18 months ago, we reached a tipping point. We were looking at all the other fancy fashion brands out there, and thinking, “You know, a lot of these folks look more expensive than us.”
Thing is, our visuals looked DIY. Because they were DIY. And we were concerned.
The problem with affordable prices is it makes some people think it’s made cheaper. Even though that isn’t the case at all.
The quality of our fabrics and design is (in our humble opinion) up there with the best of them. We just spent our small margins on fabrics and wages, so there was little left in our piggy bank for branding and photoshoots.
But over this past year, the end of the DIY era has slowly been dawning on our fledgling fashion brand.
And last week, we got a brand new makeover.
We haven’t reinvented the wheel or shaved off a beard we’ve been donning all our lives. But we have got new fonts, a few new drawings to show what we stand for and have spent far too much time debating how to create the perfect flick on our new “y”.
The makeover has been designed by the talented Jay Carter, aka, The Visual Tailor. Take a look here – we hope you like it.
It’s a tipping point moment for us, but not quite as dramatic as this one...
A few weeks ago, we met a new friend called Sophie. She was living in London when she realised she didn’t want to live in London.
“Is this what you want to be doing in ten years?” her friend asked her one day.
So one evening, on the drive home from a dinner party and quite a bit of wine, she took a sharp intake of breath as if she’d realised something vitally important and obvious:
She turned to Panu, her partner, and said, “We need a vineyard.”
It was a tipping point moment. “Panu thought I’d lost it,” Sophie told us. “But I hadn’t.”
Panu was a mixologist. He's the kind of person you’d find placing mulberries into a test tube first thing in the morning. The question always on his mind is, “could I distill and drink this?” Often, whether the question is about sunflowers or birch sap, the answer is yes.
Panu worked in the drinks industry until covid times decided to temporarily erase hospitality from existence. Together, he and Sophie had visited wine regions around the world and closely followed the explosion of British wine.
So when Sophie started talking about vineyards, it sounded a little crazy, but could be the whole new start his career needed. So he went to study winemaking.
“I’ve never spent so much money on holes in the ground.”
Sophie and Panu found a 250-year old farm in the heart of West Somerset. It was just missing a key ingredient.
It didn’t have a vineyard.
So they decided to plant one. “I’ve never spent so much money on holes in the ground,” Sophie said, and it was going to be a while before they ever made money.
It takes three years after planting a vineyard before you can begin picking the grapes.
It takes ten years before sparkling wine is fully flowing.
Sophie’s ten year plan is literally taking ten years to come to fruition.
For now, Sophie and Panu source grapes from other vineyards, and do the full traditional treading technique – splitting the skins of grapes in a gentler way than a mechanised press can achieve, and affecting the flavour.
We hung out with Sophie during our latest photoshoot on her farm. She gave us a bottle of sparkling wine to try and, even though our palette isn’t as refined as Panu, we can say it was very good.
This would be a good point in the email to link everything back to our brand refresh, saying something along the lines of “Five years ago, we launched Yes Friends and dug our own holes in the ground.”
But some metaphors probably shouldn’t be forced. Maybe we’ll be able to think of a good one in ten years time. But sometimes, we just like to tell you about the friends we meet.
If you’re into your wine, check out our new friends at Thornfalcon Winery & Press (they’ve got an official opening in September).
And check out our new and gleaming Yes Friends site, even if we couldn’t come up with the perfect segue.
AN IMPERFECT SEGUE