Hi everyone!
My name is Yohan. I'm a co-founder
of a company called Lanterne.
And we specialise in real-time and predictive
analytics around foot traffic and crowd density.
Hi! My name is Tara.
I am the co-founder of Here We Flo.
And we, our mission is healthier eco-friendlier,
adorabler personal care that gives back.
So we make organic cotton tampons,
organic bamboo sanitary towels,
for menstrual use and for bladder use.
And we now also make a regenerative rubber vegan condoms.
Prior to the pandemic, I would say about,
95% of our sales were retail.
So you could walk into a Boots and find Flo.
Around March just launched
with Monoprix in France, which is a retailer,
very similar to Marks & Spencer
and Jumbo in the Netherlands.
And Jumbo is very similar to Tesco.
So we had an EU presence,
but we were primarily a UK business,
and primarily bricks and mortar.
We had our own website and we had a presence on Amazon.
But very tiny amounts of our sales
were going through those channels.
The time has now come for us all to do more.
From this evening I must give the British people
a very simple instruction.
You must stay at home.
After the pandemic hit in March,
for a good couple of months,
I would say two to three months,
there was a lot of turmoil in the retail market,
especially for smaller brands.
And as part of that, a lot of retailers actually paused,
non category A goods which includes,
products like, organic cotton tampons like us.
But they would have the mainstream corporate brands.
The last year has had a huge impact on how we,
and I suppose most businesses, have had to run themselves.
Initially, we were actually focused on a completely
different problem and that problem was trying to help
humanitarian workers in conflict zones to navigate safely.
And we were about to roll out a prototype of
our product in Colombia when COVID-19 happened,
and the whole country just went into lockdown.
So we were faced with this dilemma of,
do we just wait for the current pandemic to end,
or do we try and focus our attention and
our skill set onto the current pandemic?
And we chose the latter.
And then our CTO, Sebastian actually suggested
coming up with this idea of modelling foot traffic and crowd density.
And as a result of that, we launched a free app
called 'Crowdless' in April, 2020.
And that was all about showing people real time information
on how crowded supermarkets were.
So people could choose to visit at a less busy time
or a less busy alternative supermarket.
And we launched this right at the time
when the first lockdown was happening,
and pretty much the only place that
people could go to, where supermarkets.
So it was the right time and right place for us.
And as a result of that, the app ended up going viral.
And we ended up getting quite a lot
of media coverage around Europe,
which then led to companies approaching us,
asking for our data set on crowd density and foot traffic.
On the sales side, in the UK, a huge amount of our UK retail sales
just disappeared for the first six months of the pandemic.
But what we've discovered this year is that when
our kinds of products are purchased online,
they're really purchased in a basket.
Our own website sales have definitely gone up
over the past year, but not the way you might imagine.
Instead, our Amazon sales went from literally zero or like
£200 every month or something
to like, so much more.
I can't even tell you like so much more.
So suddenly Amazon for us took over what we were making before,
in the UK brick and mortar retail channel.
We redid our website.
We started digital marketing,
which we hadn't really done before.
And just took the whole e-commerce space a lot more seriously,
and got some really interesting learnings
from that as well as more sales.
The other thing that happened was that,
anything related to a supply chain became a lot harder.
It used to be like five days
maximum to deliver from the UK to the Netherlands and France.
All of a sudden during COVID we were seeing
deliveries to the EU take three weeks.
Consumer products and goods cash cycle is already pretty difficult.
Anyone who's familiar will tell you,
you're always fighting this battle between,
paying for your goods,
paying the factory to make your goods,
and then getting the retailer to pay you.
What we actually had to do way before we thought we would
was hire an extra part-time supply chain manager.
So we got some help there and they've been
with us since August, made a big difference.
We started using invoice financing,
to make sure that our cash cycles were optimised.
And also it just made us prioritise channels where we
have the highest margins and the fastest repayments.
Also what happened this year is we launched in America,
which has ended up nearly helping us.
So that is one thing that we've
done over the past four months is,
you know, we've set up a warehouse in Portland, Oregon.
We've delivered to hundreds of
stores on the west coast in America.
And also, set up launches with big online retailers, including Amazon.
But also riteaid.com, will be happening in a few months.
costco.com will be happening soon.
Really COVID has forced many companies
to just remain agile and flexible,
and continually think outside the box.
And that's really the characteristics of being
in this game of running your own business,
and starting up a business during a global pandemic.
But that said there are a lot of negatives,
but we've also seen quite a lot of
positives around this environment as well.
And I'll just give you one example of that which is,
previously before the pandemic we were
spending a lot of time getting on the tube,
going from place to place in London,
meeting with potential customers
or potential investors.
As the world has moved online, we haven't had to spend
any time at all commuting for obvious reasons.
But that just means that we're so
much more efficient during our day.
And we're able to have conversations with potential customers
in Germany or in Hungary, and also
speak with potential investors on the other side of the world.
So that's been fantastic for us.
The other thing is the funding environment
is incredibly challenging, at the moment.
And that's because it's not just a health pandemic,
it's an economic crisis as well.
But that said there are some positives to emerge out of this,
the UK government and a lot of EU institutions are releasing,
more and more grants.
So equity free funding for businesses
to come up with novel ideas and
to create employment opportunities.
So we've been really fortunate to have benefited
from a couple of grants during this period.
And I encourage all entrepreneurs out there
who are thinking about, going through the VC investor route
to firstly, investigate whether there are any grants available for you
because it might just be free cash that you're eligible for.
Working with the team during COVID has been,
full of challenges, but also benefits as well.
The main challenge really is the fact that we're just unable to
interact on a person to person, face to face basis with people.
But that said, we're trying our best to come up with
virtual socials every two weeks on a Friday,
we play online games.
And that's a really good way of keeping up
the team spirit and team bonding.
Given that everything has gone remote,
we're able to hire really talented people in all corners of the world.
So we've just brought on board,
a very talented software engineer from Romania,
and we've also brought on board
a really talented data scientists based in Ireland.
Making sure that we focused on
the social aspect of team when we couldn't see each other,
because we've only seen each other once
since March in person, all as a team.
So things like playing games on Fridays,
we will have like the Zoom social,
but not from like six to eight.
Our Zoom social will be from five to six,
so that people don't feel that
it's cutting into their free time.
You should have a support system.
Maybe that's your co-founder,
maybe it's some investors that you are close with.
I definitely have learned from this experience to like,
that it's very important to have one day
where I don't do anything, but like read,
go on walks and eat and just chill out.
And then maybe the next day,
try and do that as, as much as I can.
I do a bit of work on Sundays.
And then the other thing would be self-care.
Making sure you do get sleep.
You're eating regular meals
and you're taking off a day on the weekends,
at least to just fully unplug.
Don't look at the work email. Don't touch anything.
It's an incredibly challenging time both on
a personal level and on a business level.
So take care of yourself.
Take care of your mental health.
It's so important during these current times,
and really try and find
virtual online communities of other entrepreneurs,
and people involved in start ups
so that you can share your journey.
At least remotely and virtually because
the in-person networking events are
obviously not taking place at the moment.
And it's really important to be able to have an outlet,
to share the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey
with other like-minded people.
Don't be afraid to pivot.
Don't be afraid to look, you know just because you started,
you launched in the territory,
or you launched in a certain channel.
Don't be afraid to look at the numbers
and say, 'Okay! This doesn't make sense.'
But on the other hand you know,
every new channel deserves, often deserves six months.
So, yeah, when you're going through turbulent times,
don't be afraid to take a critical eye.
Don't be afraid to stick it out,
if the numbers are telling you that
things could improve and will improve.