Still Breathing

by Donnelly, Anthony; Donnelly, Christopher; Spence, Simon

  Then Melville went to see Pentland, a venture capital organisation, showing them all our marketing, all the things that the company was famous for. [Pentland Group is a global brand management company with shares in Speedo, Ellesse, Berghaus, Boxfresh, Ted Baker, Lacoste and Kickers. In 2007 they had sales of £973 million.] Melville were trying to raise money to take it to the next level – the £300 million turnover level that they said they could deliver.

  We’d already sold shares to Melville for millions and then Pentland bought 51 per cent of the company for tens of millions. We went down there and did a deal, sold some shares … we were also on top wages. So now we’re waiting for the global expansion of Gio – as promised. [Pentland’s chief executive Andy Rubin said, ‘This is a very positive investment in a growing brand which is win-win for both sides. This is a strategic investment for us. We think Gio-Goi has been doing a phenomenal job.’]

  Christopher: Pentland must have said, ‘Where’s the pub? It’s not in the business, the due diligence.’ It was ours but they thought Gio-Goi had bought a pub. Pentland are huge, they own [are majority owners of] JD Sports and an opportunity came up for them to buy in. They came in for 21 per cent and another 20 per cent and another 10 per cent over a period of three years; they had these options. Pentland had heard and seen all this great stuff.

  Melville’s dream had come true: they were now partners with this massive, massive company. Melville now thought they were big time, but they were blagging it on the back of our success. They were trying to impress Pentland by making everything even glitzier. The sales catalogues became like telephone directories – and they were mostly full of shit. Melville should have made the back end of the business slick, so that the manufacturing and quality were right and the gear arrived on time, and they should have left Anthony and me alone at the front end, i.e. the pub, doing random stuff, going to Glastonbury, Ibiza and Miami. But they tried to make the front all slick and the back end was a shambles. We felt Melville were killing the brand and not being straightforward with us and the Rubins from Pentland. We felt they had a corner shop-type mentality. They didn’t have a clue and everyone in the business hated them – well, anyone who mattered.

  I wanted to sell out when Pentland came in. That wasn’t a reflection on them, it was how I felt at that time about Melville. I wanted to get out. But Anthony was saying, ‘How can this fail?’ If our shares are worth millions now then with this massive company behind us they’re going to take it through to £300 or £400 million turnover. He said, ‘Instead of selling out and getting millions, in three years we can sell out and get tens of millions.’ But I was of the opinion ‘let’s take the millions today’. Anthony didn’t want to and everyone was saying the same – stay in – and I stayed in. The thing was, to the public the label was still current and credible. We still had an edge, Anthony and me were doing stuff at the pub, like the MTV In 24 Hours documentary with Pete Doherty, and the label was still cool.

  Anthony: We met Juliet Denison from MTV at V Festival. She was outside the Louder lounge and couldn’t get in. They asked us for help and we got them in and then we partied with them for a couple of days. We didn’t know Juliet was the head [of in-house development] at MTV. I kept in touch with her and they were interested in doing something with us. At the time I was thinking Peter might die so I wanted to set something in stone with him. I’d been listening to ‘The Long and Winding Road’ by The Beatles and I’d call him and make him listen to the whole track – we were both off our heads. I was saying, ‘There needs to be an ending to this long and winding road of ours. We need to put something down as a testimony to our relationship. I would like to come and film you with us and do something that will stand out.’ He later said it was a con but I cleared it with Peter and I rang Juliet and we started to discuss what to do [for an MTV strand called In 24 Hours].

  Whilst shooting the MTV documentary with Peter we accumulated nearly forty-six hours of footage that has never been seen. He was going to do a gig at the pub and take part in a catwalk show we were putting on. The idea was for me to get all the artefacts from his house and build his house in our pub. I’d not been to the mansion he lived in but I’d seen his flat in Camden. I’d seen something from that flat on YouTube where he was in dire straits and the drug taking was horrific. He’d had a problem with people in London who’d robbed stuff from there. We arranged for some people to go and get him all his stuff back.

  In the press they called him a troubled rocker. He’d been banged up, a junkie, all sorts … and the mansion was in a state. He was showing off the blood paintings he was doing and he even sang a song about Gio-Goi. He was our ‘poster boy’. It was no secret that Pete was not everyone’s cup of tea and had got issues. There was not another company that’d sell bulletproof vests when we did that and when we did the MTV thing there weren’t a lot of people who would work with Pete. The documentary turned out great in the end. It became the second most viewed MTV programme ever behind The Hills.

  Christopher: Drapers voted us as ‘Young Fashion Brand of the Year’. We were often in Drapers – it was a weekly industry magazine and they need stuff to talk about … nobody was doing anything fresh apart from us. We didn’t go to the awards show though. Anthony and me boycotted it as a fuck you to our partners at Melville. We just couldn’t respect them. There was a big gap opening up now between our partners and us.

  All these people who had not a lot to do with the brand wanted to go and stand on the stage to get this award. It was £10,000 a table and we bought three tables. When they accepted the award there were about twenty of them holding on to it. It was like when you went to a bring-a-bottle party when you were a kid and you and your mates were all holding on to one bottle of beer. At the same time we were number two in The Sunday Times Fast Track 100 [December 2009. ‘The companies that make up this year’s Fast Track 100,’ wrote The Sunday Times, ‘have shown they have what it takes to keep growing through the worst downturn in decades.’ Only two firms in the top 100 had raised venture capital for further expansion in the past twelve months. Gio-Goi had seen their sales grow in the past year by 219 per cent.]

  Anthony: The Fast Track thing blew everyone’s mind. Richard Branson invited us for dinner. I was asked to go to Dubai to host a party by a promoter on Sheik Khalifa’s boat [President of the United Arab Emirates]. It was said to make Roman Abramovich’s boat look like a bathtub. We were getting invites from everywhere. We were multi-millionaires – we’d been paid out. The reason I’d said we should hold on to something [shares] when Chris wanted to get out was because I expected Gio-Goi, now we were with Pentland, to do hundreds of millions.

  It was obvious though that Melville was slowly but surely trying to take control from us.

  At the Gio-Goi Christmas party there were hundreds of people. Everyone had a PA. We were only doing £40 million, we didn’t need all these staff but Melville think they know best. We thought Pentland would do something when they bought in but they left Melville in charge. Melville started to try and launch other brands inside of this business. We felt they were abusing their power. It was an odd time. We’d already had a few million quid, so on one hand I wasn’t arsed – we had enough to get by on – but on the other hand we didn’t like Angus Morrison or David Douglas at Melville or what they were doing to Gio. And we still had shares.

  So we’d be asking, ‘Why aren’t we doing £100 million in Germany like you said? Why aren’t we in America when every store wants it? Where are all these big orders?’ The independent stores were dropping off because of the shit they were producing. It was getting more difficult to do the marketing. We had a meeting with Pentland and said, ‘You know we’re not affi liated with these people outside work and we’ve watched them say they are us and now we’re watching them steer the company down the wrong route. We’re here to tell you we are sinking. We need to get rid of them.’ No action was taken and it just got worse.

  Christopher: I’d designed some shirts that looked lik
e old ’70s Simon Shirts and was reminiscing about the brand with David Douglas. A week later Douglas came in the office and said, ‘I’ve bought Simon Shirts.’ They asked me if I’d do the marketing but not Anthony; they were trying to split us up. I said that would never work. They launched it and I don’t think it got past one season. They then got another kid in and his brand was called Felix Blow. They tried to launch it through USC and that fell on its face. I heard the kid never got his brand back. They made him design shit he would never have done – it was a very poor Superdry. Douglas and Morrison seemed to us to have a natural talent at failing miserably.

  Partly because of them starting to do these new brands, we decided to start our own new label. We called it Your Own [YO]. That’s when we did the Deadmau5 video for ‘I Remember’. While I was working with Calvin Harris, I got a call from America off his management and they said, ‘We’ve found this DJ who wears a mouse’s head when he DJs and he’s called Deadmau5, do you want to get involved?’

  ‘Dead right. He sounds right up our street, crazy fucker with a mouse’s head on. We’re in.’ That was the initial call. Then Deadmau5 came to the UK and I saw him play to twenty or thirty people.

  Originally, I’d done a deal with Deadmau5’s management on the merchandise, a fifty-fifty deal. I was in a good position. I was going to meetings with EMI’s global merchandising but they didn’t get it. I went to Amsterdam and met Footlocker to do a deal with them over it. They came to the UK and we met them in our pub, but the kid doing the production made a mess of it all – the gear turned out to be a load of shit. We had basically entrusted the production to a friend of a friend who had fucked it up.

  Next, Deadmau5 was doing a show in Manchester and I rang the kid up and said, ‘Where’s the merch?’

  ‘What merch?’

  So I had to go out and get a load of T-shirts printed fast. I thought then, ‘Working with this kid I’m going to make myself look like a tit.’ I just went to Deadmau5 and said, ‘Here’s your merchandise deal back.’ It felt like the right thing to do but in hindsight looking at how big he became it probably cost Anthony and me a fortune, all down to someone else. We always deliver but it’s disappointing the amount of bullshitters out there in the fashion industry.

  So at the start with Deadmau5 we were going to do his merchandise but we also wanted something to launch Your Own with and his management wanted something cool to launch him with. I got on great with Joel [Zimmerman, real name of Deadmau5] and he became a great ambassador for Your Own. He was very helpful at the beginning, but equally we helped launch him. He had a track coming out called ‘I Remember’ and we made the video with Colin O’Toole, a director from Manchester who’d worked with Ian Brown and many others. I was styling him for photo shoots. It worked for him. It worked for us. I did a lot for Joel. He wanted suits; I’d help him out. There was nothing in it for me apart from to get some product on him. I’d take him out shopping. We had a good relationship.

  The video for ‘I Remember’ was up for an award against videos by Oasis and Keane. For my first video it was good. Our partners were upset because they were trying to launch new brands and the next thing we’ve got this amazing video being played on MTV with Your Own all over it – and they’re supposed to be the people who know about making clothes.

  The ‘I Remember’ video was planned as the first in a five-part series that we were going to do with Deadmau5 and Colin. At the end of the video it says ‘to be continued’ and my kids are playing a game of Mousetrap. When we came to do the second part I had a meeting with Joel and he said he wanted to have a load of sheep running through the town centre with miniDeadmau5 on their back. That wasn’t the plan. I said that’s not for me and bailed. The next track was ‘Ghosts N Stuff’ and Colin flew to Canada and did it – Joel with a bed sheet around his head running around Canada. I think Colin just went along with it for the money. Gio-Goi was being pushed to one side now and internally everyone was moving in different directions.

  Colin O’Toole: I met Chris at John Shard’s photographic studio when I was doing a documentary about The Hacienda and we got talking and struck up a friendship. At the time Chris and Anthony were working with this artist Deadmau5, who was relatively unknown and were teaming him with the new brand Your Own. I’m a filmmaker so I thought why don’t we turn it into a short film. They roped in Stephen Graham, his brother Aston Kelly and Warren Brown and came up with this idea that is loosely based on Anthony and Chris. It was two mates who put a rave on, simple. I wrote the dialogue semi-based on their experience, and we got cracking.

  Arthur had this warehouse round the back of Piccadilly and we had the run of the place. The opening shot we were in this unfinished building just off the Mancunian Way that had sort of been left to rot. It was all locked up, we tried to get permission to use it but it was taking ages so in the end, typically Donnelly, we let ourselves in. Arthur turned up with a pair of bolt cutters and we broke in, we got the shot, totally illegal and completely in the spirit of the video.

  Anyway, all these police vans turned up and we thought, ‘Bollocks, we’re going to be arrested here, that’s the end of the shoot.’ The coppers were shouting at us to get off the site. It was quite mad, really – there were all these residents stood on their balconies watching this going on at 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning. Chris had a high-vis vest on so it looked like we had permission. The video got nominated for an innovation award at the VMAs and has had something like 20 million hits on YouTube – it has gone on to have a life of its own.

  Anthony and Chris have genuine interest in interesting things and a unique way of going about things. They keep reinventing themselves and their drive and enthusiasm doesn’t ever seem to waver. They have that uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time. They worked with Deadmau5 before anyone knew who Deadmau5 was and a couple of years later he was the biggest electronic artist on the planet. At the time I just thought. ‘What? This kid’s a joke. He’s got this stupid mouse head on’ and Chris convinced me he was going to be this big DJ and artist and it turned out to be true. Some of the schemes you think, ‘Why are they interested in that’ and then it turns out to be massive. It’s really interesting to watch.

  Anthony: All our old pals have got involved with Your Own [YO] early doors. We had and still have tremendous support from all the buyers and plenty of celebrity endorsements. The Vaccines, Snow Patrol and Skream and Benga all wore Your Own [YO] on stage. [Actor] Nico Mirallegro and [skateboarder] Ben Grove modelled for the label. Chris had a meeting with The Prodigy to work with YO. Recently Idris Elba [actor, Luther and The Wire] wore YO at the NME Awards. Liam Gallagher took offence. He couldn’t understand why Idris was wearing a YO bobble hat indoors. They had a bust-up at the after party at the Ivy club. [MTV labelled the fight ‘Brand Wars’, claiming there was a row between YO and Liam’s clothing label, Pretty Green.] The people supporting YO [the label has also been spotted on Ian Brown, Ed Sheeran, Wretch 32, Devlin, Stephen Graham, Jaime Winstone and Miles Kane] are coming to us not because of the brand name but because they know us and appreciate our vibe. They support us and are happy to wear our clothes because of what they represent. It’s not just about clothes. It’s the history and the attitude.

  Christopher: We are real. That’s what it is. As well as the labels, we were looking at moving into management and considering buying a building to allow us to have retail space and office space for our management and production companies – all our businesses all under one roof.

  I started the Formal Fight Club with Tracey and Simon Farrell. [Champion boxer] Michael Jennings [who is now sponsored by YO] took me down to his boxing gym, Collyhurst and Moston Lads, a club that is steeped in history. I started training there, sparring, with Mike and Thomas McDonagh, and I thought there needed to be an end game. So we formed the Formal Fight Club [lavish star-studded white-collar boxing events] and did our first show at the Midland Hotel. I think we had ten fights, 400 people came. It sold out. It grew from th
ere. We’ve done four now; we’re building a brand. It’s become Tracey’s thing. She’s the female equivalent of Don King in the white-collar boxing world. We donate profits from FFC to the charity Forever Manchester. Tracey is an ambassador for the charity.

  Anthony: Our main job though was Gio and we were still doing some amazing marketing, but it just wasn’t working out with Douglas and co. The stylists looking after Kanye West came to see us and we were talking about doing something with Kanye. Then they said Rihanna was in town and would we like to style her. She was staying at the Chelsea Harbour Hotel, top floor. We took down some Gio garments, she stripped off and put two garments on. They got photos of her in a powder blue Gio Puffer jacket and not much else. That photo went around the world. She liked the brand. She wanted to be part of the story. Then when Rihanna came to Manchester to play the M.E.N. Arena we hooked up with her again. I took her to my local and we were all still in there at five in the morning, loads of silver limos outside, hundreds of people in the pub. Life was a rollercoaster.

  Christopher: I was making a series of short films to celebrate our twenty-first anniversary in clothing. Colin [O’Toole] had mentioned something Gilbert and George had done. We planned to interview 100 people, not brand them, and ask them all the same series of questions. On the list we had homeless people, prostitutes, doctors, actors, musicians plumbers, solicitors … our sister, Tracey, did a brilliant job of putting together a real mix of people. We shot thirty-eight hours of footage. I told Melville and they said, ‘What? You want to promote the brand by interviewing prostitutes and homeless people?’ I said, ‘Yes that’s exactly what I want to do.’ They went away on holiday and the guy who was in the middle between them and us, Joe Bowling, loved it and we signed the budget off – £35,000.