Gift Focus inc Attire Accessories - July/August 2020

PALA EYEWEAR PROFILE 115 find you have their attention and intention to buy. For us we concentrate on our owned platforms and in particular are doubling down on our newsletter and Instagram. These are our best advocates and we know where they are! We’ve twice had to get legal battles against billion- dollar companies (winning both I may add!), we’ve had stolen stock, and you can add delayed stock due the coronavirus, but you just have to deal with the obstacles as they present themselves, adapt and move on. I think you have to have quite a robust attitude to the ‘unknowns’ that invariably are put there to test you as a small business! What is it that sets you apart from your competitors? I believe our point of difference is that I set the business up as an antidote to a problem – to tackle the lack of eyecare in Africa. This is at the foundation of the business and therefore an essential part of our narrative that we communicate, whether that be the vision centre we built in Chinsali or the school screening project we are currently funding for in Ethiopia – it’s our transparency and being able to communicate that back through film and imagery so people can see what impact they are having through their purchase. As a business we look through the lens of minimising our impact on the planet and then maximising impact on people – it forms an integral part of our mission statement. I think the story behind our cases is as important as the eyecare work we achieve with Vision Aid Overseas. Plus, we work with an NGO in Ghana working with largely female weaving communities to make our cases from recycled plastic bags and water sachets. We’ve already prevented 4.5 tons of plastic heading to landfill through this, and as importers we provide the weavers a progressive income to help empower themselves out of poverty. All our packaging is recycled or FSC, as are our point of sale materials. We carbon offset all the airmiles we incur for our necessary business travel and from this season we are using bio-acetate (100% biodegradable frames in our collection). We continue to make small positive steps each and every time very much using the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals as our guide. How important is the location and history of the company to its success? As much as we are proud to be based in Brighton, UK, in terms of location this has little impact. We have to be a global business by virtue of being a sunglasses brand that chases the sun and brighter months globally. History, however, I think is important. Being a sustainable brand where purpose comes before profit means slower growth, but it provides discipline too. It makes sure you don’t take short cuts; the best choice is invariable the harder route when making the sustainable choice for the business. However, this ultimately builds a more authentic, trustworthy brand that I hope will place us well for the future. Having the history of our impact documented from day one will give anyone discovering us as a brand for the first time a stronger reason to engage versus a brand that didn’t have a such a heritage. Do you engage in social media and how does this help your business? Yes. Predominantly our focus is on Instagram, playing to the visual nature of the platform. We do have a presence on Facebook and Twitter too, but we find our Instagram drives the majority of traffic through to the website. We have connected with stockists through the platform and also worked with a number of smaller, creatively and sustainably led influencers. We don’t have high expectations on an actual ROI, it’s more connecting with people we believe share our values and having an ongoing relationship with them along with building our community. I’m not sure I know of anyone with a small brand that I’ve spoken to who can point to an influencer campaign that helped them shift volumes of product. It’s about reach! How has the product offering changed since you started and how would you describe your current collection? In two ways. The first collection I launched was ‘safe’ and we learnt a lot of positives and negatives from that. For example, don’t compete with aviator style when pretty much everyone will always buy Rayban! We then had a season where we focused on more trend-led pieces that we hoped would get press and influencer interest, which it did, but the reality was that these fashion forward pieces marginalised the customer who wanted something a little more wearable. So it’s taken some time to find our place, but last year we settled on our strategy, which was to produce more timeless pieces and move away from fashion pieces that by virtue of being ‘in’ for only a season or two were contradicting our values of being a sustainable thinking brand. We now focus on timeless, durable and contemporary yet classic design. The other development has been the materials and I’m really excited