What's In The Box
The brand new podcast from BOXTEC. Join us as we invite guests from retail and hospitality to discuss the issues of the day, with one unique twist: uncut, unedited and each episode just fifteen minutes long - because we're busy and we know you are too.
What's In The Box
Cornwall Inspires: How Seasalt Transformed Local Heritage Into Retail Success
The rugged Cornish coastline isn't just a picturesque holiday destination – it's the beating heart of one of Britain's most distinctive fashion brands. In this fascinating conversation with Seasalt's CIO Adam Cotgreave, we explore how a chance purchase of an Army surplus store in rainy Penzance transformed into a thriving retail business with 78 stores across the UK and an expanding global footprint.
Adam shares the remarkable story of Seasalt's evolution from practical workwear roots to becoming a fashion-forward brand that authentically captures Cornwall's rich heritage. Twenty years ago, when sustainable fashion meant "beige, brown, drapey sacks," Seasalt pioneered colorful, creative designs using organic cotton – establishing themselves as innovators long before sustainability became an industry buzzword.
We delve into the brand's strategic expansion across British market towns and their thoughtful approach to international growth. From their first US store opening in Falmouth, Massachusetts to partnerships with retail giants like Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's, Adam reveals how Seasalt maintains its authentic Cornish identity while adapting to different markets. The discussion also touches on Germany's strong affinity for the brand, where Northern European landscapes mirror Cornwall's natural beauty.
Despite the challenges facing retail – from Brexit uncertainties to pandemic disruptions and economic pressures – Seasalt continues to thrive by focusing relentlessly on customer experience and staying true to its core values. As Adam puts it, successful modern retailers need "absolute relentlessness" and the ability to adapt continuously without compromising what they stand for.
Join us for this insightful conversation about authentic brand building, sustainable fashion, and navigating the ever-changing retail landscape with purpose and resilience. Whether you're a retail professional, fashion enthusiast, or simply curious about how local heritage can inspire global success, this episode offers valuable lessons from Sea Salt's remarkable journey.
Welcome to what's in the Box, the brand new podcast brought to you by Box Technologies. Powering retail with purpose. Boxtech delivers innovative and market-leading customer engagement solutions that turn business ideas into a performing reality, from design and integration to ongoing support and maintenance. We're with you every step of the way. Now, this podcast is a little different to what you might be used to. It's audio only, totally unscripted. Yes, I promise it is really honestly, and it's usually around about 15 to 20 minutes each episode, because we're busy, our guests certainly are, and we're sure you are too. So, without further ado, let's get right into it, and I'm really delighted.
Speaker 1:It's a part of the country that, having had the privilege of having a house down there a number of years ago, I used to go down to Cornwall very frequently. My guest is the CIO of a business that I'm sure you've all heard of, seasalt. Welcome, adam Codgreave. Hello, thank you for having me. So, adam, tell us, as I said, cornwall, fantastic county. We all know that. We all love, everybody loves Cornwall, although I always used to say that when I kind of semi-lived down there, I've never seen so much Gore-Tex in all my life, so it does have an interesting climate, but it it's absolutely fantastic. So I think maybe we'll start this off talking about Seasalt, the business, by the kind of heritage of the business, and Cornwall, because that for me that really comes through in your product, the fashion that you're selling and your stores and so on and so forth. Tell us a little bit about that as a bit of an intro.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I mean you'd be excused for describing Cornwall sometimes as kind of the bucket into paper grades and it's all about pasties and busy beaches and windbreaks and, of course, to some of our visitors that's exactly what it's for, and for those people it's a great place to be. But actually, if you look a lot further back, it's got a really rich culture influenced by the century old fishing and mining industries. It's got a fantastic natural light that's well advertised. Obviously we've got the artists in St Ives and the Tate, so it's got a really rich heritage and, most obviously, natural beauty and rugged landscapes is kind of all around us wherever you look.
Speaker 2:And I think from the very beginning Seasalt's taken inspiration from that landscape and from that heritage. And if you go into our stores and look at our products and you look at the floral prints and then if you were to walk on the Cornish clifftops, you'd actually see whether it's the ferns or the gorse. That translates from the natural environment we're in and into the product. So you're absolutely right to call that out the natural environment. We're in and into the product. So you're absolutely right to call that out. And I think it's really important to us that particularly our creative teams are very connected to Cornwall and it continues to drive creative innovation from a product perspective going forward. So it's more than a place to be. It's a real aspirational way of living, I think.
Speaker 1:And of course I should not have missed this out. It's one of my favorite tv program series, sadly no longer being made, and of course we're talking about doc martin country here yes, yeah, that was wasn't just up the coast from where I am.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've, you know, we've had polder dot martin, I think, something in paradise, murder in paradise, another, another one. There's been quite a lot of filming down in Cornwall over the years. So we're very lucky really that we get that profile on a national stage, international stage in fact, with some of those shows, and that actually brings further tourist activity down to Cornwall. So I know we were talking just before and with tourists a bit of a love-hate relationship. It's a very important time of year, you know, particularly Easter and summer for us and it's a bit frustrating to get backed up on the a30, but it's a really important thing that we have those visitors down spending money in our, in our hospitality sectors and indeed our own shop. So I think cornwall really appeals to a lot of people, both domestically and internationally, and I think we're doing a very good job of kind of representing that on a on a bigger stage in the fashion industry.
Speaker 1:I'm proud to be part of that and and the thing I I learned about the, the cornish, which I love, is that they don't take any shit there's one way of putting it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, we don't. And there's a whole instagram page dedicated to car that tourists getting stuck on the beaches, and the same page has lots of videos of tourists trying to reverse down country lanes. So when that crops up on your feed every other, every couple of days, it's fun to have a laugh about that kind of thing. It's very real, you see a lot yeah, I learned.
Speaker 1:You know. We'll get back to sea salt in a second, I promise you, but. But thankfully it wasn't a painful lesson. But what is it they say about Cornish hedgerows? It's basically granite, isn't it behind? The facade of leaves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, very careful, be warned.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah it's dangerous, let's get back to sea salt, because that's what we're here to talk about and we're talking about the heritage and so forth. And you mentioned the product clothing, obviously incredibly important, and would I be right in thinking that that was kind of born out of originally almost sort of practical work wear, is that?
Speaker 2:Absolutely it was. I mean, the story is that the, the founding family, the chadwick, who's still in the business today, used to holiday to cornwall regularly down in the pensance area. And there was a story goes there was a store called general clothing stores on on adelaide street in pensance and it was the summer summer, obviously it was raining. So the family went into the shop to, you know, to buy some jackets and came out having made a deal with the owner to buy this store and originally it was kind of an army surplus camping outdoor weather kind of shop and that's really where it started. There was, you know, general clothing stores and they, they expanded that business a little bit think about, with penzance into falmouth, and then it the brothers took over from from don the father who bought the business back in 1981 I think it was, and the first transition really was turning it in from a, you know, army surplus camping store into more of a fashion lifestyle business. And that's when we started to to buy from some of the brands you you'll know now and become a third-party reseller, wholesale customer of many of those brands. And it did very well, I think, when I started, which was, hold your breath, 20 years ago. That's actually what the business looked like, I think we had four shops and it was selling lots of third-party brands and Neil Chadwick one, the the founding directors had had the, the visionary of starting our own brand, and the brand was sea salt, and it became apparent that some of the brands that we were stocking were starting to open their own single brand shops on the high streets where our, where our stores were. So there was a real risk to the business that if, if we didn't do something, we were going to be, you know, we're going to not have a place anymore because the space for third you know, true third party stockists was, was, was leaving. So it was kind of born out of passion and and and kind of out of your business security and resilience.
Speaker 2:But actually some of that passion was also around sustainability and 20 years ago, believe it or not, organic cotton wasn't particularly well-known entity in fashion. So one of the real early unique selling points for us was to be leaders in organic cotton. Back in the day, organic cotton brands were, you know, kind of beige, brown, drapey sacks that seemed to. You know, just get put over people, and so they no brands, no, I won't mention any brands, but, um, you know, you can picture it in your mind. So the idea of bringing together a progressive, creative, fashion forward brand that uses color and organic materials was really exciting. And that's when I I came into the business then and I think that was four shops, I think now 78 shops. I think we've got now predominantly a UK and Ireland.
Speaker 1:How far outside within the UK, first of all because I know there's global expansion which we'll get onto in a second. Within the UK, I think it stretches quite far out, from Cornwall into now lots of other counties.
Speaker 2:It does, so there's a flavor for that trying to think of the compass here, you've obviously got kind of St Ives and Penzance. Down the southwest we've got Norwich, probably our furthest east. Obviously we're covering Kent and the kind of east I think we're. We're up in Silverburn, glasgow, st Andrews. Obviously, more in the north we've got York, harrogate. So yeah, we've we've covered pretty much the the width and breadth of of the UK. But I still feel like there's quite a bit of headroom and 75 stores for a brand like ours isn't isn't a huge number. So I still think there's plenty of opportunity to find those you know really great towns that we can continue to open stores in where we see there's a good customer.
Speaker 1:Because I would imagine that your sweet spot would be in older, if you like, market towns.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Apologies, I can't remember whether you're in, for example, Tunbridge Wells.
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm pretty sure we should know. I'm pretty sure we are yeah when we?
Speaker 1:my home town is east grinstead and I can tell you that there are. There are a few units available there, sadly. Okay, good to know. So there you go right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I started it was very much southwest and we were looking at good busy, tourist coastal towns and when we started to populate the kind of Cornish county and peninsula well, where do we go next? And I remember you know there were fairly robust conversations, should we say, about where we go, and there was a lot of nerves around going into places like Bath, which was one of our early city stores, and we opened that. It went really well. That kind of demonstrated to us that there was a place for us to be in some city locations. We've done really well in market towns over the years. So, yeah, what we've actually done is avoided big high streets on city centres and we've kind of got into those areas, sometimes through third parties.
Speaker 2:In fact, london is still an area we haven't got a particularly strong presence in true central london. So, yeah, there's still plenty of space for us to stretch our legs, I think, and what we tend to do is under using the website, which obviously is completely national, we can see where we've got pockets of strong customer demand and that tells us as well as our own team out there on the road. That tells us really where where there's great opportunities. The challenge then, obviously, is finding the right units, the right size, the right price, making it work. We've got a great team doing that and I hope as we move into next year, I think part of the plan is to continue store growth, both UK and internationally. So it's still very exciting, still very growing.
Speaker 1:And starting with sports cars. It's it's kind of a crazy journey, yeah, and it strikes me as what I would refer to as a very authentic brand. Yeah, absolutely yeah, it's uh, and, and I guess the heritage goes into it. But let's come on to that expansion, global expansion. Tell us a little bit more about that, because I know it's the US, I think New Zealand is in there, but Europe as well. So that'd be really interesting to hear what that's all about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're at the size now where it's obvious to start having a global strategy and to some extent that's come to us. We've had a website that's been able to be accessed by customers around the world and we've had lots of opportunistic approaches from third parties all over the world and we've always been an ambitious and opportunistic business. So where there's a good you know, a good opportunity, we'll. We'll invest some time to understand the market.
Speaker 2:I think the two markets that really stood out over the last few years have been north America and Europe. Funny enough, germany is a very strong market for us. I think the brand really resonates well there. Northern Germany is very similar to Cornwall and we also get a lot of European visitors down to Cornwall where they get to go into our stores, which I think there's no better expression of the brand than our stores and I think we do a very, very good job of it. I think we're excellent retailers. So again, that tells us that there's a customer somewhere.
Speaker 2:We tend to expand initially through third parties and wholesale, because it's lower risk, quicker to get in there, you don't have to establish as much infrastructure or perhaps invest as much capital. But when we see success in those markets. We'll start to follow that b2c model up with more d2c models obviously, notably opening our first stores in the us uh last year and more open this year. I think we were first one opened in falmer, from kate codd in september last year, coming up to its anniversary now tell me, tell me.
Speaker 1:I'm fascinated to know what kind of reaction you get from north americans.
Speaker 2:The sea salt brand well, you know I was, I was lucky enough to be out in falmouth in in massachusetts, for the week running up to the opening. And the opening and do you know what? They opened their arms to us. They were really excited to see a new brand on the high street. I think you know don't want to offend any of your american listeners, but I think we are slightly more mature in the way we do retail. So when we opened the store in america particularly you know the height on the high street in falmouth we were, yeah, we were state of the art. It was, it was a beautiful store, you know, really rich, really expressed the brand well and when I was there, you know, customers were really excited to see, you know, a bit of new activity on their high street.
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot we need to learn about the american market and american consumer and that's that's always going to be the case for a brand that's stretching their legs into a, you know, a new market. Even though the market has lots of parallels with the uk, the customer is very different and we have to learn about that. Their trading cycles are different. So there's lots to learn and I think we've opened kind of drop ship models in marketplaces and we've started to go into some of the department stores out there. We've got good relationships now with Nordstrom and Bloomingdale's. They're going to household names in America.
Speaker 2:So there's lots we're learning about product, there's lots of learning about customer, there's lots of learning about pricing. So we're just ingesting as much intelligence as we can and then we use that really to inform how we shape our strategy going forward. And there's no different in in europe and so, yeah, key markets for us, luckily both growing very well. I think the, the marketplaces in in both countries are doing really well. It's exciting to see the brand, the brand out there and I hope we can continue to drive that into next year and beyond yeah, no, absolutely, we've got a few minutes left.
Speaker 1:We do try to keep these reasonably short so that people don't have to sit and listen for hours on end and so forth. But a bit more generally, I'm like that. Excuse me, I don't want to talk about necessarily the okay, we've got, uh, end of november I'm we're recording this early september. I'm not quite sure yet the schedule when they're going to go out, but we've got an autumn budget.
Speaker 1:Yeah, won't get into all of the party politics and business rates and all that stuff, but I think, talking to you beforehand, you realise as a retail business you have to adapt to whatever you know is thrown at you. And I guess the other thing that kind of linked to that is, it seems to me that consumer sentiment is quite whether it's more fickle than it ever has been, quite whether it's more fickle than it ever has been. I heard earlier today actually that with mortgage rates coming down, actually consumer confidence and sentiment looks like it's more positive, which is great news. How cecil is seems to be doing very well on a growth trajectory. How do you see all that shaping out?
Speaker 2:Well, you described it very well. We had a budget last year that resulted in direct costs on us. We, like every other business in the UK, had to decide how we adapted the business to accommodate that, and some of that was around prices, some of that was around absorbing it into profit and changing the nature of our strategy and channel mix and stuff like that. I think the bigger problem, bigger than the direct costs you're quite right to call out that it's the ongoing erosion of consumer confidence that poses a bigger risk to to kind of business in the uk at the moment. Most, most consumers will be nervous about what's already gone and obviously we're only what four, four or five months into the the change is actually taking effect. So they'll be nervous about what's what's gone and they'll be nervous about what's coming up. And retail is a confidence business and you want our customers, we want them to feel happy, secure and have some disposable income to go out there and spend money on, on things that make them happy. And that at the moment is difficult and, like you know, like every other business, sea salt has to adapt its plans and its strategies to to compensate for that. But yes, yes, you're right, we weathered many storms.
Speaker 2:You know the 20 years I've been at Sea Salt and it does feel like the last five years in retail has been fairly volatile. You know, if you even go back to Brexit and now we're not going to get into politics I certainly wouldn't want to be going back to kind of 2016 and then 2019, then COVID, cost of living crisis, us tariffs, budget. You know it does seem to come at you and I think one of the superpowers that good retailers need nowadays is absolute relentlessness, to be able to adapt and innovate constantly. You can't rest on your laurels at all. I think you've got to make sure you never erode what you stand for, but you've got to make sure you're adapting your operations for the long term, and certainly we are still as ambitious as ever. So we want to continue growing and we're very lucky that we have continued to grow.
Speaker 2:We've got very loyal customers. We've got a great brand, great products. So when, when we go through times like this, I think we really aim to focus on the things that really matter, and I think you know the environments our customers shop in, the service they get. In those environments, the products try to remove friction from their journeys. Those are really core things for us. They always have been. We talk about them regularly at the executive board level, but as long as we keep doing that, we should be able to, you know, guide ourselves through anything that's thrown at us. But yes, it's difficult at the moment, but, um, you know, that's not hampering our ambition. It might just change the direction or the road we take to get to where we want to go. But that's yeah, that's no different.
Speaker 1:We're not the only ones in that boat yeah, no, absolutely, and I think, um, that's probably a great upbeat note to end on Adam. Thank you so much. That's been absolutely fantastic, absolutely. It's a brilliant business. I absolutely love it. So that's all we've got time for. Well, that was what's in the box. See you soon. So new episodes will be dropping every two weeks. Please stay tuned. And if you want to find out more, so new episodes will be dropping every two weeks, please stay tuned.