Menswear Style Podcast

Vasilij Brandt, Co-Founder of Nordgreen / Sustainable Watches

November 19, 2020 Menswear Style Episode 97
Menswear Style Podcast
Vasilij Brandt, Co-Founder of Nordgreen / Sustainable Watches
Show Notes Transcript

Nordgreen is a watch company which blends Scandinavian minimalism with the fine craftsmanship of leading Danish designer Jakob Wagner. Based in Copenhagen, the brand has created more than a mere watch. Each of their timepieces has a unique story, inspired by local design thought, sustainability and warm generosity. The company is founded by Pascar Sivam and Vasilij Brandt, two ex-consultants and e-commerce professionals with extensive experience in growth strategies, cross-border eCommerce, and supply chain & operations.

In this episode of the MenswearStyle Podcast we interview Nordgreen Co-Founder Vasilij Brandt about his career, background and the founding story of his watch brand which launched in 2017. The Scandinavian watchmaker has Danish design and sustainability as its two main foundations. With the brand name itself, 'Nord' represents their Nordic heritage, and 'Green' represents sustainability. Our host Peter Brooker and Vasilij also chat about leaving a secure job to start a new brand without funding, why true sustainability goes beyond the product, winning a Red Dot Design Award, and why the brand chose to work with designer Jakob Wagner.

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Unknown:

Hello and welcome to another episode of The menswear style podcast. I'm your host Pete Brooker. On this episode I'm going to talk to vas brand co founder and chief growth officer at nordgreen. And I'm going to pull a short clip here from the website which you can find by the way@www.nordgreen.com. nordgreen is a watch brand which blends Scandinavian minimalism, with fine craftsmanship of a leading Danish designer who has previously worked with Bang and Olufsen and other major design brands. Based in Copenhagen nordgreen created more than a mere watch. Each of our time pieces has a unique story inspired by local design for sustainability and warm generosity. So there you go. That interview reverse to come. I really enjoyed it. We talked about what makes us sustainable. Watch what it takes to get a watch brand off the ground. And sometimes just taking a leap of faith can really pay off. But before we get too fast, don't forget to check out the show notes at menswear style ww menswear style.co uk and we're on the social app men's wear style. And if you want to tell us about your brand and your journey, you can email the show at info at men's wear style.co.uk. Okay, ah, let's get to it. This is a good one. And I hope you enjoy it. Here is that interview with fast Brown, co founder and chief growth officer at Nord green. It's my great pleasure to introduce fares brand, co founder and chief growth Officer nordgreen. I do hope I got your name right bears How you doing today? More or less, more or less? Thank you very much. I'm doing very well. Thanks. Awesome. As please, For the uninitiated, you just gave me a thumbnail sketch of view of Mike. But if we can do it for the audience, and let us know a bit more about nordgreen, please. Sure. So yeah, my name is specific brand. And I'm one of the cofounders of of nordgreen, which is a Danish designer watch company that we founded back in, back in 2017. So basically, it says a brand that that has two main foundations, which is Danish design and sustainability, which is also reflected in the in the name, no green. No green in the self is actually a Danish surname. So people are called Jacob North green, and Simon North green and whatever. And then mark, but when you read it in English, you see two words, you see not and you see green. And that's kind of the two colours that the executive represents the brand as mentioned before, not in Danish means are we printed pronounced in North, and that means north, which represents sound, Nordic heritage and Nordic design, story. And green. The second part of the name then represents the sustainability part of it. This is just mentioned before. And so as reflected, I know, I know a logo, and we have a little logo mark on top of the word mark, which is kind of it looks like a leaf, and which represents the sustainability. But it's also an arrow pointing to the north. So when Barry so kind of the the name, the name tells the story of the brand. And that's kind of the overarching story of it. Nice positioning on here. And talk to me a little bit how you got this off the ground and the people that are involved the the concept of marketplace. Tell us a little bit about the journey. Yeah, so we started the company back in 2017. I lived in the UK back then. And now Copenhagen, Denmark, but living in the UK, working for a company called the hunt group, which is kind of an e commerce incubator that has a lot of brands within health, fashion and beauty. And, and, and yet before that I lived in a couple of countries all around Europe, but the initial idea of kind of building the company actually came all the way back in 2010 when what I studied at the University, where am I my very good friend pescar and I studied together and talked about building a company at some point. This was in this was in Denmark, actually. So that was when I started my university journey. But I lived in Berlin later on doing are doing a Master's master's degree 2012 13. And so yeah, I mean, we then we talked about Stein coming together and we just never did. We continued our studies and then we finished our studies and we both got professional jobs. McKinsey and consulting business and I work in the UK, the UK group and in 2017 we just said you know what had Korea might be quite interesting and you know, very intellectually stimulating, but we've just Always had hasn't had this dream of starting our own thing. And in 2017, we decided to, to quit our jobs. And as part of that journey, Pescara, then the one of the co founders talk to one of his colleagues called Christian, about him quitting to to start this journey. And then Christian decided to also he was also in the process of quitting actually started his own company. And we decided to just merge the whole thing. And that's how three of us got together together and build this company. Wow. And so did you all, simultaneously quit your jobs and take a leap leap of faith with this, or was already backing and was already kind of some financial security with nordgreen. At the time, there is no pure leap of faith, no backing death, no financial security, quote, we all had our savings. And we said, You know what, let's just dedicate everything we have to this, and then cross our fingers and hope for the best. And kind of we had, we had a clear idea of what we wanted to do, we will have the same passion and same enthusiasm for the project. And we decided to, to just go for it. Then of course, early on, we we looked for for the initial funding, because building company, which you want to grow really fast, requires capital. So we did, we just started doing it after we we kicked off the project, but we didn't secure any funding until a couple of months into into the business. Wow. Now, you'll have to take because if I said to my girlfriend, that I'm going to quit everything that I'm doing, and I've got a great idea. I think that'd be blood and feathers in this house, I'll tell you about it. So what were the reactions of the people around you, and you when you decided to make this choice. I mean, they were like, you know, that they thought I was stupid. But I'm not not that not stupid, because he knows it was a big risk. We everyone involved in this project, we had really kind of exciting jobs, very comfortable salaries, and we're happy with what we're doing. But you know, with the three of us just had this, these butterflies in my stomach that we just wanted to start a company at some point, then. I mean, some, of course, a lot of people just sort of thought of cool, you know, just giving up everything, just go for it. And, and that was the feeling that we had, we didn't we didn't look back, we didn't look negative on it. We We kept our heads high and just just went for it. And I mean, again, well, we all we all had paths in the back of our minds that, you know, it is a big risk. And if we fail, after a year, or two or three, you know, we probably lost a lot, both financially and also career wise, we could have grown elsewhere. But I mean, to us, you know, the worst thing that can happen was was for you to go back and get a job again. Yeah, so Well, I mean, still, it's, it's quite a leap of faith, as you say, and was it so you the three of you got together and you said you wanted to work on a thing was it always going to be watches in the back of your mind, whether whatever options in the hat of a project that you could have gone down? I mean, there has been a lot of projects, I mean, if you look all the way back to, to, to when I, when we studied together, Pescara and I, and even before that I I did a lot of small projects in back in elementary school in high school. So you know, I've always had this entrepreneurial kind of gene in me. But if we go back to the university to time or read discuss this on a serious basis, yeah, there's been a lot of projects that were that we've had in mind that we wanted to to launch, ranging from vegan, vegan nutrition, too. We had an idea regarding a fashion company, and then the watches came up. And we then decided to at the end to move on, move on with the watches, because that was where we had kind of the the biggest passion. But it's funny because both pescar myself and Christian, we, we, with our first bonus not first watch enough first jobs, we bought a watch kind of so the passion has always always been there. And the interest has always been there. And then we dive deep into it. We also, yeah, concluded that it was actually also pretty good business opportunity. So passion combined with other ciency was a perfect fit for us. And that's why we decided to move into that, that direction. Interesting. And I think all entrepreneurs will have different ideas. It's just a discipline, isn't it of focusing and nailing down one idea that they can work on. I'm not calling myself an entrepreneur by any means. But I've had a dozen of ideas that I've never been able to get off the launch pad. I think everyone's had their idea there of launching a T shirt brand at one stage. So there's always some guys that have got boxes and boxes of T shirts before on demand k one and it's always taking up storage in your dad's garage, right I remember doing one on a concept called con artists. And I've got my mum too. Draw all of these different famous con artists during the years like the guy that sold the Eiffel Tower three times. You know, so we had like this picture of him on the front of the T shirt. And the idea of it being a pencil sketch was where the artist never got off the ground. And let's talk about nordgreen instead, that's more interesting. Talk to me a bit about the, the sustainability aspect. So when I was on the website, which people can find, by the way, nordgreen.com, there seems to be a real big subtext of the sustainability infused into the brand, you know, entrenched into the philosophy. Maybe you can tell me what a sustainable watch is, and how you make this sustainable work. Absolutely. So it's not just about creating a sustainable watch, it's about creating a sustainable concept. So in general, we offer this position as a Danish design company, or it can even design company, and especially Danish design companies. I mean, you can't create a Danish design company without thinking sustainability First, look at any historical successful Danish design, designer brands, whether it's brands doing furniture, you know, tables, chairs, couches, kitchen equipment, or speakers. And they always made a really, really good materials, it's really, really high quality. So it's product that's products that we rely on last a lifetime. And that's sustainability isn't in its essence, right? durability equals sustainability of the less waste you have, the more sustainable the product basically, is you can say, right? So Danish design of Danish brands, things designer brands on a tourist, it's sustainable. So we knew from the beginning that he wants to do things design company, we just have to be sustainable, we have to think sustainability first in the product. And but we also wanted to take it to the next level, and go beyond the product itself to then be the most sustainable watch brand out there, both within North design, kind of umbrella, but also on an overall level. And I mean, you can do this and in a lot of ways North Green's vision is to pioneer the next wave of responsible Danish design, what is the next wave is because things designer, just as mentioned, is responsible for sustainable one bring to the next wave on Pioneer the next week by go beyond the product. And so, you can make a sustainable product class course using sustainable materials. You can have sustainable, sustainable manufacturing, practices and proceed procedures which we which we of course do, but you can also do everything around it. And then anniversary sustainable and responsible way. In the case of North Korean as an example, we, we actually started off back in base with a giving back programme, which was a responsibility programme that allowed our customers to donate to a cause of their choice. So when people bought a watch, they could go to our website, go into the giving back programme into the into the serum number which, which is on the backside of the watch to the into kind of the sustainability portal, we've built a responsibility portal to then to then donate to one of three courses of their choice for free as part of the purchase price. And since the beginning, we've worked with three partners really closely to support health education and environment. And that's the three courses that consumers can choose. And the first course health is basically to provide two months of clean water to family in the Central African Republic. Education is to provide one month of free education to a to a family in that in all sorts of childhood in India. And the environmental part of it is to preserve 50 square metres of rain forest and in Latin America. And we're doing this with with the with three partners with again been working with since the very beginning and this programme is still available and that's kind of how we kicked off the responsibility journey. And then since since Yeah, and then since then we've Of course expanded arrived so our packaging is fully sustainable. The boxes made up if this if the CE certified cardboard, but the inner part of it is made up made up of recycled plastic bottles so it's made of felt which is made of upcycle plastic bottles in our case. So the boxes also gives us fully sustainable kind of experience. You're going to buy especially watches and jewellery, you get boxes with this foam this black foam that looks very luxurious and expensive but it is just poisonous to the planet so kind of it might look good and feel nice but it's actually not very good for the environment. And you know so we turn that around and we we we we all have our shipping partners that have said they're there this this year to this year to footprint we our office to to neutral and you know just things like that. So we go way beyond the product itself to make sure that we are sustainable and responsible across all avenues of the business but also the supply chain as a whole. Brilliant also but I love that the charity element of that because so many times when I see on websites, and this isn't to denigrate anyone else's ideas, but you'll have the option of donating say 10% to a charity. And it's often the charity that the founders chosen or some that it might be a charity that is not even close to your heart, but you feel like you're giving it away to some kind of black hole or an abyss somewhere, which is well and good for that charity, but it's not really something that motivates you to buy anything, but having the optionality and also seeing where it's going, I think that's a really big, nice, big bonus, good USP. That's the biggest problem is transparency in many cases, right brands, they, they, they see that a percentage or certain level of the purchase goes to a certain cause. But what it actually is, you know, it's not always clarified. So in our case, we, we are completely tangible in regards to what actually is going to happen. And then we also give the customer the choice to choose a course that's close to his heart. And when the interesting part is that when you when you then select the partner and you do the donation, then you can always log in again with that certain number to then follow the progression. We have kind of a landing page and the story will always be connected to that watch, which means if you sell it in the future to somebody, whatever, secondhand, then that person can then then login to see what the first cost custom customer chose to donate to as part of his purchase. So there's a stork next to the watch is nice. Yeah, that's nice. Reminds me of when I sponsored a tiger called Rocky. One of these Greenpeace things, but it was really cool. They kept on sending me little letters on behalf of Rocky, they are thanks for the 10 pound piece of add a nice lump of steak today. And tomorrow, I'll go out in the hills and do this and that I was like, Nah, that's really cool. I get to see 10 pounds getting from different parts of South Africa. Exactly. I mean, that's, that's continuously updating, right. And that's just brilliant. Yeah. And if you have a humorous element to it, it's all part of the journey. Maybe Tell me about some of the designs and what other than the sustainable element, what's actually going on within the watch that makes us different, or perhaps distinguishes this watch from other watches in the market right now. So I mean, the most important part for us in the beginning of the journey was to again, position ourself as true Danish design company. And that meant we had to hire a very, very good designer, because neither myself or Pascal, Christians, were designers, we had just entrepreneurs who want to build a beautiful watch company. And that is also of course responsible. So we had to recruit designer, we wanted to really get to kind of the best of the best. So we reached out to all the top Nordic designers in the world and ended up basically creating a very close partnership with Jacob Wagner, who is also Yeah, he was one of the lead designers and at Bang and Olufsen as an example. If you know, Ben Olsen is, you know, the Danish Danish food company that's very, very exclusive provides produces very high quality products. And he basically designed the entire headphone series as an example, which, you know, I just see, no matter where I go in the world, without travelling in Germany, or Japan, or the US or even South America, I just see those headphones everywhere. So, you know, he really makes kind of classical type products of designs that really last a lifetime is worth a lot of in the fashion designer fashion as you can the furniture industry, doing furniture, huge brands, like keppler, beanie and more also in the town, Italian brands, but has also done things designed brands such as montain, and, and, and hay and other big ones and coming out of Denmark, so kind of the design story is very complete now. And I think in the sense that you actually buy a watch made by Jacob Wagner, which is not just standard design, that he's one of the best designers in the world, even having a fixed fix exhibition at MoMA in New York City as well. So that's kind of the main thing you really buy, you really buy a genuine Danish design product, but at a price point, that's not different to all the others out there, you know, within the kind of fashion and design segment, we went up price any higher, and you're just looking at the design store. And you also get the, the the sustainability of it. And from a product perspective, Jacob has design for designs so far, the native the philosopher, the infinity and the pioneer. And we're launching a new model of just in a week. And we want a half week, which is exclusively exclusively exclusively for women called the unit cap, which is very exciting. And but the others have already been launched in their lives, more or less insistence, the beginning. Native philosophy and infinity were launched from the very first day and then the Pioneer came on did more than that, and a year later, and the first three months. Sorry, corn. No, no. So it's until I was going to ask was the pioneer the one that won the red dot? award? Correct? Yeah, the Pioneer one the the red dot Design Award in in 2020, which was, which was very exciting, really big deal, right? I mean, I've been been to the red dot Museum in Singapore. And okay for people that have never heard of it it's it's purely an exhibition based on design so you can go down there and see robots conducting orchestras playing table tennis against each other. It's it's almost like you're just walking into the future. And I yeah, anyway, I just saw that I saw the the red dot award and I was like, wow, that that is pretty big news considering with all due respect, you've only been going for a couple of years to to even be considered for this is let alone win it. I think it was pretty special. It was very special. We're very proud of that mouse does a pioneer design which show which was launched which was our latest design that was that was launched. And the Pioneer pioneers his first kind of gender specific watch we've had that was kind of it was designed for men but of course women can still buy it and wear it if they want a bit more chunky watch. But the first three designs we created the native plus fun infinity they actually are unisex right and so so so they you know they are they're sold to to both genders with moved in infinity more towards women, because we can just see that the vast majority for bodywork for women, and but the other the philosopher and the native, they're purely, purely unisex and even though they are unisex, this expressions of the watches can still be very kind of gender specific, because we have these quick release strap functionalities, which means you can easily quickly release the straps and change them with others. So a lot of our customers they buy, you know, 235 straps, they can have a lot of different expressions when they when they when they swap them for the watch case itself. So it's, we can see that you know, a lot of the women they buy, you know, the mesh band, so they buy the the five piece link links, or the like, where a lot of men, they buy the leather, they buy the rubber, they buy the nylon, and the watches just look very, very different depending on which strap you're wearing, you know, and then of course, women they're more inclined to buy the rose gold and the gold cases and the males and one plan to buy the silver and the gunmetal we have four different case colours. So even though the watches some of them are unisex, they can still be kind of tailored to the individual genders. That's interesting. Can you put I saw a lot of your your watches and your watch straps, I should say on the website. Can if I had my own watch strap like my own kind of NATO one that I just took off my Amiga James Bond watch, for example, can I switch that on to one of the pioneers that does it worked that way? If it's right, if it's the right size, then then then yes, we do have completely standard kind of case with so I locks they are and I'd have a 20 they are they're 20 millimetre and distance or 18 or 16. So it's very, you know, they can really be used across most together with most standard straps out there. So if you buy a 20 millimetre strap for your Amiga watch, you can certainly use it on alpiner Yes, I should say I don't actually own the Amiga watch but yeah, I could always dream. They are nice though. What was the books that you bought when you said that you and your your co founder friend but watch together at the same time? I'm curious which one it was say Oh, second older me again. An old Amiga see master from it was the one that was in it was James Bond golden I so from that movie, you know, they they changed over time. So I bought an old one from the old 300. Nice. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So I think I think they're I think they're much cooler than the new ones. The more story to them. Yeah. Well, you've got one of the most famous Danish people in the Bond films, right. Mads Mikkelsen rocks up in Casino Royale, he blew that out of the water, by the way. Um, absolutely. Yeah. He's amazing. And he would be I mean, I would love to have him as an ambassador for North Korean. Yeah. We'll get that one day. It'll be perfect. Or perfect. Or Vigo Morrison. Okay, even more than his grade and nearly never like customer value, as well. I mean, those three Yeah, some of our prime. Do one I'm sorry. I've just I was crazily Rolodex going through my mind then for famous Norwegian people. My brain just went into this huge Yeah, we do. We do work more and more with, with Danish kind of actors and celebrities and, and, and launching co lab designs with and Wes is doing this on a global scale. Well, all of them all of our core markets. But it's an example just recently, we just launched a watch together with I guess he's the most popular musician in Denmark. He's called Christopher. He's also very big in Asia, where we also have a quite strong presence. And, and we did a watch with him. It was the North Korean x Christopher collection, created in partnership with the world child counselling organisation. So as an example, every watch was something of that collection, we donate one round of chemotherapy to a child in developing country. So with these co labs that we have, you know, developing together with with with a list of actors, musicians, whatever it is, Always have a public link to them as well. And it goes beyond the getting back programme we talked about earlier. So that Yeah, just just an example of something we have done with celebrities in the past. That's very cool. First, I'm going to switch gears a little bit maybe we talked about celebrities and potential great brand ambassadors that you have, how much attention do you pay to see social media influences? And you know, obviously, with a lot of startup watch brands, I think they turned to social media to leverage some traffic and gain attention for their for their brand, do you actually have the same approach? Do you look at social media in that way? Is it something that you can utilise? Yeah, certainly, we we are very present on social media, both through advertising, organic, posting, but also through through influences. I would say influences is something you know, it's a marketing channel, right? But it's a channel that has changed substantially in the past five to seven years. If you build a company back in 2013 14, and kind of leveraged the influencer marketing channel, it was just a gold it was gold rush right? I've heard of brands who work with one influence on based on a few posts, they sold more than 50,000 units which is just it just ridiculous. They had a lot of bread yet. I had a lot of friends back then that just grew with like, like crazy because they just used influencers and back then everything was very organic, because influencers were actually really excited about getting free products. So when they talked about it in their posting and all that it was very organic goes very truthful. It's very natural, right. And the followers they they bought it because one of their favourite influences were wearing it. And it was it was it was Yeah, it was trust it was they had a high level of trustworthiness. But I think in the past sufficient the past just three to four years, the industry has changed a lot and become very much commercialised right back in base, you get huge influences posting for you just for free product. And now you have to pay 10 grand for it every time. If you'll want to want a big one even more, right, we've had codes of $50,000 or perhaps even more than that. So it's gotten really expensive. But the trust between the influences and, and the defaults has also decreased because the apologist knows that most of these things are commercial now nowadays, and because of that, it's just not organic in the same way as it was in the past. So from a match Mickelson cheaper than 50 grand oppose, surely I can do it for 10 K, I know that much. Laughing today, yeah, you will be interesting to use 50, Grand cheevers? It's ridiculous, right? So So nowadays, it's just become really expensive. And that's why we do of course use it. And we do we use the channel heavily. But we don't see that's the kind of very strong conversion channel, we don't see a lot of transaction coming through Jeremy compared to back in the days where you at least got like 510 or 20 sales per like influencer, you use nowadays, it's just that the numbers are often very much lower, especially our case, because our products are a bit more expensive, right, you pay more than $200 dollars for every product. And usually people just want a bit more research and maybe even see the storage before buying. So we use a channel but it's multiple, multiple brand awareness, just to keep the watch out there. Make sure people they see it in other people's risks through social media channels. We don't use it as kind of a strong sales channel. Right. Okay. And as you're our direct consumer, I don't believe you got any bricks and mortar at this stage. You know, we do but not our own stores. It's through third party stores. Yeah, I see. And how do you try and gain exposure for the, for the website and the ecommerce store? What? What are your main tools outside of the social media? I mean, we use all the traditional marketing channels. So just as you mentioned, short social media, both organic and paid. But we'd also use search and different countries. Obviously, Google search advertising is the biggest in the world. But we also use Yahoo in certain markets where Yahoo has a good presence and even think, so we do search marketing all over the place, we do a lot of shopping. So as an example, Google Shopping, where you can see the products on top of interest just below the top of the page when you search for something, we use quite a bit of display advertising. So that's example when you go read the news on BBC or any other big media in the UK, you often see if you ask here and they're following you. And we also also use use that a lot. And we use email marketing to kind of continuously reaching out to existing email subscribers and past customers. And we're getting really strong when it comes to search engine optimization as well. So we you know, peoples are finding us organically, depending on depending on what they search for, but now we're really ranking high and a lot of keywords within the watch industry. primary keywords that of course relevant to us because that's what we want to rank for. But also, a lot of kind of longtail keywords that doesn't have direct direct links. Danish design, which company, but still kind of to watch company, and then we still kind of show up. So we're getting quite strong on that as well. And we request from them affiliate marketing as well. So using a few different affiliate networks all around the world. So you know, different comparison platforms, the users and things like that. We work a lot with blocks, magazines, both online and offline, but primarily online because we are, yeah, see income driven. And we push PR quite a bit, did that especially the first two years, the past year, we haven't that much. But we will continue with it, especially end of here, when we open had a very good result. So we really we explore the down spectrum of marketing, and we really do it also in the local level. So, you know, the advertising we do for customers in South Korea are very different to that advertising we do for customers in the US, what we do for the US is actually very different to Germany, even though you might not think that Germans and Americans, ah, maybe maybe an overall level that different culturally, so we really localise everything that we would that we can, both from a marketing perspective, but also from a website perspective. There's I felt like we could do another hour on how you managed to pull the strings for this and the sort of research and the way you have to market this product. It's a great watch. Thanks for talking so much about it and giving us so many colourful answers. And best of luck with the launch next week. Perhaps it's already out by the time we get this podcast out more than likely, but people can check out the watches@nordgreen.com and also on Instagram nordgreen official so that people can tag along and follow the journey there. But it's been great to talk to you. Thanks so much for taking time out your Sunday. Thanks for inviting me. It was a pleasure. Well, how about that I could have talked to vas for hours, mainly about the films of Mads Mickelson and Vigo muslin, another podcast and overtime. In the meantime, make sure you're checking out the good guys, head over to Nord green.com and treat yourself or your loved one to a good looking design lead watch. Thanks for tuning in. If you like what you're hearing, do leave us a review on your smart phones. It helps our egos and until next time

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