From Passion to Product: Jerry Lawson’s Unplanned, Resilience-Fueled Journey to Building Frog Bikes

In this episode of Your Mind Your Business, host Carina McLeod sits down with Jerry Lawson, Chief Frog and co-founder of Frog Bikes, to dive into the unplanned, resilience-fueled journey from corporate life to building a £10 million children's bike manufacturing business that sells in 50+ countries.

Chapters:

[00:00:31] Introduction to Jerry Lawson and Frog Bikes
[00:02:58] From Corporate to Entrepreneur - The Pivotal Moment
[00:11:48] Reality Check - Unexpected Global Demand and Challenges
[00:19:36] Crisis Management - Fires, Tax Investigations, and Resilience
[00:31:03] Managing Growth, Competition, and Team Responsibility
[00:42:47] Work-Life Balance and Partnership Dynamics
[00:48:35] Key Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

💡 Topics Covered:

✅ The transition from 20 years in corporate (Tesco, Amazon, John Lewis) to starting a children's bike company
✅ How a simple problem - heavy kids' bikes - sparked a £10 million business idea
✅ Research-led product development with Brunel University to understand children's unique needs
✅ The reality of manufacturing challenges, from factory fires to customs delays
✅ Building resilience through major setbacks including tax investigations and Brexit
✅ Scaling from 3 people to 100+ employees across 50+ countries without external funding
✅ Partnership with Team Sky and maintaining innovation leadership
✅ Sustainability innovations including 25% post-consumer recycled aluminium frames
✅ Managing the emotional rollercoaster of entrepreneurship with your life partner
✅ The importance of expert advisors and knowing when to ask for help

🔥 "You have to assume everything is gonna go wrong. There is a possibility that something will go wrong... you have this risk register, whether official or just in your mind."

💪 "You've just got to have total resilience... assume everybody's an idiot. So you ride defensive riding."

🎯 "We wanna make bikes that kids wanna ride, stores want to sell, and parents want to buy."

📌 If you're considering leaving corporate life to solve a real problem, or you want the unfiltered truth about building a manufacturing business from scratch without external funding, this episode reveals the grit behind entrepreneurial success.

🔔 Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell to stay updated with more episodes of Your Mind Your Business!

Discover more about Frog Bikes: https://frogbikes.com 

Follow Frog Bikes:
https://facebook.com/frogbikes 
https://instagram.com/frogbikes 

#Entrepreneurship #Manufacturing #FrogBikes #BusinessResilience #YourMindYourBusiness #KidsBikes #Innovation #Sustainability #BusinessPodcast #Entrepreneurs #EntrepreneurPodcast #CorporateToStartup #ManufacturingBusiness #UKBusiness

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Transcript

So you have to assume, and this is what we've learned, everything is gonna go wrong. There is a possibility that something will go wrong. It doesn't mean you can get it right of the solution, but you have this risk register, whether official or just in your mind to go, okay, what could go wrong? So we didn't expect the fire that was never on our list, but we did assume a container won't fall off.
The difference is we would've had four containers on a boat. But no, they all went up in.
Welcome to your mind, your business, the podcast that dives into the real grit of entrepreneurship. I'm your host, Carina McLeod, entrepreneur and fitness fanatic, and today we have a special guest, Jerry Lawson from Frog Bikes.
Hello.
Welcome Jerry.
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited to talk to you today. I was trying to figure out how long it's been since.
We actually last spoke so,
in our old Amazon days.
In our old Amazon days. So yes. And
I decided to go to the dark side to another business.
To another business. Yeah, definitely. So it's gonna be an interesting conversation today 'cause both from that corporate, where we started in that corporate world and you've been very successful since with your business.
So I guess let's start and share with the audience a bit about who Jerry is today. And then I'm gonna hit rewind and go right back to the start of your journey.
Okay. So I am officially titled Chief Frog. I run a business, created a business with my wife called Frog Bikes. We manufacture, let's say we design, manufacture, and sell.
I. Lightweight kids, bikes, all research led, we sell them into about 50 countries, generally into independent bike dealers. and we're in about 1400 independent dealers in those countries. Turnover just short of 10 million, but turnover has been as much as 15 million.
Wow. firstly, congratulations.
That's incredible because it's not just about selling a product there. You've innovated and created a product from scratch and not only sold in one marketplace, as you say, over 50.
Yes. probably a few less at the moment. There's always difficulties. I know we're gonna talk about some of the difficulties, but there was a war in Russia, so we pulled outta there.
There's some ugly tariffs happening in the US and that's caused the problem. So there's always trials and tribulations of the business. But yeah, we sell in lots of countries.
Yeah. and
manufacturing in the uk so I shouldn't forget that. So we employ just short of about 70 people in the country at the moment and people outside of the uk, and we're manufacturing well.
Yeah.
Amazing. So I'm guessing there's a huge story behind all of that, and partly down to the fact that you started in the co corporate world. let's hit rewind and go back to, I guess what that real pivotal moment was for you to actually take that plunge and go into. Entrepreneurship.
So if I could take right back when I was a kid, I started a paper round really early on, fundamentally because my dad wanted his papers delivered on a Sunday and the paper boy was not around.
So I was always a cyclist. So that was just played to my cycling opportunity and that was my way of demonstrating, okay, I can earn some cash and do two things that I love. Earning cash obviously, and riding my bike. I then had a. Proper career. Let's talk about that. But both Shelly and I grew up in a household where the family were entrepreneurs in a sense.
So Shelly's, so my wife's. Family ran a kitchen business, together a little thing called Hampshire Kitchens, and they just delivered kitchens into people houses and helped design it. Shelly's mother was designer, Shelly's father managed the whole process from my point of view. My father had been a lawyer and then decided to run some businesses and had run a car component manufacturer and all this sort of stuff.
Being an entrepreneur from that point of view just happened in our household. From our point of view, we weren't even thinking about it. We were trying to solve a problem. So the problem was, I'm a cyclist. Every bike that I tried to find for our young kids, and they were really young, was heavy than my bike.
And I thought, there's gotta be a better solution to this. I'd had a, I was still in a corporate, I was in the John Lewis partnership and was frustrated that I had a three-year-old and couldn't find a solution. So I went and talked to bike shops and they all talked about a brand, but they couldn't sell.
And at the time I thought, that's a bit ridiculous. Why can't you buy on the bike shop? Omnichannel wasn't really a thing. buying online or through a phone call was fine, but it didn't feel right for a bike. I got one of these bikes, felt it, talked to a store about was there a concept if we created something and then sold it through stores.
Every store I talked to said it would be a brilliant idea. So that was not really us, I want to be an entrepreneur. I wanna set up a business. This was, I'm solving a problem and there'll be other people who want similar solution. and that's what it started. I left a.
Corporate job. Did a bit of consulting, designed a bike, sorry, designed lots of bikes and then went out on a sourcing expedition. So this is 2012. Then went on the Olympics, still preparing, didn't know we were gonna launch anything, didn't know what it was gonna look like, and the minimum water quantity we thought was probably a year's worth of stock.
and was slightly nervous. 'cause suddenly we had to put our hands in our pockets to get. Some stock of some bikes. and then we just sent, it's a year. If it all goes horribly long, it's only 3000 bikes, which to the scheme of things sounds like a lot, hadn't even thought about where we stored them.
Had no plan about actually wanna do it. So found somewhere to store them. Pushed the button, order 3000 bikes. and. Went over to see production to check they were exactly what they wanted to, obviously there's a whole sourcing process, that gets to that. and then when they turned up, the warehouse we'd rented wasn't big enough.
So the first thing of however much you plan, we didn't plan enough. we had to borrow somebody else to say, can we borrow your space as well? And that was it, We've had 3000 bikes sitting in a warehouse, and so we then. Decided we'd launch the product.
Wow. Amazing. So you started off in the corporate world, so was that, that quite a big step?
I know you mentioned about being brought up in an entrepreneurial environment, but having, how many years were you in that corporate world before then? You were like, I'm designing a bike and gonna make this happen.
So 14 years in one business, five in another, three in another. So 20 or 20 years.
Yeah. In corporates. and it, as I said, is this wasn't a, I want to set up a business. This was, I wanna solve a problem. And from my point of view, the biggest thing is I, was lucky in one of the businesses I'd set up new areas and I'd. Been in a couple of startups, but the advantage we had as a startup in behind a big business where the shareholders were huge, there was lots of cash.
one, one business I did was a startup. All of the shareholders committed to putting 5 million pounds into it, and you suddenly think, oh, that's pretty cool, or $5 million. We didn't have any of that idea. We had no idea, had no plan of, okay, how are we gonna fund it? Didn't even have a bank account until about.
September and we were launching in February. We didn't know we were launching in February, so hadn't really thought it through. And we were from a world where everything was planned. My wife was a consultant, as a training. So everything you think about and we had thought about it, but only in the sense of can we launch it?
What does the brand look like? And we had some key objectives about the product and the brand, but not about. Much else. How are we gonna launch it? Oh, we'll find a trade show to go to and those sort of things and we'll get consumers interested. But it was, and we weren't even gonna go outside of the uk.
It was just, okay, we'll do the UK
Yeah.
And it'll be niche. so it was fascinating journey. And we're still, I'd say it every day is a school day. and people say that philosophically, we say it from point of view, there is always a new learning, whether it's a 10 tran. Truck coming to hit us and we'll talk about some of those.
Or whether, I sat in a board meeting yesterday and everybody said to me, fundamentally, you're too approachable. We need you to not be as approachable and give a little bit less time so you can get onto the strategy thinking. I've never been told that.
Oh wow. Yeah. But
that's why you have an independent group of non-execs who can give you the hard cheese.
Yeah, definitely. And it's really interesting that you say like you're You had that more of a planned life and then all of a sudden you are launching a bike brand. And I guess a lot there comes down to the fact of the passion, right? In terms of, and you were solving a problem that it's almost like everything else gets put to one side because I guess you were believing in the solution that you created
and the end goal was, the important thing is we would like a bike that is specifically designed for kids that is lightweight and that those are things and.
That they are interested in. So that was our end goal. It was great brand that actually appealed to kids. And if anybody looks us up, we've got a frog now. It's a splat if you look at it in some ways. But some kids think the frog's been run over. So the older kids when we did it in red, went, oh, that frog's been run over.
Others just think it's, oh, it's left, its mark. It's so sweet. And so it appeals to differently but no negative connotations about frogs and that was what we were trying to solve. having a great product. We end up. Working with Brunell University to research kids. So we put kids on a stationary rig, to understand what's different about kids.
We all know they're different, but hand eye coordination, their strength, physical ability and those sort of things come into it and made the bike very different. And obviously weight, the weight is very. Important as a rider, if it's too heavy, you can't push it, let alone ride it uphill. If it's too heavy for the parent, they can't put it on the roof or in the back of the car.
So we, need to make it lightweight. The works for both the rider and the parent.
Yeah.
So those were the things we were solving. Little did we know we had. We had a whole other things that by running a business and we'd obviously been involved in strategic parts of businesses, but sitting there going, we're gonna commit our own cash, because you don't go fund for funding until you know you've actually got it.
We still haven't got any funding, so we've managed it ourselves, but you also have. No bank's gonna touch you. by getting a bank account was, we had to go to one on the high street 'cause they were there and actually we're gonna put some money in and then if the bank business we're gonna pull the money outta it.
So
that's incredible. And the fact that you say you've, grown without any backing is incredible given the revenue. That you highlighted, that you've achieved. That's amazing. And I guess then, so you're, starting this, company and you've, you, you've got, you've done your research, you've ordered the bikes, but I'm guessing, that sounds quite like just saying it like that doesn't give it enough, I'm trying to think of the right words.
Yes. Basically. So let's start talking about, I'm guessing that journey was not as probably. Easy as you might have thought in your mind when placing that order,
it was impossible. the challenges that come along, you can never expect them, So the first one is a positive challenge was when we launched, as I said, we'd had 3000 bikes.
We thought that was a year's work space, stock. We couldn't keep up with demand, and we weren't planning to go outside the uk. so our whole thing was two to three years were look outside of the uk so we were appealing to people who, parents who like cycling so like-minded, they like cycling, understood the difference between lightweight and the benefit.
and so we thought this was niche. when we went and actually launched, within the first month, we had almost run outta stock. Wow. And that was the first difficulty, positive difficulty. 'cause suddenly we had a lot of cash, but then we had the long lead times. and we weren't manufacturing at that time, so we had to think through is, how do we solve that?
That's a different problem. Now we're running outta stock. How much stock do we need to commit to? How do we fund it? How do we get cash around us? And all those sort of things. but everything was hard. We had to pass regulations and the regulations, so yes, I say we launched, in order to launch, we had to test every single component to make sure it passed the international standard to make sure that it was safe.
and we were already making things specifically for ourselves from the research, and it was like, okay, this is getting complicated. And at the time there was three of us, I was sourcing, buying, traveling, designing the product and trying to do everything. We had a customer service person. Oh, we had a finance person, and then my wife was doing the marketing and that was it.
And you just think there wasn't much to the business. We were trying to keep our cost down. and just lots of things happened as we tried to grow.
Do you ever think that you'd bitten on more than you can chew? Like at the start you're thinking 3000 and then all of a sudden you've sold nearly 3000 in one month.
What does that mean in terms of lead time capital that you need to put into the business in order to get more stock?
yes. If you're starting again, the business case or the MBAs would sit there and go the, you need a proper plan. You need to think about best case and worst case scenario. But at the time, we were just.
High on the fact that people liked the product and the brand, but then we found everybody was talking about it. And so within the first month, and this is the ridiculous, we had someone in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark contact us saying, we, we would like to buy your product. So we didn't say no, we. And then the next thing is we think we could help you get it into this market.
We think what you've created is absolutely perfect, and we're just thinking we weren't expecting that either. and we hadn't created a new infrastructure to export. have that sort of volume. It is just. It was inconceivable. So those are the positive things. The negative things is we had to go through the whole process again, and it was just me to go and spend some time in some factories in different places to say how do we get the components?
I was working with Brunell University and trying to get more data out. How can we make the product and we were trying to keep everything on a shoestring and everybody talks about we didn't go out for external investment. Because we wanted to manage it and control it. Not that we wanted to only be the only shareholders, nothing like that is who was gonna fund us.
how much time would it take us to go and find funding? We didn't know how much funding we needed. We, all these things comes into it and you just think, okay, we could have sat down quietly. But we've just created something and everybody wanted it, so we weren't gonna say no. so there's some good things, but there's a lot of things that we just didn't expect.
Yeah. things that just completely outta the ordinary. Yeah. that you can't, we had some great help. We had, there was a government funded, Consultant who came and worked with us and he gave us different ideas and challenged us. So there's lots of positives, but the setbacks, huge amount of setbacks all the time.
Yeah. And, I guess you are, in a corporate world you've got security, you're out your comfort zone sometimes, but there is that comfort element. I'm guessing you're completely out your comfort zone now you're, you are touching things that you'd never have dealt with in the past.
Yeah.
You have to be a jack of all trades and you definitely are not a, you must have none. from one day I'm out trying to sell and sign up a sales team who. Think on the side, do I really want to get involved with a startup? I've got a steady business. And finally we persuade them. There's three of them are still with us, so that's positive in the uk.
so the other side is we're trying to pass regulations. We've got something pulled at customs. we had one container pulled at customs at one stage, and we're just thinking, why? And it was just a random check and you just think, now we have no stock to sell. Because the container of stock hasn't turned up.
and then it, then we're running outta cash. So we go to the bank and try and have a conversation and saying, can we borrow some money? And it's, we don't help small businesses like you and that, and this is the thing is we were. In a big bank who just saw us in their local branch, hadn't taken the next step.
It took us 18 months of serious trade before somebody sensible came to us and went, I'm new in this area. You are too big for me. You need to see these guys. And then suddenly we had a good relationship. But you just think. for a starting business, you go to your local bank, they're not gonna support you.
They might have a startup loan of 5,000 that would've bought us about 10 bucks. it's not really gonna support the business and all these things. We were lucky. We had our own funds to fund this. And obviously been self financing all the way through. I wouldn't advise that to anybody.
I would just not put anything on the line. Oh no. And they want personal guarantees every time. They want to give you a bit of support, even if they've got the stock behind them and you just think, what am I putting on the line every time? They wanted the house and we just said, no, you can't have that as collateral.
That's. That's us. and, rightly enough they want collateral. 'cause they look at, and this is probably the advantage of a bank, is they look at what it, if, what happens if it all goes wrong.
Yeah.
And we weren't thinking that we were high on the adrenaline and the fact that everybody loved our product.
So I have to be really careful 'cause it sounds like it's fantastic, but. It was nonstop. There was, you never let up. Yeah. You're always thinking about, what am I doing? How many people, how many mouth I've got to feed? And slowly the business was growing with people and the problems were getting bigger.
So the problems were, I. Sometimes very simple is what happens if the factory has a problem. And this is before we opened our own factory. what happens if a container falls off the back of a boat? You always hear that and you think, that's another white town, so we've gotta build an insurance policy.
And you are talking to an insurance company. I know nothing about insurance. I know a lot about insurance. Now I knew nothing about insurance of the car and house insurance. And it was the challenge about, okay, so they ask you what cargo insurance do you want? What? What happens? How much do you want? what?
How much do you wanna pay as an excess? And you're thinking, I don't know this, I'm not the expert, that's why I'm coming to a broker to help me. And you're thinking, now I've gotta pay money out. I hope never to need it, but I'm paying out a lot, of money. And then we had a fire in one of the factories.
We are using brand new product. We're about to launch completely out in flames and the insurance policy. Covered some of it.
Wow. And you
think, why did I have an insurance policy?
So
we're about to launch a new road bike. Oh, let Road just had to launch a road bike specifically for kids. Worked for five year olds.
The whole factory gone.
My goodness. Things that you don't expect, like you, you mentioned about the container being stuck at customs, the fire and everything. Oh. How do you, manage that? Because that, that, that takes. Yes, there's a skill set needed to be able to do certain tasks, but that's gonna take some kind of mental, emotional toll
resilience.
you have to be. I wouldn't say hardnosed. You've just got to have total resilience. You've got to assume, and I'm gonna use an analogy, when you learn to ride a motorbike and it's the best thing you are told, assume everybody's an idiot. So you ride defensive riding and it's really important. The word is.
Defensive, not offensive. So you ride in the middle of the road at every opportunity on a motorbike, and then when there's traffic, you filter between them at a certain speed and all those sort of things. So you have to assume. And this is what we've learned. Everything is gonna go wrong. There is a possibility that something will go wrong.
It doesn't mean you can get it right of the solution, but you have this risk register, whether official or just in your mind to go, okay, what could go wrong? So we didn't expect the fire.
That
was never on our list, but we did assume a container mightn't fall off. The difference is we would've had four containers on a boat, but they all went up in flames.
so fortunately we hadn't told people, and this, our learning was we don't tell people about a new launch until we've actually got the product. And so we lost the whole of stock, spent the time trying to find a new factory to do this particular product, all this sort of stuff. but you just have to be resilient to go, ugh, we'll get through it.
and that's probably an attitude of through my whole life, is. There's a barrier, you're gonna go over it. So whether that was doing a triathlon, doing an Ironman, doing a marathon, all those sort of things, you think, actually I can find a solution to this. and I'd say my corporate world taught me that as well.
I ran shops and. We had a shoplifter and you just think, okay, I'm gonna deal with a shoplifter. So I ran with a friend of mine who was running a different shop around the corner. Competitor. We caught the shoplifter, didn't think actually he might have a knife. You just solve the problem there and then, and so what I'd say is we have to be in our business.
Quite resilient and the advantage now is there's a lot more of us and so you can delegate to people to take on things, but at the time when we first launched, we couldn't do that. It was just us.
It's fascinating how you've gone into the fitness part and you mentioned about the marathon and triathlons and that, because I think that takes mental resilience.
And doing that, I guess you are applying that resilience that you teach yourself when doing the, those crazy activities. And I know you've got one you mentioned already on, on Sunday. do you find that helps you almost carry that over to. your business world, it's probably
both help each other.
Because, the sporting challenges gave you time away.
They also allow you time to not be so focused that some of the things you've been thinking out just happen in the brain. and, interesting. I was talking to my daughter who's just done her last A level and it was paper three of biology.
And she said the advice they were given was. Go to the essay questions as you start, not to answer them, just to read them and start thinking about what the solution is. Then. Go to the questions that are easier at the beginning, shorter, maybe not easier, I won't use the word. start with those. And then by the time you get to the essay questions, you might have formulated some stuff and write notes in the margin and all that sort of stuff.
And I'd say the sporting stuff helps you switch off from, I'm dedicated and focused on what's happening in the business to, I'm concentrating on the road, oh, I know how to solve that problem as you come up to a hill and you get some time thinking, at different stages. So I think they do help each other.
Yeah.
but when we talk about setbacks, we opened our own factory, which was fantastic. But, so we opened August, 2016, and we were running the business, making lots of bikes ourselves, a really good team in there. Everything was smooth. And I came back from a sourcing trip with one of our buying, with our buying team.
we're making some new components, all that sort of stuff. And I walk into a meeting to be told. It's possible we were underpaid on tax. And just think, how could we done that? We've done everything right. So this is March, 2018. So the next thing is we have two and a half years of complete investigation with third parties, HMRC, crawling all over us to understand whether we have turned out we had.
Paid because of some anomaly in how we'd had paperwork and all this sort of stuff. Nobody noticed none of us and just started thinking I could not be an expert on tax.
We were doing what we thought was the right thing. We were getting the paperwork from our suppliers, we were putting it through the process, turned out it was wrong, and then we had a setback of suddenly how are we gonna pay?
What we need to pay. Oh. And they'll send us a fine. Wow. So we go through absolute hell time. Every time we got a brown envelope, the whole business was like, oh no, not another one. What are we gonna find here? Now we're feeling a bit more relaxed about it and we're through the other side, but absolutely we're not expecting that.
Wow. Yeah. could have closed the business could have just moved on, but Shelly and I went, we're gonna find a solution for this one and move on to the next thing. and that was. Just another ugly setback that we couldn't have foreseen and we were never gonna be, it comes back to jack of all trades.
We were definitely not a master of tax and paperwork coming in and importing, let alone exporting and things like that.
So you've, there's been a lot, right? There's been a lot of punches coming left, left, right in the center. But the fact that you almost stayed in your lane in. And being resilient and got through going through it all is incredible because it really does highlight, it takes a certain character and mindset to be able to get through all of that.
Right.
And I would say the learnings has really helped that Shelly. Fully was behind what we were doing. We were working solidly together on it. And that could have been an absolute disaster. Neither of us had worked together. Both of us had, in our mindset, not talked about ever working together. And the next thing is we're running this business together.
We are. You talk about being in our lane, we had to come outside. Our lane can help each other on a regular basis. I'm absolutely rubbish at marketing. Shelly was brilliant at that, but then we were bringing people in and so we were. We had to be very conscious about what's the end goal. and there's some good things I, don't want to lose sight of the fact that in 2014, so going back, so sorry from a chronological point of view is.
We got, team Sky contacted us and said, we're looking at doing kids bikes. We wondered if you'd be interested in pitching for it. And we won the business and we, for five and a half years we worked with Team Sky. That put us on the map in a different way. Behind the scenes we're obviously having lots of difficulties.
Yeah. But suddenly we've got some proper brand recognition for the product we've created. So you It's a rollercoaster. Yeah. emotionally, Always a rollercoaster and it doesn't stop. so there's loads more times that we've had. I won't forget it. Brexit was an absolute disaster, and it's still the gift that keeps giving.
COVID was the opposite. COVID was fantastic and then went the other way. And so you just think. You cannot prepare for all of these things.
Yeah.
we're in a much better place now, but we've gone through absolute highs and lows.
I was gonna say it's the highs and the lows, and I always use that. I always talk about the, roller coaster because how do you manage that?
So how do you balance yourself? Someone said to me that came on the podcast previously said, I never get too high with the highs or too low with the lows, which I thought was brilliant, but how do you balance that out? So
we're absolutely rubbish at celebrating success, and I use it in term terminology.
It's one thing when I was at Tesco, we ought to always talked about celebrating success and you just, the difficulties, you don't get enough time for that because you know there's something else about to happen. And you have to be resilient and prepared and. The challenges as we've become a bigger business.
We had at one stage a hundred people across the business. I've always gotta put on a fantastic face, even when sales are rubbish and we've got a stock coming out of our ears. You've just got to have that. Everything is fine. Or we've, we are honest to the team to say there's difficulties and they, so they're asking, how are we solving these problems?
And it's good 'cause we're very honest with the team. With some of the things, maybe not as honest as we could be. 'cause we don't want them walking out. but we have a, I think the thing that comes out is having a strong team. And our learnings is at the right stage, having experts. So our real gem was we brought Val in, who's our head of marketing, to come in to help us.
Just before we signed with Team Sky. as our brand manager, we couldn't tell her who we were about to sign with 'cause it was all confidential. And then we managed to persuade us to join us. She's now been with us. Ever since, so probably 11 and a half years. which is brilliant. And she now runs our marketing team.
It's absolutely fantastic to have a rock and I hope she doesn't mind me calling it a rock, but she's so strong in that area that we don't need to think about it. She has got it under control. We work very well together. She works very well with a sales team, marketing r and d, and it's brilliant 'cause it's in safe hands.
Lots of great stuff happening. So on the website. We launch, we're launching a new product, careful the terminology, and we've, we are launching it differently. We've got a timer telling people when it'll be available. We've got photos, we've got stock that's been made, all that sort of stuff. And we are now in control.
We were in a much better place, and we haven't done that before. when we did, we launched with Tour de France. We'd had a teaser campaign showing people a bit of yellow on bikes and this sort of stuff. This is Val and her team coming out, and we, and it having an expert is brilliant. We were not at.
That stage at the beginning to suddenly say, we can afford an expert. So coming back to if wave of magic wand to go, what would we do differently? A, get some serious funding. B, have some. Intellectual capital in our business. but we weren't gonna do that. We didn't know if it was gonna work. Yeah.
And so I think it's a brave business that goes out and finds funding. Maybe it's sensible 'cause they're not putting themselves on the line just and then invest in people Who into a startup. And you think that's, that is good. It could all go belly up, but they're in it together.
Do you ever think about that responsibility?
Because when you are in that corporate world, you don't have the responsibility of worrying about employees, right? And paying and payroll and everything. And you mentioned something that is the reason, why I'm digging into this is like putting on that face, times are tough. You share a little bit, but you can't share too much 'cause you don't wanna unnerve people, but you still wanna show a little bit of, transparency.
How do you. how do you navigate that feeling of the weight of all of that on your shoulders? Or you might not have that weight? I don't.
I definitely got weight. I do joke. Tongue in cheek, maybe the truth said in jest is we do talk about, we've got mouth to feed and we have to keep the revenue coming in.
maybe not always as profitable as we'd like, but actually we need, we've got payroll to meet at the end of each month. we've got quarterly tax, the at bills and At certain times it's been difficult. And Shelly and I have been working out and saying, okay, how do we handle this? Do we pick up the phone to the bank?
and what is good? We have a good relationship, different relationship with a couple of different banks who could be supportive. And we've had to build that relationship. we've had to change some of the relationships we've had with banks 'cause great people have moved on, been promoted it, it's just painful when they get promoted out and do something else.
But. It's a wait all the time.
about, okay, how do we make sure we're resilient, we're profitable, we've got the revenue coming in, and then we go and talk to our good customers. And so I think the advantage we have with having so many stores in lots of markets is we are not reliant on one business.
From a sales point of view, so we haven't really talked about the sales point of view, but having lots is really useful 'cause just asking them all or offering them something to drive sales. Is enough sometimes to just bring in a bit more cash if we were tight? Yeah. So January we had a phenomenal January because we found some overstocks.
We, we knew we've got some new products coming, so we thought, okay, if we drop the price slightly to some customers, will they take it? Sure enough, they got on board. They've taken them, they've sold them. We haven't even launched the new product. So there's some good things if you handle it the right way, but we have to think about everything we do.
From a, does he give us a return on our investment? Graham, who's our ops, head of ops, been with us. Nine years always goes, is it the right thing to do? Are we concentrating on the right thing? It's really useful having him and having these people who are not vested in the business in the sense of they're not investors, but they are vested because it's their day job and they care and they're really helping.
that it's challenging. Never have people on your board who are not gonna challenge you. it's these sort of things. You want to be challenged all the time because you'll make, get a better outcome.
Yeah.
And as long as there's never, it's not personal. Understand. It's all about how do we make the best business?
Because you've gone through a bit of a change. when you started out it was passion, it was solving a problem, but then it changes, right? you, know what your goal is, end goal, but then you've got everything else involved here, as in it is not just about passion and solving a problem, it's also meeting payroll.
It's also the responsibilities, you say feeding mouths and et cetera, et cetera. So does that ever Change your, I did guess. Has that ever influenced or impacted the passion that you originally had?
from a product development point of view and no, we're still about, and, we split the business, and this is the positive stuff, is we wanna make bikes that kids wanna ride, stores want to sell, and parents want to buy.
And if we go to that then, and the order might change. But fundamentally, if we go to those three pillars, that pillars, that's really, important to us. So those are the things that saying, okay, is it a product? Is it a store that, is it margin good for the stores to, parents want it separately? We've got our values, we're talking about people, planet, profit and product.
So there's some lots of overlaps. So those are what we we live the business by. But often we have to focus, and this is the challenge in a smaller business, is we have to focus on certain things. So if revenue's not coming in, sales are not hitting it, we will find and probably the wrong thing, but.
It's right for the businesses. We're a little bit like a schoolboy football team. We're all chasing the same ball. So if revenue's not good, a few of us go after, okay, how can we drive more revenue? if profit's not good. Okay, we'll quickly over that way, we've gotta meet payroll and there's problems with the people.
We'll go and face that as a bigger business. And I think of. Big corporates, the ones we've worked in, they've got experts who are just looking at that one thing. So in theory, they should not have a problem because they've got an expert who is concentrating that all the time. Our challenge is we don't have lots of experts, and we're a small business.
We don't have a massive. Budget for payroll. So we are always gonna bring people on who we're bringing through our business, likely to leave our business at some stage. 'cause we've developed them as much as we possibly can. So it's as a lifestyle business that they come and spend some time with us.
but then we know at some stage there is a potential that they'll move on. 'cause. There's gonna be a limit to how much we can pay them. They'll want to progress, they might want a bigger job. So we have to be very conscious about that. And that's the one thing that comes back to Shelly and I are the stable people because we are the owners, the directors, the shareholders, and the investors and have been in since the beginning.
Yes, but we're always trying to battle with what's the next crisis coming our way. Yeah,
yeah. But I like the fact that you mentioned about your key pillars and your core values. 'cause I think that's fundamental and I see that with successful businesses is making sure that they're clear on that.
Otherwise, how can you direct the business forward if you are un unclear, which is great. And one thing is, your product's innovative. But innovation often leads to copycats. so we've got the competition part. We've also got social media and everything. So how do you, I guess this is a bit of a double question in terms of how you manage the comp competition and the evolving copycats, but also that noise that comes from social media.
competition's good. Keeps you on your toes. What? We found as there have been some competitors come in who have copied bits of us, we've put patterns on certain things because of what we learned. We've also, because we've got. So much data on the research. We've used it before anybody else can. We do put it out in the public domains because we wanna show that we've done the research and this is what's happened.
But obviously we've put patterns on components. What's also, and I'd say what's always up our sleeve is we've got something else happening. So even if they copy what we've got today, and we saw this quite quickly, somebody came out and copied us, but made it. Slightly worse 'cause they couldn't use all the same things we'd done.
They hadn't done the design stuff, they hadn't think about kids. They hadn't done any colors. the list goes on. But then we launched a new product, which had the next generation, but we're also doing, and this is when we talked about. Our four pillars, planet is very important. So we are leading away from a sustainability point of view.
We've just launched our to a plug for our latest impact report, and we've taken more than 35% of emissions per bike out of our bikes since 2019. Amazing. So we've, and this is excluding some of the really big stuff. So our frames and forks now have 25% post-consumer recycled aluminum. Nobody else has done that.
They, we had to get a loan from the Development Bank of Wales in order to fund buying the aluminum. That's how we had to think differently. Our pedals are made outta rice husks, so it's a byproduct of the rice industry. So keeping ahead of our competitors fundamentally means we have to innovate and keep innovating.
and that's challenging because we've done a lot of innovation and it's okay, what's the next generation? But as I said, we've got a new product launching next week. We've got a. Product launching in July. We've put another one in August, another one in September. So we, we don't sit there going, we are fine, but it does take us three years to bring a new product to market.
'cause we've gotta test it. Yeah. And social media, it's really important 'cause we want consumers to be telling other consumers about the product. So we like it from that point of view and we're, quite. Positive, I'm be careful of the terminology. One of our competitors has had two emergency product recourse.
And so because we test to adult standard and thanks to the Welsh government, we have our own testing house. So we test everything ourselves. We don't take anybody else's answer, answers and certificates to say it's fine. Our competitor who's had two recalls, taken a couple hundred thousand bikes outta the market, has had to do some serious fixing of things.
They launched products that would never pass the standard. So it doesn't mean it wouldn't happen to us, but we do make sure that we are limiting. It comes back to our risk register, limiting the risk that will hit us. and social media can be painful 'cause if, A store gives a customer bad service, then it reflects on us, and all sorts of things happening.
And so we want to be supportive to the stores and help them stores as our friends. they are selling on our behalf, so that's really good. but we know that if they don't give the great service, then it reflects on us.
Yeah, definitely. And I think that the interesting part where you talk about competition and with copycats is that what's standing out to me.
Is the key differentiator is the passion and that you actually truly care and you've created a product because you want to solve a problem, not you've created a product because you're like, oh, that's working in the market, so I'm gonna go and create that. That seems to be a key difference for you.
I'd say that's one of the differences. I think it's also, we've brought in teams of experts everywhere. And they probably have in these competitors, one of our competitors hasn't, they brought a product that copies us. They've even used the name to tackle us. So I'm careful of. Naming the competition.
but they don't have a team of people who are just working on this. So this comes back to the one in Austria. It is just only looks after kids bikes. So they are a proper competitor. Different. But for us, all we do is kids bikes. And people always ask us, are you gonna branch into adults? Go.
We haven't researched adults. There's hundreds of brands and adults. we've researched kids and we're scratching the surface in most of the markets we're in. So we've got small market share. We know more about kids than anybody else, so stick with what we know and we'll just make really good bikes for kids and design them specifically for kids.
Get kids to ride them and test them and tell them what they think about it. So our passion, yes, we're really passionate about it, but we're also. Sticking to the thing we know. and we've been doing this since 2012. We launched in 2013. We only know kids bikes.
Yeah. You've been doing, I was trying to do, add that all up there.
So that's, doing my maths. 13 years you've been, going. which is fantastic. And because it's you and your wife managing the business between you, how do you make sure that doesn't then impact or you're smiling because I'm guessing, family life, right? And how you create the boundary that says, I'm switching off now.
there's these things going off all the time, which you can't, you have no control over sometimes. How do you manage that?
So we've got two kids who are now much older than they were then. it's been really tough. We've had times when we've sat at home in our respective desks and just not being able to do stuff 'cause we're firefighting.
and then during COVD, we were all at home. and to begin with, we didn't have enough stock and so we were fighting about what could we do and the kids are doing their. Exams. I think our son was doing his GCSEs. And you just think, and you just think that was quite tough. they're not around their kid, around their friends and things.
And so we just had to have times when we would not talk about frog. which was difficult. 'cause the next thing is one of the kids was, are we going cycling? Can I ride my frog bike off? Okay. We weren't gonna talk about it. and because it's a passion and we all do some sort of sport, then we use that sport to.
help us get away from it. But it was challenging. It's one of the things we said it was, we've obviously been being very resilient and our relationship's very strong, but we've had to deal with tough things that are happening in the business life. And then you come home and go, okay, now I can cook, or, we'll do something with the kids and things like that.
It's. Yeah, we've got more headroom now. Shelly's become a non-exec. She's doing lots on sustainability, so all the stuff we've done on sustainability and she looked at and helped and fundamentally left us to deliver it. She's now helping lots of businesses with the sustainability. She's a non-exec, comes in and challenges us all the time.
And that's probably helped because she's now doing something we're all passionate about, but she's got the headroom to do that and help businesses, whereas we are getting on and doing everything we are in the business on a regular basis.
Yeah.
but it was challenging. And then it's the other thing that I.
I, wouldn't have ever expected that Shelly and I would set up a business together. It was never on the list. Oh yeah. Let's set up a business together. It was, not there. and, but I'd go, I wouldn't have wanted to do it with anybody else. I've got lots of friends who are in the cycle trade, wouldn't want to set up a business with some of them.
Definitely. But 13 years to get to where you are, and you, say sort of 10 million in revenue and at, one point a team of a hundred. I know things have changed slightly now, but that's incredible to have got from there within the space of x amount of years. and I know you say it's hard to celebrate the wins, the successes, but I guess there must be a time when you sit back and you go, do you know what we achieved that we did that together.
We don't do it enough. I think. And it's probably the negative aspect of running the businesses 'cause we know we haven't got the return on our investment. So there's still, questions we ask is, will we get our money back? do we need to think of things differently? But fundamentally. We do celebrate.
we, we celebrate how many kids are riding our bikes. And what we also celebrate is that our bikes last a long time. So it's not just the original kid could be siblings, cousins, it that may have been sold on a marketplace and. so we do see lots happening and they hold the value. So parents are really delighted that they can sell the bike and somebody else can get the benefit.
So we celebrate how many kids, are riding our bikes, and then we go, we've still got very small market share. There's still a lot of bikes sold every year. How many markets could we actually do something? Yeah. How do we unlock it? So it is. Yes, there's some celebration, but there's also some, okay, how do we deal with the challenge of the next thing?
So the next challenge is which markets? The next challenge is how do we fix the markets that are not performing? Yeah. and, that's the exciting thing. But then we bring on new people, we. So we bring on people with new passion, different experience who can then challenge and help the business.
Yeah. and that's the thing probably the board were telling me is I'm too approachable if we can get more people taking on some of the things that frees up my time and other people in the team. but we've gotta feel we've got the headroom that we can afford these people 'cause. You just don't wanna bring in a consultant.
As much as I love consultants, you want somebody to come in who gets passionate and actually helps take on stuff and is yeah, is empowered to drive that bit of the business.
And I love that the fresh ideas. But it's that constant evolution. But also. You are still hungry for that growth because there's the opportunity and you see that opportunity.
So it's not do you know what? We've created a great brand, we've created a great product, and it must be amazing seeing kids driving, like riding around on, a bike that you designed and created. but you still wanna push forward. So if you were to talk to yourself again, if you were to go back in time and you were to say, you know what?
Give a little bit of advice before jumping on this venture, what would it be?
It's not a bandwagon. I'm glad you didn't say that. So I think that's a really good question. I think there's, probably a few things. So it's not, one piece of advice is one, create a war chest. and that's probably where you need to.
Have some cash around that protects you, but also protects the business. And that might be you quite quickly go and find some people to help fund it. my pragmatic approach is it's better to have 50% of something brilliant than a hundred percent of something that's doesn't exist. and it's not that we, it doesn't say we were trying to hang onto it.
It's, we've just never gone out looking. And it's probably the next stage. the other thing is grab advisors as many as you possibly can in as many areas as you possibly can. Get them talking to you. Be a sponge, milk them because they will tell you things that you didn't know you didn't know, and you won't know the questions to ask.
So our learning is what will happen with HMRC and tax. Brexit, completely different. So Brexit, we didn't go into it, but we had some time talking to Brompton and we. Discussed details of what they were gonna do during Brexit and they were gonna be charged about a hundred pounds to take the bike through the Netherlands, into the, into Europe.
And we were thinking we can't spend a hundred pounds a bike.
that's a big thing. We've now got similar solution, a lot lower cost, but we got it wrong. 'cause we think we, we thought all of our stores would suddenly be importers and we lost some business because of that. So it's, again, listen to everybody formulate.
We took our own advice, but we actually listened to other people and so it's grabbing advice from as many people as possible. And I think be truthful, to yourself and anybody around and ask for help. Just don't hesitate. People love helping people love feeling like they can help. And just take the help.
The more people that help us help you. It's. It's the best thing. 'cause then you think, actually I've talked to an expert, they've given me some advice. I'll take their advice. It's your own fault if you don't take their advice. but at least then you've gone in armed with what the options are.
I love that.
The ask for help is an interesting one. just from a personal note as well, I know I'm, one to wear a hero cape. Have you, have you often is that something. That you did early days or is it only more recently? did you think between you and your wife? We, can handle all of this
we muddled through, which is why I'd say to myself is get advice.
Yeah. and. Let's be realistic. We, did get help not necessarily always the right help, and they may have been well-meaning we may not have been paying enough for the help. so we've had to upgrade some of the help we've had. and sometimes you have to pay for it, sometimes you don't. But we've got a non-exec.
and we talked about Brompton. He was a Brompton. He was the chief commercial officer. He now runs what bike. And having him as a non-exec is phenomenal 'cause he's got different experience. He's not totally alienated from the industry, but he's not totally in the industry. 'cause what bike is a stationary bike and having just somebody else who you can bounce ideas off.
who can challenge you, who can get involved and really get into some of the things that are going on, but also he's not dealing with it every day of the week. And that really helps. Yeah. So that's why advisors and, yeah, we asked for help. and we got some poor advice. I I, if we're gonna talk about poor advice, poor piece of advice, we're getting Welsh government funding.
We were told you need a Welsh government. Oh, we need a Welsh business. So we set up a Welsh business. So since 2016 we've had a Welsh business. I. So we had two ERPs. So double our systems. We had to do two rounds of account. Turns out, didn't need a Welsh business, just needed an office in Wales.
Oh goodness.
So
we've had, we are now closing it, moving everything across, had two p, the team across. He just thinks suddenly there's a load of extra audits, accountancy costs, all that sort of stuff. Didn't need it. Wow. But the person at the time gave us the advice. We took the advice, we didn't question to challenge it.
So the other bit of my advice is ask people's advice. Check the advice is valid.
Yeah.
Because that's probably cost us an extra 10 KA year since then. Wow. And now we've got to, yeah. Get a new contract and all those sort of things. Wow.
It's been a journey. Quite a journey, an incredible journey though, at that we're not at the
end.
No, you're only what I say day one. but yeah, I think, yeah.
Yeah. So we're still on a, we are in a teenager. Yeah. Maybe getting, becoming a stroppy teenager.
Yeah.
but yeah, there's a lot more to do, whether it's in the same guise, just have to see.
Yeah. But I guess, If you had to start it all over again, would you do it again?
I know Shelly wouldn't. taking my own advice, it would go out and look for funding very early on and experts.
Yeah. And
I think that's where funding right at the beginning would help us have experts. and because we've learnt, we've been through the pain that we probably. Didn't need to go through.
Yeah. But there are startups who've had lots of funding and have still had problems. But the thing about it is it's not just the original entrepreneur, thought innovator who's on the hook. There's other people. Yeah. we've put everything out there.
You've, you've done an amazing job, and you've been an awesome guest.
I've absolutely, thank you. Loved hearing your story and just, appreciate your openness as well, because I think for those that listen, will think, oh, okay. Frog bikes. Yeah. We see frog bikes in the store. It's, you are making x and. People don't always understand that there's a real journey and a journey of resilience and grit and everything.
And for those that listen and that are creating a business and might be going through some dark times is pretty normal. The rollercoaster, the highs and lows,
it, is normal. And everybody we talk to who's done startups, has had good times and bad times. I think. But you've gotta get the honesty.
And that's obviously where this is helpful. Yeah. Is being truthful about it. 'cause everybody does a lot of marketing telling everything. It's all wonderful. It's especially curated to tell you the good stuff. And you need to know there's so much rubbish and I'm. Careful not to use the negative words, but fundamentally it is the crunchy with the smooth and it's not smooth very often.
Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. I can vouch for that as well. So thank you so much for being a great guest.
Thank you for having me. And thank you everyone for listening today.