I caught up with Ole Fjelberg, founder of OnePiece UK – OnePiece is the ultimate comfort, leisure and lifestyle wear.

In the full interview below, Ole talks me through his journey so far running the company, studying at Queens Mary University and how he has managed to get the UK excited about OnePiece and some of the difficulties he faced starting the business.

Hi Ole, how are you doing?

I’m going great

Can you give us some background information about yourself?

I was born and raised in my fathers delicatessen shop in Oslo, Norway. Moved to UK to study at Queen Mary in 2008 and started OnePiece in the UK in my second year, which I still run. I love to ski, tennis, see the growth at my own company and help friends with their ideas.

So Ole, how did you get into entrepreneurship, what was your first business?

As the son of a great shop-keeper I always wanted to do something for myself. First business was KleinService, an innovative cleaning service, cleaning up after pre-parties in Oslo. Due to the innovative concept we got amazing press in the largest newspapers-, TV- and radio stations.

After that, what else did you get involved in after that?

Did some military service in the Norwegian Royal Navy and went studying. In uni I founded the Queen Mary Trading & Investment Society, and then the OnePiece came up and took all my time.

Tell me about your experience studying at Queens Mary University?

Queen Mary was great, but I was more hooked up in things around uni than the actual course. I played on the tennis team and met a lot of great people. At the end of the first year I founded the Queen Mary Trading & Investment Society, which was a great experience. We got great backing from the department and great feedback from speakers, students and sponsors. At the end of second year I had to give up my position as President for the OnePiece venture, which was a good decision. The society still lives and grows.

I guess with the whole issue about the value of going to university being questioned, what’s your thoughts on the whole issue?

After three years in uni I did wonder: ‘what did I actually learn?’. As I did a major in economics I didn’t really learn any specific job, however knowing how the world works around you is very valuable, and I definitely knew that better after three years in Queen Mary. However the most valuable thing I believe you get out of university is the people you meet. You get to meet like-minded people from all over the world, and make friendships lasting a lifetime you would never have made otherwise.

Tell us about One Piece? How the idea come about?

In 2007, three friends of mine lying hung-over on a Sunday afternoon, discussing how they could make themselves more comfortable than they were there and then. The waistband on their sweatpants really bothered them, so they decided to try sewing together a hooded sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants, connecting the two with a giant zipper to create the first OnePiece.

What is One Piece?

OnePiece is the ultimate comfort, leisure and lifestyle wear. Made by the highest quality cotton with a brushed inside it’s developed to be ridiculously comfortable at the same time as we offer colours and designs to suit every taste. So you can stay comfortable and look great;)

Tell me about how you got involved in the company?

The OnePiece literally exploded in Scandinavia, fuelled my social media, PR and blogs and became massively popular. I was watching this from my student flat in the UK and thought we needed to show this to the brits, and we certainly did.

So does that mean you have shares in the business?

Yes, I own a share of the UK company OnePiece Jump in Ltd, where the Norwegian mother company is also shareholder.

How difficult has it been introducing the brand in the UK? What would you say was the hardest part?

It was certainly a totally different market than Norway. As the Scandinavian countries has a very unison market, the UK is very fractioned and it’s like you need to take one part at the time. There’s also so many things happening in a city like London that you have to scream very loud in order for anyone to hear you. We got a lot of very good press and celebrity endorsements which have helped us a lot on the way. The hardest part was when our previous shipping supplier UKMail totally failed on us previous to Christmas sales 2010, and we needed to stay up around the clock to solve all the mess they’ve made. We quickly got DHL on the team, and that helped us a lot.

What would you say has been some of the most valuable things you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur?

Everything that can go wrong will go wrong and a little bit more, but even though something goes wrong – take it by the horns and solve it as fast as possible and get on with the good parts.

What would you say has been some of the toughest part of running a startup?

Learning and doing everything is very stimulating but can also be very frustrating. Maybe the toughest part is getting into the whole HMRC tax system. It’s the thing you have to do, but since it’s not affecting your sales it’s easy to wait too long with.

What has been your most memorable moment so far?

When the Daily Mail article ‘OnePiece – The new fashion wave’ became the most commented article on the Daily Mail Online – more than the US governor elections and the war in Iraq.

What advices would you give to any aspiring entrepreneur out there looking to enter the fashion industry?

- Find the right suppliers and make sure the sample is 100% right before ordering.
– Don’t compromise quality for quantity
– Make sure you’re 100% square with HMRC, if you can’t take it get an accountant.
– Don’t be afraid of changes as you go
– Listen well to tips from people from the industry, although it doesn’t mean you have to follow them all.

What can we be expecting from you guys in 2012?

Lot’s of exciting stuff! We’ll introduce a whole new clothing line with anything comfortable like sweatpants, hoodies, t-shirts and so on. We’ll also come with loads of new designs, washed colours, maybe even different fabrics…

Before starting Arena Flowers, Will worked at a private equity firm in the city and before then he was one of the marketing guys at eBay UK. Will explains to me that not everything is as perfect as it looks or pretty as in the case of “flowers” a lot of setbacks happen behind the scene he said.

After being convinced by his business partner to go into the flower business, he eventually cracked and started Arena Flowers. Will explains his journey so far running the business.

The idea for Arena Flowers came jointly from myself and my business partner and long time friend, Steve France. In summary we saw a large market not very well served by existing old fashioned incumbents and poorly executed online. So we thought we’d have a go at doing it better. Five years later, it’s been some ride!

The Start

At the time, I had already done five formative years in private equity in the City, then spent three years in marketing at eBay UK in the period when eBay really exploded into the pubic consciousness. That surge was nothing to do with me, mind you, but it was fascinating to watch it from the inside. Steve was already in the flower industry. He was convinced of the opportunity of selling flowers online and I was, quite frankly, rather sceptical about it – “surely the customer will want to see the product?”, ran my logic. However, I realised quickly that I was wrong; flowers have been sold at distance for a long time, using the telegraph originally, so no reason the internet couldn’t be used similarly. Furthermore, the internet could actually be used to ameliorate the experience. Which is why we decided to go for it. Flowers, but leveraging the internet.

We have come a long way from the early stressful days. I had no idea what a tricky business we were getting in to and it was very very hard the first few years. We didn’t raise enough money, we couldn’t afford enough senior people, we really weren’t that sure what we were doing. We had some bad luck: our three phase electricity exploded blowing all power at Flowers HQ; our internet went down for 6 days (a man in a digger genuinely cut 6,000 cables AND a water main and destroyed thousands of businesses’ internet access); our main courier (a household name) tried to play silly buggers and charge us an extra £20K for Valentine’s deliveries with one day’s notice; and many other improbable bombshells that we couldn’t possibly list here.

This meant we learned one essential lesson: “manage the downside and the upside will take care of itself”. We genuinely never expected so many things to break or go wrong. But now, having learned to assume that they will, we take bumps in our stride. In my City job, I used to laugh derisively like everyone else at my investment bank and the “disaster recovery” planning we did – “what’s the point of this nonsense?!” We certainly learned the value of contingency in the first few years of Arena.

The Middle

The opening of our second warehouse in the Naaldwijk flower market near The Hague in Holland was a big part of what made Arena what it is today. Being located on site and now able to cut out all middlemen, we could guarantee full control of the quality of our flowers and their cost. We reviewed our pricing strategy and managed to improve our profit margins while providing more low and mid-price range products. We’re still looking to improve our product range, quality and price, this is why we carry on dealing with growers direct.

Last year we signed a deal with a Kenyan grower which allowed us to offer some of our bouquets at a cheaper price for the same high quality, even during peak periods; it also means the odd trip out to Kenya for our product development manager, which he enjoys! We also work with growers in Thailand to complement the variety of our range. We’ve always been very demanding on the quality of our stems and have over the past months started to institute a testing routine especially when starting with a new grower or product.

Arena Flowers is all about the experience so every single detail is important to us. This is why we offer such a wide range of add-ons (luxury chocolates, greetings cards, soft toys, champagne, balloons…) as well as the possibility to add a personalised photo (or even a video message) to any order. All that stuff might sound quite simple and pretty boring but it is actually part of a very complex operation which in its whole makes Arena Flowers unique selling points strong assets against the competition.

Our Dutch warehouse was also a massive asset in our development and expansion. In 2008, we launched our Dutch language site and quickly had a German, French and two Belgian sites running as well. Offering the same high standards as our English site; fresh flowers, personalised service, competitive prices, next day delivery and International flower delivery; the popularity of our European sites grew rapidly. Our strong presence in the European market and international delivery service (through a highly qualified third party) also opened doors to an amazing deal with ProFlowers for which we manage the site ProFlowersInternational.com.

They started pretty much like Arena did and grew very fast to now be the leading online florist in the US after only twelve years. Pretty outstanding and they have been an inspiration for us and we are very proud that they chose us to handle all their international orders.

The Future

When starting Arena Flowers, we didn’t have a fixed idea of what the business would become, more like a concept we believed in and still keep driving today. We wanted to offer product excellence at affordable prices while adding something to the service (like our photos and video messages) as well as attention to detail. This is as true today as it was yesterday and we will continue to work on getting the message out in the future, in particular with some very exciting developments coming in Q2 of 2012. Watch this space!

3 Things We’d Do Differently

Raise more money – it wasn’t possible at the time and it took us a long time to dig ourselves out of the holes that resulted from being grossly undercapitalised. But we got there in the end, via the hard way!

Hire an accountant – we didn’t have a full time bookkeeper at the beginning and we should have done as neither Steve nor I had the time or training for this detailed work. It’s boring but very important.

Have more senior managers – linked to the first point and being under resourced. There was simply too much work to do and not enough good people. So huge opportunities go begging, which is very frustrating. If you have substandard people it can be even worse; they can develop a project, just really badly and lose you a fortune. Woops. Resourcing is something we still suffer from a bit but hopefully it’s something that we’ll put right in the not too distant future. Good people are priceless as in a business like this, you simply cannot do it alone.