October 25, 2024 · 27 mins read

Podcast: Elizabeth and Alex from Elizabeth Scarlett

Our latest Industry Leaders episode is out now with Elizabeth Scarlett Petrides and Alex Petrides sharing the personal journey they have been on in growing the  business. Packed with inspiring stories for founders wrestling with launching and scaling a business.

Listen to the full episode below or search Industry Leaders wherever you get your podcast

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5fnW8PQdiZOu3dHHQ6CD2p

You can also read the interview below: 

Sorcha: Hello, and welcome to The Industry Leaders Podcast. I’m Sorcha O’Boyle, and on the show with me today are Elizabeth Scarlett Petrides and Alex Petrides from the beautiful accessories brand Elizabeth Scarlett. As a bit of background, Lizzie is the founder of the brand, and her husband Alex, formerly of Allplants and Propercorn, is the CEO. The brand has such an interesting backstory. It’s been going for just under 10 years, and it’s stocked in over 1,000 stores in 15 countries. It’s really achieved a lot, but I think maybe the most interesting bit is that it’s raised over 500,000 pounds for wildlife charities. Now, more on that later, but first things first because it is great to have you both here. How are you?

Elizabeth: We’re great. Thank you.

Alex: Yeah. Thanks a lot.

Elizabeth: So lovely to be here. Thank you for having us.

Sorcha: Oh, I’m genuinely thrilled. I wonder, Lizzie, could you maybe paint us a picture. How did Elizabeth Scarlett brand come to be?

Elizabeth: Yeah, of course. I had a really deep passion for painting and wildlife, so I wanted to fuse these passions together to create Elizabeth Scarlett. At that stage, I’d say it was more a dream rather than this big business idea, but I knew that whatever I did I really wanted to touch lots of people’s lives and have some sort of impact.

I started to build this vision where I could see if I put my illustrations into products then we could eventually be placed in stores throughout the world. I wanted to create something where there was a community and that they would feel this spark of joy and the connection to the natural world that I had, and I wanted that to come through to the products. This, of course, when I started, was all pre-Instagram, pre-TikTok, so it was very, very organic, and it was definitely more of a dream than this I’m going into the business with this big idea. I followed my heart and willed it into a reality and, just one foot in front of the other, brought it to the next stage, and it was so exciting to see it grow and turn into something.

My husband, when I started the business, was involved in really exciting scaleup businesses. I’ve just always been surrounded by people who have this belief and a real passion for life, and I really wanted to find my thing and that I was really passionate about and had this belief behind me.

Ultimately, I think it was about me finding my own path and using my artwork and my passion for wildlife and turning it into an impactful business. I guess I just feel that it would be eventually possible, so I learned from them as well that to do anything you have to graft and be as comfortable rolling out a suitcase store to store, knocking on doors, going to little boutiques, and as you are packing boxes.

I remember, when I had my first delivery of Elizabeth Scarlett, I made the mistake of ordering individually from individual suppliers, so I had to put the insert inside the cushion cover, inside plastic bag packaging, and literally thread the swing tag thread through the hole and make everything look polished and perfect. I think, also, sending stuff out in that way and doing everything with good intention and excitement really put me in good stead.

At one point, I’d be designing cushions for a high-end hotel in Mayfair, and the next, I’d be rolling my suitcase into a gift shop. I can actually remember early on I went into this gift shop, and I was so excited. I called my best friend. I said, “I got the order,” and she said, “How much was the order?” I said, “100 pounds.” She said, “I’m going to remind you of this. When you’ve got a big company, you’re going to remember that 100-pound order.

Alex always says that my super power is asking for help. I have no shame, and I think, to be honest, it just comes from a place that I know that there’s a lot of people who know a lot more than I do and have expertise in different areas. It’s actually been a really lovely way to build a great support network around us as well.

Then we started with cushions, and we went into bedding. I thought that we were going to be creating this interiors brand. It was then that I created the pouch, which is what we’re so known for now. We call it the Everyday Pouch. We launched it on our eCom store, and that was the thing that we realized, oh, we’re in accessories business. It’s just a perfect example of trying different things and finding a way, and there were a few things along the way that really turned Elizabeth Scarlett into what it is now, for example, creating our Everyday Pouch, launching our eCommerce store, and introducing 2% for the wild.

Those were all the key moments in building this brand. With 2% for the wild, we saw that Patagonia was promoting that they give 1% of their revenue to the planet, so we decided to double it and bake it into our business model and focus on wildlife conservation. To be honest, ultimately, without all of us reconnecting to the beauty of the natural world, we risk the collapse of nature and the disappearance of wildlife, which scares the life out of me, so I see it as my role to help protect this. That’s what we do through the brand.

Now we’re a team of almost 30 people. We’ve had so many friends and family and help along the way, and they continue to do so. It’s been amazing. Even though we’re coming up to 10 years, I really feel like we’re just at the beginning. We’ve actually established ourselves and our mission and our product range. I feel like we’re going on to a new phase as well, and it’s quite difficult to process how many lives that we’re part of every day. When I see the reviews and I connect with how many customers we have now in this community we’ve built and the fact that we get these messages and people say that they use a particular item every day in their bag and it makes them feel happy and joyful and connected to nature in some way, it’s quite wonderful to be at that stage now and really exciting.

Sorcha: Yeah, that really is. I wonder, Alex, could we bring you in now? When and why did you come on board with the brand?

Alex: I never really intended to be part of the business again. Everything’s been very organic, so I, at the time, was changing my course personally, realizing that what I was doing didn’t really match my personal ambitions of where my heart was taking me. I took a step back to Allplants, which is something I had built with my brother, and he still runs that today. We were about to have a baby, and it was during COVID. Lizzie had obviously built this condo of a brand, and it was forming and shaping into something. I said, “I’ll look after it for you while you take a backseat. Take your time. Don’t worry. We’ve got this.”

It was just myself and three of us at the time, and I haven’t wanted to let go, I guess. It’s been really fun, really rewarding. Lizzie has this very subtle, graceful way of approaching a really, really difficult challenging thing, which is how do you get people to connect more emotionally with one another, sparking this joy, but also, beyond that, even if it’s a subtle afterthought, how do you get them to really feel that connection to nature that we feel strongly about? With Allplants, as an example, it was very much front and center. This is what we’re trying to do. This is our mission. With Elizabeth Scarlett, it’s way more about the art, the beauty, and then how that can shape an emotional connection, and for me, it’s so much more exciting. It’s so much more rewarding to see just people’s faces light up when they interact with something Lizzie’s created and the ideas behind what we’re trying to do.

I think, as Lizzie said, we’re still a little baby figuring it all out, and it’s very mushy. It’s like Playdoh, and we got all these ingredients. We’re trying to work out what the recipe is. The thing that threads through it all and flavors it is joy, is wildlife, is beauty, is art, and that’s great. That’s got us here, and now we’re just trying to make sense of that as we really want to keep moving forward without questioning ourselves too much. Organically, instinctively, letting things happen and learning along the way. From my perspective, I also get to just hang out with my wife, which is – some people would hate. We obviously have moments where it’s uncomfortable or annoying, but we also just really get a lot of kicks out of that. Last week we had the kids in the office. It’s just a way of life for us that we find really fun.

Elizabeth: Yeah. I was always used to that. I mean, we’ve always had family businesses. I mentioned earlier about going into my grandad’s office and making the tea and getting it out to everybody and knowing everyone who worked there. There is so much warmth that comes with that as well, and I think it really infiltrates to the culture that we want to build and make it feel like a really warm, joyful environment.

Alex: As Lizzie said, we have a lot of friends who work with us in whatever ways, big or small. I had a friend in the other week, one of my best friends who helps build a lot of our financial modeling, and Lizzie came in with the kids. He’s like, “How do you – why do you do this to yourself? What is this madness?” Meiri, our daughter, was sitting next to me calling the shots.

Elizabeth: Yeah, taking her CEO position in my seat.

Alex: Yeah. I don’t know. We see that as just really luck, and it’s just fun. The fact that we can really allow our hearts to lead as much as possible, even when logic sometimes is necessary, often is necessary, hopefully will help us create a more meaningful business and the kind of business we need in the world, which I think is a great privilege, basically.

Sorcha: One thing that really strikes me is that it seems like a very gentle kind of business and kind of brand, which is an unusual thing, I think, in retail. I think it’s quite easy to analyze a brand to break it down into its constituent parts, but then you lose the soul, which I think is something that you guys have managed to maintain really, really well.

Elizabeth: We know each other so well, so we bring that through.

Alex: Yeah. I think we are good yin and yang in that gentleness space, that Lizzie reminds me to be gentle. I remind her that we’re running a business. We both want to do both things as well, but we get to harden ourself from one another. I think that, even in the way that we’re building the team, some people are a lot more in the data and have a lot more rigor in that sense, and that’s fine but as long as they’re having fun with it. What I hate is when people get stuck in it and feel like just shrouded in logic, and I think that it’s a fool’s game. When I always reflect on how Lizzie built this thing, what the early beginnings of this thing, she’s just spoken about it. She had to ignore logic, defy logic, to some extent. Actually, while we have to nowadays listen to it more, we still have to believe that we can bend it and shape it and stretch it in ways that meet the opportunity or the heart to telling us as instinctively right.

Elizabeth: Instinct plays a massive role in how we’ve grown. Let’s just say logic can be a barrier to making things happen sometimes. Whenever we’re faced with growth conundrum or strategy, I just go back to, well, the first five years it was just me, and I just went with my heart. Everything’s worked out. I think it’s about the intention behind everything that we do.

Alex: I also think, with logic, you can often create decision paralysis and actually just let things flow. You will make mistakes. I know it’s really cliché, but those mistakes are fine. You’re not trying to build something perfect. Nothing is perfect. It’s part of learning, and it’s part of creating that flow within the business. It’s hard, love. We don’t always get it right. It’s definitely important, and we’re trying more and more.

Elizabeth: Yeah. I think, where that comes in, a lot is through product development as well so down to designs and how to keep reinventing and provide new and exciting things for our community. First of all, we listen to our community, and they tell me what they want. Today we’ve just launched a World Animal Day collection with our very first panda design. I’ve been messaged by our community for a couple of years now saying when are you going to do a panda? We just launched it today, and it was so exciting to see the numbers and be like, wow, the panda is outselling the other designs. It’s so rewarding as well to design something that you’ve been asked for and fulfill that request and have that connection with the community. Also, it’s always a gamble, and I think it’s juggling that. I come at it from the perspective of you can have all the insights, but it’s about a feeling and knowing that something’s going to look good or come together well. That’s where we really balance each other out, though, because I come towards it with the insight side.

Alex: Yeah. I’ll be like, yeah, but we need to – even now, the intensity.

Elizabeth: Yeah. It’s instinct and insight led, I would say.

Sorcha: Can you tell me about your 2% to the wild? That’s something that’s really, really interesting. You work with a couple of wildlife charities. Can you tell me what you do with them?

Elizabeth: Yeah. It was always an intention to bring that into the business and to give back to wildlife in some way. We started off with a few collaborations and different projects, but we wanted to – as I mentioned before from the Patagonia inspire, to just go one step further. I remember Alex coming to me and saying let’s just do this. Let’s give 2% of our sales because profit fluctuates, and we just wanted something that we built into the mechanic of the brand as we grew. I mean, there’s just so many amazing people and projects out there that need reliable funding, so now reliable funding given from Elizabeth Scarlett with genuine impact is our goal. We do support so many different projects and missions. There’s even response units now in Kenya and India with our logo on them, which just gives us so much pride, and to know that they’re literally facing wildlife emergencies every day. We get the reports. We share them with the team and our community.

It really just drives a sense of hope as well, and I think transparency for us and for our community to know exactly where their donations are going. We’ve been out to Kenya to visit the projects, and we’re going to Ascension Island, which is this island in the middle of the Atlantic. It will be the first time that Alex and I are visiting. There’s over two million turtle hatchlings there a year, and we’re going at turtle hatchling time.

Alex: We picked that project quite deliberately because it’s the biggest entity of turtle hatchlings being hatched every year, and now, for the last two years, three years, I think three years, we’ve fully funded the Ranger Program there, so every year they have a new team of rangers going out and making sure that there’s safety and there’s protection. They’re counting and they’re…

Elizabeth: Moving nests.

Alex: Moving nests, yeah, lots of different things just to make sure the health of the populations are growing. It’s just become something that through the designs we can create that cycle and that loop back to here’s the thing you’re protecting. You bought a turtle pouch. Look what we’re doing with that. We’re trying to do that more and more. It’s part of this genuine passion that we have for how can we get people to really connect with nature and feel the joy it brings, feel the importance of it, but also the fun and the beauty of it? We can’t let people get to shrouded in that idea of anguish and sorrow.

Lizzie’s always been really clear with me that we’re not going to be like a charity. That’s not how we need to present ourselves. It has to be fun. It has to be beautiful. It has to be full of joy. We always go back to that joy. I know it keeps coming up. It’s because it’s just so powerful. When you can get that right, it can be really, really powerful.

Elizabeth: We always say it’s supposed to feel celebratory, particularly if you’re buying a gift for somebody and giving it to them, and it’s got this additional impact and gift that gives back. It’s just supposed to be that extra bit of joy and hope, and also, we lead really busy lives. We’re focused on other things. It’s easy to get distracted by our lives. Yeah, there’s this whole beautiful planet around us with incredible wildlife. I always think people see an advert from us, and they might remember that, or they might see a zebra design in a gorgeous yellow base that they love the look of. Every day that they use it, they think, oh, yeah, I love zebras, or I love wildlife, or it reminds me of something. That’s our intention for it to just still be on people’s minds that we want to take care of Mother Nature and all the beauty in the world but not – I don’t have a more polite way to say this other than shoving it in people’s faces.

Alex: Yeah. You said it earlier. As a team, we want to help secure a future for wildlife, and it has to be beautiful, not just a future for wildlife where there’s five of them in the field, like a really beautiful, thriving future. Obviously, we’re not going to be the – necessarily the people leading that, but we can play a role. Lizzie’s obviously got these skills that we’ve magnified to try and play that role, and it’s something that the opposite just terrifies us. It’s so possible. Ten years ago, wildlife numbers were dwindling massively. David Attenborough talked about it so much. Over the last 10 years, actually, there’s been a lot of positive stories, a lot of hopeful stories, a lot of amazing work that we’re lucky to be a part of and learn about and actually go and understand more.

It’s just such a great thing that we have this community we’re building that feel that same intension, share that same intention, and through the act of gift giving can keep spreading that. That’s why we went into gift giving more so is because it does allow us to create that spread of awareness, that chain of joy but also connection to the wildlife issues we’re facing, basically. I made it somber. I didn’t mean to make it somber.

Sorcha: No, no, no, you’re right. I think, when you think about the climate crisis, it can be so overwhelming, and it can be really, really truly scary. It is those small stories of hope and joy that are going to resonate with people. If you see bad headlines all the time, people just don’t read them. Even newspapers find that they have to reposition headlines to turn climate stories into some kind of positive. Otherwise, people just don’t click. If you’re able to engage with people by having that zebra pouch with yellow that just brings them that moment of joy, that is impactful. It is doing something. I wonder, what are you most proud of having achieved with the brand?

Elizabeth: I find it really hard to connect with how far reaching the brand has gone. Often, when I get overwhelmed with the business, he always gets up the reviews. He says, “Read these reviews and read” – like your art matters. It makes people feel happy and joyful in its own reflection.

Do you remember that quote at the beginning about the ripple pool? I think following your true heart’s passion and putting something out there can have this ripple effect and be way more far reaching than you first imagined. At first, it was me expressing myself, but then it’s turned into this thing where people are expressing their own sentimental reasons when gifting. That fills me with such a sense of pride.

Alex: When we meet with customers or we talk with them in whatever way it is, there’s this thing that everyone does, Lizzie never intended, which is they tell the story of what that design means to them and then why it connects them to someone else. All these unintended stories that capture a friendship, or a memory, or just the essence of a character. Someone in their lives reminds them of oranges because of this thing that happened in that time.

Elizabeth: Or this trip that they went on.

Alex: Yeah. It’s like that chain is just exciting. I think going just the beginning of how we can play with that and be part of that and play a role in people’s lives in that way, but there’s also just the fact that we’re – that it exists. I don’t know.

Elizabeth: It’s 10 years in, and it’s still going and lots more doors have opened. It’s metamorphosized into so many different things. I mean, I literally started with cushions, and here we are with this accessories brand and some really exciting collaborations and a whole archive of art and things to do there as well. We have a team now of around 30 people, and we do have a culture of kindness in the team as well. I’m so proud of our team and how they treat one another and manage to get this mix of fierce passion and ambition and drive, also balanced out with kindness and empathy and care for one another. That makes me feel really proud. Like I said, it’s just we still always feel like there’s more ahead of us and that it’s just the beginning, which I think is perhaps a strange feeling to have at 10 years. Yeah.

Sorcha: Can you tell us about some of the things that you’re looking forward to in the next couple of years, any of the big dreams?

Elizabeth: We’ve set a charity milestone that by 2030 we will have donated two million to wildlife charities, so reaching our one million, I’ll be really, really excited to hit. We’ve already hit half million. By next year, we’ll – I’m looking at the numbers guy here.

Alex: Yeah. The sales, most of the other projects we’re doing, we should – I think, by end of next year, we should be just off 800,000. That’s what I’m roughly hoping for, and then, yeah, the million milestone is quite a big one for us, I think.

Elizabeth: We’re starting to look into new markets. We’ve got really exciting growth in the US at the moment, and we’re leaning into that and exploring that, which is really great. Yeah, we’ve got some exciting collaborations. I can’t say what they are yet.

Sorcha: We’d have to keep an eye out for them.

Elizabeth: Keep an eye out because it’s – what I will say is it’s…

Alex: You don’t need to keep an eye out. It’ll be such a unique thing.

Elizabeth: It’s unexpected and it’s really exciting. It will be in a different category, so that’s quite fun. We’ve had two children over the last five years. Maybe we’ll have another kid.

Alex: We’ll see about that.

Elizabeth: Alex is a hard no.

Alex: Yeah. The US is really interesting for us. The UK, we’ve still got so much work to do. We started and trickled a launch into the US this year, not in a big way, very much in a gentle way, and I think, by end of next year, it’ll probably – could even double our business. I think that’s a really big eye opener. Oh, if we do that, suddenly this. Wow! Okay. I think that in a nutshell explains roughly how we continue to approach this, which is just letting things unfold. We both try and set intentions and try and shape where things are going, but we’re always surprised by the outcome.

Elizabeth: That’s my constant learning. My constant learning is you never really know what’s around the corner and just stay open to it all and see what happens. I’m reading this Brené Brown book at the moment, and she talks about the sentiment of a strong back, soft belly. I think that really epitomizes more definitely how I am with strong back and foundations, our values, and knowing what we’re about and knowing what we want to do but, also, the softness of being open to wherever it might take us and seeing how things go.

Sorcha: Yeah. That’s such an interesting way. I think sometimes businesses can be quite rigid. Like you were saying, Alex, yeah, about Allplants being like this is what we are, this is our mission, and this is what we are 100%, it’s vulnerable as well to be really open about it.

Alex: We’re lucky, and we’re very deliberate about this. I was the first employee at Propercorn, built that for five years. When I left, we were delivering three million packs of popcorn around Europe, the most – I think the fastest growing snack brand in Europe at that time, and that was just so much fun. We let things flow. It was just full of energy, but then it got difficult. As we plateaued and we were fundraising but we’re looking at the next step – and we knew what it was, but we were getting into our just enthusiasm was running out of juice. We needed to get more brains into the business. Not that I wasn’t smart. I think you know what I mean.

Yeah, there’s a rigidity to it. I think, in Allplants, we had it from the off that we knew what our intention was, and we were quite rigid. I think part of that is – with both, in a way, it’s like, the business we built, one of the aims was to grow at a certain speed, and that requires investment. As soon as you are trying to tell people and pitch people the company externally – before you even really know what it is and what’s going to make it the amazing thing that you feel in your heart, you shape it. You give it a name, and you slap a label on it. You want people to believe that. I think we’re lucky with Elizabeth Scarlett. Yes, it’s been going for 10 years, but it’s grown itself. We don’t have investors to impress or people to ask for money because we’re really careful about how we buy stock and how we invest in the team and how we approach doing the business so that we don’t need to become reliant on other people’s whims.

What that allows us to do is be vulnerable, allow things to just develop. Sometimes allow there not to be a plan as well, and if that sounds scary to – everyone in the world, everyone hates that as a concept. So many times in the team, “What’s the five-year plan? How can we rally around a five-year plan? We don’t know what’s going to happen in six months’ time. There could be a world war. I don’t know what’s going to happen.

Let’s have an intention. Let’s know roughly what we’re about and where we’re going, and let’s listen to our customers. Let’s follow our instinct, intuition about what’s going to serve us best. I honestly think that that’s such a refreshing approach but is scary for a lot of people, but that vulnerability is good too. I don’t think I want to change that. There are some realities that you have to do things differently as your grow, but we want to keep that element of vulnerability. We don’t want to be going out and raising money, even though, yeah, it could probably put a rocket under the business. We could probably do that, but it’s not our intention. Actually, I don’t think it’s valuable for anyone in terms of the reason we’re building the business requires that softness, requires that really deliberate connection to the meaning of the business, not to the bottom line, not to how quickly can we sell it on, or anything like that. It’s just not where we’re at.

Sorcha: Thank you both so much. I really, really enjoyed talking to you.

Elizabeth: Oh, thank you.

Alex: Thank you, too.

Elizabeth: Thank you for having us.

Sorcha: That was Elizabeth Scarlett Petrides and Alex Petrides from Elizabeth Scarlett. Thanks so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Industry Leaders Podcast, and don’t forget that you can catch up on all of our previous episodes wherever you get your podcasts. That’s it for now. For me, Sorcha O’Boyle and all of us here at more2, take care and bye-bye.

​

---