How It All Started
Starting a business usually comes with a lot of questions! How did you set up on your own? Why did you start your own business? Why custom kit? Do you really make everything by hand?
So I thought maybe it was time to shed some light on the reasons why I decided to start my own company, what I’m aiming to achieve and all other bits in between. I’m planning to write on a few different areas of start-up life, but for now it makes sense to kick off with the background… what was I doing before OFS and how I started.
After leaving school, like many others out there, University seemed to be the next logical step, so I chose to study Sustainability at the University of Nottingham. The course was generally ok, but in all honesty it was a mish mash of geographical and engineering topics at a beginners level that didn’t have much direction. Like many students I put a bit of effort into the course but I was very much taken with the social and sporting side of university life! It was here that niche sport of Canoe Polo quickly became the best part of my university experience and, perhaps unknowingly at the time, opened my eyes to some gaps in the market that would later influence my decision to create rash vests. After three years of a first class social life, I graduated with a 2:1 degree but had very little thought on what I actually wanted to do. With lack of direction and at the time where fees weren’t outrageous, postgraduate study seemed a reasonable way to fill another year, choosing to further my study of Sustainability in Bristol. It was in this year, where I was in an unfamiliar city with few people I knew, that I began put a bit more time into developing what I wanted to do instead of buying cheap pints at the union.
Whilst studying I began work with a start-up energy company as a part time customer service assistant. The experience gave me a great insight into a rapidly growing company with a start-up vibe. I loved it there and I quickly shot up the ranks. While this was a valuable experience, I made the decision to leave after finishing my masters — the energy company had given me a job but I wanted to find a career. That career ended up being accountancy. I headed to Oxford to pursue my not-so-life-long dream and found myself being very underwhelmed by the life behind a desk.
I would wake up at the ungodly hour of 7, put my suit on, cycle through the picturesque buildings of Oxford, climb the stairs in the old college building, only to sit at my desk and wish the time away so I could go and get my sausage and bean jacket potato at 1pm. Whilst I delivered good results, was progressing through the qualification fast and even signed up two clients which was unheard of for trainees, the company could see I wasn’t enjoying it and decided to move me across to a marketing role.
It was at this time that I decided it was time to go out on my own. There were a number of reasons for why I started my own business but at the time, these were the driving factors:
Firstly I was tired of being under someone else’s management and I’d only been in the Professional world for about a year and a half! The Accountancy role was genuinely really good in terms of management, but I had already developed a distaste for other people managerial styles in my short time in the working world. I’d seen drug dealing team leaders who told you off for not hitting targets (but then sold cocaine to employees at the staff party), managers withholding job perks because of favouritism, and members of the lucky sperm club who merely inherited the company from their parents and didn’t have a clue how to lead (they had no respect for employees as people, rather just numbers). However, the bit that got me most, and I’m sure other people have experienced too, was favouring routine over innovation. While my experiences of management were not 100% negative, I knew I would do things differently and could see what it would take to be an effective director of my own business.
Secondly. Why not! There are so many successful companies that you see every day, but they all had to start somewhere — if they could do it then why couldn’t I? Social media shows you the lives that other people live. I decided that I wanted those lives, but I know that I would actually have to take action to get there!
Finally and most importantly I asked myself what is it that I want to do, and the answer to that question was always: whatever I wanted. Starting my own business is the truest route to giving yourself the freedom to do what you want, despite the paradox that I now have no time to do anything (but I don’t really mind that at all). I love the freedom and I love working for myself!
So I did it, I started the business!
I was now in a position where I was making every decision for myself. Looking back at what I’d experienced in the few years prior, my time with Nottingham Canoe Polo not only stuck out as a highlight, but also revealed a gap in the market that I became determined to fill; high quality rash vests. At first, I outsourced the production of the garments, but with continual growth, I am now able to complete every stage of the manufacturing process myself, including sewing the garments.
I’m proud of how OFS has grown and expanded in just a couple of years. Whilst some say what I am doing is amazing, realistically I just work hard (the majority of the time I like to think I work smart too, but in reality things don’t work like that… being a sole founder is a nightmare as you have no sounding board and you can really run with bad ideas!) Of course, I have ambition and self-motivation in spades, but I hold this passion because I love what I do and it is what I truly want to do.
I have heard a lot about how my generation overestimates their capabilities and think they can do everything however, in rare cases such as myself I disagree. I sew, market, film and edit video, design, run all the social accounts, format the accounts, design the website, answer all emails to a high customer service standard and more! The secret sauce to all of this is googling well and working hard!
OFS is continually growing and adapting to the demand of the industry and I’m excited for what the future holds. Hopefully this is the first of a few blog posts about my journey as a start-up business founder and director. I would like to talk more about challenges I faced, milestones in the company and my future plans.