Name: DaDa Underwear
Based: Edinburgh
Website: www.dadaunderwear.com
DaDa is an ethical men’s underwear brand that uses bamboo and organic cotton to make its incredibly comfortable pants. We operate online and you can buy individual pairs or sign up to a subscription so you get a fresh pair delivered every three months.
Our biggest cashflow negative is having to pay upfront for fabrics without having buyers for them. We would never cut costs here as we use sustainable materials and it is important we pay our workers in a living wage, along with free meals and transportation.
However, we have lowered this hugely by launching the Quarterly Underwear Club where men pay £5 a month and get a fresh pair of underwear delivered every quarter. This means we get more than three months warning before sending our product, allowing us to better estimate fabrics required, while also providing three months of positive cashflow before sending out underwear.
We sell underwear exclusively online meaning fixed costs are relatively low, and have made every effort to strip out any that aren’t completely necessary. We recently switched from a popular merchant account and payment gateway to Stripe, which charges only a small percentage of transactions. We’re also learning to focus marketing spend on measurable channels and concentrate on those with the highest ROI.
It is often hard to negotiate good credit terms as a startup, but we do always negotiate better terms where we can as we all know cash is king.
Hamish Lawson is the owner of DaDa Underwear.
