The Sole Supplier was founded in 2013 with the aim to provide accurate trainer news and release information for the UK and European market. Their community of partners (brands and enthusiasts) provide them with new and exclusive content daily alongside a dedicated in-house team of sneaker experts. Curation and selection are key processes for The Sole Supplier. Each item on site is handpicked with insight into legacy, fashion trends, audience, and heritage considerations. Through working with over 50 different retailers online, they provide up to date release information on the most coveted footwear from across the continent. The release dates section to their website has become a pivotal destination for the sneaker and streetwear community, especially those looking to stay up to date with trends.
In this episode of the MenswearStyle Podcast we sit down and speak to George Sullivan, Founder of Sole Supplier. Our host Peter Brooker speaks to George about the history of the website and how they grew their community. They touch upon the effects of the Coronavirus on the overall sneaker market, with a shift from retail to online. George talks about what first ignited his love for trainers and how that developed into opening his own eCommerce business. He quickly realised that his knowledge of when the latest trainers would drop would benefit other enthusiasts and collectors, and he combined this with high quality content.
Whilst we have your attention, be sure to sign up to our daily MenswearStyle newsletter here. We promise to only send you the good stuff.
The Sole Supplier was founded in 2013 with the aim to provide accurate trainer news and release information for the UK and European market. Their community of partners (brands and enthusiasts) provide them with new and exclusive content daily alongside a dedicated in-house team of sneaker experts. Curation and selection are key processes for The Sole Supplier. Each item on site is handpicked with insight into legacy, fashion trends, audience, and heritage considerations. Through working with over 50 different retailers online, they provide up to date release information on the most coveted footwear from across the continent. The release dates section to their website has become a pivotal destination for the sneaker and streetwear community, especially those looking to stay up to date with trends.
In this episode of the MenswearStyle Podcast we sit down and speak to George Sullivan, Founder of Sole Supplier. Our host Peter Brooker speaks to George about the history of the website and how they grew their community. They touch upon the effects of the Coronavirus on the overall sneaker market, with a shift from retail to online. George talks about what first ignited his love for trainers and how that developed into opening his own eCommerce business. He quickly realised that his knowledge of when the latest trainers would drop would benefit other enthusiasts and collectors, and he combined this with high quality content.
Whilst we have your attention, be sure to sign up to our daily MenswearStyle newsletter here. We promise to only send you the good stuff.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The menswear style podcast. I'm your host Pete Brooker and on this episode I'm going to be speaking to the founder of the sole supplier George Sullivan. Amazing interview this and I'm just gonna read the bio of the soul suppliers LinkedIn page because I think it really gives you a nice background. They're established in 2013. And their mission was to answer a problem that many 1813 year olds had, which was Where can I find the latest most exclusive trainers? The soul supply, they're now receiving over 5 million pageviews from over 2 million footwear lovers month. I mean, that is staggering. That's not in their bio, I'm just ad libbing, but the soul supply curates news and information on major footwear releases from around the world. And the interview with George is great. He gave us his very gracious with his time. Speak to him for about 25 to 30 minutes. So that's coming up. Before we get to the interview though, make sure you're checking out all the latest articles reviews news over on the menswear style page as menswear style.co.uk you can follow us on the social as well to keep updated when we release podcasts and competitions, etc. So just punch in menswear style into your smartphone there and we should come up. Lastly, if you want to get in touch with the show. That email is info at menswear. style.co.uk Okay. Here is that interview with George Sullivan, the founder of the soul supply. It's my great pleasure to introduce George Sullivan, founder and CEO of the soul supplier. How are you doing today, George? Yeah, I'm good. Thanks, Peter. Yeah, how are you? Yeah, no more good. I mean, George, I'll get into it with the website. But how has the pandemic affected you and your industry? And and whilst you're there, maybe just give us a little bit of a story about the soul supply, please. Okay, yeah. So firstly, it's good to be on here. The sole supplier was launched in 2014 to help people find the trainers that they they might not know they need yet or they know that they need. So our job is to just help people find footwear from over 100 retailers. So we do that through Content Search, comparison tech. And we've got a website and app and we serve around 3 million users a month. So I mean, the casual footwear industry is massive right now and set to triple by 2025. But as you said like Coronavirus is affected the fashion industry badly. We're with, you know, a high percentage of stores closing all of them across the world more or less. It's had a real knock on effect with people's cash flows going up the width of the spout, and it's very volatile right now. So I'm very interested to see how that that sort of stat holds whether the market will grow or whether it will triple by 2025. Considering what's going on. I mean, the brands that you've got on your website, you've got all the marquee names, all the heavy hitters. How have they reacted? I mean, you I guess you're in contact with your supply chains for these brands. I mean, are they up and running? Still? Are they still kicking out? products and launches? Yeah, so we work very closely with Nike, Adidas footlocker for asylum, and, you know, those guys having to close their stores is definitely meant that online is now the focus. So actually, for us, it's kind of they're coming to us still in the same way because we still need to support them. And we still need to talk about the cool stuff that's going on their website. So in a way things are pretty busy because people are at home and you know, I've heard some great stories as well about some retailers since like closing their stores are actually now up in revenue more than they were when they had their stores open. Because they moved all of their business online and they've actually saved money by doing that. Right overhead Yeah, and they've got a lot of payment holidays. I mean, this is a rare case right but I have heard some of those things happen. So I just really think is going to change the way that not just this industry but the whole online offline thing works for forever it's going to change the world this Yeah. I mean I'm thinking that it's some part of me is like a coin toss because I've even noticed just in the last hour or so going through your website, you know just mooching around getting cranky I love that and I'm just about to pull the trigger on this and I Oh hold on you know cash flow etc. The more people are online more people you know Trigger Happy looking at stuff they feel great, excellent now can actually get these things and then at the same time, there's that thing in the back of the mind where that maybe fencing off a few expenditures? Yeah, you're so right. Like, I've always tell people, one of my videos on Instagram, it's called don't buy trainers. And for anyone that follows me when they saw that they were like, Don't buy trainers, I was like, Yeah, don't don't buy trainers, I'm basically saying, you want to be careful with your money, because I'm all about trying to help people on my personal socials. And I'm saying, even though we're telling you the latest and greatest trainers, it's got to be you've got to be spending in line with your, your goals and what your what you can spend what you can afford, because I wouldn't want to see anyone broke, because they bought too many trainers, or spent too much on supreme or, you know, it's important to get a balance. So my mission right now is to is to help people understand how to be more successful in life and business. And also, things like being more positive, saving more, all of the things that surround it, you know, nice, yeah, nice message. And so, George, can you dial us back a little 2014? The brand started, what got you into the athleisure wear business in the training industry in particular? Yes, a good question. I would like to ask you that as well. Mine was off the back of I was around like 19, I think 1819. And I hadn't when I was younger, had loads of nice trainers, I just had sort of nothing out the norm. And then I'd been seeing things as I've been growing up like these really cool trainers. And then I was always kind of in my headlight. As soon as I start earning my own money. So I left school, got a job. And then as soon as I started earning some of my money, I went out bought my first pair of trainers. And that was like a pair of Air Max 90 why and vote which was quite a rude looking shoe. But that was what got me into it that shoe. And then from there, there was a few others man and then I just got the bug like slack I've seen so many people get you get this bug of like you want the next pair of trainers you want to it's a weird bug that I can't quite explain. But it every a lot of people get it. What then brought it on that you had to feel like you now have, you're now in a position where you can start up an e commerce site, and you can actually sell trainers. Yeah. So I was wanting to start a business from when I was around 15 years old, I was getting inspiration from seeing my dad start a business and run businesses, some successful some failing. And then I would read a lot of business books as well as I was growing up for around 15 years old onwards. So I kind of had these thoughts kicking around in my head about the web. And my dad was always like my mom, they were like, Oh, you the internet's where it's at, you know? So I had these ideas. And then when I got to around 22, I was tossing around from around 18 to around 22 don't not do it a lot working in sales jobs. And not really just I had all this knowledge in my head about web, the web and stuff. And I, I worked in an SEO agency selling clients SEO, and then all of a sudden, I was just like, I can't do this anymore. I need to knuckle down. And I was working in recruitment. And I said every penny I save for my Commission's I'm just going to put away, I'm going to stop going out. I'm going to save. And I'm going to resell some trainers that I actually could get a second pair of so I'd get like the latest hierarchy at the time and I'd resell it on on eBay at the time. If I had a second pair. One to rock one to stock is the cat. Like Yeah, so I'm not afraid to say that my hustle at the time. went beyond wearing trainers. I wanted to make money at the time. I was like, I haven't done anything that makes me any good money for years. And it's time to knuckle down a little bit was what I thought. So at the time, I was like, there's a lot of people that need this info that I need, which is where do I find the latest trainers? And how do I buy them online? Because I was what not only did I want to wear them I wanted to resell them. So I had this double need. So then I needed loads. So that was it. It was like as soon as the penny dropped that I needed to give that information to other people. And my dream could be bigger than just this whole like buying wearing and reselling. It was natural. I just started aside from the stuff that I had learned already and organically built it in the evenings and weekends after my after my day job. And at what point are you now Where are you now I'm to employ people maybe farm outs, some articles, SEO, etc. imagery. I mean, how did you how did you grow the business? Yeah, so that's a good question. Because I always had that SEO knowledge. And that was what I thought was really cool. I was always like, I want to make a website. I can rank in Google and I want people to be able to Find the information that I'm putting out. So I read a lot about SEO. And for two years almost, I was always about growing it organically. I didn't want to get investment from the outside, I wanted to do it in my way. I wanted to help people with the content I knew would work, right. So for two years, I just hired a few freelancers to help me write, and to help me design stuff, and to help me customise the website. So I wasn't actually employing any full time people like that worked with me in an office until after around two years, because you can do a lot now online with freelancers, as you know, I, it's, it's so easy if you get trustworthy people to just work with them remotely as we're experiencing. Yeah. It's interesting, the SEO industry, when I told you of that, I also had my own independent fashion shop, it was mainly a shop that was a warehouse with a shop floor, you know, we had a huge building that we didn't pay rates on because it was out in the middle of Bumble. Bumble. Yeah. But what was my gig was really was to run the shop, but then kind of fill the website with content and attract people to the website. So I had some guy who was helping me, and he was in Teach me, like, SEO is so big, and I was half thinking that must, it must be a myth. This SEO, you know, where does it come from, it's just emerged out of nowhere. And it was at the point where I was describing garments, like even to the pair of socks that we were selling. And just to fill the page with content and get SEO, I was having to write 300 word descriptions on a pair of socks. And my, in my tech guy was saying, This is how we get people to the website. And I said, this is not what the internet wants. And this is what I was telling him. And since I've come to learn that I was wrong about quite a few things. I'm not saying I knew everything, I knew a couple of things. But what I was right is that the internet is like this big electrical city. And what the internet wants you to do. And what Google wants you to do is navigate through the city and not find any code or sex, it wants you to go through seamlessly from link to link to site to site. And if you have hit a page that is just spam, or it's a pair of socks, and it's got 500 words, and it's all got the same key words going down. It's might it might get you a spike and might get you something in the short run. But then they'll introduce an algorithm, like many algorithms have been, you know, we've been hit by many over the years that says enough of that. No one wants this. Because people get on it, click on it, and then they're off. And then it changed. Yeah. Anyway, so I digress. But it's, it's such a handy tool to have up your sleeve, knowing how to build a website, but also knowing knowing what people want from it, as well. Yeah, definitely. So it's something that I would recommend everyone to get into, you know, read books on creating websites, follow online courses on how to code, learn about SEO. So you can get your website ranking. because let me tell you that Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, tick tock, you don't own these platforms, and the day that they drop off or change their algorithm, all you've got left is your website, if they all disappear, all you've got is your website and your email list. So our goal with a sole supplier was to just build a great platform that people come back to, to look at rather than just the socials quality content that people respect and want more of right. And they know where to come similar to a website like hypebeast, who you just know, you can go there, and you can get this unique quality content that they've managed to get first because they're in the fashion industry. And they're well connected. So yeah, we got to think about these websites and a lot more and owning our customers. And their experience rather than trusting all these social platforms, which has shown time and time again, that they don't care about. They don't care about us. They'll change their algorithms tomorrow and will be broken as business owners. So but actually, they are being nice to us at the moment Facebook are giving credits to advertisers, Google, we're donating a lot as well to advertisers. And it's there's there's they are doing some nice things, but it's just a dangerous position. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I think we use it so much to leverage traffic to our website to become dependent on the social channels, but then the propriety of these sites, you have literally no ownership. I mean, I was speaking to a photographer the other day, he's got an amazing website. And I said, How come I can't follow you anywhere? on the social he goes? Because as soon as I put it out somewhere, it's not mine anymore. I don't own it. Yeah, that's very true. Yeah. They own the licences to your content. Yeah. As which is mad. Yeah. But anyways. I mean, how next question for you, George. How do you how do you vet the brands now on your website? And do you have brands coming to you saying, Oh, can I can I be on your platform? How does that work? Yeah, good question about that, because something like it comes back to me wanting to keep the business true and authentic. And I've only ever wanted to put stuff up that I like and would resonate with. And as we've grown that's been like that our staff like that work for us. And as we've grown a bit further is like, well, what are the general market? What are the people in the general market, like, if we don't like certain things, it doesn't mean that other people don't. So within a within reason we try and we try and stick to stuff that is a level of cool or has a level of exclusivity or a level of style to it. That is not so mainstream and commercial, that it's like a shoe you'd find in sports direct, less, say, it's just a little tear above that, which is still accessible, we still a good general release shoe, but we curate everything that we know, will will resonate with people in that sense. So it's a mid range between the super like the real exclusive and the commercial. Is that is that that gap in between to get people that are not really sneakerheads interested, and also that that still interests sneakerheads, and people that are really into it. So as long as the brand's fit with that sort of that image, then we're open, you know, like, I'll give you an example. Let's say we've done a bit of work with og, the OG slickers is what people know the most. Now, I know, and we know that a lot of our audience, like the brand are men and women. And the reason is because they make some banging slippers. And people would therefore, because og have risen in popularity, and we've seen searches increase for Argh, we're more open to that partnership and talking to them. Whereas maybe three years ago, that might not have been something we would look at, because it just wouldn't have been right at the time. So we pick and choose Yeah, it's a tough, it's a tough one to answer that. Do you? Do you always want to try and be first to the punch with like the lunches and the news, you? Are you more interested with saying let's get the meat of the story. And let's make it our own, rather than kind of regurgitate other people's content, what our goal is to sometimes just be, it's a mix of being fast, and making content that stands out and giving you our spin on it based on what you would have seen online with some inside info that we might have, or some info that we've got from one of our partners. So he is a mixture, man, you can be fast with everything, can you? Well, no, I mean, and and also, it seems to be such a rush to be first with something I typically the people that you find that are first with stuffer haven't got the accurate information and might even just have soundbites, you know, I log on to things and see something and I click on it and go, Oh, there's only there's only a headline here and a picture. Yeah, you know, in the early days, we'd get in a lot of shit for for making the wrong flight, we create in some articles that had wrong information in or the time when it was just me and maybe a couple of other guys like writers, or social media managers, I would be very instinctive with the way I would put stuff out. And I would be that world that's coming out there at that time. And I would sort of try and draw the lines between that information read between the lines, and then I would post something, which was a very accurate or very near accurate guess, based on the information I had, and sometimes that would turn out to be wrong. But we don't do that anymore. Because our reputation is important. We have that we have to know that it's correct. If we're publishing something, you know, yeah, I mean, also, I don't know if I'm sure it's the same with the sneaker industry. I'm kind of more of a James Bond and I know if you post anything within the James Bond community, and it's not 100% accurate you have people that pile over the top of you to correct you and you know, you're excommunicated from from the club almost if you don't get it 100% right. So yeah, your your YouTube channel man is fantastic. Just gonna say I've just had a quick browse for it. Now as we've been talking the thumbnails I mean, the community that you got going on there how how do you approach creating content on your YouTube channel? I think it's really hard for brands on YouTube if I gone to my YouTube now, the things that pop the most are individuals don't know if you find the same beat but I follow individuals on YouTube. Yeah. Rather than brands so much, maybe like boiler room I follow but yeah. But yeah, so it's been hard for us as a brand to get coverage but the one of few tips that I can provide are being consistent and having a schedule So publishing content at set days of the week set times stick into, and definitely stick into a type of content. So what we do is, we'll do you know, we'll do like aggregated content where we'll say like, these are the top 20 Air Force ones right now, and also do high heat, which we've got first, like exclusive shoes that we want to show you before they're out. There are two types of content for YouTube. We stick to that. Yeah. And it's, it's working. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm with you on the personality thing. The individual, I often find that with a lot of brands, it's very nice and glossy. Yeah, there's lots of nice imagery, drones going over mountains. But there's something like there's not much soul in a lot of it, because there's no one saying like, this is how it fits. This is what it looks like, you know, there's a real there's no one dropping anything in the background. There's no dog coming into the picture. You know, shagging the cat, you know, there's no, there's nothing like that, which I provide on my YouTube channel for anyone listening. Now, I'm interested, I'll send you a video. Yeah, now it looks, it looks really well put together. And the website is the sole supplier.co.uk. Finally, recommend people head over there, check it out. And just be willing to put an hour aside because you can really dive down and get into some of these. I mean, there's so many to choose from so many different designs, and the brands are great. So congratulations. It's been great talking to you. What's next for the sole supplier was? Well, I guess, we don't know too much at the minute with the craziness going on. But What plans do you have once we're all released, all the sole supplier is there to help you find your next pair of trainers and be the only place you need for that. So we do that just with showing you the latest and greatest shoes from 100 different retailers with the latest stock information. So you know you don't need to go anywhere else. Right. That's the that's the journey that we're going towards. So yeah, please anyone that's listening. Give me a follow on my personal Instagram, which is George Sullivan t SS. Love to connect with anyone and thanks for having me on the show as well. No, it's really good having you on mate. All the best. Thanks a lot. Cheers, man. Amazing. Thank you so much George, the sole supplier, then people, the sole supplier.co.uk. If you're not already going there, check it out. And thank you for listening. I know there's a lot of podcasts out there where you can get your information from at this time and you're tuning into our channel, which is great. And we'll be back again with another interview. Until next time, remember it's only fashion people and you're never fully dressed without a smile.