Milan furniture just for fun rather than for work.

And it’s just an opportunity of picking and spotting people there because you never know when they might come in handy or you might think “Oh, that will be great for this particular project”.

I’ve managed to meet people in this little network of design and then work with them later on in my career as well which has been amazing. [unclear] was discovered is great.

After Heels I got approached to join Soho House. Chloe Macintosh who was the creative director at made.com when I was there, she’s actually working for Soho House. They created the role and when she was writing the job description she was like, “Oh, I know somebody who can do this job”. And so I went in there, met them for a couple of cup of coffee, had some interviews and then got the role, which is really exciting.

I’m currently creative and product director at Soho House for retail. That’s Soho Home and Cowshed. So that’s it.

Justyna:

I think I have about 10,000 questions about each stage. Soho Homes, Cowshed, huge brands, extremely successful, but how do you make them happen? What are the challenges? What’s your focus? What do you do every day? What are the aims of the Brands?

Kirsty:

Soho Home is their retail home side of Soho House. It’s just in its third year now, so, it’s quite young. It’s quite a new young business.

Justyna:

So did you launch it?

Kirsty:

It was already running when I was there, but there was a small product selection and a really teeny team of three people. Now it’s a team of 12, so I’ve managed to grow that and there’s a lot of really amazing products and collections coming out.

Soho Homes started organically like a lot of things do at Soho House. Soho House, for those that don’t know, is a members club. They also have public and private restaurants, bars, cinemas, spas, workplaces, a little bit of everything.

And in the Houses, there’s a lot of exclusively designed products. Their Barwell Crystal is something that’s really famous and it’s beautifully made in Slovenia, hand cut crystal. Members were like, “I love these glasses. Where can I buy them?”, and there wasn’t anywhere to buy them, so it was a natural progression to actually have a retail side of the business so people could buy these products.

That’s now grown from tabletop lighting, furniture, upholstery and accessories.

Now we also provide products into the Houses, as well as wholesaling to other retailers, like John Lewis and Liberty and then also selling online for retail.

We also launch new collections nearly every month.

Justyna:

How is that possible?

Kirsty:

When I was at made.com it was two collections a week. So one a month, that’s fine. What we try and do is a launch parallel with new Houses that are opening. For example, when White City opened last year or [unclear] and then this year there’s Paris, so we’re going to have a Paris collection.

Then also retrospectively, because Soho House has been around for 20 years, there’s a lot of Houses to pick and choose from already. There’s a lot of really popular  Houses like Berlin or Dean Street that have different looks and feels.

What we do is pick and choose a little capsule collection from each of those Houses, so a customer can have a little representation of that in their own home. We’re kind of like the department store for Soho House. That’s how Home works.

Cowshed is a little bit of a different beast. It’s been around a lot longer.

Cowshed got its name from actually being created and the first building that was used with the Cowshed from Babbington House, which is one of the first memberships.

Richard, who’s still works for the Cowshed side of the business, does all the formulations. He approached Nick and was like, “Why do you have all of this nice, natural product that you should be using in your spas?” And Nick said, “Okay, have the Cowshed”.

It’s grown from there. It’s 20 years old now and all still made in the UK, all natural ingredients and it was really anarchic and [unclear] and nobody was really doing what they were doing at the time. The beauty Industries have really grown in the last 20 years with a lot more competition.

Cowshed is currently going through a brand refresh. It’s not changing its name, it’s just maturing a little bit. It’s names of the ranges are changing and they’re growing up a little bit more. Maybe it’s gone through its tweens. It’s not this 90’s pop chick now. It’s a sort of thing that will have that sink appeal that you want to have in their houses and also in your own home. All the formulations have been improved and now we’re going to be using bioplastic for the bottles.

Justyna:

And the packaging?

Kirsty:

Yes. Even the labels are going to be from a bioplastic and recyclable. It’s really nice.

And the colours that we’re using, we’re working with an illustrator that has actually worked on the books, the Soho House books. It’s still got that black and white field you recognized on the Shelf but it’s just a lot more designed and considered. So that’s quite exciting. Watch this space.

Justyna:

How long has it been in the making? Because that’s such a huge thing to do, isn’t it, to re-brand.

Kirsty:

It’s been two years, because so many people have so many opinions on it. Some people love the way it looks and love the current names. Some people hate the names. And also, because there are seven fragrances the seven moods and, the way Cowshed was created and, rather than we want a fruity smell or a floral smell or a sea smell, it’s all about what are its properties and what it can do for you. It’s all therapeutic. One is uplifting, one is relaxing, one’s revitalising and so you have to keep those. But then everybody has a favourite and if you’re trying to discontinue one, there’ll be an uproar.

So there’s been a lot of making sure everybody’s happy.

We’ve also worked with a brand agency, just for the initial stages, to get the right direction and it’s really good to have an independent point of view as well. And then from that we’ve then worked internally to build the whole range.

It’s been a lot of design filters and a lot of design direction. So yeah, it’ll be over two years by the time it’s out, in summer this year.

Then there’s loads of other really cool skin care products coming on a later on in the year.

The product development team are so passionate and so talented at cowshed and there’s loads of really great skin care products coming through as well, in really nice packaging.

Justyna:

I really look forward to seeing it. The big question I have is what do your days look like? Because working at Soho Home, that’s a full-time job.

Kirsty:

Yes, it’s very busy and lot of people don’t see me all day.

I get in at about 8:30 and then I try and get at least 30 minutes of emails done and then it’s back-to-back meetings basically till the end of the day. Because I’ve got quite a large team I try and have a weekly catch up with them all at least once, so that’s a good couple of hours work.

We’re doing so many meetings. We started to try and do more standing meetings and a lot less longer than 30 minutes. Everybody’s in a kind of meeting culture because there’s so much to talk about but also meetings are a great place to get everything done because you don’t want to be emailing the whole time. So if you speak to somebody it makes a big difference.

When I’m not in meetings, we try to work on design direction and looking at colours for next collections.

Justyna:

When you come up with new collections tell me about the process. Do you have trend forecasters?

Kirsty:

The way that we work is quite different to most places. So Soho House doesn’t really follow trends and each House has its own story. The design team and architect team get to know the building. They’ll find an amazing building and there’ll be some historical references or building references inside it. Whether there’s a local artist or designer named for that part of the city, or if there’s a stained glass window with a particular pattern on it, that’s where they’ll start taking their inspiration from.

Then the design team will have mood boards and with look and feel of directions of what the bedrooms will look like, what the public spaces will look like. Once this is signed off at that level, that’s when the retail team step in. We have our own designer as well. Then we go through it and say, “Okay, which ones are these are you going to have a lot of?”, because the way that we work is, because we are a retailer we have to be able to retell at a good price.

We don’t want to be selling something for thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds that somebody can’t buy in the Houses. There are some really beautiful high-end pieces that if you saw that at retail price, we would have quite a few in our warehouse.

What we try and look at is where they have multiple so if there’s a dining area, so if we know we’re going to have a hundred chairs or the table is a really great example. We develop a lot of the tableware. We will then work on the look and feel, pick and choose items that we think will be commercial and look great and then also create design briefs with the design team. We then get that signed off and then we go back to our supplier base in our manufacturers and sampling and making basically.

We then provide products within the Houses as well as retailing them. It’s really an unusual mix as most retailers don’t have that opportunity to piggyback production. Soho Home, even though it’s three years old and normally you’d be asking for quite small volumes. What if it’s a restaurant with 700 covers? You’re already going, okay, we want 500 of this we want a 1000 of this and then that’s what makes the supplier go, “Oh, yeah. Okay, we can do that for you”.

It’s really great to have that leverage, an opportunity to work with great suppliers that maybe wouldn’t work with a start-up normally.

Justyna:

Of course. And what do you find is the most popular? Do you sell these mainly to members?

Kirsty:

It started off as members only right at the beginning. Then it grew and we opened up to the public. The last couple of months of last year it changed from being more members than public. Now there’s more public customers than members, so it’s just transitioned over, which is also great because it shows there’s growth available to people outside their Soho House community as well.

Justyna:

That’s how you it can build longevity.

Kirsty:

Exactly. Definitely. Everybody wants to have that little bit of sparkle in their home. Yeah, definitely.

Justyna:

When I was preparing for the interview, it’s what I did all this time. It’s like, who you’re going to speak to and they go well, that would look pretty great in that corner.

Kirsty:

Yeah. Definitely. I’ve been doing that with some of the new collections that are coming out, there some really nice things I think would go nice in my house.

Justyna:

With everything that you’re doing you’re actually doing even more.

Kirsty:

Oh, yes. Yes.

Justyna:

I believe that brings us to Freedom to Exist.

Kirsty:

Yes. Yes. So freedom to exist is Paul, my other half, Paul Tanner and my side hustle. So we’re co-founders..

Justyna:

Do you really need a side hustle?

Kirsty:

I think it’s really good to earn money while you sleep. There’s nothing better than waking up in the morning and having orders on your phone and you’ve just been sleeping.

So no, I think it’s really great because we wanted to run our own business together. We’ve worked together at several places—at Habitat at made.com and now this business—and we know we can work together.

Justyna:

Because that’s really important.

Kirsty:

Yeah, exactly. And we really love being our own bosses and just making decisions ourselves. We have really good skillsets that play off each other. We don’t get on the whole time; it’s not perfect, but I do everything creatively. All of the designs, all the photography and the look and feel for the website. Then Paul does all the other things that I think are boring, but he actually really likes, so he does all of the operations, he built our website and he does everything finance based, so it works quite well.

Justyna:

How did how did you start Freedom to exist? Where did the idea come from? How long have you been running it for?

Kirsty:

We’re now in our fifth year from registering the name and probably about four years of trading and selling our watches.

It all came around because I couldn’t really find a watch that I liked, that fitted my [unclear] small wrists. I always used to have to put holes in my straps or take out all the links and then they look really weird on your wrist. I just wanted to find a watch that didn’t have diamantes and branding all over it. I was searching and couldn’t find something.

Then we were in Liberty and we were in their watch department in the men’s area at the time, and there was another lady looking for one. We overheard her talking with her other half going, “These are all too big but I like them” and so maybe we do have a market here and Paul’s always had a bit of a collection of watches as well. He loves things that are understated and minimal as well. If you see him, he’s normally all dressed in blue. There’s no brand.

So it started from there. And because we have that design and product development background we thought we’d be able to do it and when we were living in China, we met suppliers that we thought would be able to work with and so it came from there.

So we designed and developed. We started off with five of the smaller 30 Edition, which is the one I’m wearing today. We launched that. Then we quickly had requests for a larger one. We’re totally self-funded. There’s quite a large minimum order quantity with watches. It’s 250 per case.

We had to invest ourselves and so in order to launch the larger 40 addition we did a successful kickstarter campaign. We managed to raise 25,000 pounds through that and then launched three colourways of the larger watch and now we’ve grown to over 30 different colour combinations of watches.

Justyna:

It’s quite exciting. How was it when you first had to order that two hundred fifty shipment?

Kirsty:

It was like it was a bit like push the button. We’ve done all this work and they were ready to order and we’re like, okay, so you don’t know how it’s gonna do, we don’t know if we’re under or over ordering. We did slightly over order to be fair.

We were so optimistic—we’ve got a great product, we’ve got a great website—what can go wrong? In the end it’s started off a little slower than we were hoping but now we’ve got a really nice flow of customers and also people that come back and buy gifts for other people.

This has started to build up to be a really great Community as well, which was something we didn’t realize was going to happen before and we get really really lovely reviews. I mean, I don’t know about you, but when you get us to do a review about a product I rarely do it but we have some really invested people that write really nice reviews because I think they know it’s just the two of us.

They’re also design lovers and they appreciate what we’ve done. We still have that personal touch. I handwrite all of the thank you cards to people. We also offer a free gift wrap service. I think it’s that extra element.

Then also somebody has a question. They’re talking to one of us and I think people really appreciate that one-to-one small business that they’re supporting. That’s really nice

Justyna:

Of course. How are you finding from everything that you’ve been doing, working in the design industry as well, how do you feel the market is now for small businesses or is it easier to make it harder?

Kirsty:

It’s very competitive now, but I think it’s definitely easier that the internet and how easy it is to set an eShop up is amazing. So we had our first two orders. I think one was London and the next one was Australia. I mean how often are you able to do that? We didn’t realize we’d have such an international community straight away.

The hard thing is awareness against competition. Because we’re small we don’t have big budgets and what we discovered is watches are very expensive on Google AdWords. People are spending a lot of money per click.

We’ve had to grow really slowly and organically that way and then we found it’s more about one-to-one and in the community. We love it when we’re going to a design event and we’ve got some friends or people that we don’t even know and we like “Look, they’re wearing our watches”.

It’s just a really nice community and feel which we really wanted to have. So it’s more about word of mouth rather than paying an influencer loads of money and then post it out and wear it once.

Justyna:

That seems to be a much less sustainable approach, doesn’t it?

Kirsty:

The people we have, we’ve got design ambassadors instead. Some people we knew, some people we just thought were super talented we wanted to get involved. But we wanted that to be their primary watch, the one that they like and wear, rather than something that they wear once a week and then they’re wearing another watch the next week.

Our watches are all about sustainability and longevity and they’re affordable. They’re not really expensive. They’re from 99 pounds, but they’re simply your everyday watch that you can love and enjoy rather than their throwaway community.

Although I do tend to have more than one watch because I like to coordinate with what I’m wearing, but that’s allowed when you run your own watch brand.

Justyna:

I think that’s inevitable. It’s very interesting we have a kind of a throwaway culture and I think we’re throwing away definitely more and more, as well. What I’ve been noticing is that championing the ‘every day’ because we used to be that you’d have pieces for special occasion, and the everyday didn’t quite matter. I feel like we’re so much more in tune with the right here right now and we want to…

Kirsty:

Definitely. I think honesty of materials. You’d have something that’s really highly crafted. You can have a watch that’s beautifully made, the hand mechanism that works perfectly, but you pay for that and it lasts forever.

For our one, it’s a Swiss quartz mechanism, but you’re paying an honest price and we have said everything about what everything’s made from and that does its job as well and we want it to be as long lasting as possible and it still quality design. But so you can afford to wear it.

Justyna:

Which is what makes it for everybody and with your Freedom to Exist, Soho House, Soho Home and Cowshed, what’s a dream project that you’ve not worked on yet?

Kirsty:

Oh, that’s so difficult. It’s always the next projects. I always get bored of the past projects. I always want to do something new and I personally, I’d really really love to do some more homeware and upholstery design.

I’ve really been eyeing up doing some cutlery because I think cutlery is something that you handle every day and it’s so tactile. There are so many nuances to a shape—how it feels in your hand, how it feels in your mouth—and I’d really like to work on that because I think there’s a lot of design details that you maybe don’t notice at first glance.

Justyna:

So there’s so many restrictions, right?

Kirsty:

Yeah, exactly. I’ve been to a couple of places where they manufacture it and so I’d love to actually have my own range doing that.

Justyna:

Then on the personal side as well, before we started the our chat, there’s a house.

Kirsty:

Yes, that’s really exciting. We bought a doer-upper. It’s on the Avenues in W10 and it’s a little two-up two-down Victorian house and it hasn’t been touched for at least 40 years I’d say and so that’s a big project.

That’s an extension, a loft conversion. I’ve never done anything like that before. We’re both working on it, so we’re working with an architect and we really want to look at all of the things that I’ve been talking about—sustainable design, something that’s interesting, having a little innovation within there as well. Hopefully we’ll be in it by Christmas and I’ll be able to share some pictures on social media with it as well. But I’m really excited. It’s a really good project. I’ve been dreaming about it quite a lot. I visualize the finished thing in my head already, so hopefully the vision will come to fruition

Justyna:

That’s amazing because I was thinking I was just about to ask is it the hardest thing or the easiest thing to design a home for yourself?

Kirsty:

Well, I actually have extra pressure on myself. So as a designer, but I’m a furniture and homeware designer, so it’s the small things that go into the house. I’ve never really had to think of like the full concept before, the larger scale.

I think I’ve got extra pressure but people are always saying, “You guys, it’s going to be amazing. You can finally have all your products in there”. I really want it to be a house that’s usable and liveable but also reaches all those expectations as well. So I do feel under a bit of pressure about it.

Justyna:

I can’t wait to see it. I’m sure we will see you on pages of magazines as soon as it’s done.

Kirsty:

Yes, I hope so.

Justyna:

Thank you so much Kirsty.

Kirsty:

Oh no, my pleasure. It’s been great.

Justyna:

I hope you’ve enjoyed our conversation as much as I did. I found Kirsty so inspiring. She’s also actually super kind and has a special offer for the Freedom to Exist watches. You can use the code ONDESIGN, and it will get you 25% off at freedomtoexist.com. So head over there now.