Ed Bartlett - Founder - Kostüme

Breakfast with Founders 🥐 Yesterday I met with Ed Bartlett (who is also overfunding on Crowdcube!)*

 No single strategy works on its own - you have to dig deep to find out what will work.

Ed is the founder of KOSTÜME - an entirely new frontier in technical apparel.

They exist to make the best technical apparel on Earth, without costing it. And having felt the apparel over breakfast, I can testify that Ed's really onto something!

We spoke about:

- Making gradual, personal changes to lifestyle to really practise what you preach and do what's right for our planet. No change does happen overnight, but it all starts with the small decisions at home - from clothing to travel to food choices. There's still a long way to go in creating awareness on these choices and making them more accessible. 

- The journey of building a brand from the ground up. To truly create a sustainable brand, you need to look at your entire supply chain. KOSTÜME has taken steps from source to create a distinct pre-order and drop model that allows for no waste or clothing ending up in landfill. 

- Raising money through crowdfunding. By focusing on a target customer group (cyclists) for their first product, bringing crowdfunding in early in the journey really helps build something that your customers want. By being afforded extra time by customers in delivering product (pre-orders and drops), staying really close to them is important. Even better, get them to invest in the journey!

- Avoiding growth at all costs. In other words - don't give all your money to Google and Meta. Today, marketing is harder than ever and really is multi-faceted. No single strategy works on its own - you have to dig deep to find out what will work. KOSTÜME has created a product that people talk about and word of mouth has helped accelerate their growth. It's now key to understand the data behind this and double down.

Thanks to Vestd for supporting our series! (more on that soon 😉)