We were lucky to catch up with Emma Macdonald recently and have shared our conversation below.
Emma, appreciate you joining us today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?
The Tartan Blanket Co. is a sustainable lifestyle brand focusing on design-led, natural woven scarves, blankets and accessories. Based online and in our hometown of Edinburgh, Scotland, we are a Positive Impact company dedicated to sharing warmth.
On the surface, our brand has grown year after year scaling to a team of nearly 50 people, being stocked in hundreds of stores and sharing thousands of moments of warmth around the world. However, the journey has been far from smooth and there have been a number of twists, turns and significant challenges which we have faced to get us to where we are today.
Back in 2014 my husband Fergus and I had made the decision to move back to our home town of Edinburgh from London, to start our own business and eventually a family together. We felt like there was a gap in the market for a sustainable woollen brand that could combine all the traditional benefits of a tartan wool blanket with modern design and sustainable manufacturing. Having worked in fashion, I was really keen to build a positive impact and purpose into the brand and company that we created.
We started small, working with local mills, learning about what the customers wanted and building a small team around us to deliver that.
After the first year, we started to realise the limitations of what was possible in the Scottish market. We wanted to trace the wool but found it was imported from countries such as Australia and Mongolia, with little or no knowledge of the farms it was being bought from. This then led us to an exploration of where the best and most sustainable wool comes from and we travelled around looking for partners to work with. One of the key challenges was finding partners willing to take a chance on us and manufacture on a small scale whilst we grew. It really came down to the relationship and how we could work together and we were so fortunate to find an amazing partner in Mongolia of a small family-run company that works with community farms and small-scale weaving. Our partnership has grown every year for the past 7 years and now we are very different businesses as a result, but our friendship and partnership still remain as strong as ever.
We also found partners in India that were taking woollen textiles from landfill and re-weaving them into recycled-wool blankets. This was something that 7 years ago was not such a trend, and we felt like we were really taking a gamble that the customers would value this unique way of production as much as we did. We also worked with our partners over there to support larger communities of workers to hand finish the blankets, rather than using machines, something which was incredibly important to them. They have now grown into one of our biggest weaving partners and completely transformed into a business.
But it wasn’t all smooth sailing and we did work with production partners who let us down or created designs which did not translate how we expected in the weaving process. We learned a bit more each time, which helped make us stronger and more resilient as we grew. I would definitely advise starting small with lower risks when entering production. Sometimes the margins can be incredibly tough to produce in low volumes, but it’s so important to test manufacturing partners and concept first before going all in, as it can break you.
Another pivotal moment for us as we have scaled has been stepping away from our tartan heritage to embrace our design and sustainability foundations. Although Scotland will forever be fundamental to who we are and where we are based, we began to realise that we were becoming limited by what helped us begin. As we developed our design aesthetic and evolved the brand, we had to step away from some of our key customer markets to open up to new ones. This lead us to be stocked in places like Liberty of London, Selfridges and Anthropologie and positioned us in the fashion and interior design markets. It can often feel hard to let go of customers and collections which for so long have been key to your business, and sometimes it can also be financially painful in the short term. However, in order to evolve into what you want to become you often have to be just as clear on what you are not, as what you are.
As we entered into the fashion market we really wanted to ground ourselves in why we started the business in the first place, which was to be a positive impact company and continue to follow our mission to share warmth. We decided in 2020 to donate 2% of all revenue to charity, with our 1% for the planet, and 1% for the people Positive Impact Pledge. This meant that as we scaled and grew, we knew our positive impact would grow with us and that we would be doing good with every sale we made. In 2021 we also began our journey to becoming B-Corp certified which we hope to complete by the start of 2023. This has been a huge learning journey but ensured we are holding ourselves accountable at every stage and challenging ourselves to always do better.
As part of our pledge, we have:
-Donated over £200k to various charities including Cool Earth, The Trussell Trust and the NAACP.
-Planted over 1,000 trees in partnership with Tree App.
-Worked with our suppliers to improve sustainable practices in their factories.
-Redesigned all our packaging to be recyclable and repurposable.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
After graduating from Edinburgh University with an Economics and Business degree I quickly realised that, unlike my classmates, a career in finance was not going to make my heart sing. So I went on to study for a Masters’s degree in Fashion Marketing and then went to work in London as a fashion buyer. I really found a career I loved, balancing my love of fashion with my more logical and strategic mind. I had never really imagined myself starting a company, and it wasn’t until we were looking to move back to Edinburgh to be closer to family, and start our own one, that I realised how few roles there were in the retail industry in Scotland. My husband Fergus already had another business and slowly convinced me that starting one together would be a great idea. So we went about building The Tartan Blanket Co. and I am now so glad we did, as I found my dream role and purpose, plus we now employ nearly 50 people in retail roles in Scotland, helping create an industry I struggled to find.
The Tartan Blanket Co. strives to create a better future by sharing warmth and supporting people to care for each other and our planet. We are focussed on creating natural and sustainable warmth through our blankets, scarves and accessories. With our 1% for the planet 1% for the people pledge and our (soon to be ) B-corp certification, we want to offer people a shopping experience where they know their products are not just going to bring warmth and joy to themselves or those that they gift it to, but also they can trust that it has been made in a sustainable caring way and have a positive impact on others and our planet. By us taking on the responsibility of our impact, we make sure customers don’t have to and so they can shop with us without hesitation or guilt.
In the last few years, we have become design leaders in the industry, through our amazing design team and some incredible people who we have been lucky enough to collaborate with. This has led us to be stocked in some of the most design-led retailers such as Liberty of London, Selfridges and Anthologie. We also created a bespoke collection for Anthropologie in the US this year, which was a real highlight for us as we grow our brand awareness over there.
We have also built out our product range over the past few years to offer a gift box building experience, where people can build gift boxes to include one of our scarves and blankets as well as other complementary cosy items such as candles, cashmere socks, chocolate and books. This is something we developed just a few months before covid broke out and gained huge traction as people wanted to send comforting gifts to loved ones. We also offered the ability to personalise items with embroidery and include hand-written gift notes, which just added to the experience and helped people feel close, whilst staying apart. During covid, we grew over 100% and pivoted into what our customers needed from us. Listening and working with our community is key to what makes TBCo so special and successful, as we would be nothing without our amazing customers.
How did you build your audience on social media?
For the majority of its lifetime, TBCo. has been a mostly online business. Having an eCommerce shop means that digital marketing is essential in scaling your brand and driving it forward. Social media has been a wonderful tool in allowing us to connect with our audience and build a global community of people who share the same values and ethos as us.
We show up authentically online – our content naturally varies depending on whether we’re posting on Facebook, Instagram or TikTok, but we are always genuine and showcase our brand from the heart. The content we share mimics our desire to be sustainable, stylish and stay true to our Scottish roots. Working with a wonderful group of content creators around the world has also given us the opportunity to present in front of audiences we might otherwise not have had access to, and provides us with stunning User Generated Content (UGC).
It’s always exciting seeing how our customers, press and content creators style their TBCo. wool and social media platforms allow us to do this.
For those who are just starting out on their social media journey, the best advice I can give you is to:
Be authentic – post content that is true to who you are and what you represent;
Be educational, informative or entertaining – have a purpose behind the post, don’t upload anything for the sake of uploading.
Have fun! It’s evident when a team or brand is having fun behind the scenes because its content reflects it.
Engage – social media is a two-way street, and without genuine engagement, it’s like you’re shouting into the void. Start conversations, reply to comments, and be a friend first.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
The team are what really makes TBCo. – we have a staff of nearly 50 people now who are dedicated to sharing warmth and having a positive impact. As we have evolved we have recognised how important it is to have a clear mission and values and look for people who align with and emulate these.
I spoke with the My Daily Business Coach podcast last year on the recruiting process at TBCo., and explained that we have a robust recruitment system whereby rather than just looking for qualifications and experience we focus on finding people who will be the right fit for the team and culture with an open mindset and the drive to grow and develop.
We cultivate an environment where our staff are able to explore different roles around TBCo., as we know someone may have interviewed for one job but would flourish in a different department or position. As a business owner, I take responsibility for any underperforming as it usually has to do with a misalignment of values, or can be down to a lack of communication and explanation of what our company values are. We take time to make sure our staff are able to develop their skills and enjoy working at TBCo. as much as we love having them!
We also ensure we support our team and live by our company values. One of our values is “We are warm” and we emulate this by offering a share warmth day, where team members can take a day off to give back to society. We also have a ‘Share Warmth Award’ every Friday when one person in the team is nominated for sharing warmth with others that week, whether it’s by helping out or showing care for others. We also have a Blanket Day and a Picnic Blanket day where people can take a day off to stay on the sofa wrapped in a blanket or get out and enjoy the sunshine.
However, growing a team, especially quickly, can be a challenge both to find the right people and know what roles you need in the business. We are lucky to be able to evaluate our company structure and ensure we have amazing specialists across different fields, as well as the right managers to support and lead them. It has only been recently that we have recruited a Senior Leadership Team to help create and deliver the long-term strategy for the business. This has been fundamental as we grow across multiple markets and categories.
One of our key learnings has been that even as a small team, people need clear structure and growth opportunities, to ensure they know what they are accountable for and working towards. We also ensure there is regular clear communication and feedback about how all our staff are doing in relation to these, as uncertainty can really breed negativity and concern. This is something we are constantly working on and is ever-evolving as we grow.
Contact Info:
- Website: tartanblanketco.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tartanblanketco/
- Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/tartanblanketco/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-tartan-blanket-co
Image Credits
Jessika Shaw, TBCo. Photographer