Why the UK isn't celebrating risk takers and wealth creators | Boardroom Uncovered

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i didn't know what success was but I knew he wouldn't fail andy Murray how on earth did you get him to invest with
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difficulty uh is is the short answer the desire to be a British equivalent
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alternative to Nike or Adidas the desire to be a challenger to those guys really
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in is instilled throughout the business i don't know if we'll get there but it's great fun trying to get there the goal
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was always let's absorb as much knowledge as we can from the city from all these great businesses that you get
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to meet so that we can apply that knowledge to starting our own business hello and welcome to another edition of
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City AM's Boardroom Uncovered with me John Robinson my guest for this episode is Tom Bian the chief executive of
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Castor tom co-founded the brand with his brother Phil and has since signed up Sir Andy Murray as an investor with a
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company now worth in the region of1 billion pounds castle's logo has become a familiar site for sports fans in
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recent years but how did two Muryside brothers create one of the UK's fastest growing companies and can this undoubted
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British success story achieve its stated aim to become this country's answer to Nike without any further delay let's
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dive in well Thomas thank you very much for coming on board it's great to have you thank you for having me i think there's only one place to start really
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and that's Andy Murray sir Andy Murray he's um early backer of Castor the face
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of the brand in some ways especially in the early days how on earth did you get him to invest with difficulty uh is is
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the short answer so the partnership with Andy I think was
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probably as close to perfect an example that you could get of entrepreneurial hustle so I am a big
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believer in the maximum of the harder you work in life the luckier you get and
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working with Andy it exemplifies that so we'd started Castor my brother and I
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we'd created some product which sounds really easy but actually it's quite hard to do we'd built a website which sounds
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really easy and it's quite hard to do we'd convinced some people to part with their hard-earned cash in return for our
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product which is when you're starting out this big seinal moment and we'd started to gain some traction so we were
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still a small business but growing quite nicely we were profitable uh probably
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because of our Mury side upbringing we've both always had this mindset of
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you need to generate profit in order to be a real business and that sounds really straightforward right but there's
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a lot of companies that certainly back in six 2016 when we started had this
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mindset of raise cash pump that cash into Facebook doesn't matter if you're acquiring customers profitably or
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unprofitably just grow as quickly as you can and worry about profits down the line and we never had that mindset so we
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were growing nice and steadily but we'd always had this ambition right from the
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beginning of wanting to be a global brand so being very proud to be British
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but wanting to be global which most people thought was crazy and I understand why they did but to us at
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least it made complete sense and when you have that mindset it actually became
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really straightforward to reverse engineer okay how do we become global we need to have globally recognized
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athletes wearing our product on a global stage so we thought about athletes that
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would fit our brand DNA better never stops being a challenger brand uh Andy
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embodies all of those characteristics perfectly and we essentially gifted
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product to everyone around him so his coach his physio his personal trainer
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his mass his psychologist all these guys and girls so that Andy would just keep
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seeing the brand uh not particularly sophisticated but you know I'm not sure they teach that at Harvard but it it
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worked and he kept seeing this brand the where the good luck point fits into it is he was coming to the end of his
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previous kit partnership kept seeing this new brand someone said oh it's this British brand two brothers obviously
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Andy with his brother Jamie uh become exceptionally successful as tennis players so I think the brother angle
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probably helped us and when we got introduced to him it it was It sounds really cliched but it's completely true
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there was just like an instant chemistry so I can't speak for Andy but very much
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I got the sense that he liked the fact we were young British had these big
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ambitions weren't part of the status quo or Nike or Adidas wanting to challenge
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the big guys um and once you've got that chemistry and natural affinity the rest
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of it kind of flow flows quite naturally from there you mentioned Nike there you said previously that you want Castor to
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become the UK's answer to Nike how are you building your company into something
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that could potentially take them on on a global scale because that is it's quite the claim isn't it you're not going to
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do that easily who wants easy you you don't you can't start a business well
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some people can maybe but I can't get out of bed at 5:00 every morning and
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travel at weekends and make the sacrifices that are required to be successful without having the potential
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for it to be really big there there's there's no right answer for everyone of course some people are quite rightly
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very happy for their business to get to a certain level but right from the beginning with Castor we did want to be
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a global brand and as I said previously or as I said earlier some people think you're crazy
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when you do that but it's amazing to me how
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without having that ambition you're definitely not going to get there doesn't mean that you're going to be successful because you've got the
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ambition but having that big ambition is is a really good starting point so we've
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always had that desire to be a big globally recognized brand and that's
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driven our decision- making throughout every stage of the journey so whether it was a partnership with Andy Murray
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whether it was making the decision to go into football and partner with big
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globally recognized teams like Rangers or Newcastle whether it was making a decision to expand across Europe
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probably earlier than other entrepreneurs or brands would have done that big ambition the desire to be a
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British equivalent alternative to Nike or Adidas the desire to be a challenger
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to those guys really in is instilled throughout the business and really drives the decision making
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so I don't know if we'll get there but it's great fun trying to get there and
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for me I couldn't do it any other way of course you're doing it hand in hand with your brother as well we're recording
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this in the heart of the city of London your old stomping ground you know you're originally from Muryside but you both
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had jobs down here and then decided to quit move back to Muryside and start
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Castor what gave you the confidence to quit well- paid jobs to take that risk
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i think if you're an entrepreneur it's it's just inside you that there's a a
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deep intense drive to control your own destiny so I I
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loved working in the city i love working in finance i learned so much working in leverage
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finance you would meet 10 different businesses a week you'd meet 10 different CEOs a week i was 21 years old
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if you're interested in business there's no in my opinion there's no better place to be to learn how do businesses compete
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where do they sit in the market how do they generate profits how resilient are their revenues where does it go wrong
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why does it go wrong i I was a young guy and I was like a sponge all of this
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stuff was just like oh my word what a privileged opportunity to learn from all of these amazing businesses and people
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but there was never any doubt in my mind and I know my brother was the same that it that was always a finite period of
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our lives the goal was always let's absorb as much knowledge as we can from
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the city from all these great businesses that you get to meet so that we can apply that knowledge to starting our own
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business so when we moved down here I'm 3 years older than my brother so I came down a little bit earlier but right from
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the beginning we lived together in a in a a tiny flat and we would wake up at
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5:00 talk about ideas for a business between 5:30 and 8:30 leave to go to
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work get home at 6:30 at night talk about business ideas again till 9:30 p.m
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go to bed and then wake up and do it again and again a lot of people think that's crazy but if you really want to
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do something it's through that process of staying up later than other people
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getting up earlier than other people it's I think in Britain we often criticize it again I say it slightly
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tongue-in-cheek hustle culture in America it's championed it's crazy to me
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how in sport for example we celebrate Tiger Woods Michael
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Jordan these great players that practice harder than anyone else that work harder than anyone else and are ultimately
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successful why would it not be the same in business if you work harder if you practice harder if you make more
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sacrifices it's very logical to my mind that you should be more successful and
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it it it doesn't make a huge amount of sense to me that we don't seem to celebrate that in the UK but the the the
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transition from working in the city to entrepreneurship it was really natural because there was never going to be any
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other route i can imagine the hairbrain schemes that you and your brother came up with at 5:30 in the morning and and
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last thing at night i'll tell you one of them John uh which I I mean I was embarrassed about at the time and we've
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been lucky enough to have a bit of success now obviously you can look back at these things with a smile but I I uh I think I've been I've been skiing twice
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in my life now i'd been once at the time and had this great idea to create an app prek apparel brand so all the core
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clothes that people would wear when they're having a drink after after being skiing after having gone skiing uh and
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my brother said to me "That's a brilliant idea aside from the fact that what the hell are you going to do for
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the nine months of the year that people don't go skiing?" Uh and I didn't have a great answer to that question so we
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decided to move on to something else but there was a few like that i bet there were yeah absolutely um obviously Castor
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is a success story you know by by any metric it is um you got big backers and
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you've got great brand recognition and also kit deals with with huge sports teams and athletes across the world but
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from 2016 up to you know first few years of Castor's life did you ever think it
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might not survive no why is that because the strength of
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the idea or the the backing that you had no definitely not not Not the strength of the idea not the
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backing just the the tunnel vision required to literally create something
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out of nothing which is what you're doing most startups do fail of course they do and it's a logical right to
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believe that well I'm going to be different it's a really strange balance
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between deep self-confidence and self-belief that I believe I can do this
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but simultaneously being incredibly humble and recognizing I don't have a lot of skill
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sets required to make this thing successful how can I meet people bring people with me on the journey that can
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help fill the many gaps that I have you need both of them one without the other
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being humble without having self-belief doesn't work and it absolutely wouldn't work in reverse either
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so I remember right from the beginning when the revenue was tiny i would check my phone every day to see how many
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products we' sold that day had the amount of product sold that's gone out
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of the business been more than the amount of cash that had gone out of the business and you're looking at that number every day and if more cash is
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going out than what you're generating life was not fun and you would there was genuine fear deep in your stomach and I
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don't think that ever leaves you if I'm honest but that that oldfashioned saying of
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pressure can crack pipes or create diamonds in my view it's only when you're in an environment like that
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success was the only option and in my mind I I I don't think I could define success whether we would get revenue to
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a million or 10 million or 100 million or a billion i didn't know what success was but I knew we wouldn't fail
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talking of pressure it's now time for those quickfire questions
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are you ready absolutely first off uh what was your first job paper boy so I
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was a paper boy I think at 12 13 years old so it's probably where the habit of getting up at 5:00 started to go and do
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that and I've never lost it who inspires you steve Jobs is definitely my favorite
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entrepreneur so reading his story and seeing how he built Apple has been a
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massive inspiration to me now you can't answer Andy Murray to this one but if you had to appoint a celebrity to your
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board who would it be and why gareth Sgate okay well she celebrity
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yeah celebrity um the focus on culture that he had with
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England football I don't think he's had anywhere near the level of credit that he deserves for that and I think over
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time you will get that and I think you would add a lot of value to any business there we go you heard it here first um
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what's the best thing about your job being in control of your own destiny and if you weren't doing this what would you
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do probably be a paper boy uh what would I do i'd be a very
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mediocre golfer trying to be a professional golfer and finally if you were prime minister
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for the day what would you do implement a flat income tax okay talk to me more
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about that why is that i think we're as a country and I'm
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incredibly proud to be British and I'm a massive believer in Britain i think we're at risk of taking too many steps
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down a road of not wanting to celebrate risktakers
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and wealth creators and the only way that we'll stop going down that road is with very clear uh and decisive action
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i'm not sure if a flat invative income tax will come anytime soon but if that starts a conversation then great what
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are your perceptions of the UK economy we're we're quite a few months into the new Labor government but not quite a
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year yet um what do you rate it h I think it's hard to be overly positive in
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that the actions taken by the government haven't necessarily matched the rhetoric
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that came pre uh them coming into power
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so there was a lot of talk about growth economic growth being the absolute central agenda item number one i'm not
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sure the actions taken match that rhetoric i think any sensible person
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will recognize that there are fiscal challenges we're not the US that can
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maybe afford to be as uh liberal with some of their fiscal policies um as we
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could be unfortunately but I'm not sure the government have done very much to show
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they're on the side of risk takers wealth creators people that want to get on in
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life and the UK can and should be one of
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the leading meritocracies in the world we don't need to be a leader in
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everything we don't need to to be the number four five six economy in the
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world to be successful but there's some incredibly talented people here and there are sectors that we can be
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genuinely world class and world leading in but that won't happen by accident it
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will take decisive policy action to unlock that potential and as yet that
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action has been lacking how do you unlock that potential then what would you like the government to do differently that they've not been doing
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i think it it starts with the rhetoric so there there has been and it's it to
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be fair to them they're slowly changing this but when they first came into power talking about oh we've inherited this
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terrible mess and the the economy is a disaster and I think they they quickly
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realized that what cabinet ministers say has a real impact and I kind of have
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slowly started to backtrack from that so but it does start with the senior
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politicians in the company in the country sorry uh because they maybe should think about it as a company that be a good start demonstrating that there
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is a belief in growth there is a belief that this country can compete in on the
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the global stage and then beneath that articulating a clear plan for where we
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can win so talking at a very high level about AI
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does not achieve anything it doesn't do anything for anyone on the ground in my opinion it's great if you want to host
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an annual AI seminar or or or meeting but in my view there needs to be far
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more tangible action taken to say this country can be a leader in the
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creative se sectors uh the service sectors sport uh healthcare bio
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biochemistry there are many areas that we can be leading in
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but one we need to recognize that and secondly we need to take real action
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whether it's through free enterprise zones whether it's through certain tax incentives to encourage the people that
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can win in those areas to go and take the risk because there's not a lot of incentive for anyone to take risk right
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now and maybe more private companies in the UK successful private companies listing on the London Stock Exchange
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is that in Castor's future well I'm I'm reluctant to talk about anything to do with uh the stock exchange because last
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time I did I said to someone that there's no immediate plans for Cost to IPO and and somehow that turned into a
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headline of Cost prepares for IPO so to to be very clear there's no immediate plans for us to IPO but equally as a
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British entrepreneur someone that founded a company in the UK in the north
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of England we're very proud to create jobs in the north of England 500 jobs in counting it would be brilliant to one
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day be able to list Castor in the UK but it's very hard for me to look at
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the UK market right now and say that is the optimal next step for my business i
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don't think there's going to be any single change that is made that that alters that that impact or the the the
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that makes it more attractive it will take time but at the moment if I look at
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what's going on in the US markets if I look at the private equity markets if I
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look at some strategic opportunities we have in the Middle East and the Far East and
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Asia it's really hard for me to look in the mirror and say that the UK is the best place for me to to grow my business
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and raise capital i don't have all the answers the fact that we're having the conversation is a
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great start but the London Stock Exchange should not take for granted
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that forever it will be the ultimate end goal for British entrepreneurs to list
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in this country because I don't think it is anymore well look at the Isa brothers of course they're shareholders in Castor
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and they're about to float EG group on the New York Stock Exchange about 13 billion dollar float are you waiting to
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see the outcome of that before you make a decision on whether it's going to be London or New York or somewhere else no
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is the short answer i mean uh Mson and Zuber have been absolutely fantastic
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investors for us they it was a real catalyst when they they invested in Castor they they
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challenged us to think bigger and and Phil and I at the time thought that we had these big dreams and ambitions and
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Mosen and Zuba came in and said how do you think bigger and how can you get
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there faster and what can we do to help and you can't ask for any more from an investor uh other than to ask those
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questions so they've been brilliant for us ej is a very different business to castor a very different stage in its
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journey so we're not looking at that i think what's more interesting is what the London Stock Exchange does
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what the government do to try and make it more attractive for companies to list
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here again I'm not saying there's easy answers because there isn't but the status quo clearly is suboptimal so some
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changes will need to be made because it would be a shame if Castel was to list
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outside of the UK it would equally I've got a fiduciary and moral duty to
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shareholders to optimize the value of the business if we if you have a global
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ambition as we do particularly in sports where castor
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operates at some point you need to penetrate the US you can't be a global
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brand in sports you can't be a billion pound turnover company which is what I
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would love to get us to in sports without going into the US so that market will always be interesting for us
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equally if I look at what's happening in the Middle East and the investments that are being made in sports from in Qatar
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in Saudi and uh more broadly across the UAE if I look at some of
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the deregula deregulation and changes that are happening in markets like India and China some very exciting things
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happening and the UK I think this applies both to the government and the LSE need to understand that they like
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all of us are competing in a global market the world is becoming ever more
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interconnected that is not going to slow down with the the the ongoing penetration of AI and unless you as a
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country or as a stock exchange are offering something that is better than other people elsewhere in the world
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you're not going to win that's true for me at Castor but it's true for the UK government as well h and of course you
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hold a slightly unique job title in the fact that you're co-chief executive of Castor alongside your your brother um
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I'm sure you get along very very well and see eye to eye on many different things when it comes to Castor but you
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must have a difference of opinion every now and again how do you resolve those
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differences of opinion i just blame him every every time something goes wrong um is it a
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brotherly arm wrestle or we don't know any any other way so
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it's not as if I remember when uh Liverpool Football Club went through a period where they tried to have
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co-managers and uh it did didn't work out too well Jared Julier and Roy Roy Evans
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um and that was I mean that didn't work for many reasons but when you have a
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single CEO and then make it a joint CEO I can understand why that doesn't work well we've only ever had the two of us
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right from the beginning so it would almost be strange if we if we did ever change that so it's it's always felt
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very natural there's two big benefits firstly we're brothers and whatever happens in
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business you're going to be brothers at the end of the day and no matter how well or badly things are going when you
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go around to your mom's for Sunday lunch she'll give you both a clip around the ear if you're if you're arguing about
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business and that uh again that's something I'm they probably teach at Harvard Business School but that that that is a pretty effective strategy for
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for us so when you've got that innate trust you being brothers outweighs
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anything else it's quite quite powerful uh potent thing to have uh in business
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that I suspect not many people do have and then secondly we're incredibly lucky that we've got very different skill sets
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so in in simple terms my job is to grow revenue and and anything that involves
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growing the business know international growth new partnership opportunities uh
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bring speaking to investors and potential investors uh and and that's
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something that I really enjoy doing and then my brother's job is to make sure that that revenue turns into profit and
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cash flow so we we kind of split our roles quite nicely don't encroach on each other's turf and if if there are
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big decisions to be made which there often are of course we'll go for a walk or we'll go for a coffee we'll debate it
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we might disagree but we'll come to a conclusion and as soon as that decision
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is made it's there's no you or me it's we we we've made the decision and we need to make it work and that that again
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is is quite a powerful uh factor when you have that decisiveness that I
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suspect not every business has of course the castor wings are becoming ever more
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prevalent in the last few years i say you you you're moving into rugby union uh you're in F1 football um all cricket
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all sorts of different sports is there a sport that you're not currently involved in that you'd like your logo to be
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associated with in the next few years or so so the US sports at the moment the the US market is very different
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from well the UK but frankly most other uh geographies so in the US essentially
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everything is centralized so you you don't do an individual deal with the
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Miami Dolphins or the Chicago Bears you do a centralized deal with the NFL and
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then which is Nike and then they kit out every team in that league so it's not easy to penetrate what potentially is
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quite interesting for Castor is the college market where they will often have 100,000 fans turning up to a
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college game it's massive isn't it it's hard to think how big college sport is it's it's turning up to high schools in
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in Liverpool to have a look at the basketball team not not yet uh let's see what the future holds um but that that
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that college market's quite interesting there's been quite a lot of deregulation uh within that space that that that's
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opened up some interesting commercial opportunities so the US market is quite interesting to us i think about it less
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in terms of sport category and more in terms of geography so how we now that
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we've established a footprint here in the UK we've established a model that works whereby we can partner with these
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sports teams we can help them grow their revenues help them better connect with
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their fan bases that that has proven very successful and through that it helps us
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grow our own brand because as you said every time Rangers win a football match
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or Athletic Bilba win a football match or England cricket my logo gets visibility and that is very powerful
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authentic marketing for me which again many not not many brands can match now
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that that model is proven how we roll it out internationally is a really excit
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really exciting opportunity for us there's always a balance between
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ambition and wanting to go into new markets and discipline and wanting to expand into those markets and execute
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well um which is not always easy in sport because everything is so emotive
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fans are are very emotive so you need to do it in a very disciplined well executed way but how we expand the model
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into new geographic markets really excites me and also I I imagine it's
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quite a challenge to set your brand up against Nike and Adidas and other brands
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that are so well established in particular sports teams particular sports fields how do you set Castor
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apart from them and when you're pitching to a Premier League team or an F1 team say "Well go with us instead of this
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more established global brand." So the first part of that answer John is
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I was really attracted by the high barriers to entry in the market
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so there I'm 35 years old and I struggle to think of a time in my life that a new
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brand had entered the sports partnership or sports marketing market however you
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want to describe it so it had really been dominated by the big three and really the big two Nike and Adidas and
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whenever you have a market with those
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dynamics standard logic would tell you that there should be quite attractive
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returns within that market so maybe it's the egoomaniac in me i don't know but
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the fact there was such high barriers to entry the fact that very few people had even attempted to break into the market
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is what made it attractive to me beyond that if you have a market that's not
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really had much innovation not really not really had much disruption there's no real incentive for the incumbents to
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disrupt themselves or innovate themselves i think the the incumbent the
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incumbent's dilemma is is is the technical phrase where things worked pretty well for Nike and Adidas they
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kind of carved up the market between them everyone made money teams might move every now and then but
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generally each played in their sandbox quite nicely with the odd exception so
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for us to break in everyone externally thought wow that's going to be really difficult how
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will you do that but actually speaking to clubs as an innovative disruptive
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challenger really resonated so there was the brand element and the fact that we
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are a challenger we are disruptive we want to be innovative we're not the number one we're not Nike we know we're
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not but we want to knock on the door we want to challenge those guys that mindset that DNA really resonates with a
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lot of teams because there's only one team that wins the league each year everyone else by definition is a
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challenger so that brand positioning challenger mindset really resonated and
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then secondly beyond that our model is different from the big guys the big
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brands are very slow moving their supply chains take 18 months to design a
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product and launch it into the market the vast majority of their revenue is generated through wholesale channels
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we've bought into the market a far more agile approach where what takes Nike 18
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months we'll do in four months and we've bought a far more DTOC digital first
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approach to the market which over time has evolved to become very datari so we
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can speak to clubs and not just say we're a challenger brand like you try to innovate work harder move
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more quickly than the big guys you guys as a football club or a rugby team have a similar mindset so you've got that
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brand alignment but the fact that we could speak to them about data strategy
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about selling more directly to fans about understanding their fan base better about generating more revenue
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outside of their home market through that digital platform all of those things were very
32:46
different from what the incumbents were talking about and it's probably a good example of what to many people from the
32:54
outside looking in look like impossible task to disrupt Nike and Adidas to an
33:00
entrepreneur it felt like they were on a perch and I had a great opportunity to try and knock them off absolutely we
33:06
talked a lot about the success of Castor over the last few years or so but as you know the success is not always a linear
33:13
straight lineup talk to me about the biggest challenges that you have faced your company's faced over the last few
33:18
years or so is there a particular challenge or particular mistake that you personally have made that sticks out to
33:25
you how long have you got as long as you want so the I think the big the so two
33:32
two questions there big challenge has been managing the growth of the
33:40
business and the infrastructure of the organization keeping up with the growth
33:47
so our revenue has grown incredibly quickly which sounds lovely and is very
33:53
nice there's worse problems to have in life first world problem but building in infrastructure that supports that
33:58
revenue growth takes time and it's been it is very hard to forecast 12 18 24
34:05
months into the future and invest now to build an infrastructure that will
34:10
support the business for where it will be in the future that's particularly
34:16
difficult when you're a stockled business we're not a there's there's a strong tech component to what we do
34:22
there's a strong data and digital component but we buy product and there is a cycle of buying that product so I
34:29
guess as a very specific example if I'm forecasting what revenue Red Bull Racing
34:36
will generate in Mexico last year they had Czecho Perez a Mexican driver the
34:43
revenue in Mexico was significant this year Czecho Press is no longer a Red Bull driver the revenue I'll generate in
34:50
Mexico will be very different to what it was last year how you build an infrastructure do you have a warehouse
34:55
in Mexico do you invest in a tech platform over there how do you deal with local taxes and duties uh that's become
35:01
even more prevalent now that now there's new entrant in the the White House but making the investment decisions ahead of
35:08
time is definitely a challenge the biggest
35:14
mistake has been being too slow to build a senior team around you and again I I
35:23
hope and believe that that isn't due to being egocentric
35:30
but when you as co-founder when you founded the business together you're head of marketing head of sales head of
35:36
product head of design head of customer service you deliver the packages to the the the the post office every day it's
35:43
cliche but you do everything as you grow it's really hard to give that up
35:48
particularly when you've had success because logically you think this works
35:54
yeah this me being all over every detail and sending emails at 5 am and still
36:00
sending emails at 10 pm and doing phone calls on a Saturday works so to learn to
36:06
evolve your leadership style your management style so that you bring great
36:11
people in but beyond that trust them to go and do a great job that isn't easy and there's
36:19
consequences to doing it too slowly so that's been I would say the biggest
36:24
mistake is to being too slow in building a great team around you thankfully we've
36:29
now rectified that mistake yeah final question uh Tom where do you think Castle is going to be in five years time
36:38
doing more of the same hopefully so this is a this is an incredibly
36:44
competitive market we we've now established ourselves in the market
36:49
we've had to take some punches from the big guys which I love because I I love a
36:54
challenge i love I'm very competitive and the fact that Nike and Adidas have have come after us a little bit shows
37:00
that we're getting under their skin which I absolutely love we have to be a step ahead of them so I can't beat Nike
37:09
or Adidas on on size or strength they have a far bigger balance sheet than me they can pay teams or athletes a lot
37:16
more money than I can so I I have to constantly out innovate them be a
37:22
speedboat in a market of oil tankers and I love that so
37:28
finding markets that we can think more quickly that we can innovate more
37:34
quickly than others creating products creating fan experiences all of those things really
37:40
excite me but what excites me more than anything is the same thing that excited me at the beginning which was the
37:46
opportunity to build a British sportsware brand that competes on the global
37:52
stage that is a reason to get out of bed at 5:00 every morning so we're not there
37:57
yet but in 5 years if we've continued to build on that journey I will be a very
38:04
happy man brilliant tom thank you very much for coming on board and recovered thank you thank you

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