The Yard

Dom Paddy & me AKA The Yard, Devon, circa 2005

After three years living a seasonal life between mountains and coast in France I returned to the UK. During my time there I had started a t-shirt brand with two old friends from home - Paddy and Dom - pictured above with me on my balcony in Devon for an article about our hometown of Totnes in The Guardian.

Inspired by surf and skate brands like Volcom and Counter Culture, we saw ourselves becoming a British equivalent (lol).

I designed all the clothes and between us we took care of production, sales and finances. We spent about 5 years selling clothes and building a name for the brand by putting on parties and events, sponsoring a few riders and generally following the template laid down by the surf/skate/snow industry.

Looking back we had some interesting ideas and approach. One standout piece of marketing we did was to create a blog - The Yard Circus on Tour - publishing the travel diaries of three young surfers we knew, including a young aspiring journalist named Ben Howard and best mates Roddy and Adam. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) I have no record of these hilarious tales. Of course Ben went on to use his writing skills in a different way and is a brilliantly talented songwriter. We also built a big, supportive network online which we used to pre-sell new designs direct to customers as a way to reduce waste and keep costs down way before companies like Everpress and Print Social or print-on-demand services existed.

We got to a point with The Yard where we were offered significant investment from a private backer but decided the targets we had been set were not achievable and frankly, bottled it last minute. It was a big lesson in trust, ambition, self belief and, essentially, what you need to run your own brand (clue - it’s not loads of fancy ideas and no idea how to run a business!).

I still see people wearing the t-shirts and hoodies occasionally and get a pang of nostalgia, partly because they still look good! I think if we launched it with what we know now, plus the power of social media and on-demand production, we might have a better chance of making it work :)

(…oh there are those big halftones again)

The Zombies Ball

Early painting