This week’s 30-second interview is with Oscar Boatfield and Nell Wharton, the co-founders of sustainable accessory brand BearMade.
How did the business start?
Although we now cater to a more general outdoor X urban market, the idea for BearMade started in 2018 on a riverbank in Hampshire, shortly after I met my wife and BearMade Co-founder, Nell. We both love the outdoors and nature and didn’t like how complicated it was to start fly fishing, so we came up with this idea for a small fishing bag that would just take the “Bear” essentials. We wanted to promote a more simple and adventurous side of the sport that we enjoy, and also run workshops to get people outdoors and connect with nature.
We taught ourselves to sew, very badly, and started making prototypes. Fortunately it didn’t take us too long to find our master bag maker, Amy. She took our prototypes and together we made them into the bags that we make today.
What is the USP?
We are unique in a lot of ways. The current accessory business model is typically done badly, So we try to explore different ways of doing things:
GLOCAL – We think globally and act locally. We only sell our bags where they are made. Currently, that’s in the UK.
WORKSHOPS – We want to help our local town connect with nature. By this time next year, we will have actively helped at least 200 people get outdoors and planted over 4,000 trees.
HONESTY – We believe transparency is key. It’s definitely something that makes us unique. We share our cost breakdowns, everything about our materials and probably more information than we should about ourselves. We are building a community with BearMade and we think in order to do so, you have to be honest with people.
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How did Covid impact plans?
Covid allowed us to slow down and assess how we can make a greater positive change. We decided to connect with people outside of the fly fishing industry; and make a bigger impact with the general outdoor X urban consumer. We started something called “Bear Share” where we connected members of our community to keep each other company during lockdown. And we finally managed to host our first wild workshop in the summer where we taught teachers how to encourage their students to connect with nature (10 per cent of our sales go towards funding wild workshops).
What have you learned as entrepreneurs?
Be brave and just get things done. We have learnt that it’s much better to just have a go and improve over time. The difficulty is that it’s pretty terrifying, a lot of the time it feels like you are putting a part of yourself out into the world and it feels like it’s going to get torn apart. Fortunately, most people are incredibly kind and even if you don’t get it quite right, they will help you improve.
How is the accessory industry changing?
To be honest, we don’t take a great deal of notice of what others are doing in our industry. Instead of trying to redesign products to meet the latest trend, we find ways to refine our supply chain and improve the quality of our products. We want to challenge the insatiable fast-fashion model and prove that it is possible to run a business that does something genuinely meaningful and makes amazing products that don’t cost the Earth.
What are your future plans?
Next year is going to be a really exciting one for us. We will be holding more Wildish Club workshops. We will also expand our manufacturing and find a couple of other small makers in different countries so we can start selling outside of the UK.
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