Tom Hart is a brand marketing specialist with more than 10 years of experience across premium fashion, lifestyle and technology brands, having worked at the likes of Stella McCartney, Burberry, Selfridges and Orlebar Brown.
In his role as head of brand at Levy Merchandising, he has helped launch and establish SUDU, a new UK sportswear brand based in Manchester. He has helped bring the brand’s first ‘Run’ collection to market made up of both footwear and apparel pieces, crafted using cutting edge fabrics.
From growth to the most important part of the company’s marketing mix, Hart takes us behind the brand…
If you would like to take part in ‘Behind the brand’ – get in touch with via rachael@prolificnorth.co.uk
What does your brand do in a nutshell?
SUDU is an innovative, new UK sportswear brand looking to disrupt the sportswear market. Translating into ‘speed’, ‘velocity’ and ‘tempo’, we launched our inaugural ‘Run’ menswear collection in May, consisting of 16 pieces including a mix of apparel and footwear. Each piece has been carefully crafted to help athletes of all abilities unlock their potential and to unleash their inner athlete.
In June, we announced a long-term partnership with Premier League club Wolves to become their official technical kit partner. We will design and manufacture all kits as part of the deal, and will be looking to roll out what is a revolutionary new kit supply model working with other teams across sports.
Plans are also in place to soon bring further Play football, Train fitness and Rest lifestyle categories to market, as well as working with Levy ambassadors and a wider advisory board to inform the creation of women’s specific product collections across categories expected to launch from early 2025.
Can you bring us up to date with the company’s latest performance and headcount numbers?
We currently have 52 employees within Levy Merchandising – including head office, fulfillment and retail. Performance wise we’re of course just getting started, but we’ve been really pleased and encouraged by the response so far from consumers and fans alike across launches.
What key factors have contributed to your recent growth?
It’s hard to pick out any one thing but our partnership with Wolves has certainly been fantastic, and especially so from a reach standpoint. To be able to partner with such a well supported club with as rich a heritage as Wolves early on in our growth journey is something we’re incredibly proud of.
Our community events have also been amazing as has been the response with media with the likes of the Daily Telegraph, Men’s Health and the Daily Mail already featuring and ranking our products up there amongst the best.
How do you differentiate your brand from competitors in the market?
Effectively marrying up style and function is one area we’ve really thought about amidst a sportswear market where consumers are wanting both elements to go hand in hand. We’ve also really focused on identifying our purpose and what we stand for as a brand alongside ensuring we’re bringing genuinely innovative and products with purpose to market.
Building an emotional connection with our customers is also central to everything we do, and so with every piece of content and marketing we put out, customers should see themselves reflected. That is why we have been so focused on working with our local communities and real people vs the traditional 6/7 figure influencers from before we even launched the brand. We want to inspire them to push boundaries and achieve greatness, helping them unlock their full potential.
In line with this and getting as close to our customers as possible, we’ve already successfully executed two community events in London and in Manchester, and want to push accessibility and fairness across sport, both on an individual level, and in terms of how we interact and work with communities and sports teams.
How do you cultivate a positive and productive company culture?
I think it comes from the top and while there are many factors involved, opportunity, accountability, recognition and reward are key elements.
At Levy Merchandising, I think we do a great job of giving our staff at all levels the opportunity to learn, grow and progress, at the same time having created an environment where it goes hand in hand with accountability which is also important.
We celebrate and recognise the successes together too, and reward employees where this is due.
We also collectively practice what we preach by putting our product to use with lunch time run clubs, trialing the latest classes in town and getting out into the community and away from our desks.
What’s the most important part of the company’s marketing mix?
Perhaps I’m biased, but I would argue that without a strong brand you’ll have to work harder and spend more across other areas of your marketing mix to achieve success! We spent a lot of time developing and refining our ‘reasons why’ and purpose ahead of launch, so now we are implicitly clear on what our north star is. This allows us to question everything and keep us honest and on course.
I also think it really is a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts – all areas have to work well together, especially so when entering a competitive market.
To what extent does the company use the support of external agencies?
We’ve already been working with several great agencies to support our launch and as we grow. These include independent PR, social, digital and creative agency, The PHA Group, who have been spearheading our PR efforts, while from a performance standpoint, digital marketing agency Serotonin have been helping us manage our paid media activity, OOH, content creator management and execution on our community events. Creative production agency Northern Artillery helped us design our new brand website.
They’ve all been fantastic to work with, and will be integral to helping us continue to grow with big ambitions for the brand.
Where do you hope the brand will be in two years’ time?
I think we’re realistic, but we feel we can significantly increase our market share across categories. We hope to be a brand people come to for every eventuality, across running, football, fitness, and from a lifestyle standpoint.
As mentioned, a big goal is to also build out our partnerships portfolio to work with other sports teams across sports.
Our kit supply model removes the third-party, your big brand, where they’re currently taking a large chunk of value out of the chain. As opposed to being self-serving, it’s coming together with sports teams as one, to run the business together.
We’re bringing the whole process under one roof, from top to bottom, encompassing manufacturing, retail and brand, to achieve this. The end product is better commercial return and affordability, without compromise on quality.
