Åtta Forever is the name of my sustainable children’s outerwear business and I have made the leap to get the company registered and trademarked and so my new journey begins! I am certainly not alone in this process; I have the help of Millie, my 20 year old daughter and Nick, my ‘something year old’ partner at home. I also have two amazing mentors; Klas and Ana Kristiansson from Apparel Entrepreneurship who have been a huge inspiration for me and turned a “I wonder if I could do this?” into a reality. The fact that they are Swedish attracted me in the first place as this linked with the home of Forest School and I like the way Scandinavian people view life. Apparel entrepreneurship is the ‘go to’ for learning how to run and scale a profitable apparel brand. One of their core values is help new start ups become sustainable, which is the other reason I chose to go with them. I am currently on their hand holding accelerator course which is steering me through the process of building a successful apparel business.
I would like to take you with me on this journey; the ups and downs, successes and inevitable failures to maybe inspire you to try something new. Maybe you have a pipe dream that you would like to have a go at? We can learn about sustainability together and the small changes we can all make that cumulatively will make a big difference to our children’s future.
One of the first things I did was to start reading and listening to pod casts about marketing, organising work flow, judgement, sustainability, building and growing a start up business. I never thought of myself as much of a reader, I never thought I could concentrate that well on one thing for very long. It turns out that I wasn’t interested enough in the books I was reading. As a teacher I would always let children choose their own book, otherwise what is the point? You have to follow your own interests and it turns out that I am really into non-fiction which is a surprise but then again I have never tried it so shouldn’t surprise me really!
One of the first top tips I learnt about setting up a small business is that you can’t do everything so you need help. Leave your ego at the door and admit that you are not good at everything and some people are better suited to doing specific parts of your business rather than you. I’m pretty good at identifying what I’m not so good at but the trouble is I will spend hours trying to work out how to do things on my own instead of asking for help. I did this a lot with Grass Roots Muddy Boots to start with. This time is different, I have learnt my lesson; so Nick is going to help out with numbers because my brain was not built for numbers! The other person who is involved is Millie. Millie and I are going to be a mother daughter team and run Åtta Forever together, which I think is really exciting! We are learning together and it’s good to bounce ideas off someone plus we work well together because we can be honest with each other without any offence being taken. This is great because it makes us agile with the ability to pivot; change the way we do things for the better without having any red tape or negotiation process to go through.
Millie and me x
Millie is doing a graphic design course at Lincoln University and her skills set lends itself to the role of website / logo design and social media management. We have been working on improving our social media presence, focusing on Instagram primarily. I have learnt that 60% of workload in the business will be marketing so Millie has her work cut out! It’s ok having an amazing product and message but if nobody knows about it, there seems little point. For this reason connecting with customers through social media and email is really important to us.
Millie and I sat together to design a logo for Åtta that reflects our core values and what we believe in and here it is….
Åtta Forever logo
The name Åtta, firstly pays homage to Forest School’s Swedish roots. Sweden was where Forest School was born. This word means eight in Swedish, which is a special number to Millie and me. Millie was born on the 8th day of the 8th month in the year 2000 so she was 8 years old on 8/8/08. It has become our ‘lucky number’. The number 8 also holds huge significance as a Chinese lucky number. The shape of the letter is reflective of the infinity sign and the concept of forever, never ending, re-use, recycle, sustain. The halo comes from the small ring attached to the letter Å which in Swedish makes the short vowel ‘o’ sound, making Åtta pronounced ‘Otter’ in English. The halo signifies all things good; that the product has been made sustainably and your child will feel ‘good’ (comfortable) playing out in it. The face is for children; they love to see shapes characterised with marks that look like a face. We plan to customise our products with the logo and maybe name it so children can identify with it. What would your child call this character? I would love to know….answers on a post card and I will share them next time and choose one. Alternatively, text, email, comment below (all the usual ways) your child’s answer. I genuinely would love their input on this.
