To get a seat on a train, you have to arrive before the crowd.

You also have to be on the right train.

Back when I was building howies, I called all our skate and bike shops to tell them our T-shirts were now going to be made from Organic cotton.

The retail price would go from £19.99 to £27.

It had taken us years to build up our wholesale business.

It took me a morning of phone calls to lose it.

All of it.

The thing that was important to me wasn’t important to them.

I was early with organic cotton; most people were still getting their heads around organic milk at the time.

But I wanted to run a brand that did it that way.

So, we started doing a catalogue as we no longer had any shops.

Selling direct. Who knew?

Even today, people still collect the catalogues.

As for organic cotton T-shirts, they became the thing we got known for.

They grew the business like crazy.

The key thing to know about being early and right is:

It doesn’t work without belief.