What was the initial inspiration behind founding Notwoways?
What a question.
The initial inspiration behind NOTWOWAYS. There’s my perspective, and there’s Callum, my business partner’s perspective. I’ll briefly speak on Cal’s perspective, just so you get a bit of insight there. Back in 2019, the YouTube scene was very prominent with merch but not many brands were out there. Things like Prime did not exist. Not many YouTubers were creating real clothing outside of the merch space.
Then you had a subset of YouTubers, primarily American ones, like Seth Fowler, Qais Omar, Weartesters etc. Backed by a group called We Are Underdogs. It was a factory that was collaborating with them, similar to how the Marques Brownlee shoe came last year now. At that time, in 2019, these guys were creating footwear, it was super cool. But that’s all there was in the space.
What I learned from them was that they were trying to sell shoes they co-designed to their audience, but it seemed like it just wasn’t resonating heavily. Or for it to survive beyond a few drops. Even though these were sneaker YouTubers who were known in the space, yet their footwear wasn’t selling – Let alone trying to build and manufacture a brand from scratch. It was a scary thought when the initial idea of NTW came about.
So, when Callum approached me saying he’d love to start a footwear brand, for me, the first thing was to identify what mattered to him. How he felt about footwear, his dreams and how much he already knew about the industry.
Another important thing was to teach him everything I knew, so he at least understood the journey we were about to embark on and what it takes to build a brand.
Ultimately, we decided to go for it and start the brand!
But if we were going to do it, we had to do it the right way, through sustainable efforts, through community-building, and using different avenues to inform the design process, not making the same mistakes and learning from those other creators mentioned earlier..
Most importantly, listen to the footwear world, discover what is currently missing and ask ourselves: What do the people want and how can we progress the industry in a positive way?
This allowed us to figure out a way to try and build a legacy. Create good products and take everyone on the journey with us.
How did you come up with the name Notwoways?
Specifically regarding the name “No Two Ways,” it stems from this idea of “one way forward.” It also comes from experiences Callum and I had as children, where we almost didn’t make it—yet we were given another chance at life. I won’t go into too much detail because it’s quite personal, but we were given another chance at life, and it made us realise that we’ve been given a path, and it’s ours to take.
Ironically, it happened to both of us at the age of four.
Even if things don’t go the way you imagined, a setback is just a detour in the path you’re supposed to take. We wanted to embed that idea into showing the world that you can do things without following the norm, you can do things your own way.
We have also recently rebranded to ‘NO’ as a brand within NOTWOWAYS. We have some exciting stuff planned, but first was the crazy rebrand campaign we did where we activated a clause on the investor contract including the likes of KSI, Miniminter and Lachlan to name a few. All assigned to make noise and ‘blow-up the NO brand’ in how they saw fit. It was fun!! And even released a brand new silhouette with it all to top it off: The NO.1
What are some of the biggest challenges you faced during the early stages of launching Notwoways?
I think one of the biggest challenges since the beginning and even now, (four years into our journey) people have certain expectations. In year one, people immediately compared us to every other established (non-independent) brand. Footwear design is difficult to manufacture, there’s a reason why we only went with full sizes and didn’t offer half sizes. We knew we wanted to do unisex because we weren’t happy with how the industry separates men’s and women’s shoes. Everything should just be uniform, and that’s something we believed in.
However, by doing so, people also assumed that our sizing, fitting and production consistency should be on par with established brands that have thousands of people working for them. We push to do better and excel in certain areas for sure.
Even now with our footwear buyers, they compare us to brands like Asics, New Balance, Nike etc. At the start, our investment was huge because shoes are not like bags or t-shirts with just a few sizes. With footwear, you have at least 10 sizes, and sometimes in a production run, you might open moulds for each outsole and need several moulds for popular sizes like UK 8, 9, and 10 to meet the lead time.
That initial 13-size investment quickly scales to a 20-size investment, with moulds costing two grand per size. The costs add up fast, and that’s also why we made no money on the first couple of releases. We had to survive, just me and Cal, without knowing where the brand would go. No one had done footwear like this before, especially not a YouTuber or Creator, and we had to figure out how we could grow as an independent company. Doing everything ourselves, the design, sampling, photography, website, you name it – with not really any budget.
Those first five releases weren’t perfect, but what a time it was. The first two releases: Exuberance and Moonless fitted half a size small, and there were inconsistencies, like variations in the length of the pull tab. We also had issues with materials, like using vegetable-tanned leather (that don’t contain chemicals or harmful substances) – it is a must for us. But on the Saphfire release, some of the natural tannins in the veg-tanning process rose to the surface and created some marks, which could be brushed off, but we had to hand quality control and clean some pairs ourselves, inform our audience with honesty and find viable solutions. One of our factories even had a serious fire that destroyed 200 pairs including some of ours, overnight.
Another issue we faced was with our recycled plastic bottle cap pieces we injected into the outsole. The pieces were too big, it was a lot of trial and error, but we refined the production with smaller pieces and are still able to have recycled components within many parts of the shoes we make. Over time, the shoes improved, but in that first month, people still complained about the sizing being wrong and asked for half-sizes. Ironically, the shoes started selling for £500+ on resale, so no one was actually returning them even then. Till’ this day, our return rate is less than 4%
The dynamic was tough, high expectations versus us trying to fix the product along the way. If you look at our first shoe compared to our shoes now, they’re completely different. In the beginning, the midsole had a triangle pushing into the ball of the foot, and now that triangle is gone. These are subtle changes we don’t even talk about, but they matter to us, and each fix is an investment in updating the molds.
We’ve been listening, understanding what the people want and updating the shoes based on their feedback. In summary, I’d say the biggest challenge we’ve faced is being compared to the giants immediately.
The mokka colourway is a distinctive earthy tone. What inspired the particular colour palette?
With the Mokka specifically, what happened was that Cal and I were driving back from a photoshoot. Having a couple of coffees. Both wearing Syzygy at the time. Brainstorming stuff. Coffee spills everywhere. White leather seats. Disaster.
And I’m just looking at my shoes, in two minds. Thinking like, “F***, my shoes are destroyed right now.” And on the other side I was like, “Maybe there’s something here!?.”
People love coffee. London has great coffee spots. There’s something here in the UK that is unique and authentic. Something that I wanted to get across with the release. “If we’re gonna do it, I want it to be authentic. I want crazy packaging. I want coffee cups on tissue paper. I want a stencil that has the NTW logo so that people can do coffee art with it.” Let’s do this for the coffee lovers! So off we went, brought the team together and brought this concept to life.
We just wanted to build this whole story around it.
Why do you think the Mokka colourway resonates with your audience?
So what I like people to believe is that they trust us, that we of course follow the trends or are ahead of the curve or simply try to do things differently. But also understand what the mainstream wants and what our audience wants. But I think it’s quite tricky with the consumer base that we have. It’s very open with some people that are fans, other people are in fashion, in footwear, in finance, you can keep going.
I think one of the things that the colorway does definitely do is act as a bridge for all the above to sort of merge and feel they’re part of something. It is a really fun family to be around. At the end of the day, it’s just about our passion for shoes, really. It’s not anything deeper than that.
I think there’s also another side of the truth in that there’s a trend. How do I say it? The trend and trajectory of brown being the new black, heavily led by the likes of Travis Scott, Pharrell and even New Balance who are really feeding this niche of beige, earth tones, greys and browns. A huge gap that Ye and Virgil left + experts like Jerry Lorenzo really pushing his aesthetic forward too. It is all swaying the ecosystem of greys, brown, beige, tonals and soft pastels especially in London. It’s then on us to stay ahead of the curve, release the right product at the right time and find ways to bring something new to such a saturated market.
What can fans expect from Notwoways in the future?
That’s fun; that’s a fun one. So there’s a couple of things that I can mention here. Of course, we have our DTC offering that we have on our website with some exclusive stuff. We are also in the middle of aligning our wholesale distribution and we have some made-to-order activations like the NO.1 release. Finally (for the first time ever) we are turning collaborations into one of our sales channels.
Collaborations are going to be very exciting. There are five fully signed projects in progress of being developed, one of which—well, actually two—will be announced within this year. These are some incredible collaborations and a huge opportunity for us. Quite different from what you’d usually expect! I understand that the market is saturated, so there needs to be some utility or post-consumer experience with those collaborations.
I want to provide people with memories, a feeling, and inspire them – To be able to look back at a moment in time years from now and remember that moment when buying our shoes. Authenticity at its finest.
Take the JME collab for example. The day before, I sent personal invitations to 100 of our audience and 20 VIP’s including the likes of Helen Kirkum, CultureForce and Nicekicks to name a few. Everyone came through to support and managed to meet JME, listen to some unreleased tracks and get a signed pair of the HKE ‘ULTIMATES’ along with it.
Another brand reached out to me back in August wondering if we were interested in having our shoes as part of their London Fashion Week Debut. I felt honoured! I am always looking for cool and passionate people to connect with. So when I met up with Mensa and their team, it felt real, it felt authentic. It was a no-brainer decision. We ended up shutting down Millenium Bridge and did a full 18-look runway show. It was awesome. It is one big family!
I love working with fellow creators, designers, passionate people and the community here in London is just incredible. Definitely hit me up @rockwellprincely on instagram if you have a fun idea! I am always looking to connect with like-minded people, no matter where you’re from or where you’re based!! Let’s go!! 🚀
