Go Your Own Way

PBP Insights

Go Your Own Way

ELLEN BENNETT relied on her gut to fuel the success of kitchenware upstart Hedley & Bennett. She’s just now starting to heed (some) advice from industry experts.

Did you have a five-year plan when you launched Hedley & Bennett?

There was no five-year plan. There was not even a five-month plan. The plan was one mission: I wanted to be the Nike of the culinary world.

That’s ambitious.

I was a cook who worked in restaurants, and there were all these fragments of experiences that I pieced together in my head into this recipe soup. My dad and my grandfather, Hedley, are engineers. So there’s this piece of me that’s very much like, how do I make something better, constantly, in life and spirit? And then there was this other piece, which was, I guess the opportunity, which was that everybody in restaurants were wearing really garbagey uniforms. Lastly, I’m also a runner. And when I first started running, I got a great outfit and thought, holy shit, I can run now because I have a solid outfit that makes me feel legit. I signed myself up for the marathon and I actually bought in. So when you combine all of that together, those were the ingredients that helped lead me to, “Okay, I’ll make this thing happen.”

PBP partners with sustainable makers around the world. How much does your customer care about transparency and sustainability?

Such a good question. With our particular audience, our customers aren’t necessarily coming to us because our aprons are made out of organic bamboo cotton; that’s not why they show up. They show up for a quality product that lasts. And that’s huge. If you think about it from a sustainability standpoint, this actually is more sustainable than a brand whose ceramic coating is non- toxic and is sustainable, but it lasts six months and then you throw it in the trash.

Hedley & Bennett is available for dropship and wholesale through Powered by People. PBP also supports H&B’s own product development and sourcing needs.

How has the company grown in ways that you might never have expected?

There’s now a tremendous amount of energy that goes into data. Back in the day, we used to have all these SKUs because I liked them. Now we have SKUs because they are effective, and my emotional attachment to stuff has diminished dramatically. I learned this phrase from all these consultant people that have come to work for us, and they say, “You gotta cut the long tail.” It’s one of the greatest things I’ve learned. Essentially, you have all these SKUs and 20% of them make up 80% of the business. So all the extra stuff, if you look at it on a chart, is like a long tail. Remove the SKUs that are not producing income for you, that are actually tying up your dollars, tying up your energy. You’re paying all this money to warehouse shit you’re not selling. So once I sort of realized this, I was able to get over it and move forward.

What have you learned leading a brand for the past 10 years?

You have to hold true to your original core mission and be okay with being the weirdo. It’s okay to not do what everyone else is doing. That’s something that’s gotten me through the early days of when, like, Warby Parker and all these big brands were raising millions of dollars and we didn’t raise a cent. But now I still own a majority of my company and we are growing profitably. We went from being the nerd to the hot girl at the party. It’s okay to be weird.

Read the full article here (Page 11)