Back in 2008, James Eden was on the verge of a successful career in finance but his enthusiasm for banking was failing; as was the Manchester clothing factory named for his great-grandfather, Private Jack White, who served in the first World War and was awarded a Victoria Cross for bravery. Eden abandoned the City of London and moved back north to Manchester to attempt to turn the ailing factory around. His high-end, classically styled menswear label Private White VC, officially launched in 2011, which offers garments hand-made from British-sourced materials, is now a resounding success and the company’s sales have grown 50% year on year since Eden took the helm. Private White VC designer Nick Ashley, the son of Laura Ashley, formerly worked for Dunhill, among other prestigious brands. “Nick’s values and family ethos align with mine – he is very much in favour of UK manufacturing and textiles,” says Eden. Private White VC has a store on Lamb’s Conduit Street in London and in April 2014 opened another in the original factory, a few minutes’ walk from Manchester city centre. This is more than the story of one company, however – it’s also about the preservation of a little bit of British manufacturing history. Manchester, once known as “Cottonopolis”, has always been the centre of the UK’s textiles industry. In 1800, its skyline was dominated by steam-powered cotton mills and the city was the hub of the world cotton market until well into the twentieth century. Private White VC and the factory where it is produced are part of that history and equally part of today’s modern Manchester; Eden’s pride in his label and its new success reflect the city whose industrial heyday helped Britain to thrive globally and is today reinvented as a successful 21st-century metropolis.
So: how did Eden turn a failing business into a thriving success – and, in the process, discover the career he loved?
A project that inspires, rather than simply a job, is key to lasting success
“I went to university, did a master’s degree at Cambridge and got an internship at a bank. I thought I’d be seduced by the glitz, glamour and romance of working in the City of London but it didn’t work out how I expected. I was ticking all the boxes, I had all the right degrees and I was just a few months away from doing my final Chartered Financial Analyst exams, but to really succeed, you’ve got to be passionate, enthusiastic and committed, otherwise you’ll only get so far – and that’s where I found myself. I was surrounded by people who were very much hungrier than I was; I was very apathetic, very fed up and I wasn’t comfortable riding that wave of apathy. People who needed jobs more than I did were being shown the door; I was a 25-year-old guy with no commitments so I could make a clean break and move back up north to Manchester where I grew up.”
Taking on an ailing business was daunting
“To start again, you need an opportunity, an idea, a concept, a vision or an opening. I’ve always had an emotional attachment to the factory that I acquired. The brand is called Private White VC and the original Private White was my great-grandfather. Other kids would run errands, wash cars, work in the local newsagent. I’d find myself in the cutting room, counting buttons or sweeping floors – I’ve always followed the factory’s progress and taken great pride in the products we made. How the opportunity came about: one of the partners and directors wanted to retire, plus there was a big dispute with a major brand who had pulled their business. The factory was going to go under. There was no-one else on the horizon who wanted to get involved with a dirty, Dickensian UK factory so I thought I’d get in there. I never thought it was going to be easy, but, at the same time, the DNA within this building was very strong and the business’s backbone, its staff, are fantastic – very knowledgeable, very passionate, they just lacked a bit of innovation, focus and leadership. There was no concept of things like e-commerce or marketing – when I joined, I think we had a fax machine, but I’m not sure it was plugged in – but we’ve all mucked in, pulled together and found a new formula.”
Some of the challenges came as more of a surprise than others
“All facets of the business were alien to me – it was a very steep learning curve in e-commerce, web development, finance, credit control. They were all new and alien but relatively easy to familiarise yourself with. It helped that I’m reasonable with spreadsheets, accounts, Excel and suchlike. The biggest hurdle I had was handling and managing people. I have no problems communicating, I like to think I’m a nice guy, good company, humorous, and I like to think I can get on and motivate people who are working with me. But while it’s very easy negotiating and motivating and incentivising and creating team spirit with, say, a team of lawyers or bankers with a common goal, it was very different working with, say, a machinist who was sceptical of my motivation. I could see it from their point of view: you’re a 57-year-old machinist who’s worked flat out for 40 years doing the same process on the same machinery, you’ve done an impeccable job and had no problems. In comes some young, inexperienced, precocious yuppie, he starts modernising the machinery, tweaking the factory layout, improving the lighting … people are very sensitive about change. Trying to convince them that my modernisations and refinements were a force for good was harder than you’d think, but while the rules and regimes of 20 years ago worked fine back then, now they’re antiquated. We’ve recruited massively since I took over, and trebled the workforce, but we did have to say goodbye to some people who either couldn’t get their head around me, or couldn’t get their head around the change to the business. It was very different to what I’d been used to. Making tough decisions when you’re working for a big investment bank: well, it’s not your money at stake and it’s faceless, you’re dealing with people over email or your Bloomberg terminal. This was very different. When I look back at my time in the City, it seems a different planet, stratospheres away from the real life I know now, in a factory in the north west surrounded by real people, where I have to give clear instructions and expect and demand results.”
Taking full responsibility is satisfying
“More often than not, I’m delighted with the decision I made to get involved and stick with it. You have bad times, bad days, bad months, bad years, and you make bad decisions, but one of the great things is that, if a bad decision’s made, it’s on my head – but if a good decision is made, that’s on my head too. I like the sense of control. If you work in the City, you know that on the 24th of the month you’ll get paid more money than you deserve and you have so many people to hide behind and to watch your back that you can sometimes take your foot off the gas. Here there’s nothing to hide behind. I’m putting in a decent management team as the business expands, but ultimately everything comes through me.”
Bold strategies get results
“We decided to go from being a faceless contract manufacturer to actually launching our own collection of branded products. There is a huge risk there. If a major brand places an order for, say, 100 raincoats, you order the cloth, you invoice, you get paid. You’re not left with stock, or worrying about your marketing, PR and all the rest of it. We’ve had some fantastic customers who’ve stuck with us through thick and thin, but there are issues such as currency rate fluctuations, buyers who get rotated, so we thought we’d create our own brand and go direct to market – let the customer find us. When I opened a shop in London people said I was crazy, then we opened our own e-commerce site – it sounds obvious now but for an old, Dickensian mill it’s quite revolutionary. And our biggest and bravest decision was to kick certain customers into touch: some were too cheap, some too fiddly.”
Aim high and focus on the long term
“My ambition is to create an extremely successful, extremely profitable luxury label. If I wanted to make bigger profits and bigger returns quicker, I wouldn’t be doing this. I’m doing it for the money but also for the love of the sport. In my last job there was nothing to enchant me other than the camaraderie. I’m now very passionate about what I do. It’s nice to create something successful – and if you’re doing something positive for local business and for the local community, it helps you stay motivated.”
Know your customers – and what they’re looking for
“People don’t want a story that sounds contrived and made up. They want transparency, something with authenticity and credibility and quality as well. I appreciate that not everybody has the appreciation of or need for a cotton woven in Lancashire; not everyone has the desire for a garment made in the UK. But we take pride in making our products in the UK and Ireland and sourcing our fabric in the UK and Ireland. We’ve identified the best suppliers, we’ve been working with them for many years, we get the best quality, service, reliability. We’ve cultivated and preserved that over many years. I wouldn’t know where to look if I wanted to start sourcing clothes or fabrics overseas in China. Do I believe that our ‘made in the UK’ badge is important? It definitely is to us and to our customers, as people become more sophisticated, better informed. Customers are doing a lot more research before they make a purchase. People want to know things are made properly, sourced ethically, made by people who are paid properly. Private White VC’s proposition is niche, but there are niche customers with an inclination to invest in what we’re offering and we’ve not even seen the surface, let alone scratched it, in terms of people being aware of our product. There’s a big world out there.”
