Business

THE STUDENT ENTREPRENEUR

By Nicci Cloke ⋅ December 10, 2007 ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

While most of us while away the hours and the pennies, gleaning our biggest insight into the world of business from Dragon’s Den and The Apprentice, some finer specimens of the student body are out having big ideas and big successes.

James Watt and Martin Dickie, who were both students in Edinburgh in 2004, are now directors of their own award-winning company BrewDog, brewing their own range of beers. Despite having high-profile success (of the top 7 Scottish beers on RateBeer.com four belonged to them, they received two gold medals in the World Beer Awards this year, and in the Tesco Scottish Drinks Awards they took 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th place) they feel very strongly about maintaining their identity: ‘We are not a faceless corporate monstrosity…we are just two guys trying to make the best beer that we can.’ And they feel pretty strongly about business strategy too: ‘Business plans for small businesses are a totally worthless endeavour. If you can not hold all the necessary details about your own business in your head, what the hell are you doing starting a business in the first place? If you can’t convey your enthusiasm and business model to a stranger within 5 minutes go back to your day job.’ As BrewDog continues to succeed – this year they were awarded a £3000 prize from Shell Livewire – they are determined to keep hold of their ‘original vision’. Says Watt, ‘The key thing is to believe in yourself and your idea 100 per cent because you will get kicks and knocks.’

Liverpool’s own talented student population has of course got a few entrepreneurial stars of its own. Iain Trickett, a student at JMU, is the founder of T-Birds, a fashion chain he began in 2004: ‘it wasn’t until I got to uni (2005) that I started taking it seriously as something to do for a job.’ In 2006 he enlisted the help of girlfriend Rachel Crowther aka R4, and since then the brand has gone from strength to strength. The brand now has a strong focus on art, enlisting designs from graffiti artists and design students. Iain says he finds art ‘far more accessible and more fun when put on the t-shirt canvas…I like the garments to look like somebody’s just come up and drawn on your t-shirt.’ The brand gets its inspiration from random things- the new season is inspired by British pub life after Iain found himself watching darts all the time. He also refuses to print black t-shirts, except for an annual limited edition t-shirt, saying ‘I’m not a fan of the colour…it just isn’t fun.’

For a business that started off with Iain using scrap bits of felt on cheaply bought t-shirts, T-Birds has become extremely successful very quickly. The brand is stocked in ten shops worldwide, including stores in Los Angeles, Kyoto, Hong Kong and Berlin. But Iain is particular about where his products are sold – when he felt a store in Manchester stocking the brand wasn’t quite right, he decided to take the stock out. He also feels very strongly about the production of the clothes, which are all made in Britain. He says he just doesn’t like ‘the idea of some guy in Sri Lanka sweating over my t-shirts’ and that knowing where the brand is made – the t-shirts in Accrington Stanley, the printing done in Manchester – is a ‘real strong point’ of T-Birds.

Of course, it wasn’t all plain sailing in the beginning – Iain used his student loan to get the business up and running. He jokes ‘I ate nothing but beans for four months but it makes you realise what you have to put in to get something out.’ More seriously though, he admits he’s had times when things weren’t going well; after an order worth £300 wasn’t paid for and he was left down on stock and cash, he admits ‘I questioned whether I wanted to do it…it was frustrating mostly. I couldn’t go to the places I wanted to, couldn’t see the bands I wanted to.’ But after sticking at it, Iain now has a successful brand which makes him around a £6000 profit a year, and more importantly, reflects a set of ethics and artistry that he believes in.

So what business advice does Iain have for any budding entrepreneurs? He places a strong emphasis on being different rather than striving for commercial success: ‘People are always more supportive if you want to do something different, not trying to be the next Nike’. He also has sensible words for anyone dashing out to buy a sewing machine: ‘Only do it if you’re really passionate – don’t go into it half-arsed because you’ll lose money. There are horrible people out there, but you just have to take the rough with the smooth.’ Laughing embarrassedly at this cliché, he smiles when I ask him what it’s like to see people wearing his clothes: ‘I think ‘it’s weird that you like what I like and you’ve paid money for it’- it’s still a buzz to see somebody you don’t know wearing your stuff.’

You can buy T-Birds clothing from Lost Art on Bold Street. For more information on BrewDog go to www.brewdog.com