Episode 354: Marnie Goding of ELK
How can a brand remain true to its values in a profit-driven world? In this episode, Fiona chats with Marnie Goding, founder of Elk. They talked about the importance of aligning business values with impactful decision-making and the challenges of integrating ethical practices in a traditional business model. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
The impact of outdated systems and the need for technological evolution
Implementing NuORDER for efficient 24-hour selling
Adapting to the demands of the pandemic with technology solutions
The challenges of integrating sustainability in the fashion industry
Transitioning to a more sustainable business model
Balancing sustainability with business costs and customer demands
Importance of bringing in experts to drive business growth and excellence
Strategies for conveying business values and vision to stakeholders
Tailored marketing strategies for wholesale and retail channels
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Ultimately, what you realize is that you can't do everything yourself and it's dangerous to try and do everything yourself. Yes, I'm still guilty of macro managing sometimes but that just comes from a closeness, it comes from a fundamental understanding and that gut instinct that only you as a business owner will have. You get to the point where you understand that you just can't do everything or that there's something that perhaps you don't know that somebody will know more about or that somebody can do better to help you advance the business.
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Welcome to episode 354 of the My Daily Business podcast. This episode is an interview with a small business owner and this one is with somebody that many people will know and at least know the brand especially if you are here in Australia. I can't wait to share that one with you. Before I do, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which I record this podcast and that is the Woiwurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
I also want to acknowledge that it is a difficult time for First Nations people in this country, especially post-referendum. If you are First Nations reading this, please know how much love and support there is for you even though it may not feel like that, especially with the results of the referendum. If you are a non-First Nations, please know that there are many ways to keep this momentum going and to support regardless of how you voted.
A lot of Australians do want better outcomes for First Nations people. Look at how you can keep supporting First Nations people buying from black-owned businesses and getting catering from Indigenous and First Nations in Torres Strait Islander companies. We created a list of this for one of our emails. If you would like that shared with you, you can email us at Hello@MyDailyBusiness.com. There are also many lists already out there created by First Nations people. Please, do a Google search and find some way to keep this going because we are all responsible for creating an incredible life for every Australian.
Also, whether you're in Australia or outside of Australia, there's so much going on in the world that is causing pain, overwhelm, stress, grief, and loss to people all over the world. If you are finding it particularly difficult, please know there is help available. Here in Australia, we have Beyond Blue, and you can find so many resources. If you have an ABN, you can get some free mental health coaching through Beyond Blue by sharing your ABN, and that is particularly for small business owners. It is mental health coaches and not psychologists or psychiatrists.
There is also 13YARN if you are First Nations and you want to talk to other First Nations people about some of the challenges that you're being faced with at the moment. Of course, there are so many other places for people to reach out to all around the world. Please, do your best to look after yourself, be kind, and share kindness. There's so much attacking and hate going on all over the world, particularly through social media. It is a tough time and please know that I'm sending everyone a big hug and look after yourselves. Let's get into our small business interview.
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It's my absolute pleasure to bring you an interview that I did with the wonderful Marnie Goding, the Co-Founder, Brand Director, and Creative Director of Elk. She started that business in 2004 with her partner and Co-founder, Adam. In our chat, we talked about how the business started, when it evolved, how she knew when to hire her first staff, how the business has grown, and how they've created this incredible purpose-led business that stands by its values. Even when that is the harder option, it lives up to being a sustainable and ethical business in a fashion retail landscape.
We also talk about how the business has grown over time and how Marnie and Adam have created a culture that is still there even when people work remotely. We also talk about the small steps that other businesses can take if they're looking to live up to their purpose, align with their values, and create a sustainable ethical practice, as well as what it's been like to go through COVID as both a wholesale and retail business. How do you create this incredible culture where people want to keep coming to work and they're invested in your brand vision just as much as you are? There's so much that we unpack here.
I want to say a massive thank you to Marnie because we have only had this happen one other time in 350 episodes. Marnie and I were halfway through our conversation when I realized we were not recording. Poor Marnie had to go right back to the start and record again. I want to thank her for her patience. She's a busy woman and gave up her time to do this. Here is my interview with the wonderful and inspiring Marnie Goding of Elk.
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Marnie, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks for having me, Fiona.
I'm looking forward to this chat. How are you feeling about life? I like to start with this question.
We're feeling positive. It's a busy time for us. We're feeling somewhat overwhelmed at all of the great things and challenges that are also conversely thrown at us. Things are good and we've got big plans and we've got long to-do lists but we've been doing this long enough to know that we've got to remain focused and we're not trying to do too much. It's particularly tough at the moment out there in the world of retail. Particularly in fashion, it's a bit of a battleground at the moment.
You mentioned that you've been doing this a decent amount of time and you have. Many people who follow this podcast will be familiar with Elk, your business, brand, and probably own parts of pieces from it. Can you share what is Elk and the origin story of why you and your partner, Adam, created it?
Elk is coming nearly twenty years in business now, which is exciting. It was started in 2004, probably a little earlier than that, but officially in 2004 by myself and my now husband, Adam. We met young and had always had the idea having come from entrepreneurial and small business backgrounds in our families that we wanted to work together. Adam is a fine jeweller by trade. I was working in marketing and events prior to us commencing the business.
We had this nice of complementing each other's skills. He's technical, creative, and good with finance and numbers. I've got the more creative and visionary side. Together, it was a good match. We wanted to work together straight away but my dad and his sage advice encouraged us to go and do our own thing for a little while before we jumped in and worked together. That was good advice because we made mistakes in other people's time and we had some life experience that we were able to bring to the business.
Adam was making fine jewellery for a loyal but infrequent customer base that didn't need to come in often to see him. I saw an opportunity pretty quickly that existed for him to create a lower-priced product to encourage his customers to come back more frequently. We also had a lot of friends in the fashion industry at the time. We realized that there was a niche in the market for still handmade but price-pointed contemporary types of jewellery items.
We started experimenting and I taught myself how to silversmith. We found, through friends, opportunities to create collections for their runways. Quickly, the pieces that we were making started to get noticed and we were selling them through his small shop front but we had others asking us for that product. It's important to remember that was a different time. For some of the people reading this episode, it’s understanding that it was a time the pre-internet is something that's probably quite hard to imagine.
The way that we started was through this product being noticed by people in stores and by other fashion labels. There wasn't a lot of choice at that time. They were asking us where they could buy this product. Whatever we made, we sold, and we just couldn't keep up with demand. That has seen the collection evolve from what was purely jewellery into other accessories and then into a fully-fledged fashion range, which has been running now for thirteen years. That's a twenty-year history in a small snapshot.
Was Adam's business already called Elk or did you come up with that name together?
It wasn't trading as Elk. We needed to create a different name because it was going to be and started to morph into a different business from what it was previously. He was custom making everything himself and it was just him. This business is about more. We sat down and thought about what this business could be and we realized we needed a name that was not connected to a particular person. Elk was born out of the idea of creating a brand that was central to a strong natural figure or being. We've also got quite strong ties to Canada and Scandinavia through our family history.
We wanted a name that was also unisex because we didn't know where the brand was going to head and what product we were going to make. It’s something that had no ethnicity attached to it and that was strong, short, and easy to say. In hindsight, twenty years before the internet, it is what it is today, trademarking a name like that, in hindsight, wasn't a great idea because it was difficult to get those trademarks through. Knowing what we know now, we would probably play it differently. We are where we’re at after a bit of hard work and the branding does suit the business that we've created.
It's almost like when people name their children, you don't know what the child is going to be like. You name them two seconds after you've met them or before you've even met them. It's like Apple computers, you wouldn't have thought of Apple and computers or mustard and lockers. A brand can grow into its name as well. I couldn't imagine it being called anything else but Elk now.
The brand is more than just what the name is. You have to represent so much more than those three letters.
You mentioned that the business has been around for twenty-plus years, which is gigantic. I totally understand where you're coming from when you were saying it's pre-internet or pre-social media. I used to work at fashion magazines then and it was a different time, journalism and media. Media people had a lot of sway more so than they maybe do now. Because of that, you have gone through the global financial crisis, you've gone through other things, and COVID-19 and the pandemic. As a retail and wholesale business, how did you deal with the pandemic and what were the lessons that came out of that for your business?
The biggest thing that came out of that was this understanding that we've got a fundamentally strong business. We are still owner-led and we're completely self-funded. We are proud of the fact that whatever life throws at us and whatever business throws at us, we're able to ride that through. In the twenty years that we've been around, we've gone through the global financial crisis and the pandemic. We're not big risk-takers and that has sometimes slowed us up but it's certainly given us a strong foundation to always fall back on. We're close to our business.
We are good at forecasting and seeing what's coming up. Being blindsided by big things like a pandemic or even small things like interest rate hikes, when you're running a good business, you have to always have your eyes and your ears open. You have to make sure that you take the time to step back and watch what's going on. We've got 80 to 90 employees now and that's a lot of people to manage and it's a lot of people to also keep on the straight and narrow. Having a clear vision and having fundamentally strong business practices and principles is a great combination for making sure that you've got a strong future.
Speaking on that and staying on employees, who was the first employee that you took on? Especially being partners, I'm imagining that might've been a bit of a conversation, like, “Are we there yet? Do we really want to take some of the money we're making and put it on to somebody else?” There are lots of people reading that will be in that stage where they're either trying to get into the US so they need somebody over in the US to be working for them or they're trying to hire their first staff member. What was it like and who did you hire?
Our first hire was an apprentice jeweler and that was pretty quickly after we started working together. After that first hire, we brought on a salesperson. From the salesperson, there was an accounts person and so on. Whatever stage in business you're at, despite wearing multiple hats that you never ever take off, I still put out the bins and I still clean the kitchen and feed the worms and do all that stuff.
Ultimately, what you realize is that you can't do everything yourself and it's dangerous to try and do everything yourself. Yes, I'm still guilty of macro managing sometimes but that just comes from a closeness, it comes from a fundamental understanding and that gut instinct that only you as a business owner will have. You get to the point where you understand that you just can't do everything or that there's something that perhaps you don't know that somebody will know more about or that somebody can do better to help you advance the business.
Bringing people on is a big commitment, it's a commitment to you financially but it's a commitment to them as well. Personally, they've committed to working for you and you're responsible for that person whilst they are. Having a business plan in place and understanding what benefit that person brings to the business is critical. I am in this beautiful position where anybody who comes to our business, I learn from. You never stop learning. You never know everything because things change as well. You might need to know more about accounting or you might need to know more about HR. There's that fundamental understanding that comes with running a good business.
Also, the world changes, the market changes, the business expectations change, and even compliance changes. You have to always bring people into the business who are going to extend you or help you learn or be a stronger business. Making the right hire at the right time can be a huge step forward for a business. You are certainly bringing people on who are going to hold you back. Our biggest challenge over the years is having people who make our lives harder.
It can be hard, whatever position you're in, whether you run a business or not, dealing with employees. I remember when I became head of marketing for a big accessories company, somebody said to me, “It's 5% head of marketing and 95% percent head of HR because all you're going to deal with is people's problems all day long.” Outside of that, it’s coming back to you having a great staff.
In terms of the pandemic, a lot of businesses have gone through changes with their staff, in particular, staff not necessarily wanting to come back to work full-time in an office or come back as much as maybe they were working. You've got retail shops so those people have to turn up and open the retail shops and be there. In terms of head office staff, how have you dealt with the change to people's lifestyle and want to support that, as well as continue having this great connection and this great community that you have, more so, when people are physically in the same spot?
We're running a business in a way that we could never have managed pre-pandemic and that's not a bad thing. We've got a strong culture at Elk and we've always talked about flexibility, balance, and aligning your values with your workplace. Pre-pandemic, we had a lot of people coming to us and saying that they wanted to work with a brand that displayed its values quite publicly and was transparent about the way that they function. This was a proving ground for us. It was a very tough time.
During that critical period when everybody completely had to shut down, there was nothing anybody could do. There was zero option on trying to get around it and we didn't want to get around it because we were focused on surviving it. In our business, a part of our functions is distribution. Our warehouse was deemed a critical component to keep working, which allowed us, in some parts, to keep the wheels rolling. It allowed us to fulfil wholesale orders and online orders as well. That was pretty great because there were a lot of businesses that didn't have any options.
For our design team and our administration side of the team, we had to adapt. The team was incredible, they showed the most incredible loyalty and exhibited the most incredible tenacity. Also, for all of us, it was a vulnerable time. What we did was we tried to maintain positivity. We tried to stay fundamentally strong for them because we wanted them to understand that we are a business that's weathered things like this before, we weren't going away, and we weren't going to lose the business.
People went straight to the responsibilities that they have, “How am I going to survive? How am I going to pay the mortgage? How am I going to pay the school fees?” Whatever it was, we needed them to be understanding that Elk was not going to go anywhere. Communication was critical through that period. We set up an internal newsletter that we would put out each week, checking in, telling funny stories, telling people where we were at, how we were feeling, and how we were tracking any updates that they needed to know. That time proved to us how critical communication is within the business and how what we feel or understand is not necessarily what one of our staff, suppliers, or customers even understood about how we were feeling.
There's so much in that. Outside of the pandemic, before being twenty years old, which is incredible and huge and you should be proud of that, you've weathered so many storms already like the global financial crisis. How have you got through these? You've talked about some practical things that you did during the pandemic with the newsletter.
On an emotional level as the leader of a business, how have you managed these dips? You mentioned before that you don't take that many risks, which is wonderful to hear.
Often, in business, it's like, “Take risks. Be bigger.” People then come crashing down sometimes. How have you managed to get through the other challenges pre-pandemic and what would you say to someone who's reading who's maybe in that exact headspace right now given everything they're hearing in the media about the recession? Does that even make sense as a question?
It does and it's complex. The realities of how we run business today are all relative. For anybody new following this podcast, you might have a business that's a year old or might not have even started a business. We will all face the same challenges. The challenges around capacity, your capacity to be able to cope with businesses as usual, and then the capacity or the space to be able to deal with things that might come at you, which will come at you that you don't expect. What support mechanisms do you have around you?
By good fortune but also good engineering, surrounded by people who can provide us with advice and support when we do wobble and people who can set us back on the straight and narrow. It's tough though, whatever stage the business is at, whether you're a business of 1, 100, or 1,000, a challenge is a challenge and you have to learn how to get through it. You have to focus on where the biggest impact lies and where the biggest influence your decisions will sit. It's challenging when you run your own business. Unless you're starting it when you're 60 and you've got a lot of experience behind you, you can't know everything.
The other part of providing yourself with a good safety network around you is looking at the people that you bring into the business. We could not, categorically, have gotten through that pandemic without our head of HR. We didn't have a head of HR for long before she joined the business. I look back now and think it was a real mess and it was a messy time because nobody had the answers.
She didn't have the answers either but what she did do was able to help us navigate a complex system of government regulation, requirements, and being eligible for grants or whatever it was, or subsidies at the time. You need people around you to help you navigate that stuff because you drown otherwise. Keeping your head above the water is a survival instinct but pushing yourself forward and making yourself stronger from these challenges is only something that instinctively you can do as a business owner.
I'm going to ask another question on that. Do you have any practices? I will go for a walk. I'm lucky to live in a bushy area of Melbourne. I started in the pandemic going for a walk to get out of the house because I had a six-month-old child and doing homeschooling. My husband had to work full-time from home and I was trying to run the business. That morning walk was like, “Get me out of the house. Get me out of the craziness.”
That is something that I've kept doing. It's years now and I will do it as long as I can for the rest of my life because of mental and physical health but it's more mental. Getting out in the morning and getting some fresh air, I can cope with stuff better. Are there any practical things that you or Adam or anyone else like a senior in the company do that you think have helped with tackling all of those challenges that inevitably hit any business owner?
The biggest change for the business is the way that we work now. Coming out of that pandemic period, most people loved the balance of being able to have some time working from home and that is something that we've continued to offer as a measure of flexibility for everybody in the business that's not critical like retail to turn up or the warehouse, for example. Now, whilst we're still navigating how to have people come back and work from home at the same time, that is something that is not a ritual, perhaps a company policy that's been put in place to offer people a bit of balance.
Personally, there are many things that we realized that we needed to put in place to cope mentally. The same thing with two kids or a husband and wife who work together. COVID was challenging. As a business owner, the other big thing was that sense of responsibility that we had for those 80 to 90 people. They looked to us for answers that we didn't have and they looked for us for guidance and for strength that sometimes we didn't have.
Coming out of that whole period of time, what Adam and I have done is we've made the biggest life decision and we've moved down the coast. We've taken our kids out of school. We have transitioned our roles differently to allow that to happen. Our team has facilitated that happening as well. We had a personal tragedy at the start of the year that compounded the choice that we've made for our own mental health to be down living where we are.
We commit to driving a horrific number of hours every week to come back to the office because we still need to show up, we still need to be present, and we still need to lead the business. We still need to be there as fallbacks or as people to guide and make decisions. We are also demonstrating by real practice that finding balance in life is important. Things are busy. We're growing as a brand and we've got new retail stores coming. It's a hectic time for us but we're still trying to demonstrate that having flexibility in your work life makes you a better person, a better parent, a better leader, or a better manager. Whatever it is, you have to take time to step aside and breathe because you panic otherwise.
I'm sorry that you went through a tragedy. We moved out to where I live in North Warrandyte years ago now. I have to say that nature is such a healer of all sorts of things that may be going on. Good on you for being the leaders and showing that that's possible as well because there are many people looking at you and saying, “It is possible. I could have the lifestyle I want plus the business that I want as well.”
You've mentioned that you have exciting news and that you're opening new retail but you do wholesale and retail. There are some lovely stores near me that sell a lot of Elk. Which systems or what have you had to create in order to run a successful B2B business and a B2C business? The marketing and communications, I know some businesses have got a secret or private Instagram channel, for example, for their wholesalers, or they have different messages that need to go out to wholesale and retail. How do you do that in terms of keeping it consistent but also understanding that they're two separate markets?
Technology and systems, you can look at through a few different lenses and one is through efficiency. We've got a business that requires systems to allow us to freight our goods, make our sales, and put orders in. A simplistic lens to look at it is through customer experience. Our customers are not only our retail customers, which we source online through retail but there are wholesale customers as well, which are both domestic and international.
We are also our own customers as well, our staff. We have some of the best feedback on the best representation like what they like and what they don't like. We have to find a way of dealing or not dealing with but with communicating with them as well. There are systems that are required there. For us, in the business that we have created, the other lens to look at things is through sustainability. We've got different systems that we need to measure our impact and measure our carbon footprint, for example.
There's a complex web of systems that's required. In some senses, the systems that we were using were best-in-practice years ago, as innovation and technology advances, those systems are redundant today. In some ways, we're a little bit old-fashioned, we still run agents, we've got showrooms, and we run showings. We're not totally digital because we still want those connections with our customers and they need to see us and feel the fabrics. We get the best sense of how our wholesale customers particularly tracking through one-on-one contact.
One of our greatest successes from a wholesale point of view is that we're known and we've got quite good regional coverage. As you suggested before in your area, there are some stores that have our product in them. That tyranny of distance sometimes means that people can't always get to see us. We’ve set up a system with a company called NuORDER and that's effectively given us a 24-hour selling tool.
One of the things that's come out of the pandemic interestingly is that wholesale business owners are busier than ever so they can't necessarily find staff but they also can't find the time because they don't have the staff to go through that traditional buying process they used to. We set this tool up for them and thank God we had it because through the pandemic, it was invaluable when we couldn't see our customers or they couldn't get out to showings or they didn't have time that they could place their orders as frequently or as infrequently as they wanted it, 1:00 in the afternoon or 1:00 in the morning, it didn't matter. That was a critical B2C tool that we had in place.
From a B2B point of view, one of the best tools that we've put in place is one called Zendesk and it's a way for customers to connect with us regardless of the platform or the channel that they're coming through. We've got many touch points for our customers to contact us whether it's by email or through our social media or even via phone. All of these communication channels are through one system and it has been the best way for us to manage communication with our customers and for our customer service team to have a holistic view of either sentiment, trends, or patterns that are coming through.
Those two tools have been critical to our success through that period and ongoing as well. It's important to realize that technology can be redundant pretty quickly. In some ways, we're hamstrung by some of the old systems, particularly custom-built systems that we've had for years where we can't change, we can't pivot, or we can't retire that system easily because it's been entangled in our custom-built processes that it's not best in practice anymore. It’s critical to not settle yourself for something that you can't get out of.
It’s so important, that last point. We changed our brand name in April 2023 and there are many links and things out there that it's like, “Gosh.” You don't even realize sometimes how embedded certain things are until you want to go and change them, for example. I love that you mentioned NuODER, that is a full-circle moment because my bosses at the fashion magazines were the guys who'd come up with NuORDER. They developed that program. You mentioned before that transparency is a big part of your business and you were talking about sustainability and having that sustainable lens when you're looking at your systems.
You're aligned as a business to One Percent for the Planet. I wanted to ask when that came about and also how much work it has been to be in the One Percent for the Planet alignment. I know that a lot of people want to be B Corp Certified or they want to go down the path of One Percent for the Planet or do something else like that. Often, they're put off by how much work is involved and how much of auditing and paperwork or non-paper work that they have to do. How did you get involved with that? Can you talk us through your experience and any advice that you'd have for somebody reading?
Working out what's important to you is critical because that will drive any decisions that you make. What is the purpose of running your business? In our case, we are a fashion business. We have a huge amount of environmental impact, which we are increasingly aware of. What is important to us is the transition that we're going through and have been going through for probably years now and our core purpose is to run a better business and make better products to decrease our impact on the planet.
That's what's important to us and that's what I was saying before about working out what's important to you because that will drive the decisions. All of this work that we're going through in the field of transparency or ethical and sustainable practices is something that's being driven by Adam and myself. We were already doing and already living out those principles that we've translated to the business. When you're looking at what you do with that, it's important to try and navigate how much work something is going to take, what's important, and what's doable.
Underpinning all of this is there’s no marketing, it's more about Adam and I saying, “What's important to us? How do we reduce the impact that we have on the environment by the business that we're running?” We could ignore that impact. We could continue on the path that we've been on for years and continue to run a lineal fashion system where we take, make, and discard but that's not what we're about.
We've acknowledged early on and probably a lot earlier than most other brands that that's not sustainable. It's not something that the environment of the world can sustain from a resource point of view for future generations. We're putting our money where our mouth is. Having a lot of that work already underway is what we needed to fulfil the commitments that we have. Joining these external parties like One Percent for the Planet and we are close to submitting our B Corp application was a way for us to formalize that existing work.
We're on the eve of launching our fifth transparency report. We generate most of those reports ourselves in-house and we also self-assess. We wanted to find a way that we could prove that we're effectively following our own commitments and walking the talk. We're making ourselves accountable. One Percent for the Planet isn't a lot of work, it's a commitment that you make, and it's an accounting process.
We were contributing 1%, if not more already. What we were doing was making sure that those funds were being channelled through to organizations with an environmental cause. That was a tricky time for us because we had a long-standing relationship with UNICEF and we're proud of the work that we've done with them. We were a platinum champion for children. There was a long-standing relationship there that we needed to move away from because UNICEF didn't have an environmental focus.
What's important is that One Percent for the Planet has a list of pre-approved organisations that have environmental causes. That's the centre of the charity work that they're doing or the work that the NGOs are doing. UNICEF, we spoke to them and found a way of working with them continuously by finding a purpose that fits into that environmental bucket. Whilst One Percent for the Planet isn't a huge amount of work, something like B Corp is.
It's particularly for a business like ours and it's increasingly complex because we've got a supply chain that's dotted all over the world, we've got product and raw materials right down to our Tier 4 supply chain that is in some of the most remote parts of the world. Making sure that we can submit to B Corp and be rigid with our process is something that we find difficult to resource ourselves. For small businesses, you can get a consultant in to help you or you can put a resource into your business. In our case, we did both.
When we started on this journey of transitioning from a traditional fashion business into the business that we are today, I was doing it on my own. I realized pretty quickly that I couldn't do everything. Also, at the time, we were starting to shift away from conventional materials and conventional manufacturing. It was a time when this topic of sustainability, particularly in the fashion space, was pretty new. We realised that there were not a lot of resources out there, there was not a lot of information, and the information that we were finding was conflicting.
I was trying to do all of this at the same time as running the business as a growing business as usual, having a family, and doing a lot of other things. Adam and I brought somebody into the business. Erika Martin was one of the best people that we've ever brought in and she helped us to focus our attention and to realize that we can't achieve everything and that we needed to focus our energies on the areas that we're going to have the greatest impact.
The point of all this really is that you need to decide what's important to you, you need to decide where you're going to spend your time, and you need to understand how much time that's going to take. If you can't give something your all, is it worth doing it all? If can't do it all, you need to bring somebody else in to help you. Today, the market is different and there are people out there who can help you do that. Whereas years ago, sustainability experts didn't exist, it was a different time.
It's great that you've gone into detail about that because a lot of people don't know the difference or maybe have heard about the B Corp, the effort, and then thought, “I won't touch anything.” It's good that you've differentiated them. As you said, “If you can't give it everything, maybe look at other things you can do.” Also, the idea of keeping accountable to your vision.
You've mentioned for a few times your vision and that's a big part of it and a big part of any business. We haven't got much time left and you're a busy person but how do you show that to the staff? How do you make that vision a reality for people outside when they've just started the business and they're onboarding and maybe learning a bit more about the brand? How is that brought up on a practical level throughout people's time at the business?
For all stakeholders, it has to be something that they understand. When I speak to stakeholders, I talk about the internal team, I talk about our supply chain, and I talk about anybody that comes through our business. Whether it's our customers, our PR agency, or whoever it is, they have to understand why this business exists. They know what we do, we make fashion. What they need to understand is what sits behind that, why we make fashion, and why we make the fashion that we do.
We are transparent on a daily basis through the way that we behave and the way that we talk but also through our reports. We don't have everything completely figured out. We're not trying to say we're something that we're not. Driving this business of fashion that we run is a set of values that sit in and around wanting to do things better, wanting to offer a better alternative for customers when they do come to us, and offering a solution that is more circular.
Having our team come to us, even when we put our job advertisements out, we're clear about who we are, and we're very clear about what our purpose is and what our vision is. Why would you work for us? You know that before you even come to us. That's reiterated then through the recruitment process and then through the induction process and then continual reminders as well. We have an annual conference where we go back through and talk about our values.
One of those values is authenticity. We try always to bring people into the business who can demonstrate those values as well. Anybody who will then be responsible for training somebody else or for imparting knowledge or imparting training will also fundamentally hold those values as important. Adam and I have to continually demonstrate that.
As the founders, we don't need to do any of this, we don't need to sprout values, and we don't need to push sustainability. It's expensive, complicated, and frustrating but it's essential. We have made that essential to the business. We've made that essential to ourselves and we've made it a non-negotiable. We say continually that every decision has to have sustainability at the front of it. For some staff who've been with us for a long time or some staff who've come through from traditional fashion businesses, that's a real change of mindset. We don't compromise on that.
There are times when we want to and there are times when we're challenged. Something that is critical to anybody who's starting a business is not only looking at those core factors of, “How much does it cost to make it? How much does it cost to ship it? How much does it cost to market it?” What is that factor in there that you're going to allow for sustainability? It costs more. It is undeniable that the materials cost more, and marketing costs more.
If you're going to contribute to One Percent for the Planet, that's another 1% that you've got to add in. As business owners and founders, we still make that important. We say, “We want to compromise but if that dress that you bought for $125 last week is going to be $145 next week but it's made out of something that's far less impactful or that it's made in a factory that's got ethical conditions, isn't that worth paying for?”
Underlying all of that is the customer. The customer has to see the importance of that. They have to see the relevance of that work. It's a challenge because, particularly at the moment, times are pretty tough, and people are stretched. That's us needing to balance out that messaging of, “Buy our product because it's better but don't buy it if you don't need it.”
We don't want to force consumption. We don't want to say to you, “You have to have something that you don't need in your life.” It's this constant state of balance. Isn't that life? It's trying to work out the balance in between, work life, play life, or whatever you call it, between price point and ethics between consumption and responsible consumerism. It's constant balancing.
It's good that you're being transparent and open about it and also that people can see that a brand like yours can survive and there is a market for it. Whenever I've worked with clients on this particular question, people often think, “I have to panic, especially in this current economic climate. I have to slash things and maybe not hold up to my values as much as I want to.” That is going to cause long-term regret for a short-term potential gain that may not even be there.
I do think that there is always an audience who wants to buy the $145 dress and maybe buy less of something else that they were going to buy that year in order to afford that price increase because they believe in what you're doing. I imagine that you'd have a lot and a long list from twenty years but what are you most proud of from your journey with Elk so far?
The thing I'm most proud of is the awareness of the journey that we've been on and the research that we've done and it's had on our team and right through the supply chain as well. In some cases, we've seen suppliers who have been working the same way for generations and they've undertaken and committed to a real shift in understanding and committing to improving their processes or the materials that they procure or, from a transparency point of view, giving us a look into their supply chain that previously they held guarded. That's a positive influence and a legacy that we're the most proud of.
We had a staff member who left us and they said to us that when they came to us, they knew that the journey that we were on was to be a more sustainable fashion brand. They've left with so much knowledge that they didn't have when they came with us, not from a technical point of view necessarily, but certainly with the understanding of the environmental impact of the industry that we're working in. They're now going to take that to their next job in a business that has zero acknowledgment of impact. That is the work that we're trying to do.
We're not saying that whether we're best and we're not saying we've got everything figured out but what we are doing is trying to show that this is the playbook. If you're going to transition or you're a new business that wants to start with sustainability as part of your DNA, this is how you do it. Yes, we're still figuring things out. Yes, the industry is in transition. The business itself and society are in transition as well.
Right now, this is the best way that we can figure out how to do it and we're going to share the journey in the hope that somebody takes something from that and that they then impart that to their friends or their family or the next job that they go to or that then they come full circle and come back to us with more knowledge.
This is a crucial time for us to do better, know more, and commit financially and personally to doing better because the clock is ticking and the environment is not keeping up. I question every day whether or not what we're doing can ever be sustainable and I don't think it ever can be. What we need to do is show better ways and be the better option for people when they do get to that point of buying something and that it's a better option than what they could have bought previously. There'll be a better option again tomorrow but we're working forwards and always working forwards.
You've shared so much, thank you so much. What is next for Elk and where can people connect with you?
A further connection is the key for us. We are expanding fairly slowly but expanding our presence in retail. We've got one of our stores in renovation at the moment and another big one due to be renovated soon. It'd be nice to be able to expand wholesale back out into international. We had such a huge spread globally pre-pandemic that we've pretty much entirely lost so we're keen to get stuck back into representing Australian fashion and sustainable Australian fashion internationally. That's an exciting time.
One of our core pillars is community so we're looking forward to driving deeper connections in communities where we trade because it's more than about selling products. We've got some of our retail stores in some lovely areas and our wholesalers also work in some great areas. It's all about supporting each other and, at the end of the day, supporting the customers who support us.
Thank you so much, Marnie. Congratulations on twenty years, that's gigantic, and on all of the work that you're doing in the sustainability space. It's admirable and it will be contagious for people reading, being like, “I'm going to start. Even if it's a small step, I'm going to start.” Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me.
Bye.
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A massive thank you again to Marnie for so many tips and insights from her understanding about marketing and coming up with the brand name through to everything around transparency. On that note, if you are interested in checking out the transparency report from Elk, you can google Elk The Label Transparency and you should get through to their transparency page, which goes through everything about caring and repairing for their products, plus what they're doing with One Percent for the Planet, plus their transparency report. You can also connect with Elk and with Marnie herself via their social media and you can find them on Instagram, @ElkTheLabel. You can also find them online at ElkTheLabel.com.
I would love to know what you took away from this and you can always send us an email, Hello@MyDailyBusiness.com, find us on Instagram, @MyDailyBusiness_, or TikTok, @MyDailyBusiness. I want to highlight two of the things that stood out to me from my chat with Marnie Goding of Elk and the first is when she talked about viewing everything through the lens of sustainability.
Often, in business, we view everything through the lens of financial success and that's it. Many times, people will say, “How's your business going?” People will either respond, “Because we are up X amount of percentage or X amount of dollars year on year or month on month,” or, “We've had our best year ever,” or, “It's not going so well. Our sales are down.” We only look at the business through that lens rather than choosing a lens like sustainability, “Regardless of how the sales are going, what else are we trying to achieve with this business?” When we look at it from that standpoint, how are we doing?
I also liked that she was talking about how even the metrics for success that were great a couple of years ago have changed and adapted and we need to change and adapt as those things change in terms of how we view sustainability and what are we doing to genuinely show up as a sustainable business. I loved that concept of looking at the business through a different lens than so often people look at, which is predominantly financial.
There were so many things but the other thing that stood out was when Marnie talked about extending yourself and growing the business by bringing on people who know more than you in a certain area. That can be such a hard thing for people to get their heads around, especially if you've built the business yourself and maybe, like Marnie, you're working with your partner or you've got a sister, a cousin, or somebody else in the business. It can be hard to not think, “We can manage it,” or, “Do we want to spend the money on that when we could spend it on SEO or doing more Meta ads or something else?”
It can be difficult to go, “I'm not an expert in this area and I need to bring in somebody who can help us achieve a level of greatness in that particular part of the business because we don't have the skills.” Even if you maybe do have the skills, it's sometimes like, “Do I want to spend my time? Is my time best spent doing that thing?” For example, I love playing around in Canva. I should have been a graphic designer in another life.
There are lots of graphic designers being like, “Canva is not graphic design. Don't try and put those things together.” I love doing that creative stuff. I love spending time messing about. However, that's not the best use of my time. All of our graphics for social media are created by my OBM, Yricka. We have other graphics that are created like slide decks and course coaching materials by another person that we work with.
We had Ashley Simonetto who created the actual brand guidelines and often is the person I go to if we're going to change things or change how Instagram looks or TikTok covers or whatever. It can be hard to be like, “I enjoy doing that and maybe I've got some little bit of skill in it but other people have a better skill. It's better for me to outsource that or to bring somebody into the business who's going to be incredible at it versus me faffing about it or trying to have a little bit of fun for a couple of hours when I could be better utilized in the business to grow it.” That could be a hard thing to get your head around.
