2020: A year of two halves
There’s no question that 2020 has been a year for the history books. Of course, Covid dominated all of our lives and for us, it pushed our timeline back by a full 12 months but that hasn’t been the disaster that it might sound.
Part I
Between March and August, I restored and customised a Honda CGL125 motorcycle. Stuck in lockdown, it was the perfect project to keep me busy but apart from that I learnt a lesson that I had never been able to grasp before - do one thing well. From March 23rd when I bought the bike to August 11th, when it got packed up to be shipped over to the UK, I only took 2 full days off from working on the project. That’s not to say I worked all day on it, some days I did but on others I might have only cleaned a couple of bolts or researched my next move.
Another similar lesson was that we often think that achieving a goal can’t possibly be as simple as making a little bit of progress each day. I’ve been guilty of either going full tilt for a short period of time before burning out or paralysing myself by making things overly complex. Both options lead to the same result of unfulfilled potential.
“We often think that achieving a goal can’t possibly be as simple as making a little bit of progress each day.”
By the middle of the year, I’d taken an unloved and uncared for bike and turned into something I was genuinely proud of. An unexpected but beautiful side effect of working on the bike was the community that started to develop. I’d already met a bunch of people through the BMW K100 build that I’d started in January but the more I shared on social, the more people I met. Every single person that I reached out to was friendly, passionate and eager to help where they could. One particular moment stands out where I’d been working on the petrol tank, reshaping the opening for the fuel cap. The original tank wasn’t the shape that I wanted and my only other choice was the right shape but was set up to use a rectangular cap that bolted on to the tank with a hinge. I wanted to use a circular twist cap and need to modify the tank to work with the cap I’d bought.
The cap is made to fit a CG125 but the tank was for a CGL125. I had no idea how the inside of the tank needed to be structured or really, how the locking mechanism worked. I’d seen that Jonathan Hull had a lovely CG125 that he’d posted on Instagram, so I fired a message over to him to ask if he could send over a couple of pics for me. Within 5 minutes, he’d sent over a video and I was able to get on with the job. That wasn’t an isolated incident either. I had loads of help throughout the build and connected with people all over the world.
As the bike started to come together and need less of my time, I was also able to use lockdown to develop the first prototypes of the Lawrence jacket. Not that it was the Lawrence at the time, that didn’t come until I was back in the UK.
Before he died some years ago, my Uncle had spent time researching and creating a family tree. As part of that process, he’d found two shots of my great grandfather. I’d always felt a connection to him looking at the first of the two, a photograph of him in his WW1 army uniform and had put a post up of him on Instagram in 2019, 100 years after the end of the war. He’d lost his life in Gallipoli and his name is on the memorial in Hellas. The second shot was taken when he was back home during a moment of leave and I found out recently that it was taken in his workshop.
It was these two photos and the connection that I found with T.E Lawrence, that became the initial influence behind creating a military inspired jacket.
Part II
In August, I moved back to the UK from Bahrain. We packed our lives up and flew out from an almost entirely dead airport. While we’ve been deciding where to base ourselves, I haven’t had a workshop. Although that’s meant I haven’t been able to work on the K100, it’s actually been a blessing in disguise. It’s meant that I’ve dedicated myself to creating clarity around who I’m building Barnfield for and why.
Although it’s arguably just as important, if not more, as the products we’ll be creating, there isn’t the same framework around this kind of work. Designing a jacket, finding fabrics, working with the tailors to get the fit right, etc, these are all very linear and obvious tasks. It’s the same with the bikes - it may not be 100% clear how to complete a specific task but you can see that once it’s done, you’ll have taken another step towards a finished product. One task leads on to the next and you take each step knowing that you’re moving forwards to create a final product. Branding and marketing aren’t like that. There’s no visual framework with a step by step list of what needs to be completed to successfully launch and it’s incredibly easy to get caught up in questioning whether or not you’re doing things right.
I ran a digital marketing agency for 10 years, I consulted for a further 3 and I’ve spent countless hours educating myself around the subject but because there’s no ‘one size fits all’ method, I’ve realised that you have to decide what success looks like yourself. Once you get there, you can move the goal posts and redefine what success is going to look like again.
Communicating a brand story is tough. Especially when it’s founder run. It’s very difficult to separate your own story from that of the brand. Unless of course, you don’t.
“It’s very difficult to separate your own story from that of the brand. Unless of course, you don’t. ”
I realised that when I tried, anything I wrote out just felt inauthentic. And no one likes a made up origin story. At the end of the day, I want Barnfield to act like an anchor to bring like-minded people together as a community. That might sound a little bit of a stretch for a clothing brand but it gives a purpose behind everything we’ll do and makes it easy to know what to say yes to and what to say no to.
Community - yes. Collaborations - yes. Sharing - yes. Transparency - yes. Creating value - yes. Promoting others - yes.
So as we step into 2021, I’m still limited in terms of how much I can achieve in getting beyond the prototype phase for our first jacket. Having moved things forwards at a decent pace at the beginning of the year, various levels of lock down have made it virtually impossible to go from prototype to finished product. The clothing manufacturing industry is notoriously old school and many of the best factories barely have an online presence. Not only that but it’s really important to me to see where our clothing will be made. There’s not much point spending time and effort finding the best sustainable fabrics only to produce in a factory that doesn’t care for the people actually making them. As it stands though, we’re in lockdown again and international travel is definitely off the cards.
“The details don’t come easy but they’re what elevates the ordinary into the extraordinary.”
Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say, and I’ve started to look at what can and can’t be achieved in the U.K. I’ve never doubted that the skill and experience is here but I’ve had my eyes set on Portugal from the beginning. Porto especially is really well known for high quality work and ethical manufacturing with reasonable minimum quantities. But who knows? I’m hoping that with a bit of research, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
The other real positive of being pushed back though is that it’s given me the time to dive into the details. I’ve been speaking to others in the community to find out what they look for in a jacket. Whether that’s in terms of look, fit or those little extras that can really help. Pockets at the right height to keep a spare pair of gloves in without bunching around your hip, a hidden loop to attach a cap to while riding or somewhere to keep keys safe. The devil’s in the detail as they say and as we say, it’s the last 10% that takes 90% of the time. The details don’t come easy but they’re what elevates the ordinary into the extraordinary.
