inov-8

“The factory that we were working with changed our terms to when we actually placed the orders.”

“So just to give you an idea, the mold costs are about sort of 30 to 40,000 dollars. ... Sorry, that's for a series of the molds, so that's for a size range. So to do one shoe, you've got to invest that sort of money And that's only to make the moles.”

“All my savings and all the profit that I'd retained within the consultancy business went into that.”

“They're Japanese corporate, very respectful, very considerate, but they are slow on the decision-making process, and everything has to go back to Japan to take decisions”

“No, I wouldn't say so, actually. I think the business was probably more profitable when I was CEO and in ownership of the business because it, you know, I always looked at the longer term best for the brand, but I was very careful with the money because that w…”

“And you know, today, if you go to a fell race, there's probably 70, 75% plus people are wearing Innovate shoes at these races, which is fantastic to see.”

“I think we've got a long way to go, actually, because we're well known in the small niche markets, but actually they're not big enough to grow the brand to its full potential.”

“Over five years they wanted me to dilute down to zero.”

“For the type of footwear that we do, it's best made in Asia because that's where there's the most development and they have the best machinery and processes and materials to make sports footwear.”

“So it would have been two years in, so 2005, and that's when I managed to negotiate the bank facility for that quarter of a million pounds.”

“I was still the major shareholder of the business, so they took, yeah, 42%.”

“I knew that there were about five or 6000 fell runners in the UK, so it's quite a small market, but quite easy to market to because they, you know, subscribe to the same magazines, and they go to the similar races, and it's a community, so I thought that that …”

“In 2020, I bought back the business and actually signed all the paperwork. At one of the most difficult times, because COVID had just hit Asia and was spreading across.”

“Whenever you Launch a brand. You've got to find, well, what's our differentiator? And where's the niche or gap in the market that we're going to go for?”

“Whilst I did have a lot of connections, I had to pioneer a lot of the running shops, and basically all I did was I built a database of them, and we basically did a mail shot to all the retailers, and put one shoe in with the mail shot, and then I gave them a s…”

“Our naming system is the sole name or shoe name, and then the number is the weight of an average size shoe.”