Young Social Impact Heroes: Why and How Charly and Lockie Cunningham of SANS MATIN Are Helping To Change Our World
An Interview With Penny Bauder
Never give up! A key thing we have learnt is that you will almost never get it right on the first attempt, whether product development, your website or your branding, it takes time and evolution and everyone is learning constantly as they go. But that’s the art, don’t give up, as the more time you spend working, adapting, streamlining, and problem solving, the clearer the overall picture becomes and inherently the more successful your business will become.
As part of my series about young people who are making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Lockie Cunningham.
Charly and Lockie Cunningham are the British cousins and Co-Founders of the footwear brand SANS MATIN. Having grown up together, been to school together, and even travelled across South America together, they always knew they were going to build a brand or a business together. Having studied at separate universities, Charly — Business and French (hence the French name: SANS MATIN), and Lockie — Structural Engineering & Architecture, the result of a data driven, direct to consumer, French named, creative, problem-solving business does make sense. This coupled with their love of shoes resulted in the idea for a footwear brand. Currently stocking unisex sneakers and high-tops, the cousins aim to develop the line into espadrilles and platform sneakers over the course of 2022. All footwear products are created with versatility, comfort and style in mind. The idea being to create a one-stop footwear shop for any occasion — from the office to restaurants to bars and clubs.
It was imperative to both Charly and Lockie to build SANS MATIN around three core pillars: charitable, ethical, and environmental and sustainable practices. Having both worked with various charities from Hampshire (UK) to Brazil from a young age, the importance of giving back has long been engrained in their day-to-day lives. This social importance has stemmed from their mothers, one of which being a child psychotherapist, and the other having founded an incredible arts based charity. SANS MATIN donates 2% of all revenues to charitable causes, uses locally sourced and environmentally conscious materials, and ethically handmake every pair of shoes.
Having initially launched the UK brand in December 2019, and having since gone from strength to strength, the cousins have set their sights on opening up to the US market and will be launching in September 2021.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit how you grew up?
Charly and I are cousins who have grown up together, been to school together, and have even travelled across South America together. We both grew up in London and then went on to different secondary schools in the UK (high school equivalent from across the pond!). What’s interesting is ever since we can remember, we have been obsessed with the idea of building a business together. Whilst growing up we sold products of random crazes to our peers at school, all the way up to the preliminary development of an idea for an educational platform aimed at university students. All in all, I think we can safely say that the entrepreneurial drive has been there from a young age!
From a social impact standpoint, we have both been well educated in the importance of giving back and both of us have worked with various charities from Hampshire to Brazil, from a young age. Where better to learn than from our own mothers! My mother has recently become a child psychotherapist and Charly’s mother is the founder of an incredible arts-based charity called Turtle Key Arts where we both have helped with various projects in our spare time. The importance of giving back and helping others has been instilled since we were very young and we knew, even when SANS MATIN was nothing more than an idea, that giving back would factor into the business.
At university, Charly studied Business and French (hence the French name: SANS MATIN), and I studied Structural Engineering & Architecture. I guess when you combine all that, a data driven, direct to consumer, French named, creative, problem-solving business does make sense. This coupled with our love of shoes resulted in the idea for a footwear brand!
You are currently leading an organization that aims to make a social impact. Can you tell us a bit about what you and your organization are trying to change in our world today?
Changing the world is hard, and we don’t believe that any one business is able to do so from a social impact standpoint. However, what we can all do is work together to make a positive change together. The importance of giving back, providing opportunity, helping those less fortunate, and working to leave the planet in a better way than we received it are all imperative. We built SANS MATIN to three core pillars: ethical, charitable, and environmental practices. Our UK business donates 2% of all revenue to our partnered charity — Children Change Colombia (CCC) — and in the US, 2% of all revenue will be donated to organizations who are replanting the Amazon rainforest with indigenous species with the introduction of a further charity expected in a few months’ time.
All our shoes are ethically handmade in Medellin, Colombia, where we have spent months with all the incredible individuals who handcraft our shoes. As we continue to grow, we will continue to offer further job opportunities in the vibrant and beautiful country we have grown so fond of, and as a result cement our place as part of the Antioquia community. Through CCC, we are able to aid children in Colombia who have been displaced from their homes, experienced violence, and who’s lives and future are in danger. Over the last 18 months, and in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, we changed the payment structuring to our ateliers which helped avoid redundancies and ensured safe and controlled environments for the production of SANS MATIN footwear.
From an environmental and sustainable standpoint, we have a long way to go to reach our targets of becoming carbon neutral and possibly in time, even carbon positive. However, to date, we source all our materials locally to our manufacturers to minimize our carbon footprint, our packaging is made from recycled cardboard and sugar cane, and our shoe bags are made from PET (recycled plastic bottles) and recycled cottons. Our 60% natural tree rubber outsoles are sustainably sourced and produced in a closed loop system, where all surplus rubber is repurposed into tires. Finally, in the UK we offer a system called SMCycle, where our consumers can return their old pair of SANS MATIN shoes to be recycled once they have completed their lifecycle. If the shoes are in good enough condition, they will be donated to charities around the world, and if they’re unwearable, they will be repurposed into the likes of carpet underlay and car seat stuffing! We are currently looking to implement a similar process for the US market which will go live later this year.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
As mentioned, from a human social impact perspective both of us have always highly valued the importance of giving back and helping others. Therefore, the charitable aspect that we have built into the brand was always going to be there and was always going to be an incredibly important part of what we were going to do.
From the ethical manufacturing standpoint, we were both shocked to hear about how so many brands and businesses manufacture their products and goods. Use of child labor, forced labor and severe underpay have all been issues that have come to light in recent times for brands that we often trusted, and wore extensively. This then made it imperative that we made sure everyone who was to be any part of SANS MATIN would be treated fairly, paid fairly and be offered equal opportunity to those around them. We are proud to have met everyone who works within our supply chain, from the team who create our amazing tree rubber outsoles to the pattern cutters, our seamsters/seamstresses to our recycled shoe-bag manufacturers. We can therefore offer transparency to our consumers in our ethical manufacturing practices which we believe is an integral element of our brand.
Finally, from an environmental standpoint, our generation has grown up in a world where global warming has gone from myth to fact. The importance of protecting our planet is paramount. The issue is we need to do more than that, we need to rebuild and turn back the clock on our impact on the world. Bioplastics litter the oceans and our rainforests have been demolished for all their worth. Like most, we see the importance of cleaning up our oceans, replanting our rainforests and protecting our natural habitat. This is why we have set SANS MATIN tough carbon goals to achieve and the importance we place on giving back — in this case by aiding the replanting of the Amazon rainforest with indigenous species.
Many of us have ideas, dreams, and passions, but never manifest it. They don’t get up and just do it. But you did. Was there an “Aha Moment” that made you decide that you were actually going to step up and do it? What was that final trigger?
This is a great question, and I think we can go back to an earlier answer where we discussed the times we have attempted to set up multiple businesses when we were younger. We never had an exact ‘aha moment’ but all previous ideas that we’d had we pursued (all logistically and theoretically) until we hit a roadblock that made the idea either too complicated, unlikely or required an inordinate sum of investment. We would always spitball ideas late at night when on family holidays. An example being, one Christmas we actually came up with the idea of a ‘checkoutless’ supermarket all controlled through an app about 10 years ago which amazon has now launched in their grocers. Obviously for us the idea has now been proven but the logistics and cost were impossible. With SANS MATIN, it was different. We knew the idea was good and believed it would work, it was more the logistics of setting it up and creating the product that was the roadblock. I think with these things, you also need a certain amount of luck, because our roadblock was removed after about 3 months into the idea and preliminary designs. Charly’s cousin happened to be sitting next to someone at a dinner one night discussing their jobs. He turned round and said that he’s a footwear consultant, to which Charly’s cousin said, I’ve got two family members who have an idea and would love to have a conversation with you. Dory (the footwear consultant) then introduced us to his partner called Jessica who in turn introduced us to the atelier where all our shoes have now been handmade to date. I do honestly believe we would have set up and launched either way, but sometimes you require a bit of luck. If the idea is there and you know it, you have to keep pushing and doors will unlock, and there may never be that ‘aha moment’!
Many young people don’t know the steps to take to start a new organization. But you did. What are some of the things or steps you took to get your project started?
We started with the concept and idea, and once we validated that with friends, family and research it was then ‘how are we going to actually do this?’. We really looked at this as a business from the beginning as we knew we weren’t going to be selling these out of our garage, we wanted to have the infrastructure in place from launch to attack a much larger market and start competing at a high level from the off. This required business plans & forecasts — about 50 before the financiers in the family validated them as credible! Then it was incorporation, legal, trademarks, and research. Once the bare bones were there we sought initial investment and began to develop the samples and the ecommerce platform that we would sell from. We also knew that cashflow would be one of our main battles, and so we made the most of the various innovative tech startups and outsourcing opportunities that can come at a lower price point than full-time employees. Around the world we have around 20 consultants, agencies and freelancers working directly with SANS MATIN. That also comes hand-in-hand with automation and tech. The more automation you can build into the business inherently results in you having to do less manual work which may not be the best use of your time. It’s not a perfect business model, but it just about allows us to be able to manage every aspect of the business and strategize to develop and optimize for the future without being completely swamped 24/7.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?
I think any new startup of the last 18 months would answer the same way — COVID-19. This was, and continues to be, so significant from a business standpoint. We have had to learn the importance of being as agile and adaptable as possible at a moment’s notice. We’ve had to ensure synchronicity across the business through analytical, forward thinking processes and problem solving. This has certainly been the greatest test to the business to date. Like most other businesses, we’ve had to learn to manage and control the company remotely, streamlining where possible, and cut back where unnecessary. A significant impact has been the lack of travel we have been able to do. The ability to go out to Colombia and work in the atelier with our team on new samples, products, material research and sourcing, packaging updates and supply chain management is so important, and something we have not been able to do for the last 18 months. We have therefore had to adapt and communicate through other means, but the process of design and approval has understandably been slower than the timeframes set out before the pandemic. However, with all this aside we have been fortunate, and have been able to allow the business to flourish during these incredibly difficult times. We are so grateful to our families who’ve supported us, and to our amazing customers — the SM Family — for continuing to believe in us and what we’re doing.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson or take away you learned from that?
This is not directly our fault to be honest, however, it’s probably the most unbelievable thing that has happened to date, and could have ended a lot worse…
For the UK business, all our products are stocked and fulfilled from our 3rd party warehouse in Manchester. The team have been brilliant since we onboarded with them and as I mentioned earlier, efficient because of automation. However, within 6 months of using their services, the team upgraded their warehouse and therefore location, where the move was logistically massive. They were trying to complete the move (including packing up and unpacking) whilst ensuring that their services were only down for 48 hours. You can imagine the amount of orders they would have had to fulfill once they were reset up. Anyway, I think the timescale was a little too optimistic as, soon after the move, we received an email from a customer informing us that although they were hoping it was just a mistake and not a scam, the sombrero they received instead of shoes was terrible service and if they didn’t receive their shoes soon would start listing SANS MATIN as a scam wherever they could.
This was obviously a bit of a disaster and luckily we quickly managed to resolve the issue. It was a big sigh of relief until a new customer email came through. Now a woman had received a poncho instead of the shoes she ordered. We responded being apologetic and offered her a discount and told her that the shoes she’d actually ordered would be shipped the same day. Luckily for us, not only was she the last person to receive a wrong item, but also replied to let us know that she rather liked the poncho, that she planned to keep it, and that she had been parading it round the house all day. She finally finished with a thank you for our help and can’t wait to receive the shoes. So, all’s well that ends well!
None of us can be successful without some help along the way. Did you have mentors or cheerleaders who helped you to succeed? Can you tell us a story about their influence?
We both do very much believe in the importance of advice and guidance. Whatever you do and whether it’s successful, the decisions are all yours, however, others’ opinions should be carefully measured and considered. We have sought a lot of advice and guidance from family, friends, and a few people who’ve been involved in start-ups in one capacity or another. It’s been invaluable to us, and we wouldn’t be where we are without it. Highly recommended!
Can you tell us a story about a particular individual who was impacted or helped by your cause?
As Children Change Colombia has such a widespread impact it is hard to pinpoint a particular individual, however, we believe in our 2% promise and know that as we grow and the more we therefore donate, we can continue to have an impact on more individuals. Whether displaced or victims of sexual violence, through the amazing work that our partners CCC do, we know we are helping to make a difference. Please do head over to the Children Change Colombia website to learn more about what CCC’s incredible projects across the country are doing to help those in need.
Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help you address the root of the problem you are trying to solve?
We’ve put this pretty simply, but we believe from an ethical, charitable and environmental standpoint the following changes could be implemented for businesses;
1. Ethical: Increased regulation into transparency of companies’ supply chains.
2. Charitable: Increased incentives for companies to focus more on their Corporate Social Responsibilities.
3. Environmental: Companies and not just cities/countries should be setting carbon target goals by 2030.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
- Never give up! A key thing we have learnt is that you will almost never get it right on the first attempt, whether product development, your website or your branding, it takes time and evolution and everyone is learning constantly as they go. But that’s the art, don’t give up, as the more time you spend working, adapting, streamlining, and problem solving, the clearer the overall picture becomes and inherently the more successful your business will become.
- It’s probably worth learning Spanish before getting your shoes handmade in the Spanish speaking country of Colombia! We certainly had a few issues to start with here. Luckily we have our amazing Colombian manufacturing consultant Jessica to help us. However, there were a few days where Charly and I were first in our atelier trying to finalize the design of our first sneaker. The result was attempting to communicate design changes through pointing, making unusual hand gestures, questionable drawings, and scrambling together any Spanish that we’d learnt at school.
- You’re never going to get it right the first time. This is similar to our first point, but it’s about being open minded to change and adaptation of what you have done to date. We have iterated everything a thousand times over already, from copy to our website, our outsoles to our packaging, and that’s absolutely normal. You can always keep improving and developing a product, processes, systems or tech and having that understanding and desire to continue to look to optimize and improve is, in our mind at least, the way to building a flourishing business whatever that maybe.
- Make sure you have time off and downtime. This is a tough one as we are both still flat out and haven’t actually taken a weekend off for over 18 months. However, we both exercise regularly, make sure we go out for dinner, drinks and surround ourselves with friends and family as much as possible, and when the opportunity does arise, try and switch off completely. New and good ideas often require downtime, switching off, or doing something completely different. It’s easy to forget that and keep charging on, but the mental side of taking time for yourself is of paramount importance when running a business.
- Trust in those around you. One of the elements of our business that has been the most beneficial is each other. We are cousins, best mates and if we hadn’t had each other through this process we certainly wouldn’t be where we are today. The benefit of a true friend as a co-founder is that we’ve been able to bounce endless ideas off each other without judgement and, even in the tricky moments, we have been able to keep one another laughing as we have done since we were about two feet tall! Co-founders also have their proven merits in ideas. As said, bouncing ideas off one another is key, but more so, when discussing an idea or a change, it’s so important to have various opinions and discussions. This often results in agreement somewhere in-between the two arguments in which direction to take an idea. Our final thought on this is that you will be spending a LOT of time together so make sure you don’t drive each other round the bend — we keep this reserved for when our soccer teams come up against each other!
If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
We would of course say please do all you can! As we’ve said, it’s not just one company that will make all the difference, it’s everyone working together and that includes what you do day-to-day and at home. For us, an example of something that we have both been doing for a couple of years now is eating vegan a few days a week. It’s a small change to make but we both feel it’s bettered our diets and wellbeing, but more so, we are fully aware of the environmental impacts of meat production and consumption. With water usage, energy use, recycling, plastic consumption and resultant negative environmental impacts, we both talk often about what more we can do personally to minimize our impacts. It all absolutely counts!
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Possibly no surprises here, but Phil Knight (Nike founder) is an inspiration and a half to us. I think anyone who goes into footwear will say the same thing. It’s amazing how many parallels we can draw along with his journey, from shoe developments, to travelling to new countries (and not speaking the language), to understanding how manufacturers operate. With us being solely online (DTC), the business models are very different, and we haven’t even scratched the surface in terms of his level of success but it’s amazing how we have had the same problems, issues, concerns and ideas to take our footwear brands from concept to reality. However, Phil Knight is an absolute legend. One who has truly changed the world of footwear, and we would be honored to meet him (and possibly ask for a few tips to get to the next level!).
How can our readers follow you online?
Please visit our store: www.sansmatin.com and have a look around. We are aiming to officially launch and start selling out products mid-September so sign up to be notified of when we launch so you don’t miss out. Please subscribe to our newsletter to learn more about us, and be the first to know with new drops, discounts, and special offers. Finally, please follow us on social media, Insta: @sansmatin Facebook: SANS MATIN
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
Young Social Impact Heroes: Why and How Charly and Lockie Cunningham of SANS MATIN Are Helping To… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.