Myrqvist wants to make Goodyear Welted shoes accessible to everyone. The brand was born after a successful Kickstarter Campaign which reached its goal after just 24 hours, before closing as the most successful Swedish Kickstarter Campaign in the fashion category 30 days later. The brand designs and produces high quality shoes in the Direct-to-Consumer market, aiming to keep prices affordable without compromising on quality. With Scandinavian minimalism at heart, Myrqvist shoes are designed in the Swedish capital and are manufactured by experienced craftsmen in Portugal. They sell their shoes via a flagship store in Stockholm on their eCommerce website. Instead of an inflated mark-up that comes with traditional retail-based brands, they offer top of the line quality at less than half the price. Goodyear Welted shoemaking is a labour-intensive shoe construction which stops water from leaking through and enables the possibility to replace the outsole when required. Their finest cuts of full-grain leather are sourced from Hermès owned Tanneries du Puy in France and will age beautifully over time.
In this episode of the MenswearStyle Podcast we interview Myrqvist Founder, Sebastian Öhrn, about his background and the story of how he started and grew his men’s footwear brand. Our host Peter Brooker speaks to Sebastian about the meaning behind the brand name, operating the business during the Coronavirus pandemic, and how to launch a successful Kickstarter campaign. They also discuss effective use of social media and how the shoes are a Scandinavian twist on a classic British design, incorporating rubber soles for extra grip on icy surfaces and a less chunky silhouette.
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Hello, welcome to another episode of The menswear style podcast. I'm your host Pete broker. And on this episode I'm going to be speaking to the CEO and founder of muckfest Sebastian on a little bit about mcfist. So shoe brand primarily with Scandinavian minimalism at its heart. Their shoes are designed in the Swedish capital, and they are manufactured with experienced craftsmen in Portugal. So Mark vist the website and why are QBIST se that's a lots of ticket we're gonna put all the links over on the show notes, which will be over at menswear style carry UK along with all the other articles and fashion and competitions you can find over there. Also on the social type in menswear style on your smartphone will pop up there somewhere. And if you want to be on the show, you want to get in touch to talk about your brand, then why not reach out info at menswear? style.co.uk Oh, here's that interview with Sebastian earn CEO and founder of muckfest. It's my great pleasure to introduce to the podcast Sebastian earn CEO and founder of Merck vest. How are you doing today? Sebastian, not too bad son is out. It's like 16 seven degrees here in Stockholm, which is quite nice for for Sweden. And, you know, people are getting a bit more calm about the current situation. It was about to say I mean, we'll get on to the brand merch visit in a minute. But I know Sweden is slightly different to the rest of European in terms of the COVID and the pandemic. So can you just give me the pulse of the nation? In a nutshell? Yes, it is. And I'm not sure why it's actually disrupting that much. But really today, like, pretty much everyone was out. And this week, we seen like, a massive difference from from just a week before. And I think I mean, we haven't had the tight lockdown restrictions as you guys have. And it's kind of been discretionary. But a lot of people been taking the responsibility and stayed inside. But I feel like this week people are getting back to the office we see a lot of movements on on the streets, people are sitting in restaurants. And they go shopping, we had record sales for this month. Today actually in our physical store, which has been struggling a lot. The past few six weeks or so. So let's talk about the store the the bricks and mortar store. You have one flagship store in Stockholm if I'm correct, yeah. Yeah. So so we opened that one up in November and parallely, we ran two stores because I had my first store like almost in 2017. I started that one. Right, yeah, this is kind of like a transition. Now we close down the little store, conveniently just before Corona. So now we have one flagship store in stock on and focusing mainly online. Let's talk a little bit about you first, Baskin, what kind of education did you get? And what was it give me a thumbnail sketch? How did you get into launching this brand? Well, kind of my background, I'm born and raised in Stockholm. You know, like my parents. I just grew up in a like, residential area just outside of Stockholm. But after high school, I went to study abroad in the UK, or in St. Andrews to be exact in Scotland. So I was there studying economics and management kind of a business degree for almost five years, nine semesters. And I think it was during my penultimate year that I that I thought about starting new kvist the footwear brand. And I did so remotely. And so when we first launched nucleus, we did it on a Kickstarter. Do you know you're familiar with Kickstarter? I am and yeah, no, there's a great story on your site, but I'll let you regale that if that's all right. Yeah, so I mean, for those who don't know, Kickstarter is basically like one of the major sites for crowdfunding. I'm not sure how popular it is nowadays, but at the time we did our thing is quite a hot thing to do. And so what we did is that we we, we created a video about this business idea that I wanted to sell, high end, handcrafted leather shoes for men, direct to consumer, and then we asked people to basically contribute with money in return for product at a 20% discount, so we didn't have to give any, like shares of the company away. We just, it was kind of like taking a large batch of pre orders. And that gave us the funding to start the production. I set up all the operations for our, for our company, basically. And so we could launch the bar. And you nailed your your price that you set. Right. I mean, you didn't just reach it and get over the line. You smashed it if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I think we had the goal of 100,000 kronor, which is like roughly 10 k pounds. And I think we got almost 70 k pounds. So that was 600 something percent up from from our go. I mean, I set a goal a little low, just because I knew the momentum would be better if we like stretched our goal. But I mean, the realistic, the real realistic goal was something like maybe like 20 K, so we, we we got a lot more traction than anticipated. And how does that happen? because let me tell you for a start, I've done multiple Kickstarter and crowdfunding campaigns. I've even done one for this podcast. My editor and I cobbled together an idea of having it sponsored for another series, and we put a pitch together and just to get any kind of traction, even with our audience was tough going. So tell me how it worked out the secret behind your success? Yeah, I mean, I think it is, it is tough. And a lot of people, a lot of people do the mistake of I'm not saying you, I don't know about you guys, but like, I know a lot of other people who think it's just like, get on Kickstarter, and you just get money by itself. But you really have to create a campaign outside your Kickstarter. So what we did is that we coordinated a lot of press, or mainly like online blogs at the time, like men's wear books in Sweden, who simultaneously promoted our Kickstarter campaign on the date. And we our goal was to create a lot of momentum in the very first hours. Because that creates some kind of like, herd mentality. So if you see, if you go into Kickstarter, and you see a project that was just launched, like a few hours ago, and it's already picking up a lot of traction, you're more likely to get on, get on the project. And, and otherwise, you know, it's just this follow others mentality, right? Okay. It's a bit like a YouTube algorithm then. So if you release a video on YouTube, you've got to get a certain amount of number hits and plays from the get go. Otherwise, it kind of just gets buried and YouTube ignores it. But if you like you say, the herd mentality, if you come out the gates charging, then people will soon latch on to it. And I guess momentum is key, right? Yeah, exactly. It's all about getting the mountain. Interesting. And so you secured the goal, you get the funds, what are the next steps from there, then we have to figure out how to get a casino. So Well, actually, we got a lot of problems, because we had just anticipated like, around, you know, shoes worth 220 K. And then we had to create like a supply that was three times that. So we really had to redo our production and switch factory at twice, actually. So some of our how back is in the very beginning, they got they got issues quite quite a bit delayed. And I mean, we were trying to be sorry for that, but we compensate them with some discounts and socks, but most of them got it in time. Luckily, I mean, so tell us a little bit about the brand, if you can, the inspirations for the designs. So design in Sweden, manufactured in Portugal was one of the stepping stones that you need to get now in place to get this from concept to market. So after we launched the Kickstarter, you know, the goal was to have our own sales channel, you know, starting online, and what we wanted to do is really, it's not that much about the design, which it has grown into becoming but at the time was more about like, great product, great materials at a great price. And but I think what differs us from when it comes to design is that we want it to be somewhere like in between the Italian and the English aesthetics. Now we have expanded our array to have like different kind of lost and shapes of our foot. Started out with like, one last, which is a lot. And last is for those who don't know, last is what you make the shoe on and kind of defines the fit and the shape of the shoe. Right. And we wanted to create something Swedish because at the time we were the only, like, only Swedish brand for Goodyear welted shoes. Okay. And so really, I wanted to take like a traditional British product and create Scandinavian brand Scandinavian take on that traditional handcrafted British product. Maybe you can school me a Scandinavian take on a British product? What inflections would a Scandinavian design have what do they bring to the table? Well, a bit less chunky, I would say then then the British and a bit more, you know, sleek curves and shape of the, of the shoe. In addition to that, we we've also added a lot of like different salts that can tackle the climate in Sweden. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of wetness and rain in the UK as well. But we do have it here in Sweden. And we figure out that leather soles for not too popular even though people really wanted like nice leather shoes. So we were quite early out with creating a so called half rubber soles. So it's basically a classical leather sole, which has injected rubber into it, and then it's sewn on with a Goodyear welted construction. And that gives you like more grip, but also the durability like you don't wear out the shoes as quickly as you otherwise would have. In addition to that, we also done a lot of studded rubber soles which are good for like when it's freezing, because in stock gone, sometimes it or in the rest of Scandinavia, it can get quite, quite slippery on the streets if you if it's sub Sarah degrees. So you need like that grip to go to work? Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine. So we're fast tracking now in year 2023 is in business? What is your role within the company? And how do you now operate? How big is your team? What's your day to day like now? Well, my role is the CEO and founder is, you know, constantly pushing the business forward and ensure that together with the rest of the team, that we grow and improve our product and business and all the aspects of the business. And we're about five, six people now in the team. And so it's not huge, but we're on in an expansion phase. And when you say five to six, do you mean someone's about to get fired? No. It depends on how you count, like we have people working in the store. And then we have like someone who's hired but hasn't started working yet. So yeah, I would say like five, six people is, is a fair, fair number. But no, so it gives me a wide variety of responsibilities. Because each person including myself, have to manage a quite, you know, wide spectrum of responsibilities. So I'm not just talking to investors in the bank, you know, sometimes I have to jump into the store, if someone's sick, I have to, you know, be involved in the design process of the shoes. And what I do try to focus on is just, you know, developing the business and coming up with new ways of reaching customers engage with, with customers. Interesting. And so let's talk a little bit about that. Let's drill down a little bit on how you can augment your outreach. Do you entertain the idea of influences social media, how have you used to use social media to leverage any traffic to the site? I think I think social media and then Instagram in particular, is a very important channel when it where you can engage and reach. However, I think social media can be used in a number of different ways and influencer marketing is just it's just one way. So for example, now you see this trend about live shopping, etc. I don't know too much about that. But there is also paid marketing on social media. And when it comes to influencer marketing, it's not something that we that nuke this as a brand particularly relies on and so I think it's first of all that it requires a certain product and market fit to have influencer marketing as a scalable marketing strategy. So for example, in stock on There's just that number of men's wear influences who match our brand, you know, like you couldn't really send like, you couldn't start co labs with anyone, if you want to keep, like, the brand image at a certain, you know, within certain boundaries. Yeah. And at the same time we like our core customer group is, you know, it's young professionals, not necessarily people who are mentoring choosiest even though we have a, excuse me, I had it up. And even though we do have a menswear enthusiast who like shoes and products and you know, spread the word, it's like, the bulk of our customers are young urban professionals, you know, lawyers, or bankers or consultants. And I think there are other more cost efficient ways of reaching them. And what would they always be? Well, you can still use Instagram and other social media platforms, but you know, you create like your own advertising videos or campaigns, and then you pay them to be promoted. I just think that the influencer marketing strategy has been very popular in recent years, and now it's become a bit too expensive. We're at the level where it wasn't really like 70 years ago. For example, I don't know if you're familiar with that in Wellington. And yes, we launched a company. I mean, so they were very successful. And we're really early on on to the interesting marketing thing. And at the time, they could, you know, they can reach out to someone with like, hundreds of thousand followers and just offer them a watch for. And obviously, for them, like, because they were so early into the game, and they had a lot of opportunity with that strategy. And but now that market has become somewhat saturated. I still think it works for certain products, and for certain type of influencers and markets and target groups, but I just don't think like a scalable influencer marketing strategy is something for Mukhlas. Even if you mildly use Instagram, even if you're not an influencer, it can just be quite intoxicating, especially now with everybody at home, with not a whole bunch to do but look at their phones. You know, people are seeing that their likes are down. I mean, people just engagement drop, because there's just so much option. Now, there's so many people on there actively producing content, you know, we're all of us are our own publishers, in a way. You know, we were, like all many journalists documenting life. So to get anything really seen through the usual platforms that might have worked for you five years ago. It's a lot more hard graph now. Yeah, you really have to break through the noise. Yeah. And I also think a lot of a lot of people are getting aware about it's relatively easy to fake a lot on Instagram. And I think people are becoming more, you know, cautious about like, getting entranced. You know, how's the picture looking now, for Merck vest amongst this pandemic? That's kind of taken a grip of, you know, pretty much every economy and every business globally. Yeah. Now, I mean, this is really, I mean, for starters, is no one's really shopping in our physical store, except for today, we had a turning point like today was good. And also, in general, the demand for our type of product is not very high, when people just sit at home. If you're not out moving, you don't really need to, so demand is down. And that's, that's tough. But we managed to get some sales online, but we had to change our offer a bit like offering free home delivery, and running some promotional campaigns. And, but it's definitely affected us. But I think we were in a good place because we're not too heavily reliant on on physical retail. So our online store is still producing, you know, enough cash for us to, to, to continue operations as normal. I encourage people to do the very thing you said they're going to check out the website Mark vest, I'm going to say muckfest.sc but you are you told me a fair that we're actually doing bits of changes where you can do Merc vis.com. And yeah, yeah. So I mean, we'll leave all the show notes over on the website menswear style.co.uk but you can also go to merch fist my RQ v ift I guess if people are uninitiated on how to spell mcfist What does it mean by the way, Sebastian? All right, it basically means I mean, it's just a it's just a name that like sounds familiar to a Swedish and a Swedish name, really. It's a composition of the word, mood, which is. So I'm missing the word here. It's basically a swamp, and then a week, a week at the swamp in the twig. twig. Yes. But it basically comes out of the slang from we have these lovely berries in Sweden called a cloudberries. I don't know if you're familiar with them. Yep. Boo. Put them in slow jam. And they kind of look like raspberries. Yeah, no, I'm familiar. Yeah. And I think that might grow in the UK. But mostly they're predominant in in Scandinavia, almost limited to Sweden. And I thought when I was creating this brand, I was on the swamp together with my grandma. Were this berry gross. And I saw this beautiful, you know, orange Berry. And I thought it would be really nice to make something out of this. So now we changed our logo a bit like the sign of it, but initially, we actually had that cloudberry Swedish slang for that cloudberry is Middlebury and then it became nuke Fest, which is Canada plant on the very gross. Listen, every every name has to be unique. Kodak Kodak means absolutely nothing. The guy that invented that they said why Kodak and you guys because it's easy. It starts with K and okay. And it sounds like you've already known it sounds like you've been saying it for years. So mcfist There you go. It could be the next codec. Thank you so much for your time Sebastian. Again, Mark. This is a place to go Instagram. Your images are so clean. Crikey. What a beautiful page that is. I'm just scrolling for it now. It's got to be better sir. Well, I recommend people stop by and have a look see how the the brand is getting on and how also to get some images of shoes. That's something I used to have to do in the day was take pictures of shoes, believe it or not, and yeah, this is next level. Okay, the audio is getting just a bit choppy. So I'm gonna let you go. But Sebastian, great talking to you. Best of luck with the brand and hopefully you'll be making some noise here in the UK. And we'll be seeing some more collections coming to your site soon. Thank you big speakers. Take me What a nice chap, Sebastian earn there from vist mirvis check them out, check out their lovely shoes. Also check out the site menswear style.co.uk if you want to find all the show notes and the imagery from the podcast as well as all the other articles. And by the way, thanks for taking the time out to listen to this podcast. There are thousands of podcasts you could be listening to. That you're getting through this one you're also reviewing you're telling a friend we love that. So until next time, remember, it's only fashion people and you're never fully dressed without a smile.