Julia Reynolds Talks Retail Revolution and Crafting the Perfect Fit for the Over Forty

Discover the unconventional route to retail dominance with Julia Reynolds, a trailblazer who defied the odds by ascending from Topshop's head office to orchestrating a revolution at Tesco's F&F clothing line. Our cozy chat in the Chantry Hotel coach house unravels Julia's story, a tale interwoven with a pioneering spirit and an aversion to the phrase "we've always done it that way." Her journey, sans university, through the corporate world, to her present-day consultancy and exciting new ventures, is bound to captivate anyone with a flair for breaking molds and rewriting retail rules.

As we navigate the intricacies of transitioning from physical storefronts to the digital marketplace, Julia recounts steering Figleaves.com to profitable shores in an era when e-commerce titans were still mapping their course. Her insights on operational efficiency, reverse logistics, and the complexities of business acquisitions shed light on the path to e-commerce success. Julia's stories from the frontlines of private equity and advisory roles paint a picture of the resilience and adaptability required to thrive in the shifting sands of retail.

The episode culminates with Julia's passionate pursuit to address a void in the fashion industry—the plight of ill-fitting clothing for women over 40. With an innovative use of AI and body-scanning technology, she's on a mission to revolutionize garment fitting and quality. As we discuss the potential for high street rejuvenation and community inclusivity, it's clear that Julia's vision for retail extends far beyond the checkout line, envisioning a vibrant future for both consumers and retailers. Join us for this journey through the past, present, and future of retail innovation.

Business Advisor Martin Reynolds interviews the great and the good of business

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Transcript

Martin R: 0:19

Here today with Julia Reynolds, my name's sake. The coincidence don't end there, because we are in her house, which is the old coach house of what was the Chantry Hotel, Ingatestone where I grew up . We were meant to meet we were meant to meet and here we are.

Martin R: 0:36

So, Julia, you've had, looking at your CV, a very successful career in mainly retail and are now Striking forth and doing still doing some consultancy, but also working on a new project, which will come on to a bit later on but if we could s tart back in the midst of time, when you're at school, and maybe for what I'm trying to get to find out what it was that's Inspired you to go the route that you did. So if you want to sort of a kickoff with your back background

Julia R: 1:14

Never really there was no entrepreneurs one uncle that was an entrepreneur in my family, but apart from that no one else really just and Sadly, or was brought up in a generation where you know women. There were certain Expectations for women that didn't go beyond, but my mother was quite an inspiration. So she was quite she's quite an ambitious person. Never, it never, never, fulfilled her dreams, but she inspired me to to Branch out and really the art of the possible and I remember being seven years old and saying to my dad one, why aren't I a boy?

Julia R: 1:52

and he said to me what do you want to be a boy for? I said, well, because Looking at boys, they get an easier life of it. They can do things that girls can't do. And my father said to me you can do anything you want to do. And I've never forgotten that. So that was probably the the Inspiration for it, but I think the other inspiration is I've always been, I've always been difficult in terms of I've always been challenged. The status quo, always everything.

Julia R: 2:18

Really to the irritation of lots and lots of people. Why is that like that? Who says you have to do it like that? And I think that's probably the root root of it.

Martin R: 2:27

If I was to be honest, if I had a pound for every time I heard someone say to me we've always done it that way, I'll be a very rich man.

Julia R: 2:35

That's exactly, and as soon as someone says that, that's a challenge for me tonight or If somebody says to me you can't do something, watch me yeah.

Martin R: 2:45

Excellent. So you, you left school. You didn't go the traditional degree route or Further education, went straight into to work.

Julia R: 2:53

Yeah, I did my A-levels and then I went straight to work, just Really sort of had enough of school, to be honest, and just was bored at the time and that you know very few people went to university in those days. I think it was about 5% of the population.

Julia R: 3:06

Yeah and it tended to be the people that were really Academic or wanted to pursue an academic career, and I didn't. I want. I wanted to earn money. I wanted to get out there and do something. The other thing was I wanted to travel, which was another one of my ambitions Travel, earn money and do something creative when my criteria not necessarily in that order, but so where did you go first, which I am.

Julia R: 3:32

My first job was in Was in top shops head office. I was a young girl and I was really interested in fashion. It was a dream job, it was absolutely. I just thought I'd arrived Because I was just surrounded by this fast pace, fast moving, dynamic business. I've never been in front owner, consumer facing, you know, on the shop floor. I've never done. I have done that, obviously in my roles. I've had to go out and work on the shop floor, but I didn't start there, I started in a head office.

Martin R: 4:01

So it was very much operational and dynamic and so you learn the the roots of the fashion industry from From Tom's top shop.

Julia R: 4:09

Yeah, well, it was, I was there and I was in the Arcadia group. Then I worked for various other Retailers over the years, a Scottish company I worked for called Macaes it's no longer. I worked really well with the two brothers that owned it, one in particular, and he Took me under his wing and took me off to China when I was about 25 and that's when I really learned how to, as you know, with your background, I really understood, you know, really learn the supply chain and how you do it and it was always a direct route.

Julia R: 4:41

It was. We never used the middleman, so we were literally in the depths of China dealing with the Chinese, and I never looked back from that, really, because that really taught me you know everything from finance to sourcing, to logistics, supply chain, shipping, all those sorts of things and, yeah, I think that was a really good, that was a good grounding for me.

Martin R: 5:09

I think, yeah, that comes across in your CV because you've gone into areas that you wouldn't have expected to have gone into, really, and challenged, as you said earlier on the status quo in a lot of organisations. I mean, you want to give us a few examples of people you work for and what you did for them.

Julia R: 5:29

Yeah, I. Probably the thing I'm most notable and was actually really quite entrepreneurial was I started the F&F brand for Tesco, which is the clothing brand in Tesco, in 1999 and one of my colleagues there was three of us on the team that started it and one of my colleagues always says we were able to build our own business using someone else's money and that was what was good about it. And we did. We were naughty, we used to do all sorts of things under the radar and when they did come out, the board directors thought it was fantastic really. They just, you know, they'd spur us on really because we were challenging the status quo, and so I suppose that was the one, probably a really, and that was a really happy time as well. It was really dynamic really.

Julia R: 6:20

We were under the radar because we were all we three of us were women and Tesco was run and operated and was very misogynist and male, so we were sort of deemed as all just some girls over there having a bit of fun with a bit of clothing. In the meantime, we were building a billion pound business under the radar and it was. They were good days. They were good days Other things I've done. I realised that things were moving very quickly, moving online and that if you didn't become digitally savvy and stuck in Tesco, that wasn't you know, that wasn't an area I could explore and I thought it was time to go out.

Julia R: 7:01

And I was quite curious about private equity, private equity world and, although I have some opinions about it now, but at the time you know, quite keen to get out there and look at other aspects, and at that point I wanted to run my own company, although it wasn't mine, it was private equity, in fact I was a shareholder, etc. But it was a way I could run my own company and do all of the aspects, which is what I wanted to do, Because if you ask me how my careers progressed, it was never, you know, like young people, like youngsters today, they map it all out and they say some of them, do you hear them talk? My career path went. I'd be in a job and I'd look across the room and I'd see somebody else doing a job that was bigger and perhaps weren't doing it very well, and I'd say I want that job, I can do that job, I think I can do that job better and I internalised that.

Julia R: 7:54

I didn't go out and tell people that's what I was going to do, but I just worked my way towards it and that's how I zigzagged up. It was just really pure determination to do it. Nothing really. I mean, I had several mentors that acknowledged my talents along the way, which helped, and they were very memorable people to me. So I went to run a business called Figleavescom, which was one of the first pure plays At the time, back in 2008,.

Julia R: 8:26

No one was making any money online. Amazon had done about 14 years of just absolutely hemorrhaging money and I got into this business. It was turning over about 35 million and losing about three and a half. So we set about looking at how could we keep it or increase it it's 35 million turnover but turn it into a profit and within two years we did that. And that was literally going through the whole value chain absolutely everything in the value chain and identifying where the pinch points were and what we needed to do about it. Things like, as you know, reverse logistics costs infantry controls, those sort of things quite operational.

Martin R: 9:19

All very vital, as you said earlier on, very much overlooked in certain things.

Julia R: 9:25

Every business I've been into. There's troubled I've been quite a lot of. It comes down to what you do with your infantry and controlling it.

Martin R: 9:34

And I say an awful lot of companies, that you go into them and they're asking you to raise finance for them and you're saying but you've got 500,000 pounds worth of redundant stock in your shelves. You haven't got rid of. Sell them off for 50% of the value and you've got your 100,000 at your one, plus more. But there we are. So what were those days like? Were they say Tesco's was enjoyable, or some of the? What about fig leaf was enjoyable?

Julia R: 10:00

Yeah, yeah, it was good. I mean it was fast. Retail, as you know, is fast moving, it's dynamic, it's changing. You know this has certainly changed in the last 10 years because so many of so much of the high street has disappeared and there's so many more new players out there. Very, very hard to make money now in retail. It always was, but now it's even harder. They were good times, they were fun. Fig leaf was fun. Fig was hard. It was hard. It was hard not because the job wasn't hard, as in you know what to do. It was the outside influences that were hard. So we had we hit the banking crisis, so we were a loss making privately equity backed pure play, and we were hit by the banking crisis and you know we didn't have enough money to pay the bills at the end of the month, but we survived and we did so. It was stuff like that that you learn through the hard knocks.

Martin R: 10:57

Yeah.

Julia R: 10:58

So when you say it was fun, it was easy, no, it was damn hard, it was really hard, but I learned so much I really learned so much and we ended up selling the business, which I've learned a lot from selling businesses and raising capital and stuff. And I'm not a fan of selling businesses. I think it's a need, but I haven't really seen many businesses successfully sold and being a great success.

Martin R: 11:30

Why is that? What's the?

Julia R: 11:32

I think companies buy companies. Some companies buy companies for the wrong reasons. I think they want to either add to their bottom line or they've got a particular sector that they don't have in their remit and they want it under the umbrella of their company. But nine times out of ten they don't know what they've bought and they don't know what to do with it, and then they try and shoehorn it into existing business, and it rarely works.

Martin R: 12:01

No, and then you've got two different levels of staff and they don't necessarily join together. No, it's whole life problems and systems are not the same Good people. And then what happens.

Julia R: 12:13

You get so good, the good people leave. Yeah, Generally the good people leave, they go. I'm not sticking around for this and I think also, if you've come from an entrepreneurial business like Fig Leaves was, you want to work in that environment. You don't suddenly want to be caught. You know that now you're working for a big corporation and there's a rule book and boundaries and a different language being spoken.

Martin R: 12:37

No, no, you're allowed to get on within and create whatever you want to create. And then, all of a sudden, you're handcuffed, aren't you? Yeah, yeah. So what did you do after that? You worked on some private equities and yeah, I got into.

Julia R: 12:51

So through selling Fig Leaves and various other things, I became quite well acquainted with KPMG and through that then was put into. I ended up. I don't know how I ended up here, because this isn't what I set out to do. I ended up doing turnarounds and troubled businesses and because I'm a fixer and I can look at something and go, oh, that could be done, this could be done and that.

Julia R: 13:17

But actually turnaround is much more difficult. It's not about that and you have to establish, you have to work out whether it's quarter to 12 or quarter past 12, and most the time you go in it's quarter past 12, so it's too late. You end up just salvage, which is why so many people with finance backgrounds do turnarounds obviously don't have finance background, but I had a lot of energy, I suppose, to help businesses put a strategy together very quickly, management team together very quickly, that sort of stuff, and I really enjoyed that. I didn't really enjoy the selling of it and the outcome and the raising money is just horrid. It's absolutely horrid. It's not fun, and it's not fun as a woman doing it either, because whatever you say I mean Tom's witnessed it it's harder to be taken seriously as a woman.

Martin R: 14:12

Identifies a man. You'd be fine on this day, though.

Julia R: 14:14

Oh well, I could do, I should do that, shouldn't I, I think some people think I've got the Kahoona winners to do that but, anyway. So, yes, I went on, did a few. Actually I did a turn around. It was a prepack, ended up being a prepack, which was.

Julia R: 14:32

Black's Leisure and I put a team management team in there really quickly. We were really heading for good things. But it was a listed business and that was interesting because that was learned a whole new set of skills there had to present to the city different investors, shareholders, obviously, lots of diligence and stuff like that. So that was a really interesting. I thought it was a learning, a steep learning curve. Not sure I'd go back and do it, but done it and stood back and really gave myself a pat on the back for that one because that was a big effort. And then I sort of because turn arounds are exhausting, I sort of stepped back a bit. Then I sort of got a bit tired and had a battlefield health and I then sort of retreated and recharged my batteries and did consultancy work and sit on boards and things like that. Always sat on a board as a commercial representative. I wasn't obviously HR or finance, whatever I was, it was always the commercial operations and I enjoyed that.

Julia R: 15:37

But then I came across this problem and I've always wanted to own my own business and run my own business. I've actually done several in my lifetime. I've done several business plans. My first one was when I was about 25, so it's always been something on my radar. I'm just late coming to it. Why am I late coming to it? I suppose because I had quite good jobs and I think if I should have started younger then would I know what I know now if I hadn't. So I don't know. So I just thought I came to it late and I'm not looking at it now as I want to try and solve a problem that I think is a big, big problem, and if I can just chip away at that in some way and help solve it, then I'll have achieved something.

Martin R: 16:25

So yeah, let's explore that. What is the new entrepreneurial direction you've taken?

Julia R: 16:31

Right. So because I've been in the fashion business all my working life and I understand the whole supply chain, as we discussed earlier, just before lockdown I was on the charity walk 100k walk with three other women and we had a lot of time to talk and there were three women similar age to me and all quite fit, relatively fit, so they weren't carrying a lot of pounds or anything, and they were talking about how clothing, the quality of clothing, is deteriorated, how they can't find clothes to fit, how talked about the good old days of certain retailers and you could argue well. Well, you're mid-age women now. That's probably looking back, being close to fit and the quality of them.

Julia R: 17:16

So when I came back from that, I started looking at it and I started to gather data. Just, lockdown was coming. So I was talking to women, talking to friends, we were having conversations on Zoom and I started to build quantitative and qualitative data. I set up a survey monkey, do you struggle to find clothes to fit? At the whole like questions. And then I interviewed people. We went into people's wardrobes what do you wear? So I just started to get a real sense of, outside of my own view, what other people thought.

Julia R: 17:54

And then when in between lockdowns or when lockdowns finished, I'd invite people around here and I'd put a rail of clothes together and I'd talk to them and say talk to me about what you like, what you don't like. And it was quite shocking what I discovered, really shocking actually, how bad it is. And then I started looking at everything, because everything there is about sustainability and I thought the whole industry is looking to try and find fabrics that are sustainable, make sure things don't go to landfill. And I kept thinking but you're looking at this through the wrong end of the telescope. What you need to do is, if you made clothes that were good and fitted, then people would wear them, they wouldn't need to put them, throw them out, they wouldn't need to go to landfill, they wouldn't need to end up on the sail rail, you wouldn't need to oversupply. And if you could just alter that by a few percentage points, you could make a massive difference to sustainability, to how resources on the planet and the other big thing that came across in all the research I did was the impact that having poor fitted or not being able to find things to fit you and look good and feel nice and last and wash, the impact it had on your self-esteem.

Julia R: 19:08

And I'd grown women women in their 50s were very affluent just sitting in my sitting room crying their eyes out going I hate shopping, I'm fat, I'm frumpy, I drink too much wine. Everything was negative. We even had one woman say to us I wear what is least bad. So it went on and this was just manifesting itself. You realise? So? Then there's a research company called Cantor. I don't know if you know them really good, well known.

Julia R: 19:41

We used to work with Matiesco and they contacted me and I had a bit of a chuckle because I thought, well, I don't have £100,000 to spend on a research project with you. And they said to me we really like what you're doing, we think it's amazing, and the retailers aren't listening. So I said, well, I don't have any money to give you. And they said but we've got info, data we can give you. We'll give it to you for free.

Martin R: 20:04

Very good.

Julia R: 20:06

So of course that endorsed what I was trying to say. So we've got Cantor data that says 92% of the UK population cannot easily find clothes to fit or good quality when you get over a certain age over 40s, over 50s market. They feel so unrepresented and it's a real problem. And yeah, it's the fastest growing demographic market in this country and all over Europe. So you think, why are the retailers ignoring this? So we then went from there, basically started.

Julia R: 20:41

I started working with a pattern cutter this is all a bit of a hobby really, because I still don't sort of consultancy work whenever a chairman rolls on the side and obviously this wasn't paying, but it just manifested itself and went from there and then. So then I got together with a couple of pattern cutters and started looking at how things are cut and made and on different shapes. And when I had this is a bit odd, but when I had women sort of undressing and I was testing things on them to get their opinions about things and looking at why things didn't fit on them, I started to form an idea about their different body shapes. And you've had, you know, you had good old, traditional pear shaped, apple shaped, and I thought, god, why does someone want to be called a piece of fruit? It's actually quite offensive, isn't it?

Julia R: 21:32

You know, for a start, and I said, and from the research I'd done, I could see that there were more shapes, particularly for the target group I was looking at was just women over 40. Which I think is grossly underrepresented in retail globally, and I then came up with this theory of these diamond shapes. So we registered seven diamond shapes of women. We then set about what was really interesting. Tom got involved in the business then and then we met up with a data scientist where things started to get really interesting then, because I presented to the company that he was working for at the time what I was trying to do and I was trying to fundraise at the time.

Julia R: 22:21

This data scientist twigged really quickly and then, picked up with me afterwards and said we should be using AI and big data to gather your data, to prove your concept. And so we've been. The last year we've been on this journey. We invested in a scanning machine from Taiwan. State of the art, takes 10,000 measurement points of every body.

Julia R: 22:42

Tom's the expert setting it up, I do all the other stuff encouraging people to strip off. You get down to your underwear and it takes about six seconds to scan your body. You get an avatar of your body. It's all done on an app. You get an avatar of your body and you get all the. It's a 3D vision of yourself. It's not the most flattering. I think as technology develops, it will get better. We then take it's all GDPR compliant. We then take the 10,000 measurement points, feed it into a giant big spreadsheet, effectively, and then what that throws out is patterns in body shape and body size, and it's fascinating, absolutely fascinating. The industry thinks that if you are 5 foot, you are petite, with small boobs and small bottom and standard legs, standard inside leg. The reality of it is you could be fat round the middle, big boobs, big and the same. If you go to someone 6 foot, a woman that's 6 foot tall. Yes, you could argue, it's quite rare. You immediately think that they would be bigger, all over but, it's not necessarily the case.

Martin R: 23:59

No, if I go for my wife sometimes and she has to go to a petite range if she can, but even then if it's a trouser suit, they're made for someone 7 foot tall even though it's in a petite range, which is ridiculous.

Julia R: 24:10

It is absolutely. Because I understand the industry and I understand the process that the commercial teams go through to develop product. I know where the pinch points are now. Now you could argue that you can't have all the colours in all the sizes to suit everybody. But that's the beauty of what we're trying to do. We're trying to say there's patterns appearing in this. If we gather enough data, yes, we might not be able to An organisation. They may turn around and say I just want the data for very small, for anyone under 5 foot or whatever. Just give me that and I will use that so we can see.

Julia R: 24:52

We now see really very clear patterns and we secured a small government grant to start the project going and we've got the data. Scientist is now on board, so it's given us a different. It's basically taking what was an idea and now saying let's use technology to prove it. And we've now just commenced talking to some retailers to test the software. But we've very clear.

Julia R: 25:20

We've got enough data now for six clear body shapes for women between the ages of 14 and 16. But it's a bit like ancestrycom. I don't know if you've ever done that. We're thinking about it in that way that With ancestrycom. You give them your DNA, they say you're X% this, x% that, and you come Chances are you came from this part of the world. As they gather more and more data, they'll come back to you and say, oh, your profile has changed because we've got more data, we can see more.

Julia R: 25:52

And we're saying that if we, when we get this, when we get this right, the more people we can scan, the more data we get, the more typical we can see. And actually we should be able to say to a retailer you live in the Greater Manchester area, the average age, what age do you want? You want between Women between the age of 14 and 16, the Manchester area. We will be able to tell you what shape they are generally, how tall they are, which shape, which dress size they are. You can then send your stock or design your stock to that area, knowing that you're more likely to sell it to them and it's going to fit them and they're going to like it. Then if you would just randomly say I'll just make this and hope for the best.

Martin R: 26:48

So what the opportunity is there I mean, you're talking to a couple of retailers to obviously provide them with the data. Will you also be doing things like getting them to have scanners in their shops and feed the data back to you?

Julia R: 26:59

Yeah, there's a three-stage approach to it. We can either give them the mannequin avatar, the mannequin, the digital mannequins of the data that we've collected and said your brand is X, we know your customers are this. Here are the shape of what we think your customers are. That's stage one. We provide the avatar so their design team can then take the avatar and say does this product? We'll show you some pictures. I will show you some pictures of what we mean. The second stage is we will be able to do a project for you and we will be able to take the avatar the mannequins avatars and we will be able to help design product and we can test product and we can tell you how many people in area or whatever. And then the third thing is we can do scanning events using your customer data and build the database and then be able to give you really, really honed and refined data on that.

Martin R: 27:59

This must be extremely powerful for them.

Julia R: 28:01

Surely they get to yeah and it's interesting because most retailers are not looking at it from this way. They're looking at it. They've designed the product, it's hanging in their store or online and they are then trying to get the customer to use their phone to video themselves so that they can put the right customer with the right size.

Martin R: 28:24

Right.

Julia R: 28:25

But what I'm saying is the sizes aren't right in the first place.

Julia R: 28:30

Yeah, the shapes aren't right. It's interesting when you look at a grading of a. Your wife will understand this. If you take a little some ender as well. You take the grading of a shirt, a blouse Lots of women have trouble with a blouse escaping here. Now I've told you this. You're going to see loads of women pulling their tops down like this when you go to the pub or whatever. And the problems are that if you are a lot so you go from a 10, 12, 14, because the grading is incorrect. So if they've graded it from a 10 upwards, you get to a 14, 16. They've graded it like that.

Martin R: 29:09

Yeah.

Julia R: 29:10

But the chances are your shoulders don't get bigger as you get fat around the middle.

Martin R: 29:14

No.

Julia R: 29:16

But according to why they grade things, they grade it all up. So you see lots of people with the shirts all hanging off the shoulders are all tight in places, not tight everywhere, but tight in the wrong places, because they're not accounting for the fact that a human body has put on critical mass through age and whatever diet In certain parts of their body, not all over the number of women that I, you know that I measured originally before we used the scanning machine that had, you know, a bit round the middle, quite an ample bosom, no bottom, skinny legs and skinny arms.

Martin R: 29:53

Yeah, yeah.

Julia R: 29:54

So they're all finding clothes because they've graded it up and it's the same for a man. You know, if you put on a jacket, if it fits you around here, it might all be baggy on the shoulders. So if you can prove that X percentage of the population are X or Y shape and you should be able to say, right, 10% of 20% of my product range should be in this shape then yeah, I mean you're absolutely right, because with me I'm fairly broad-shouldered for my body's shape and weight, so I have to get different trousers for different jackets.

Martin R: 30:26

I can't get them off the peg suit because it won't fit me.

Julia R: 30:28

No, but if you were scanned and it came up that there were 100,000 men like you in the UK with your body shape, then that's worth somebody making something for somebody. I suppose what we're saying is, in this day and age, where we can gather data and use technology, it should be easier to do it and therefore it's not bespoke. We're not talking about it because when people are looking at bespoke, it's so expensive. We even work in Manchester looking at 3D printing of. They're working very, very hard trying to get 3D printing to work in clothing. It's very difficult and they've managed a few accessories but it will come.

Julia R: 31:14

But it's still too expensive and you still need to mass produce in order to get a scale, but imagine if you knew what the shape of the population was, where people sat and their age and their postcode and their ethnicity. Imagine you had all that data like anstestrycom, and you could really so are the retailers changing their attitude?

Martin R: 31:35

because they were sticking their head in the same before, but are they now embracing it? They're having.

Julia R: 31:41

I mean we're in early talks for the moment but they're having to because they are having to, because their profit margins are so squeezed and there's such pressure on sustainability, the problems with landfill waste. I mean it's generally regarded that the clothing industry makes 30% more stock than it needs to. So you imagine some cynics will argue well, if you take that 30% out, what you're going to do with it, where all those people get jobs and it'll move on. There's lots of things that it'll develop, they'll move into other industries. It happens. That's evolution. So I think if you imagine if you could reduce the supply by 30%, it's a massive impact on landfill, on raw materials resources, water, you know, to make a pair of jeans is really intensive with water and, yeah, there's lots of, there's lots of really bad. All the chemicals that are used. Yes, we, they reckon a lot of the cotton. Where the cotton's grown, it's causing Floods and things like that.

Julia R: 32:56

So yeah, so there's loads and loads to do. We we actually were invited To take our scanner to cop 28 and we it was all a bit too late and trying to get it on the plane to Dubai, etc. But there's possibilities here we do the next one.

Martin R: 33:11

Tell me what cop 28 is for the initials.

Julia R: 33:14

Oh right, cop 28 is the. It's this initiative where all the countries get together to try and save the planet.

Martin R: 33:22

Effectively.

Julia R: 33:23

I think there's been 28 of them and I don't think they've achieved what they wanted to achieve, so there's gonna be 29th one.

Martin R: 33:30

They will fly to Dubai to do it.

Julia R: 33:32

Honestly, don't even get me started on it, but but if it could get what we're doing out there in terms of what we're trying to do, because because I'm not trying to Stop things going to landfill, what I'm trying to do is don't make it in the first place if it doesn't work.

Martin R: 33:46

Exactly, exactly. And do you see that? Bringing Manufacturing costs down and then retail prices down to make them more competitive?

Julia R: 33:54

That's interesting. If I think, if there was less waste out there and 30 percent less supply, it'd be interesting to know what it did to the supply and demand. I Don't think prices should come down. I think quality should go up.

Martin R: 34:10

Yes, yeah, indeed. What do you see the next three years being there?

Julia R: 34:16

I'd like to see, I'd like to see the bulk of British retailers embracing this or Thinking about it in this way, and then we'd like to. I'd like to take it, take it globally. I think we've had a couple of conversations with people in the States and they've been really, really keen. We've got to get it right here. I'd like to see it change the change the way the industry works and again.

Martin R: 34:43

The body shapes in different countries vary a lot as well, though.

Julia R: 34:47

Yeah, I, you know we were talking the other day. You know, could this go on? Could this be used in? You know, you can do these. Go and do these assessments now to get yourself scanned for health and stuff like that. Could your you know, could your avatar of your body be used to help predict? You know?

Martin R: 35:06

heart attacks or whatever.

Julia R: 35:07

Yeah or yeah, anything like that. You know anything like that with you could be 20 years late, but could your body mass index and seeing your, could it help? Could it help the medical industry in some way? I don't know. We were talking about it and there's possibilities there.

Martin R: 35:23

Yes, so there's great opportunities there. How do you see the next immediate year then panning out because you're Raising funds?

Julia R: 35:31

Yeah, I mean it will. It will light all of this. And you know this, everything will come down to whether we can raise funds, whether we can get it off the ground or not. We need a couple of retailers to pick it up On an experimental level and help and work with us on it, on perfecting it, and then I think, once we've got but it will come down to money, so it will come down to cash, whether we've got, whether we've got the cash to do it or not.

Martin R: 35:55

Well, you've got the right contact. Yes, I should be able to get the retailer you say that you say that.

Julia R: 36:00

But I mean, I've Tacked a few of them up and you've got to remember that I'm not not I'm knocking on a bit now, but lots of them have either retired or are no longer with us, and some of the ones that I know. So it's a bit more challenging and I think also, so many retailers are in such Deep pickle at the moment. It's the last thing, it's what they need.

Julia R: 36:23

But, they're dealing with the day-to-day try to put the fire out, roll them as you know, yeah, with your background, they're living hand-to-mouth and so there's very little budget for technology. And when they talk about everyone, you know the buzzword at the moment is AI. If you talk about that, that, they are more focused on how do I stop it going to landfill, or, you know, before I get fined by the European Union for Waste and stuff like that. So I, they've, they've to me, they're looking at it down the wrong end of the telescope. Start Make the right product in the first place and then it doesn't sit in people's wall drives, it doesn't end up in landfill, it doesn't end up on the sail rail. Yeah, I was asked to speak at her forum the other day. You know it was interesting how there were a lot of IT directors at this at this dinner. It was one of these Chassam house full dinners and they were. Most of the people were had a tech background and when I told you know, it's talking about what, what we were doing, never even looked at that. They're, they're, they are, they look exactly to your analogy. They are, you know, just dealing with that.

Julia R: 37:30

Yeah, and I think that's gonna be one of our challenges is to get people. All we need is one. We just need one, and we've done it without. We've got a small collection of clothes on our little website. It's not, it doesn't generate anything, but it's to its test products. We've tested products, because my next I've got another thing after this is fabrics. I you know most of fabrics are just shockingly bad. So my next thing I've do, but we've developed Three of our own fabrics now. It's just sustainable and will last and we'll. And I'm just because I just that's the next bit.

Martin R: 38:05

I'd like to start doing your own range as well. We've got.

Julia R: 38:08

We have got a small range at the moment on our website. So, yeah, we've got a small range and we're using that as test product to test our theory on shapes and sizes. Yeah, we've got Test product which would test it. But and we've had some great traction with it it's an amazing feeling to know that you've made a designed, made a product and then you put it on a person and you see the difference in their face.

Julia R: 38:38

Yeah they've found something to fit. So we've had done, we've had and I've seen that, you know, seen that people and it's and it's great to see. We haven't got everything right and we haven't got. There's a long way to go, but at least we know now the theory and the foundations of it are right. Yeah, we just now need to scale it.

Martin R: 38:58

And so what are you looking for an investor To bring to the table in terms of cash?

Julia R: 39:03

Yeah, we don't. Um, yes, that's what we're looking for somebody probably. I mean now it would be great to have a tech investor and which is that could bring some of those skills, because I'm not a techie person, george, obviously is Tom a little bit. Yeah, it'd be great to have somebody that knew how to scale a tech business. You know, we've got the skills now between us as a management team, we're pretty strong now.

Julia R: 39:32

We've got myself with my background, tom with his background and George, who's you know, phd, cambridge educated Data scientist, and we have another guy and we've got a couple of other people that we're working with. But we need now With cash, we need now to scale it and do it. We've proven the concept interest. We had an interesting call with. We got Innovate UK grant, which Tom managed to he did all the paperwork for, because it is a nightmare and the, the chap, the engineer that was Sponsoring us and we had to report back to to know that the money was spent wisely, etc.

Julia R: 40:12

We had a call with him before Christmas is a closing part of the project and he said I've got 16 businesses in this cohort, he said, and three of them are outstanding. He said this is one of them. He said this is this could go really far. So we then we know we've got someone like that that believes in us. So we know, we know we're onto something. It's just finding an investor now and hopefully, if we can get the test case done with a couple of retailers, will have real proof of concept and so maybe the retailers invest in it, or do you think they're the most Avenue?

Julia R: 40:45

they may do, but it comes back to the conversation about our retailers really focusing on yeah on. That is should it be a tech? You know the technology. The money that's floating around to help support technology businesses Is a lot more than you know. Everyone's shying away from retail. You just don't invest in retail, but some of the big retailers may, and so we probably need to start talking to them once we've got proof of concept.

Martin R: 41:14

I suppose they should do, because the way that the market is going away from the high street to the, you know, online it's yeah it's stabilized now. What do you think?

Julia R: 41:24

hasn't grown at all. Hasn't grown in the last couple of years. I think it's reached its peak. I Think it's commodity based. I think people still want shopping experience. There's money being made in investing in high streets and things like that, now bringing them back to almost like community based experiences. So you don't just go to a Lakeside or a blue water to shop for clothing you, you go to your local high street and you can have Something to eat, something to drink. Yeah, perhaps in visit cinema or it's got to be multi entertainment.

Julia R: 41:59

It can't be just about buying fashion or buying commodity items. It has to be an experience. I think there's a lot of work to be done. I do think the councils have a lot of work to do on creating environments, pedestrianized, clean, you know, nice facilities, reasonably priced, or or Reasonably priced parking or no costs at all for parking, I think would encourage people back in. I think there is still, you know still a lot of the high street that is very derelict.

Martin R: 42:33

But yeah, I think you're right and Maybe have the full homeless on the streets as well and give them some facilities to live in. Oh my god.

Julia R: 42:41

It needs to be. You know we need all those kids that have studied anthropology at school to suddenly you know, to suddenly use their skills and use their degrees to to, to create this in, but you know, to create environments For everyone to live in.

Martin R: 42:57

Yeah, I'm honestly and Not.

Julia R: 42:58

You know, we're very divided at the moment. We I think we're very polarized, the haves and the have nots.

Martin R: 43:07

I'm fortunate we're not as bad as America, but we're right, yeah, we do tend to follow them. So I think that really wraps up, wraps it all up. There's no need to be so much of a person. I mean all the risks for me to say is a massive Thank you to you for your time?

Julia R: 43:20

No, no, no, it's really nice to meet you.

Martin R: 43:22

Thank you. I love you to see the old gaff again. There's a real pleasure meeting with Julia yesterday and To find out about her journey to date and her plans for the business for the future. I'm sure that she, tom and her team will achieve great things. To find out more about what Julia and her team are doing, visit their website at wwwrayry wwwey-housecom.