November 2020:
While the commercial side of Swyft were able to work from home in the UK, it was vital that the manufacturing faction of the business in Portugal were still able to access the workplace.
Keiran admits that the business was lucky when it comes to manufacturing space situation, as the company had three warehouses next to one another.
However, they still had to make some changes to make the space fully COVID-compliant.
“We put in an extra two breaks rooms so that we could have bubbles within the workforce,” Keiran explains, adding that they were able to give each employee 50 square metres of space within the warehouses in which they could operate safely by themselves.
As well as this, they implemented a strategy of everyone being tested for coronavirus every two weeks, and staggering break times to ensure that social distancing could be adhered to.
It wasn’t just during working hours that Swyft made changes, though.
Recognising that their Portuguese workforce often travelled to the warehouse via car share, they introduced a travel subsidy scheme so that there was no unnecessary mixing prior to and following a shift.
“We turned [our measurements] into an education piece,” reported Keiran, emphasising across the business the importance of staying safe and healthy, not only on a personal level, but also for the survival of the company itself.
January 2021:
In January, with the pandemic still raging and further restrictions in place, Keiran reflected on the on-going stresses brought on by coronavirus – particularly making big decisions.
“I think it’s the scale of the decisions,” he said. “From one week to the next, making a decision about whether you have 100 per cent of your workforce working or zero per cent.”
“You’d never get presented with a decision like that in normal times.”
When it comes to decision making in a business, choices can be more ambiguous. During the pandemic, however, Keiran found the process to be quite opposite:
“All the decisions since March last year have been really black or white,” he reported.
“With coronavirus, it’s been very much, we’re going this way or we’re going that way. We’re making big cuts or making big bets. We’re either hiring five people or we’re getting rid of 50 people overnight.”
He added that he usually wouldn’t expect to make big decisions regularly, but that the pandemic had shaken up the norm significantly:
“It’s the extremes of the decisions that have taken me most by surprise – it’s either full gas or full brakes, and I would expect to make those decisions once or twice a year, but now you get one or two a day.”
Although the decisions required are bigger and more regular, Keiran said that he and his business partner always have a specific aim in mind when choosing what to do next.
“We’ll always be on the side of giving the most benefit to the medium term,” he explained.
“If it’s a tight call between short-term or long-term survival, now we try and make sure that medium one gives us a bit of wiggle room and preserves our greatest assets – our manufacturing and our people.”
“If we come out the other side of this with our people and our manufacturing base, we’re alright, and that’s the priority.”
Decision-making at a manufacturing level has also changed during the latest lockdown.
Shortly, Keiran hopes to release a new product onto the market, which required the company’s design director to visit Portugal to view the prototypes.
“He went to Portugal for two weeks [to see the new product], and then [the government] changed the rules getting back from Portugal, so then he had to go by Madrid. And then he got snowed in,” Keiran told us.
“It’s not just a two-day trip over to sign off the prototype, make some changes and come home anymore – there are big logistical challenges to moving around the world at the moment,” he went on.
“And when he got back, his whole family had to isolate.”
Having launched Swyft mere months before the pandemic began, Keiran and his team were able to take advantage of the boom in homeware purchasing during the lockdown – and it’s a trend that’s continuing nearly a year later.
“The housing market is quite strong at the moment, which drives up a lot of the homewares industry,” Keiran said.
“There’s definitely less of a rush now. I think a lot of people have done their purchases in the earlier lockdowns, and it’s a little bit steadier now.”
Reflecting on the choices made at the start of the pandemic, Keiran pondered on what the company might have done differently
“I wouldn’t have closed our factory for the first eight weeks [of lockdown],” he reflected.
“We didn’t know if people would still be buying homewares,” he added. “It seems crazy to think they wouldn’t, but you know, furlough wasn’t even a thing. And job losses were forecast to be 10-12 million people, and I just thought that would have a bigger impact than anyone staying at home buying a new sofa.”
“I underestimated people’s optimism that they would still spend money while sat at home.”
“Instead, we closed the factory and went into cash control mode, which was the right thing to do, but we definitely should have put everything we could into building inventory as fast as possible for what was to come,” Keiran went on.
However, for all the difficulties brought on by coronavirus, Keiran recognises that the pandemic helped to accelerate the business’ growth.
“We’ve been very fortunate and [the pandemic is] giving us a chance to get to a scale that perhaps would have taken a couple of years to get to,” he said.
“We’ve just got to be grateful for that and make sure we do that justice by working hard.”
March 2021:
When we caught up in March, Keiran was in the midst of a hectic round of fundraising.
“We’ve grown a lot,” Keiran said. “We grew 48 per cent month on month in February and we’re on track to do about the same this month.”
“We’re going to pretty much have doubled our business in the first quarter of the year, which is great, but it’s been a hair-raising experience – it’s a case of holding on tight and try and get through it, and we’re just about out the other side of that now.”
With such a huge leap in size, you might expect to find everyone working around the clock, but Keiran pointed out that he had been careful to avoid that, focusing on ensuring that all the processes set up in line with one another.
“We manufacture, ship to the UK, warehouse distribute, sell,” he explained.
“We’re completely vertically integrated, so it’s about making sure our customer service team, for example, have everything ready to go together, and we’ve been planning that jump for a long time.”
Planning for growth, Keiran added, has been key for the company’s development. In preparing, the business has gained a good understanding of when to spend marketing money when demand starts to flow.
He went on to add that the business is production-led when it comes to growth, so that it is not attempting to pull forward with sales, rather trying to grow at the manufacturing base and then push the end product through and make sure the marketing is ready for when the product lands.
“It’s extremely tight,” Keiran pointed out.
“Growth is expensive – it’s a drain on cash, it’s risky.”
While growth requires cash investment, he remains optimistic for the future, thanks to the accuracy of his business modelling. In the past year, the company has been able to meet forecasts within three or four per cent of what had initially been forecast.
“We’ve taken risks, but it’s mainly about really understanding your business model and being sure that you can lift everything at the same time,” Keiran summarised.
Although an exciting time for the business, Keiran was well aware of the potential risks and admitted that his role had become risk management – working out the parts of the business that have the potential to fall short and direct attention there.
For other business who may be thinking about scaling, he emphasised the expense that comes with growth, adding that you’re required to invest well in advance of seeing any return. He also pointed out that, if you don’t have the supply to then support the growth, customers will suffer from a negative experience.
Keiran was also keen to emphasise the importance of monitoring the smaller processes or elements of your business, as these are the elements that may result in significant issues as you scale. As an example, he cited his operation’s free fabric sample swatch boxes.
“We send out free swatch boxes to customers, and demand for them grows 100 per cent month on month – four weeks before the sales start to grow because it’s a long decision purchase,” he explained.
“If you run out of those pre-cut samples, you have a problem – they’re on a lead time so you’ve got to start planning for that, 12 weeks before your revenue grows. Any little nuisance at scale is brutally exposed.”
He used the metaphor of going for a run to highlight his message. If you’re starting off on a long run, and feel a blister growing, you need to pause and work out what’s causing the blister. If you continue running, the blister will continue to grow, until it gets too painful you can’t continue the run and must take time out to recover. The same is true when it comes to scaling your business.
Despite being a stressful time, Keiran believes that the pros of pitching your business far outweigh any potential cons. At each step, you’re continuing to learn more about your business and how you can successfully develop it.
“We’ve got investors who like lots of detail in our planning, and that’s been good for us,” Keiran explained.
“It can be annoying at times – but it’s been good for us because, each time we go and re-do it, we learn something else about the business that we didn’t know before.”
“That’s really the main thing – you’re going to be a little bit smarter at the modelling each time, a little bit smarter at the execution.”
He also spoke about balancing the potential risks with the potential outcomes, and how he personally dealt with that pressure.
“You’ve got to accept that, as long as you’ve addressed every problem you know about, then that’s alright,” he went on.
“I always talk to my team and say we’re going to try this and as long as nothing we know about catches us out and it’s something new that comes up, then that’s alright.”
Doing risk assessments and business health checks is key at each stage, Keiran added. He also emphasised the importance of questioning yourself and your processes in order to mitigate as much as possible. However, he admitted that, ultimately, “you’ll never know until you give it a go.”
A deep-dive into fundraising
As part of our conversation on Swyft’s latest cycle of fundraising, Keiran was keen to share his experiences with other small business leaders who may find themselves in a similar position, or who have yet to experience this level of fundraising.
Keiran explained that Swyft is currently fundraising at Series B stage, having already completed seed and Series A fundraising. He added that these two initial layers of fundraising take you from initial concept to proof of concept and then onto being a business with a cash flow.
“When you get to a certain size, you can invest in Series B, which invites other sources into shares or a mechanism into the business where you can raise money against the valuation,” Keiran said.
“It’s about bringing on some more capital to continue the growth story and invest in the business for years to come.”
He said that big capital investments, such as improving factory machinery, building large-scale marketing propositions, creating TV campaigns, out-of-home awareness and brand frame are typically areas that businesses pitch for.
“It’s not reasonable for a business of our size to generate enough cash flow itself to pay for those things,” Keiran went on, “so to get to the size where you are big enough to pay for them, you need that initial fronting of cash and investment.”
He also mentioned how private equity groups, family offices and venture capital firms have a great deal of expertise and knowledge, and a greater understanding of best practise.
“They’ve got connections, contacts,” he explained. “All kinds of relationships open up when you have the kind of institutional investor that we’re looking for and to help us get through.”
So that Swyft can succeed, Keiran is looking for brand-focused investors that understand the direct-to-consumer market. For him, it’s important to work with investors who have taken other businesses through similar growth curves so that they can avoid some of the common pitfalls.
“We want to make our own mistakes, not repeat others,” he added.
By bringing on these sorts of investors, a business can expect to give up some equity. However, Keiran doesn’t believe this to be a negative as everyone is then united in the same goal – to make the business a success.
Keiran went on to explain that funding comes in cycles which can go on for years. At the end of that period, the investors either exit or invest further.
“The business will be that much bigger by that point, so the value for everyone comes in the growth and valuation of the business.”
Leadership 
