00:00 Hi I'm Nell and we're sitting in our cafe, coffee shop, shop with wonderful things in
00:06 Pateley Bridge which is called Wildish.
00:08 And I'm Oscar and I'm Nell's husband, which is probably relevant, and we have slightly
00:15 different roles in the business. I do a lot of the designing and that kind of thing and
00:24 Nell does a lot of the more...
00:28 Organised stuff.
00:30 We make bags, that's the main thing we make, bags and coffee, we're obsessed with coffee.
00:37 But we also are starting to design all kinds of different products and experiences as well
00:44 through our fly fishing business and our Wildish club.
00:49 We started making bags because of, initially of my background in fly fishing and because
00:54 when we met Nell wanted to get into fly fishing as well and it is a very daunting sport to
01:01 take part in, partly because of the seemingly large amount of kit you need to do it.
01:07 So we came up with this idea to make a very small bag that would just take the bare essentials.
01:13 Our first brand name was Bare Minimal.
01:15 The bag actually looked quite a lot like this one here which is now our random skill.
01:20 But yeah, so that's kind of why we started making them, just to try and simplify the
01:25 sport and make it more accessible and then it's grown into making bags which aren't anything
01:30 to do with fly fishing at all.
01:32 And we sort of say promote an active outdoor lifestyle and you can use them every day.
01:39 They're all handmade in England, so we design and prototype them and we make, well they
01:45 function but they're not pretty prototypes ourselves on a sewing machine.
01:49 And then we have a bag maker called Amy who lives in Suffolk and we've just taken on a
01:54 second maker called Ray who lives in Leeds.
01:56 So they're all handmade in the UK.
01:58 So they were originally sold locally but they are now sold all over the world.
02:03 It's really exciting.
02:04 It's exciting with all the different sort of branches that it has gone into and yeah,
02:11 what it's led to and the exciting people that we've met and people that we work with has
02:15 been really amazing.
02:17 I'm Australian, so a little further south.
02:21 And I'm from Cambridge, unfortunately.
02:24 But I've been coming up here for years, ever since I was a kid.
02:27 So I used to do a lot of fly fishing competitions up here and got to know the river, you know,
02:33 rivers really well, particularly the Nidd and the Wharf.
02:36 And we kind of found ourselves in a position where we could move anywhere because Nell
02:42 was working as a vet and she could work anywhere.
02:46 And we were just like, why not?
02:48 Move to Yorkshire.
02:49 We just absolutely love it here.
02:51 And you know, the countryside is amazing, the people are wonderful, the life is slower.
02:56 It's probably a harder place to run a business like ours from.
03:00 You know, the reality is that we're selling our bags worldwide but we sell in the UK
03:05 mostly in the major cities.
03:08 But we just want this more, much slower lifestyle that we're able to have here.
03:15 And you've diversified, haven't you?
03:17 You're doing like bushcraft courses and...
03:20 Yeah, sort of.
03:21 We say it's a bit like clubs but for adults.
03:24 It's called the Wildish Club.
03:25 It's really a way for people to come together and have fun outdoors and that could be absolutely
03:31 anything.
03:32 You know, we do everything from outdoor cooking workshops to fly fishing to walking to big
03:39 art workshops to pretty much anything you could possibly imagine.
03:44 Stargazing.
03:45 Yeah, we just did a stargazing workshop.
03:46 It could be anything.
03:47 But it's much more focused on just bringing people together outdoors and just facilitating
03:53 those connections.
03:55 And it's just amazing to see what happens when you do that.
03:58 I think the way we've curated it isn't that we are the leaders of it, it's that we're
04:03 also a really big part of it.
04:05 And one of the best things that has come from it is it's become a bit of a skill share.
04:10 So we have people that have come along to activities that we do that have said, "Oh,
04:14 I know how to do printmaking," for example, "I would love to do that.
04:18 Can I lead one?"
04:19 And that's been really exciting and that has built some strong foundations within that
04:24 club as well, which has been really exciting.
04:26 We really like making things and making the best things we can possibly make and things
04:31 that we really love.
04:33 And we love the Wildish Club and I think that's been super impactful in the short period that
04:40 it's existed.
04:41 So the more we can do that, the better, the more people we can get outdoors, the more
04:45 people we can get meeting up.
04:47 The goal with that, we have quite established that we want to have Wildish Clubs all over
04:51 the country and people coming together everywhere to do these things together.
04:56 But with our other stuff, it could be anything.
05:00 We were reflecting on it the other day and what this business looked like two years ago
05:05 is no way near what it looks like now.
05:08 And Oscar is the classic line at any time of day I get, "No, I've had an idea."
05:15 And I'm like, "Okay."
05:16 I have a lot of ideas.
05:17 Give it to me.
05:18 What's this one?
05:19 And sometimes they're amazing and sometimes they are interesting.
05:24 But at least like 10 of them have been good.
05:28 So it's fine.
05:30 Yep.
05:31 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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