David Hieatt

David Hieatt began his working life by going bankrupt, before being hired by Saatchi & Saatchi as an advertising copywriter. In 1995, he and his wife Clare left London and moved back home to Wales to start the organic active clothing company howies and, after selling it to Timberland, they founded the DO Lectures, one of the world’s best ideas festivals. After he realised that his home town of Cardigan used to be a world-class jeans manufacturing centre before the work moved overseas, he launched Hiut Denim in 2012, with the intention of getting those craftspeople their jobs back.

I’ve always found David inspiring, and his book Do Open is the one I always recommend to people who want to master email marketing. I wanted to catch up with him partly to understand how Hiut’s commitment to quality helps it succeed, partly to get to grips with the importance of the social bit of the triple bottom line, and partly to understand what being a great marketer brings to the business. David is an expert in doing a lot with only a little – building brands through communications that are as well-crafted as the jeans. And whilst the high quality of the denim the company uses is part of the reason for its success, so is his own ability to spin a great yarn.

Martin: Thanks ever so much for agreeing to have a chat with me. I’ve followed your career from howies and on to Hiut and I thought you’d be the perfect person to talk to about the social side of the triple bottom line. When I was at the Eden Project, Chris Hines, who was the Sustainability Director, had a graphic of a pair of Y-fronts to illustrate the triple bottom line, with each of the three sections marked as financial, environmental and social. I had a long chat with him, and with John Grant, about the environmental side, but I’m yet to get to grips with the social impact. I know you set up Hiut partly because there was a wealth of talent for making high-quality clothing in West Wales, but with little opportunity to do it. How important was making a positive social impact in your decision to set up Hiut?

David: It’s interesting, because there’s a parallel story. I grew up in the South Wales valleys, which was the heart of the coal-mining industry, and when we went to school we went on this bus which we called the Iron Lung; when it went round a corner, sparks would fly from the mud guards, old-school. But we were on the same timeframe as the coalminers going down to the pit to start their shift, so each morning we saw them with their white faces and shiny sandwich tins, and then when we were coming home, they had black faces and what would have been empty sandwich tins. We saw them every day without fail, come rain, come shine. And then one day they weren’t there. That pit had closed, along with all the others. Entire communities were built up on that industry and that industry was no longer economically viable.

And so I had seen that slow car crash - you know, when there are bits spinning in slow motion? Even though the pits closed overnight, the crash afterwards was all in slow motion. Slowly the pubs closed. Slowly the shops closed. Slowly there were boarded-up homes. And lo and behold, when we moved to Cardigan in West Wales, there were no coalmines but there was Britain’s biggest jeans factory, making 35,000 pairs of jeans a week for 40 years, the biggest employer - in a town of 4,000 people, 400 people [worked there]. And then it suddenly closed and I’m going “Ah! I’ve seen this before, and it doesn’t end that well.” So there was definitely that in my mind and it would be another decade when I thought “Wow, all these makers in this town, all that skillset just gone to [waste]. I always think about it like learning: what’s the point in doing 40 years’ worth of learning and then have no way to practice that learning? And essentially, closing the factory was that.

But actually, I was in the right town with the right skillset, but I wasn’t quite in the town at the right time. I had to wait, and the waiting process was really waiting for the internet to really take off. And that suddenly meant that it wouldn’t just be a vanity project – “Oh, let’s go help the town, and by the way, this thing doesn’t actually make economic sense.” The internet allowed us to cut out the middle-man which allowed us to pay good wages to good people with good skills and also at the same time use the best fabrics of almost any other brand. Because any other brand doesn’t cut out the middle-man, they have to go and give half their margin away. And I was going “Do you know what? With our skill sets and the internet, we can actually win. We can go and get those jobs back.”

If someone says “There’s no use in that, there’s no gold”, we say it doesn’t affect us, but it kinda does. The town’s identity is as a maker town, and then suddenly the maker town didn’t make anything anymore and survived on tourism for maybe six weeks a year. And so the identity of us starting Hiut Denim with the crazy dream of trying to get 400 people their jobs back – crazy! – but it meant that the town was still a maker town. And even though there’s only 30 of us still there, we’ve never been as close to 31, and we make one of the best products in the world if you are interested in high quality denim.

And it's important from a confidence point of view for the town. The interesting thing – this is maybe our role in the town – is to give young makers the confidence that they can go and make it too. The landlord had these buildings, which were the old factory, empty for a decade. We went back into it and he’s going “Man, I wonder if there’s any other makers?” And for two or three years we showed that you can actually be a maker, in the UK, and be a business. And then all of a sudden he opened up some other units and he had a waiting list for every unit! He could have sold them two or three times [over]. There’s a wool-maker, a cabinet-maker…. So the social aspect for the town is, if you can make a great product and you can tell a great story (also important) then you can be a business in this town. But you can be a business in almost any town.

So that’s kinda where the thesis lies. But there’s many other things, because every brand has many communities. One of them is the town that you live in, for sure. Another one is the river flowing down to the sea, because you could be a polluter in that town. Another community is your customers. Another community is your shareholders, if you have any. Another community is the team [you] employ. Are you a learning environment, or is it just a job?

Being a founder, it’s the best learning programme. It’s the best self-development programme on Earth. Every day is “How was your day?”; “Do you know what, it was just different to yesterday.” What’s that quote? You never step into the same river twice? You never, as the founder, go into the same room twice. “Right, what you got today? Chuck it at me, man!”

An historic image of a working coal mine in South Wales (Wikimedia, public domain)

Martin: We often think of social purpose as being about economic regeneration. But you’re talking there about the art of the possible. It’s about ambition, or potential.

David: Completely. To the point that we try and help people leave! We had a young guy came to us; he was a fan, came to our open days, and for the DO Lectures, which we also run, we give away ‘giving chairs’, so people who can’t afford the tickets could come. And he made a chair, with the ‘Do’ on, hand-carved, in order to get a free seat. And you go “He’s interesting; he’s got some fire!”

Martin: Keen!

David: Yeah, really keen. You can always work with keen. “You don’t know how to do this? Well, if you’re keen, you’ll work it out.” So he came and joined Hiut and did really well – learnt a ton of stuff, but he had a side-project making jackets. He launched it, and it did really well and I said “Look, your girlfriend is in London, you’ve got a side project that has shown you that it already works; you kinda know how to launch – you should go and leave.” And he was really put out. He was like “Man, are you sacking me?” and I said “I’m not sacking you; you have no mortgage, no kids and your girlfriend is in London. You have a proven business. It’s time to take the stabilisers off. Take the armbands off and see if you can swim.” And they’ve gone on and done really well, and good for them. And we’re sending four people to South by South West and then there’s a bunch of people going to the web summit in Lisbon – now that people can travel, you want to be a learning environment; you want to be around ambition. You want to go “Hey, we get 400 people their jobs back by you going and starting a company of 25.” So there’s many ways to the answer.

Martin: So a sort of incubator function? So it sounds like Hiut started as a social business, first and foremost.

David: Yeah.

Martin: To what extent do you think that now helps you sell jeans? I’m Welsh, I’ve got two pairs of Hiuts and, whilst part of the reason I bought them was the quality, part of it was wanting to support the Welsh economy. Do you think that’s true generally?

David: ‘Cos you can buy jeans in the world, right? So you want to attach yourself to a brand that [its] story rings true to you and what it’s trying to do, you want to be a part of that journey. I think every great brand is a brilliantly well-told story. Hiut is: manufacturing goes away but doesn’t come back, so in essence it’s a story about renewal and it’s also David versus Goliath, and where those small amazing companies can punch way above their weight in a global sense.

I think maybe some people just buy them because they’re the best jeans out there and maybe people buy them because there’s a bunch of cool cats wears them and some people buy them because it helps [in] making a town, its rebirth, like its renewal. And maybe it’s all of those things. And in a way there’s certain elements of every story that get to you in different ways and if you watch a film, some people go “Oh I like that scene” and other people go “Yeah, but I like that bit”. It’s just because we’re human beings and we’re looking at a story with our world view on it and it’s OK.

I do think from a marketing point of view you’ve got to make a great product, and some people skip that bit and that’s not good. The thing for us is, the Grand Masters, which we call them – the women who sew our jeans – have 20,000, 40,000, 50,000 hours of making jeans. They’re in the elite makers in the world and because of this business model that we’re in, we can go and buy the best fabrics in the world. When you put those two things together – literally together – you’re up there with the very best. There’s some Japanese people who are just on another level, but we’re up there in the top five makers in the world.

We’ve got two factories at Hiut and one makes jeans and one’s a content factory, because that thing of ‘build it and they will come’ is a little bit of a fib and you have to, as a maker, tell the world that you are here and you make a great product. You have to do that. I think that sometimes marketing gets a bad rap which kinda like fries my brain. Am I literally going to make the best pair of jeans in the world and not tell anyone about it? What’s the point in being the best in the world at something and you can’t actually make a living at it? And for me marketing is, if you’ve ticked the first box, it’s really incumbent on you to tick the second one.

So we have two factories – one makes jeans, one tells our stories, it’s the content factory. And people say to me “Which one’s more important?” And I say “Hey, which of your legs is more important? Is it the left leg or the right leg?” Because you need both and you want to make a great product and then you have to tell the world about it. And there’s a scarcity of attention and we have to go and earn the right to get that attention in a busy world. And the great thing for me and the thing that always keeps me going “Yeah we can win” is still down to ideas. And it doesn’t matter which delivery system that you choose, whether it’s Tik Tok, Instagram, LinkedIn, it doesn’t matter –  it’s all down to communication and can you make another human being feel something for what you do on an emotional level. I feel like, when things turn to shit, which they can, you’ve always got that great leveller. It’s always about telling your story so another human being can connect with it and making the best product that you possibly can.

Martin: In Do Purpose you say that making a great product is Rule 1. I think David Ogilvy said “Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster”. That leads us nicely on to sustainability – I used to have a client who said he wanted to make products that were “heirloom quality”, and I loved that phrase. You talk about denim almost as if it’s a fine wine.

David: The denim world is kinda geeky. We’ve got used to great products. For, like, fifty years we drank shitty coffee and then someone came up with the bright idea that there’s great coffee out there and then suddenly we’ve got mini-mochas or whatever it is. But there’s a difference in quality between certain suppliers, and then once you’ve tased great coffee, it’s really hard to go back to the shitty stuff. That level of geekiness is there in the denim world. There are probably like a dozen great mills in the world and the really interesting thing is that there’s more people wanting to work with them than they have supply. So then they get to choose, right? They’re at a level that they’re so good at what they do, they decide whether you can have an allocation or not. And [it’s] like anything – you can make a good car, or you can make a really great car – but it really comes down to the ingredients you have and the skill set you have. Can you buy the best denim? And then, can you make it with the best hands?

And when you start putting those two things together, it’s all about ingredients and it’s all about skillsets, and it’s all about great design as well – and you need all those things, right? The line I say is “The only thing that matters is everything.” Only everything matters. So when you’re bringing a product together and there’s a mill in Japan who make the best selvedge in the world, Kuroki, and [their] mission is to make the best denim that’s ever existed. And at that point, for us, it’s [about] persuading them that we want to go and build an amazing company that makes the best denim in the world and for the world.

So we kinda know the shitty bit of denim is a great polluter in this world, just by the sheer scale of how many people wear jeans and, especially for the cheaper stuff, they don’t have best practice, in fact they often have worst practice and there’s issues with cotton, in terms of how much water it uses, even organic cotton, and there are so many aspects to it all,  but if you are geeky about it, like anything, you just go to the next level of geekiness, and you’re going “OK, here we go! Gonna fall down this rabbit hole!”

Martin: So you’ve got to be good enough for the supplier.

David: If we didn’t tell them “Hey, we we’re going to go and build one of the most innovative and influential brands in the denim business, but we need to work with you,” without that intent, it’s  “Man, we can go and supply someone else.”

Martin: Is the craftsmanship you value part of the argument for getting them to supply you? You’re going to do good things with their beautiful material.

David: When we were telling the story, ten years ago, going “Hey, we’re going to have our own factory in our own town that used to have Britain’s biggest factory so the skill sets are here, and there’s deep heritage here” I mean, that story was unique to them, because they’re going “Oh, OK! You’re not just going to outsource it to the cheapest”. So, I’ll be honest, it was a very easy sell to them, because no-one else was selling it, no-one else was telling that story. And we said “We’re almost definitely not going to be your biggest customer, but we could be the one that gets talked about most.” And we’ve been very lucky and built really good long-term relationships with some of the best denim mills in the world. And we’re fortunate, because most brands, when they’ve got a wholesale business, their margin doesn’t allow them to work with the best in the world, but because we’re direct to consumer, our margin allows us to work with the best in the world. When you’re fighting the economics, even with the best intentions and the best management, you always lose. So you do need economics on your back.

Martin: Have you read A Handmade Life by Bill Coperthwaite? If I remember rightly, I think he talks in there about making a chair. If you’re making the whole chair, from start to finish, you have a sense of fulfilment from having made a beautiful object, but if you are just making the legs or the seats, on a kind of production line, its fundamentally unfulfilling. You have a similar approach to making jeans.

David: We must be one of the few denim makers in the world that I know of, unless you’re a one-man [operation, where] the Grand Masters make the entire jean, they follow it all the way down the line. So at the end of it, they go and sign that jean because it’s not lip-service – they followed that jean, they made that jean, all the way down the line. Steve Jobs said that thing about “All artists sign their work” so the Grand Masters sign their jeans. The old factory was really about time –  everything was to the second. I had to get them to really understand “We’re not here to make the most jeans that we can any more – we tried that and it didn’t work. We’re now here to see if we can make the best jeans we can, and so time isn’t as important as quality. And that’s been a really interesting shift for them, and it took a bit of time. But signing the jean at the end of it is very significant.

Martin: It’s about taking pride in your work, I guess – I’m going to have to put my name on this at the end, I want it to be good.

David: If you get a great carpenter and they go and build something, you’ll always go and look for the place where they signed it – and they always will, because it meant something to them. And interestingly, in Hollywood, there’s an editor who doesn’t really exist, but he’s done so many films in Hollywood and he’s called Alan Smithee. Basically, if you see a film with Alan Smithee as editor, it means nobody wanted to put their name to it. That’s their way of saying “Man, I’m not putting my name to this thing!” Putting your name to something says “I’m proud of this. This is my best work.”

A signature in a pair of Hiut jeans (thanks Elin!)

Martin: Really interesting. One of the themes that regularly comes up in interviews I’ve done for this blog is growth. How do we drive growth when we live in a finite world? How do we square that circle? Is making better quality products that last longer part of the solution, do you think?

David: I think so. That tension… I’m feeling that tension. The crazy dream is to get 400 people their jobs back, but also to be the lowest impact that we possibly can and those two things are really actually in conflict, because as a maker, we’re part of the problem, we’re still extractive. So it is something I’ve been thinking about. If I go and grow the business, we’re going to have a bigger impact on the environment than we are currently. And I haven’t really squared it. It just fries my brain! And the only thing I keep coming back to is: maybe we can grow the company in terms of influence and not in terms of size, and if we show an amazing way of doing something and others follow, maybe that’s where we can have an impact. I don’t really have the ultimate answer, because it is conflicted. You want this growth, but when you grow, everything you do has an impact on the environment. So I’ve sort of done a cheat! I’m just going “Well, actually, why don’t we grow our influence in this world, and go and show best practice and maybe that can make a difference.”

I don’t know if it’s the perfect answer, it’s just the answer that sits well for me. I always think about Patagonia, because they struggle with this thing. Man, Patagonia is a real bona fide good company doing good things, and they struggle with this. They don’t actually want to grow. A side story is: I wrote in the Howie’s catalogue one of my most boring pieces, which was a journey of a carrot from Poland to Cardigan but detailing every right turn, left turn, traffic lights… honestly, it could bore anyone to sleep! It then inspired Patagonia to go and do Footprint Chronicles. And that’s what I think about. We can do small things but we can have a great influence in this world and if you think about a giant, how do you stop a giant? Well, you can be a splinter and stop a giant.

We make jeans for a guy called René Redzepi and he’s the world’s best chef. But he became the world’s best chef serving forty-five people. That’s what I keep saying to the team: “We can have an incredibly positive impact in this world, through our ideas and our thinking and our practices and if we don’t want to scale our business to a level where it’s been previously, that’s OK.” And maybe ten people go off and start other companies doing incredible things and maybe the way to get 400 people their jobs back might not all be in the denim factory.

Martin: There’s a bit of the Swedish phrase ‘lagom’ in there – it’s about the concept of just enough.

David: I mean, Goldilocks struggled, right? “Too hot, too cold… just right!”. I mean. the Goldilocks growth economy is something, and I’m conscious of “Yes, we can make organic cotton; yes, we can take microplastics out of the jeans, we can do all these things; yes, we can do less water, we’re doing all these things, but the greenest jean is the one that you don’t make, and that’s the struggle, right? So we can be a better version of what’s out there, but even so, we’ll still be extractive, we will take out more than we put back and that’s problematic.

Martin: But we do need clothes.

David: And if we’re not here.… When you were talking about if you make a product last longer, that’s really good for the environment. If you repair things so they can last longer, that’s really good for the environment. We’ve got a ‘free repairs for life’ thing and, at the moment, we’re getting a lot of stick, because there’s a big wait and people are giving us a hard time, but it’s deserved, right? You shouldn’t have to wait three or four months for a repair service. But I like the fact that they’re actually angry about not having something back; I like the fact that they want to get it repaired. We make jeans so good that you actually want to keep them going. So it’s not a perfect service right now, but it is a good service.

Martin: And it is another way of solving that problem, trying to keep existing products in circulation, rather than chucking them in landfill.

David: Interestingly, the thing that probably, in the end, has more impact than anything else that we do is this club that we formed, which is the No Wash Club. So when people go for six months without washing their jeans, that probably has the greatest impact on the environment than anything else, because 80% of the impact of a pair of jeans is you and I washing and ironing it and so if we restrain and refrain from doing that, data-wise it is probably the biggest impact that you can have. If you actually stop doing something, it actually has the biggest impact.

Martin: And good for the jeans. And good for relationships as well, because I say to my wife “You will tell me when I need to wash these, won’t you?”

David: Exactly, yeah!

Martin: So you’ve got these two core skills – the ability to source and make good jeans and the ability to communicate and influence. How has being an advertising and marketing person helped you build the company. What’s that brought to the company that, say, a finance person wouldn’t necessarily bring?

David: Well, like I said, a great brand is a well-told story. So, yes, we’re in the jeans business, but we’re also in the story-telling business. Story-telling is about being able to communicate to another human being and actually make them feel something, and there is an art to that. It can actually be learned, but it’s a good skill to have. Young kids are pretty good at picking things up now – I mean, they live in a story-telling world, like memes. A meme is like a great book in three words. And that’s a skill: communication skills. And the kids are smart these days, they’re way better than me. They’re so far ahead.

So in terms of advertising helping me? Of course! I was somebody who decided I wouldn’t do A-levels, I’d go and start a business. Failed. Bankrupt. Went and did my A-levels in one year. Went to college. Got thrown out. Spent a year and a half on the dole, trying to get a job in advertising as a copywriter, but I couldn’t spell, I had no grammar, but I did have ideas and eventually, after 150 interviews, got a job. But I was almost sort of raised by wolves, in as much as, I was 21, I was super hungry in that I didn’t want to go on the dole any more – I really didn’t, and I feel for anybody who’s unemployed for any length of time. It’s diabolical, in terms of what it does for a human being. But I was lucky to be surrounded, in the world’s most awarded advertising agency, by a bunch of people who were happy to help me. So I didn’t have the talent but I had the hunger, and eventually I got some talent.

But yes, it helped me, because I was a studier of great brands and how they told their stories, but you don’t have to go to an advertising agency to do that. It is the University of Ideas, so I think it’s a good place to learn, but you can just study it from studying brands. There’s a Korean book company called B Brand that goes and does magazines on just one company and you can really study them and you just go and role-model. If you ask the question “Why do I feel something for this company? What have they done to me?!” And mostly what they’ve done to you is talk to your heart because your brain is busy. Your brain is distracted looking at these things scrolling. And the best brands take that incredible journey from your head to your heart. It’s only 18 inches but most brands never go that far.

Yes, it’s definitely helped, but you can learn it on Tik Tok! Just go on Tik Tok for a week, you’re going to learn some tips and tricks. It is a good skill to learn, but it can be learned.

Martin: You mentioned getting people to feel something there. We’re all craving emotion, aren’t we? We all want to feel something. Whether it’s going to a rugby match or a music concert or playing sport or watching a film. That’s my conclusion, after being in marketing for nearly 30 years.

David: Completely. When you can make another human feel something for what you are doing, you’ve done a good job. And actually, most brands try to talk to the head, the logical part, and the head is fucking busy! The head couldn’t give a shit. But all the feelings are in the heart, and if you can do the merry dance and talk to the heart, and talk on emotional levels… Like, when I’m telling  a story about the jeans it’s “My town is making jeans again.” “What happens next, Dave?” “I’ll let you know!” There are [only] seven different stories, done in different ways. Go and learn how to tell a story. Go on a story-telling course. It’s kind of important.

Martin: So what other advice would you give to young marketers keen to do the right thing and use their superpowers for good – with responsibility, as Stan Lee once wrote?

David: When I meet a lot of people, especially founders, they seem to be fine with talking, and some of them you can’t stop! But actually when they’re writing or communicating, they get a little bit boring and in a way, they have to go and try and learn how to release the handbrake on them and let other people in. And so my advice to founders would be to try and write every day, go and put some stuff out there every day, and what that will teach you is how to get good at it, but it’ll take the fear away. It’s like going to the gym, not for the body but for the mind – the word gym. Go and get good at those words. There are 26 letters and all you have do is re-arrange them in the right fucking order! That’s all you have to do!

Martin: Sounds simple! And what about people working in companies. Can they have a positive influence?

David: Oh, of course! Not everyone’s going to go and start their own company, but the great thing now is that companies understand that they can’t afford to lose great people, and the way they lose great people is they stop caring about the company that they’re currently in and try and find another company that they care about more. And so you want to retain the best people and the way to do that, really, is about making sure it has meaning. The ‘pirate inside’ is really also a great job – you’re trying to change a company from within. You are the Trojan Horse. You’re the change. Companies, I think, are getting better at understanding that if they don’t change, they’re going to die. And who better to help the change than the pirate on the inside?

Martin: Hard to do if you’re new, maybe, but influence can be quite subtle, I guess.

David: Yeah. There’s a phrase that I use every day, because I have no patience. There’s a restraunteur called Danny Meyer in America and he’s written a great book (I used to give it to people a lot) and he has a phrase in there: Constant gentle pressure. In his restaurant he kept putting the salt pot back in place. In the end they just said “Don’t move the fucking salt pot, he’s nutty about this salt pot!” He didn’t make a big fuss, he’d just go “It goes there.” So constant gentle pressure. “If we really truly want to be the best brand in the world, do you think this thing is going to help?” “Oh. Maybe we should reshoot that.” In the end, its erosion. On a daily basis. Man, keep bashing! That sharp-edged rock is going to be a pebble one day.

Martin: Kind of like Nudge Theory.

David: Yeah.

Martin: I’d better let you go, but thank you for being so generous, with your time and your wisdom.

David: My pleasure. It’s been fun!