Hello, hello. We're starting off this episode a little differently to honour our guest. She's a disrupter, she's a woman who goes after what she wants and who leads the way in inspiring other women to do that too. This is going to be one sexy interview. I know it by the very nature of the brand that our g uest has built, and by the way she leans in and lives life fully.
Abingdon Mullin is the founder and CEO of Abingdon Co., an independent female owned watch company that designs watches for women. Okay, so what's so special about that you may ask? Well, you'll just have to listen in to find out. But for starters, for those who aren't yet familiar with the brand, I want to share with you what the company stands for. You'll see it on the website, and then we'll meet the woman herself. So here's what the company says it does, “We build watches for women who do more, the women who wear Abingdon watches are more than our customers— there our role models, supporters and allies, they’re our crew members, adventurous women who dare to push the boun daries and live life to the fullest. Together, we're a community of women who work hard and play hard. We know how an engine works, or why a decompression stop is essential. We can put rounds on a target and throw an uppercut, and we want more.” Well, what's not to love about that, ladies?
And on that note, welcome to Resilient Entrepreneurs. This is the podcast where we speak with business owners and entrepreneurs from around the world and all walks of life in hope that something you hear will leave your business a little richer. We're your co-hosts, Vicki and Laura from Two Four One Branding, supporting new entrepreneurs as they launch their business and offering you the tools that you need to succeed. It's why we invite experienced successful entrepreneurs like Abingdon to share their wisdom with you on this podcast. So if you love hearing their stories, please subscribe on whichever platform you're listening or watching on right now, and you'll be notified of the next great episode.
Abibgdon, thank you for joining us. There is so much to talk about.
Thank you so much for having me. And that was, I think one of the best intros I have ever had on any interview that I've done, so that warmed my heart, I really appreciate you.
Oh, thank you. We're so glad to have you here, and we're so excited for this conversation. I'd love to go back into your background a little bit to learn a little bit about who you are today. So can you tell us a little bit about your childhood and growing up? I believe you were born in England. Is that correct? So tell us a little bit about that and your family history, so we understand a little bit about your journey.
Sure. So yes, I was born in England but as you can tell, I have a very American accent, so I was raised in California. My father's British, my mother's Mexican so it was tea and crumpets and huevos rancheros for breakfast, it was kind of the norm. And I think that was a blessing really, that I was afforded because what it's really done for me just as an entrepreneur is it started a foundation of having flux and just different cultures and different experiences from a multicultural household. It really set the stage for just how I view the world and, and seeing it not so black and white, or what we see on television or in other media, but actually experiencing it. One of my favourite things, one of my favourite sayings is “You just don't know what you don't know” and being raised in a household like that with three younger siblings, we got exposed to so many things when we went back to England, or when we met with our family in California, just the differences in how both sides of our family were raising us was just, it was really exciting to be a part of. And I have to credit my parents for giving me such a wonderful childhood in that regard.
Were you an entrepreneurial kid?
Oh, totally. Absolutely. I was probably the most competitive brownie Girl Scout that you would have ever met. I had to outsell every cookie in the state of California, all the other Girl Scouts were terrified of me! But it was still a lot of fun. Friendly competition is always a good thing, and yeah, I've been an entrepreneur since probably six years old when I sold my first Girl Scout cookie.
Now flying is a big part of your life too. So tell us how that all folds into what you do today.
Well, the whole idea of the company that I started was flying. Basically how it happened was, I wanted to become a pilot. I've always wanted to be a professional pilot and that's what I figured my career would be.
I learned about flying when I was in high school. And at the time, I really had no concept of what the aviation industry offered but at my high school, there was a flight school that came in and talked to kids and told them about what it was to be a pilot, and they said two things that really stuck with me. The first thing was that you didn't have to join the military to learn how to fly, you could go to a private school, you could go to a university, there's a lot of different programs that will teach you how to fly. So I thought that was really interesting, because I thought all pilots came from the military. And then the second thing that they said is that you did not have to go to the airlines after you learned how to fly. You could fly corporate, you could be a flight instructor like they were, you could fly relief aid or just do traffic watch in the morning and be off by 10am. There were so many different things, I mean, the Goodyear Blimp, I know the pilot Taylor, she flies the Goodyear Blimp all around the country. Helicopter pilots, there's jets, there's propeller aeroplanes, there's all sorts of things and nowadays, we have so many drones and unmanned aircraft. So it was just a world that I had no idea was so vast, and I thought, Okay, this is great. I can get paid to travel, this sounds like you get well paid, it sounded like the dream job. And I went back home and said, “Hey, Mom, I want to be a pilot.” But of course I'm 14 and when you're 14 you want to be something different every hour of the day, and so my mom was, although very supportive of me, she said, “Okay that's nice, now pass the peas” and didn't really know how to guide me on that path. And so I had to figure it all out on my own.
So I held on to this dream, I went to university, because that was the one thing my parents did understand is, we don't really know if you even meet the physical requirements of being a pilot but if that whole thing doesn't work out, you should have a backup, and so therefore you have to go to college. Oh, but by the way, you're the first of the four kids going off to college so you’ve got to figure out how to pay for it. So I had summer jobs to help me cover college, I ended up being a resident advisor so I could get my housing covered. And, then I was able to save over four years, while I was at UC San Diego about $20,000 to help me with my private pilot rating. So after I got the rating, I wanted to gift myself for just accomplishing something that had been a dream of mine for almost a decade. And so I looked for a pilot's watch. And I looked for a pilot's watch made for ladies. And in 2006 there was nothing, absolutely crickets. So that was how I started my company, was making the first pilots watch for ladies.
So before we get into the more technical side of how does one starts a company that makes pilots watches for ladies, I'm curious to know what you would attribute your drive to. This is driven behaviour, is it not?
Very much so. There could be something in the DSM that describes how I just put blinders on and zoom in on something, hyper focus on something, but that's just always been something that has defined me. I'm very good with deadlines. So when I decided, it was a Christmas dinner, I was with a bunch of lady pilots who also had, it came up in discussion, we were talking about what we wanted for Christmas and one of the other women had stated, “I've always wanted a pilot's watch, and nobody's ever made anything.” And I said, “Huh, that's weird. I was looking a few months ago when I got my private and I noticed that nobody made anything, is this a thing?” And they said, “Oh, yeah, no, only 6% of the industry is female pilots so nobody's going to make a watch for such a small market.” And if you're starting a business, then you're probably doing some market research to determine if you're going to sell that product or that service. And when you read 6% of female pilots, or 6% of pilots are female, it's not a very good market to introduce a product to. But I was 22 at the time, I had no idea what market research was. So I said, “Okay, well, if I started this, and if I figured out how to make a watch, would you ladies help me design the first two models or the first model?” I didn't even know at that point if I was going to start off with one or two watches, and they said “Yeah sure, no problem kid”, they were all very seasoned pilots and I was the young one that just got her private. And so I set a deadline of my birthday the next year, which was November 3, and I had to figure it out.
If you want one word that you can basically start any business with, it's Google. I googled everything. I looked for manufacturers, I looked for where the best watch was made, I looked for how to get a website made, I looked for how to process credit cards, do I just accept checks? I mean, all the things that didn't really exist, today we've got Shopify, and we've got so many, Facebook marketplace, you can run an entire business on Etsy, there's so many different choices that we have now. But this was back in 2006, I didn't have any of those choices so I had to figure it out as I went.
I love the challenge and I love being proved, I love proving sceptics wrong as well. So when I was asking for friends and family to invest in me, I actually had one investor give me $5,000, he was a friend, and when I paid him back five years later, at 10% interest per year for five years, which are pretty decent terms, especially this was 2006, 2007. So if you remember the 2008 economic crisis, I was actually his best investment, he lost way more money in his other investments. But he couldn't get his money back until 2012, right, five years later, and that was my terms for everybody. But he said, “You were actually a bet that you would fail.” And I was like, “Really, I wish you would have told me that at the beginning, because I would have doubled your money, I wouldn't have just given you 50% back.” But it is something that I love a good hard deadline, and I love somebody telling me I can't do it. You put those two things in front of me and I'll figure out how to get it done before the deadline, and I'll do it better than you ever thought it could be done.
Did you make your deadline that you had for yourself on your birthday?
We launched on November 3, 2007, that's the anniversary of the company. It was my 22nd birthday. It was also when I got my Commercial Pilot's rating. So I went further with my flying and got my Instrument rating and my Commercial rating. And I was just starting my first flying job. And my first flying job was a demo pilot for a company called Cirrus Aircraft, they’re a small propeller aeroplane with a parachute built into it. It was one of the best days of my life.
Ooh, that one's a really tough one to match. Has there been one since where you thought,” Oh, yeah, this one is a good close second to the best day of my life?”
The day I got married, my husband is my better half, my everything. He's a wonderful, wonderful person, and I am so lucky to have met him.
That's so beautiful. I'm so happy to hear that because we're talking about a female led, a female built business and the stereotype may well be Oh, yeah, they're very for women, pro women, anti men. Clearly this is not the case and that is a beautiful balance. Thank you for saying that.
Definitely. And it's funny. I mean he comes to all the shows, and there's, I don't know if I should even say this but you probably know the old culture of trade shows and exhibitions where you have what's called a “Booth Babe”. It's a horrible term, and they often have beautiful women standing by cars at car shows, things like that. And he and I have an inner joke that he is my Booth Babe because he's the only man at our booth when we go to the Women in Aviation conference, or when we go to a watch show. And what is interesting too, is that he's so confident in himself, and he's so confident in me that a lot of people assume he's the one who started the business, so they'll say, “Oh, did you start it?” Or they'll ask me, “Did he start it? Or did you two start it together?” And he'll be like, “Nope, you got to talk to her, got to talk to the boss.” And he's just a gem of a human being. I've never met anybody like him.
Oh, that makes me so happy to hear. It's beautiful. Tell us about the first launch when you, now you have your watch you created, your dream watch and how did it go? Were people receptive, were people like, what was this? How long did it take to get momentum, tell us about those early days.
So I knew that this would work. I wasn't trying to start this company that I would end up running 18 years later and probably for another 18 years as well. I really was starting this to make watches for my girlfriends and I, that were at that Christmas dinner, and figured if there were other women who flew aeroplanes who wanted a watch, great I've got an option for them. I came out with two styles originally, the Amelia and the Jackie. And the Amelia came in black and white with a black or white leather band, and then the Jackie, which is one of the watches I’m wearing right now came in a pink dial, a white pearl dial and a green pearl dial. So in total, it was kind of like having five watches that you could choose from, but it was just these two styles. And I wanted to be a pro pilot, I wanted to go fly aeroplanes and end up getting into the big jets and just kind of having a side hobby on the side here. And when I realised, oh my gosh, this might be a thing, I actually hadn't even launched the business yet. So one of my girlfriends who I'd done a summer job with, she was one of my original investors. She gave me $500 to help me start my company and her name is Margie and she was at a party in Los Angeles somewhere and she met this woman at this party who was a pilot. And she's like, “Oh, my friend is starting a female pilots watch company, you gotta get one.” And they looked, there's no website yet. I don't have any of the products yet or anything. But their parents, this woman's parents contacted me because I guess this woman had went and talked to her parents about it and said “This is what I want for Christmas”, not knowing anything about what it was going to look like. And the parents sent me a check and I still have the check. They sent me a check for $400 and they said when you figure out what the price is, then just tell us what we owe you or refund us the difference or whatever it is. And site unseen, website unseen, business not built, nothing launched and here I have a check based on the word of a friend at a party. That's when I knew wow this could be something a lot bigger than what I thought it would be, and sure enough it's grown into something huge.
Tell us where you are now then, how many employees, how many models of watches, how many styles? Let's go. Put it on the table.
Let's see. All right, I'll work backwards. So styles, I've got eight core styles: Amelia, Jackie, Elise, Catherine, Marina, Jane, Jordan, and which one am I missing? Oh no.
You have too many children.
Nadia. And out of those styles, I've got probably a span of around 50 SKUs. So different colorways, metal bands, leather bands. We did limited edition pieces as well. So on my other wrist, I always double wrist, I wear one watch on each wrist, this is the Las Vegas Year One Race Watch that we released during Formula One last year. And that was limited to 40 pieces only. So I would say probably with the limited editions we've released close to 60 different watches, also accessories. So watch winders if it's an automatic, or link removal tools and little things to just help you adjust the watch perfectly for you, and straps. There's all sorts of silicone, leather, metal, gold, rose gold, different materials that you can change out your watch strap with. And then for employees, let's see, I've got I want to say right around a dozen. So we've got everybody, there's half that work out of home and half that work in the office, and we of course hire more during the holiday because it's just a busier time, and then we do a lot of events. So I have a pool of about 30 women that I reach out to for events. So if you want to go to a dive show, or you want to go to a car show or you want to go to a watch show or an aviation show, then let us know which shows, here's our roster for the year. And I don't hire salespeople for those shows, I hire people that are part of those industries, because when somebody comes up to you at a dive show and says “Oh yeah, my BCD failed on me while I was 60 feet underwater and I had to use the octopus over from my buddy,” you need to know what that language is. And if you're a diver that makes perfect sense to you if you're not a diver you have no idea what any of that just meant. So it's really really pivotal that I have, just because of who my customer base is, these are women who really are pushing limits in their jobs and their hobbies and doing some very out of the box things that are not so much, they're minorities in these industries that they work and play in, so I need to have women that are like-minded, and that's who works at our shows. So that pool of 30 plus the solid, I'll say our bakers dozen or sweet 16 possibly, we might have like 12 to 16 people that work full time with the company.
Wow, I think that's a brilliant strategy and something that people should listen to and pay attention to, because sales is a thing that we all kind of get icky about anyway and I don't believe that you need to be a salesperson. It's about talking the language and creating relationships. And I think that's how you build something great, like what you're doing is one relationship after another. You just said your whole launch started with that check was purely from a relationship, somebody trusted somebody's word.
Exactly.
That must have felt amazing, blind trust in you, blind trust.
Totally. But you both have a really good background in marketing, and you've probably heard the saying “facts tell, stories sell”. Have you ever heard that before? That is, hands down, that's a mantra for my life and for my company, especially. And, it’s true when you're telling your story, a salesperson can reiterate facts all day long, but if they don't have a dive story at a dive show or a story of their first flight at an aviation show, that's not really going to sell a pilot or a diver. But when you start telling stories with people or hearing their stories, and you understand what their stories are, then you're selling, and the details on the watch, those just tell you the facts.
And Abingdon you also have a nonprofit, contribution to society arm of your business, I see that just by the very nature of it being a female led business, you are also an advocate for equality and representation, but more than just gender, is that correct? And tell us a bit about your Foundation.
Yes, the Foundation started on the 10 year anniversary of the company, so in 2017. And what we do is we provide scholarships, we actually call them sponsorships, because a scholarship is typically handing a check out to somebody and having to pay for something. What we're doing is we are inviting women to a leading industry conference in a STEAM industry. So STEAM being science, tech, engineering, arts and mathematics. And what we want to do is we want to introduce them to the people that will help them with their either career or hobby. It doesn't need to just be career oriented, it could be a passion of yours. If you don't want to race cars for a living, but you love everything automotive, and you want to get into that skilled trade side and maybe just know how to do an oil change on your car and you win the sponsorship then we will bring you out to the SEMA show in Las Vegas, and introduce you to everybody in the Automotive and Skilled Trades industry that could potentially help you. So that's something that we've done since 2017, I misspoke, we've actually been doing that since 2014 but it wasn't formalised under the nonprofit until 2017. So we've given out probably close to around $200,000 in sponsorships. We will cover your airfare, we’ll cover your hotel, we’ll cover your registration, everything, it's a fully paid trip. So we do that, and then we also have these brilliant books which are activity books for kids that are STEAM focused. So you can buy them on Amazon and at $9.95, they’re paper, they are for 10 and below or 10 and above. It says the two age groups that we have, and that $10 goes straight to our scholarship fund. So that's been the nonprofit. And truly if I’d had somebody who could guide me and hold my hand when I was between 14 and 21 when I was getting my pilot's certificates, it would have made all the difference in the world for me. I don't know if I would have started a watch company, but I definitely would have just gotten ahead of what was happening in the industry or where I fit in or, all I really had was just what those guys were saying in high school to me, I didn't have any other resource available because I just didn't know where to look. So being able to provide that for these young women has just given me such a sense of purpose with the business and then of course the proceeds of the sales of the watch also contribute to those funds. When you buy a watch on the website, you have the option of putting in a donation to the Foundation if you want, so there's a lot of different ways that we can support and just bring up this next generation of go-getters and incredible women that are going to be doing amazing things.
What a win for equality, right? That’s something that's been talked about for quite a few years now but it's a lot of talk, and here we are talking to someone who's actually doing something very proactive for equality and I love that. Thank you, thank you, thank you for what you do, and thank you for who you are because I think it's super inspiring. And as a mother of a daughter, I want to see her be able to do whatever she wants, whether it's flying a plane, or scuba dive, or all those great things, which I'm terrified of both of those things! So it’s not for me! That's okay, that's okay. But I would like to know, this all sounds incredible, your story is incredible but we all know that the journey is not always so easy, and there are pitfalls along the way. And we like to ask our guests on our show, what have been the tough parts? What have been the downsides of being an entrepreneur? Has there been a moment you're like, “Okay, I quit this watch business. It's too stressful.”
There's always something. I've had customers make me cry. When I started I was packing watches out of a storage unit, I set up a little table like a desk and had a little tiny printer right there in the storage unit, and that's where it started. Some of those days when you're in a Christmas holiday season, and the one person that you hired to help you was sick with the flu, and you're sitting in a dark storage unit until 10pm getting boxes together. It is not glamorous at all. I kind of say that in jest, but if there's not a week that goes by that I don't want to quit, then I'm not pushing myself far enough, right? So the interesting thing about growing your business, is when your comfort zone is just kind of around you, if you haven't stepped out of that comfort zone, how is it going to get bigger. And every step I take with this company, I am constantly bringing myself out of my comfort zone, but with the intent of making it bigger. And it is uncomfortable, it makes me nervous when I have pitch meetings when we were raising investment last year for a million dollars. I'm pitching to people to say Hey, the starting investment is $50,000. I started my entire company with $40,000. I was asking friends and family for $500 minimum. And now I'm saying sorry, the start is $50,000 if you want to play. And that's different, that's something you get used to. But now, my threshold is alright, well, if you want to play, we're going to be introducing another, a B Round later on this year and $250,000 is going to be where we're going to start. So I'm going to have to step out of my comfort zone and start talking about that and get used to it.
And there's a lot of other things that don't come natural to an entrepreneur because a lot of times we do think, we're only confined by what's between our two ears, right? And when you start talking to other entrepreneurs and you realise, oh, wow, omni channel selling where I could sell through TikTok shop, through Facebook marketplace, through Etsy, through Pinterest, through Shopify, through Instagram shop, through Macy's, through Neiman Marcus, through the Army Air Force exchange, and then 500 colleges around the United States. Do you see how that progression just starts to change how you think of where could I put my products and how many more people could I reach if it were in those places? Well, when I started out, I was only thinking about the one place. And now I have to think about all the other places because that's where we are. And it's a constant kind of almost an internal and external battle because you still want to keep growing, but you also don't want to grow too fast to where you implode your own company and you want to make sure that you're growing in the right direction.
That's the thing, we tried on eBay for a while and it wasn't amazing. We're actually trying it again through a retailer now because they've offered this new program just for watch brands and certified brands. They introduced it last year and so we're going back into it but when we first tried eBay five, six years ago, it was a disaster, and there was a year in 2016, that I thought, oh my gosh, digital marketing is the way to go. What am I doing going to all these trade shows? They're expensive, there are a lot of logistics, I gotta hire people all the time, the ROI, return on investment is maybe one or 2x, it's not very good and digital marketing, you can get 5x amazing! Well, I almost bankrupted the company after a year, it was our worst year since our first year of business, and we're almost nine years later. If you don't try certain things, and learn from your mistakes, and if you're not wanting to quit every week, then maybe you're just not pushing yourself far enough.
What a beautiful answer. I have to ask what keeps you on track? How do you know whether a decision is going to keep you aligned with your vision or it might take you to the wrong or different path?
That's a tricky question, because it kind of depends on what part of the business you're talking about. So with a new hire, for example, there's a really good saying where it says, “Hire fast, fire faster”, and that's something that took me a long time to learn. I really thought, “Oh well, I can just teach that skill, gosh, they have a great attitude, but I could”, or it was the other way around. “Man, what an amazing watchmaker. I love having them but gees, their attitude sucks.” That one has been probably one of the most challenging is when to know how and where to grow your team. So my retail account manager, I have to overpay her, I have to give her gifts, I have to tell her how much I love her because I have to figure out how to make her live forever. She is my number one, and she does a great job. I can leave her, I don't even need to talk to her for a week and I know that she's doing what she needs to do. So that's just been a blessing. And I've worked with her now for about eight years she has been on the team.
But then you look at what shows maybe to do. Recently I started doing Watch Shows. Now this is kind of funny because I'm a watch company so shouldn't I be doing Watch Shows already? No, I didn't do my first Watch Show until 2022. So it's kind of strange, but you mentioned at the beginning that the watch industry is predominantly men, a men's industry, and here I am making watches for women because women are the afterthought in the watch world. They never put, a watch isn't designed for women typically, it's designed for men first and if that watch does very well, then let's just make it pink, shrink it, that's a saying - they “pink it and shrink it” and put diamonds on it and then “We'll sell it as a woman's watch and that's going to sell”. And I don't know about you but that does not sell to me, that doesn't appeal to me at all. I'm wearing an all black and red watch here, and then I'm wearing a pearl white steel watch, and I love pink but I don't love it as my only option. So the watch industry, I've never considered as the place that I should be marketing to. The industry where my customers are, they're not at watch shows. 90% men go to watch shows and they bring their girlfriends and their wives and their daughters hoping that those women will get into watches like they're into watches. And this year, we've been, well last year we went to three watch events, and I'm probably not going to go to all of them again this year. It was a heavy investment last year, probably close to around $40,000 to attend three events and staff it and the hotels and the logistics of flying out there and all that and I figured I'd give it a try. But this year, I'm kind of thinking well, we're definitely not doing that one. That was a bust, but maybe we'll do the other two and that's just something that you have to constantly calculate. Do I have the money for it? If it did bust, are we going to be okay? And you just kind of have to tiptoe right? It's not jumping headfirst into the pool. It's walking in very deliberately and making sure that you're not going to freeze to death or you're not going to boil over you know, you just kind of gotta wait it out and see how it happens. And if we do go to these two Watch Shows this year, and they end up not doing how I need them to perform in order for us to come back another year, then I'm going to take my money and I'm going to put it elsewhere. So our big experiment this year and I try to answer your question about how do I stay on track, because I have a goal for every 12 months. And last year was retailers. So we signed up with Neiman Marcus and Macy's, and a few other major retailers, and then we also tried the Watch Shows. And that was kind of our big experiment of 2023. This year, we're going to conclude our trade show experiment with the Watch Shows and then we're going to look into Tik Tok and Instagram influencer marketing, and really get heavily involved on the social media side. But from an influencer side, not so much from paid advertising side. So we're talking with a bunch of influencers, by the way, I don't give out watches to influencers. They have to buy a watch first and I probably shouldn't even be saying this on the podcast, it’s kind of giving away a secret, but if you've invested in the brand, then I know that you're worth having a conversation with because you believe in the brand, you bought a watch, then we’ll assess your social media, and you might get reached out to by me and I'll invite you in to become an influencer with us. We'll do the whole compensation and everything at that point. But I'm not giving out free watches to anybody, because 1) they're expensive to make and I can't just hand them out to everybody, but 2) what I've found is that when you hand something freely to somebody, they don't treat it with the respect and reverence that you wish that they would. But when they buy it, they have a vested interest in it. So that's just my personal approach to it, and how it makes me sleep at night better for my company.
As a marketing person, that is absolutely the right approach to doing it because inauthenticity is obvious. So if someone's just like, “look at this great new watch that I've got”, and they're bragging about it, you can tell when that's fake, versus “You will not believe this new brand that I found”. I'm obsessed, it's my favourite thing that I've ever owned, you can tell the difference in how they react. So I think that's the right way to do it.
I love that you're talking about all the experimentation you do because I think that's a piece of marketing that more people need to understand that it's an ongoing experimentation, because there's no one size fits all, there is no like, this is the trade show you have to do, and you're going to make your millions of dollars there and that's it. That doesn't exist, and it's going to change, and it's going to change over time, it's going to evolve, like you said, digital marketing, things change and evolve over time with marketing, you've got to continuously experiment, but having the right attitude about your bandwidth and knowing this is what we're spending on marketing, versus throwing everything at the wall, that can be dangerous. But being really, really smart about it. It's really good advice, especially for anyone starting out and trying to figure it out. There's lots of free marketing you can do out there, people, the social media and stuff. You can start out with very, very little, if you're just bootstrapping it, you can definitely start out with little and just keep building over time.
I'd like to know, what's your definition of success? Are you there? Do you feel successful? Are you still growing towards that? Tell us.
This is gonna sound bad but I don't like that word. I don't think there is a definition that describes that word. It's an omnipotent word. Success for me this month is different than what it was last month, and it's going to be different next month, and it's going to be different next year. It's a constant flux. So, at the end of the day, if I wake up and I can stand up and I can wiggle my hands, my fingers and my toes, and I can hear you and I can see you and I can speak and talk to you, I'm starting off well. That to me is success. Anything beyond that is just a blessing. So I hate to answer that question that way, but no one succeeds. Some people love not defining it, but striving for that goal, and I do think goals are very important. I'm very much driven by deadlines and goals, and if I hit a particular goal that I've set for myself this year, I will consider that goal successfully attained, but I won't necessarily ever consider myself a success. I don't know if I would ever be a success. That sounds kind of sad, but I think I'm doing good and I think I'm making a difference. I would rather make an impact with my crew members, my customers, the scholarship winners and the people that wear the watches. Because I do think that with this brand, it's taken on its own life in a way that I've had customers say they wore their watch going through a bad breakup and it reminded them that they were part of a tribe of really strong women, and it helped them get through that. I've had women who've gotten into helicopter crashes, car crashes survived, and the watch was on their wrist at the time, and it also survived. There's been some really, really strong stories about women who wear this product. And because I think having the woman's name on each of the watches, it's like having a friend. So when somebody sends in their watch for a battery change, or just a repair, they'll say “How is she doing?” “ When do you think you'll be able to ship her back”, and it's like, you've kind of separated from your friend. And if that continues to happen, and my customer service stays on point, and I'm still making a high quality product that holds up with the customers that wear them, then maybe we can start defining success.
I love how you describe the experiences that your crew members, your family of customers has. And that's the strength of a brand, and I think that's the holy grail that a lot of large companies are chasing. They want to create that sense of belonging, that connection with their customer. And it's very apparent to me just from looking at your website that you've achieved that. And no doubt you're wanting to continue building and growing on that. But that's where you see the stories of Apple demand and people lining up for two days before something is released, a new model is released. That's that demand-driven branding. So what do you think that created that for you?
I think it probably helped that I am my own customer. So, I really started off the entire company listening to my peers. And though it started in the aviation industry, when I was looking for a pilot's watch, I wanted certain things. I wanted Greenwich Mean Time displayed on the watch, because that's how we get all our weather reports and our logs and everything. I wanted it to look feminine, but not necessarily girly. I wanted a flight computer that was rotating around the bezel that would be a backup to my instruments in the plane, should I ever have a failure on my instruments. And then when I spoke to the women that I was a member of this organisation called the “Ninety Nines”, the ladies at that Christmas dinner, I really listened to what they said. When I made the prototypes, and I handed it to them, and they give me honest feedback, tell me if you hate this, and they gave me some great feedback, and I watched them play with the watch and, and try and turn things that didn't turn and try and do certain things with the watch that it didn't do that, or they were struggling twisting the crown and I realised, Oh, the crown is too small, I need to make it bigger because our fingers need to grab it. And so just observing was just critical, because if you're going to make a product, if you're going to start a consumer product business, then you can make the perfect thing according to you, but the second you put it in front of a potential customer and you put it in front of 50 potential customers, you are going to learn so much just watching them try and figure it out, and you will make a better product that way. I am so fueled by the negative feedback of a prototype because that's how I've made all eight watches, eight of the styles, I'll ask women to come in to be a part of my test pilot group. I'm designing a new watch to sign this NDA, and then let's start designing. And I always ask customers, a lot of customers we always follow them on social media. So if you're a diver and we want to come out with a dive watch then I'm going to reach out to and say “Hey, would you like to be a part of a team that designs the next Abingdon dive watch?” And if they have the time to do it and they want to do it, then they're in, and then I'll see how they interact with it. I'll send them a prototype after it's built and I will not give them any instructions. And I want to see if they can figure out how to work it, because how many times do we all read the instructions? I think only maybe 15% of the world actually reads the instructions that come with anything. So it's really key that I make a product that is a technical product, you have to know how to set the time, or how to set the date, or how to use the world timer or how to use the divers bezel, but you won't read about it, you won't watch the video manual that we have on our website, you just want to figure it out, because you get really excited when you open up that box, and it's shiny, and it's beautiful, and you just want to take it out and put it on your wrist. That's the exciting part, and so the last thing people want to do is start reading instructions. So I want to make sure that when they get the watch in hand that it can be used without instructions. And so every design that I do, and every watch that I introduce it’s a constant feedback from the customer, from the crew member. When people ask me, “Oh, are you the designer of the watches?” I say if it's a woman, I say no, you are, and she is and the both of you are. We work off of the Google accounts for business and we have a drive folder, a folder in the Google Drive that is just customer ideas, and it goes all the way back to 2008. Every idea that we've ever been given at a trade show we’ll keep a pad of paper out. What do you want to see on the next Abingdon watch? If we get a negative comment on some Facebook ad that says this should really be XYZ? I'll tell you a quick story that I am so bad. If you're in the watch world, you'll be like, Oh my gosh, why does this happen? And you'll see on our watches we changed something critical that has been done for decades, and I don't know why watch companies do this still. But on a GMT watch, a GMT watch is a 24 hour clock, right, and I was talking about it on our YouTube channel and one of our watches, it's called the Elise, it has a GMT function on it. And when you look at the red numbers on the GMT hour markings on the dial of the watch, it has the number 24. So it's 1, 2, 3, 4 all the way around to number 24, which is where your 12 is on the dial. And this comment said “I don't see, I don't get why watch companies always put 24 when military time is always double zero.” And I'm a flippin pilot, I work in the 24 hour clock all the time, I have been using double zero since before I ever even started a watch company. Why did I not do that at the beginning? And it was just something that has been done and accepted in the watch industry that you write the numbers one through 24 on the GMT watch, and so I responded to the comment and I said, You just changed the design of every GMT watch that I will ever introduce. It will always for now and forever be double zero. Thank you. And the commenter then made another comment reply like oh my gosh, really, and sure enough, if you go on our website, any GMT watch now has double zero because that is how you talk in military time, you do not talk and say 24 o’clock, 2400 hours or whatever. It's double-o. So yeah, I incorporate the feedback people give me.
Okay, that's like giving me chills, like, oh my gosh, 10 more people, please pay attention to what Abingdon just said, Please, please. It's about that customer service and that customer listening, right? People don't have the humility to just listen to their customers, and they will tell you everything you need to know. That's brilliant. I love that. That's really cool.
I had somebody at one of the watch shows that we went to last year come up to me because the watch industry had no idea who the Abingdon Company was and was like, what you guys have been around for 16 years. And I was like, Yep, we've been kicking butt, we've been doing good. And they're like, Oh my, how do you have 50 styles? Women are buying these? And we're like, Yeah, awesome. And one company said, how, how are you selling to women? What is your secret? What would you do? Like how do you do this? And I said, Well, I listen. I listen to them. I kind of said it a little bit, maybe crass, but I think they got the point, and then I asked him I said how many women do you have on your team? And you know, zero. So I was like maybe you want to start there. Don't listen to just what she has to say and don't let it just be your wife, or your daughter or somebody who loves you, because they'll give you filtered feedback. But bring several women on your team, bring several women of different ethnicities, different ages on your team, and see what they say. And then go out and what other women think about it. And at that point, there was one company who had a 36 millimetre watch, and the one I'm wearing on this wrist is 42 millimetres and the one I'm wearing on this with 40 millimetres. So these are big watches, theirs was a 36 men's watch millimetre. And they said, Oh yeah, we're thinking of coming out with a women's watch but we'd have to redesign the case and this and that and the other, and I'm like, how big is that watch? And they said, Oh, that's a 36 millimetres. And I'm like, you don't think a woman could wear that? I'm wearing a 42 millimetre right now. And I said why don't you just do a photoshoot with women wearing that watch and see how it does, you'll probably get a pretty positive response. And they hadn't even thought of, oh wow, I can have an existing product and it could be on a woman's wrist or a man's wrist. When you look at it, watches are genderless. It's a woman's watch if it's on a woman's wrist, it's a man's watch if it's on a man's wrist. And even though we market to women, because women are left out of the conversation in the watch world, we're always an afterthought, we have tons of men who wear our watches, Julio Macias, he's got I think, like 1.4 million followers on social media, he was wearing his Abingdon Jordan watch on the red carpet, Kim Estes. There's a lot of male celebrities, a lot of men who wear an Abingdon watch, because they just liked the watch. So it's not rocket science.
You've just touched on another really important point in marketing and in business success, sorry to use that word, but not sorry, and that is niching. You are very much a niched business in a male dominated industry, you've chosen to service women and we understand that. What you've just said, though, is you still have so many men, celebrity men wearing your watch on the red carpet and beyond. And I think that's just a point I wanted to highlight because often our listeners will think, oh, especially if they're early stages of business, I don't want to niche because I’ll leave out a sector of people. You've just demonstrated that it doesn't matter how strong you lean in on a particular niche, you'll also get the wider market, you don't lose anybody by doing that.
Absolutely. I think you can help me out with the saying, but it's something like if you market to everyone, you sell to no one. I would very much encourage anybody who's looking at starting a business or who is in the early stages, to niche down as much as you possibly can and you will find that you will have a huge, huge market, just in that niche. I mean when I'm looking at women in the military, women who race cars, women who scuba dive, women who fly aeroplanes, and do all the things, women who do more as our slogan is, we've got billions of women who do that around the world, so I'm not.
You're still getting the guys, good on you guys. They're fantastic watches. So I did want to touch on what you'd mentioned that you just did a round of investment, seed funding, I guess it is, that may not be the correct terminology, and then there'll be a second round starting at 250,000. So that begs the question, What is the vision? Where is the company going?
You are looking at the early stages of what the Abingdon Company will become, which will be a Swiss Army Knife meets a Chanel. So if you imagine those two brands together, that is what the Abingdon Company is going to grow into.
And are you saying with watches? Are we branching out to other products?
Watches definitely are going to be our focus much like Amazon's focus at the beginning was books. And when I went on Shark Tank in Season six, that was one of the forks in the road that we were trying to decide is, do we go into maybe the travel and accessory industry or do we stay with watches? Travel and accessory industry being sunglasses, small leather goods, passport holders, things like that, even on to luggage. And we could continue with the aviation theme of the company, but what we opted to do was stay more in the watch world. At the size of the business at the time, we’d probably done about half a million in sales at that point, it was easier to stick with watches, because I know exactly the suppliers to use, I know exactly the cost, I know exactly the margin I need, I knew all of those things. If it were a titanium or steel, if it were a leather band or a Swiss movement, I could tell you all of that at that point. If I had to go and discover all those answers to those types of questions for sunglasses, and leather goods and luggage, and all the other types of products that we were considering bringing to market as I pitched to Shark Tank - because I couldn't pitch to Shark Tank and say I'm making pilots watches for women this is great - they're gonna be like, “Are you kidding me?” And so I needed to show them a bigger company and so we opted to, just through my mentors and people that helped me start the business and helped me grow the business, we figured it's actually a lot smarter of an idea to just build out the watches, because we know how to make a watch, we know how to sell a watch to keep the company going all of that. So that was then but as I say, if you're going to see a Chanel and a Swiss Army Knife combined then there's a lot more that can be offered through the company.
I'm excited to learn more about that. Yeah, okay. All right, we'll leave it there. We'll leave it there. I got to ask because I'm a big fan of Shark Tank. Did you get an investment? What happened? Tell us the story.
I didn't get an investment so I am swimming without the sharks as we say.
Their loss, their loss.
I still do run into Mr. Wonderful every now and then because he's very big in the watch world, Damon ran FUBU and that's a clothing company and so one of the things that he was making, this in my opinion a silly argument but he did build a very successful company, apparel then after a brand comes out with an apparel, then what they'll do is they'll come out with like a vodka and then after the vodka they'll come out with a perfume or cologne and then after that, their last ditch effort to keep the brand going is a watch and I'm like, what? That doesn't make any sense to me at all because I'm pretty sure Michael Kors is doing pretty well and that's not how he did his thing. So Damon just didn't believe in it.
And then Mr. Wonderful did have an offer that he presented. His offer was ridiculous. He is ridiculous and so I countered with bringing him up for a flight in a plane and doing some aerobatics and keeping the doors off and banter between the two of us but he was in a different business.
Laurie loved the watch and she was wearing the Jackie and she thought it was absolutely stunning, high quality and well made but the businesses that she invests in, if you watch the show then you know, it has to appeal to the kid to the grandma. It's a product that would go across any age, any group, she always invests in businesses that just have something that's a very universal type of business.
And Robert Herjavec kind of was the same way that Mark Cuban was, where he was saying, I really love what you're doing. Of course, Robert has daughters and he's like, I want my girls to grow up with this mentality. But he's like “I'm in computer software tech, this is not my jam”. So love what you're doing, keep doing what you're doing, I would not be a good investor for you. So I didn't get any investment when I was on the show. But that said, like I said, I met up with Damon at an event here in Vegas a few months ago, I've been talking to his team, to the Shark group, and I run into Mr. Wonderful Kevin O'Leary every now and then because he's just so involved in the watch industry and a lot of my friends are in the watch industry. So we have a very similar circle. It’s all good, and honestly if you ever pitched you're going to work harder than you ever have worked before, because you just don't know what's going to happen. It's very strange when you walk down that hallway and you stand in front of the sharks, you have to stand there for like two minutes and they don't know who they're looking at, and you know who you're looking at, but you have to stand there silently for two minutes while all the cameras do this, like circle around and create that don don don drama with the music and you just have to kind of soak it all in. Then when you pitch, that's real, like that's totally reality TV, unedited. There are some pitches that have gone for four or five hours and there are some pitches that go for four or five minutes and you just have to be on your A game. So I needed to not look like a fool on national television. So I prepared as hard as I possibly could and it really restructured my business at a pivotal moment because this was back in 2014.
Every female pilot wanted an Abingdon watch and I just couldn't keep on going because I was going to end up running out of female pilots to sell to. I needed to shift the company somewhere and Shark Tank preparing for that show helped me do that. I do encourage it, it took me four years, by the way to get onto Shark Tank, I had applied for 4 years and it was the fourth year that I finally got me on - tenacity.
Yeah, I think the preparation for that had so been so beneficial. Just like you said for your company, for the direction, like you would have to be so focused in on what you were doing and saying and sharing and you can use that pitch. Anytime you're anywhere at any conference and write and watch shows or whatnot that you're at, absolutely. The power of a good pitch. We do appreciate that, don't we, Vicki? For sure.
So Abingdon, we would love to know who would you want to invite to a dinner party from the past or present someone you haven't yet met?
How many people can I invite to this dinner party? I would like to invite Queen Elizabeth II, I would like to invite Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and I would like to invite Amy Winehouse and Sara Blakely.
Oh my god, what a conversation that would be.
Yeah, some of the most fascinating people. I just would love to have had conversations with them, all of them. I probably still can with Sarah, the others, I cannot.
Yeah, she’s amazing. I really am very impressed by her. I thought you were gonna say Amelia Earhart.
No, I wouldn't kick her out of the dinner, absolutely not. She can come, but if I were to bring an aviator, I would want to bring Pancho Barnes. If you have never heard of her, she was flying around the same time that Amelia Earhart was flying. She was married to a minister but she wasn't religious. It was something of like an arranged marriage. On Sunday, she would take her plane and barn storm the church just to piss him off, and she was most likely a lesbian, and she just threw caution to the wind. She was one of those women that you just could not figure out and was not of her time at all. Pancho Barnes was a riot, a riot and a half, or Bessie Coleman, Bessie Coleman is, here's an interesting thing about Bessie. She is the first African-American pilot, not African-American female pilot, the first African-American pilot, and how she learned how to fly, this blows my mind, but she was doing hair. She was a hairdresser, and one of her clients talked to her about flying and she got really interested in it and wanted to pursue that. But of course, learning how to fly as an African-American in the early 1900s was pretty much a no go. Being a black woman and learning how to fly was definitely a no go. So what she did is, she bought a ticket on a ship and shipped herself to France, learned French so that she could take lessons because they taught black people how to fly in France, and then after she learned French, got her pilot's licence, she came back and started doing exhibition air shows, loops and barrel rolls and things like that and displayed all of her skills showing off what she could do in an aeroplane. She ran mail for the post as a job, and the craziest way, they didn't have seat belts in aeroplanes at the time. So during one of her airshow performances in a loop, she fell out.
Carol Hopson, she's a pilot for an airline, she wrote a book a couple of years ago about Bessie and her life called, A Pair of Wings and it's a beautiful book. It's an absolutely wonderful book. I highly recommend it. Bessie Coleman or Pancho Barnes, I'd probably have first over Amelia, but I wouldn't no, Amelia has got a seat at the table too, absolutely.
Amazing, amazing, amazing. Of course we are called Resilient Entrepreneurs so we always like to ask the question, what is resilience to you and how does one become resilient in your opinion?
So every 10 years I get a tattoo and I have them in places that you can't see. The last one I got, I actually shaved the back of my head so it's under my hair. I just turned 40. I love that resilience is part of this podcast because my next tattoo that I'm getting here in a few weeks is all about resilience. It's a willow tree bending, and one of my favourite quotes about resilience is about the oak and the willow tree. And it says “The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must, and it survived.” And I think resilience is about being bendy. Charles Darwin also says this when he was looking through the fossils, and just through who survived and which animals went extinct, and the ones that were not necessarily the strongest, but we're able to adapt to their environment were the ones that survived. And so I think resilience is all of that: it's about bending, it's about adapting, it's about changing course when we need to, it's about survival. And it's not so much about digging your heels in and saying this is the way it must be because this is how I think it is. It's about saying, Well, maybe that's not the way it should be, maybe this is what life has planned for me. So resilience, the next tattoo I'm getting is a willow tree, and I'm going to get it underneath where my watch band sits. And so that's how I treat resilience.
That's perfect and it’s the perfect place to end this incredible conversation, thank you so very much. Here's to the disruptors, here's the women doing all the amazing great things and women like you that celebrate them with beautiful watches that are functional, beauty and function married together is my absolute dream. So I appreciate it so much what you're doing. I'm super excited on your next stage of Swiss Army Knife meets Chanel. Oh my god, I love that so much. And I thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you for this conversation. It's been enlightening and fun and my cheeks hurt from smiling and I just appreciate all of it. You're a gem and thank you so much for joining us on Resilient Entrepreneurs.
It's been an absolute gem. I would love to come back anytime, I had a blast with both of you ladies, thank you for having me.
Thanks so much Abingdon. Take care.
