The interview is published in two parts in order to give you the content a little more quickly. This is part 1, talking about Nick and Mongoose now. The second part will look at the future of Mongoose.
Afternoon Nick, I’ve structured this into three sections. A little about you, then Mongoose now and finally what the future holds. Please can you tell us a little about yourself?
My name is Nick Lawson, I am a Managing Director at a large city firm. I’ve been a cricket fan, all my life. I enjoy sport and am a keen runner and enjoy Crossfit.
A few more questions about yourself…
What is your Favourite takeaway?
I absolutely love a Chicken Madras. I don’t have it often enough, I don’t know why, but it’s about the only rubbish food I eat as I’m quite strict about my food.
How do you take your cups of tea?
I love tea. I have milk, no sugar and I have about three cups a day from the same shop as you.
Is a Jaffa Cake a cake or a biscuit?
It’s a cake. It’s called a Jaffa Cake!
Do you have a dog, and if so, what breed?
I do, and I absolutely adore him. He’s a Lancashire Heeler. Well he’s actually a cross – a Capheaton terrier which is a cross between a Lancashire Heeler and a Jack Russell. Everyone thinks he’s going to attack them and he’s very small and lovely. He’s seven years old. I absolutely love dogs.
I’ve got nets at home, and he got hit in the eye by a cricket ball so he hates cricket as a result, which is really sad. It’s affected him ever since.
How did you get involved in Mongoose?
I run the firm’s cricket day every year (and have done for 9 years) where we arrange to play at Lord’s. Back in 2010, one of the playing pros brought his Mongoose bats along with him, which I thought were very good. As I learned more about the company it had a personal feel and was very accessible in its early days and as a result I invested in the first iteration.
What were the failings first time around and why did you want a second bite at the cherry?
Mongoose was a victim of its own success. While the core business was good, and made sense, the half a million pound wage bill for pros became crippling (with Matt Hayden, Andrew Symonds, etc, not being cheap).
The bats were still good and the ethos of the company was sound, but given the financial situation, the company collapsed and I (and other shareholders) restructured and financed and bought it out of receivership, trying to maintain the companies character. We believed then, and still believe now that Mongoose is a very strong brand.
Why invest in such a weird little industry as cricket?
Vanity really! A lot of people get to a point in their career where they believe they should start a restaurant, eponymously titled but I have cricket bats! As a boy I grew up with brands like GM and GN and Mongoose had a more personal feel than the bigger brands when I invested. One could have the bats personalized with your children’s names, which felt different. Having never been good enough to play at a decent level this was a way to get properly involved in cricket.
From this I’ve learned how impossible retail sales is. The advent of the internet, the pressures on retail sales of sports equipment, very slim margins and the vagaries of the environment. 20% of all sales go through Sports Direct and Amazon.
In the first year that Mongoose came out of receivership, in 2012, we were hit with one of the wettest summers on record, the recession, the Olympics bisected the summer reducing interest in cricket and Sri Lanka and the West Indies were the touring sides, meaning no-one bought any cricket bats and we thought “My god, what are we doing?”. We got bailed out by the Ashes series of 2013/2014 and the proximity of the two. There are a lot of factors that you have to consider.
It has been a fascinating journey! There are lots of things that we have learnt on this journey.
We’ll move on to a little about the current Mongoose. Who would you describe as the archetypal mongoose pro?
I think Matty was such a great pro to start with, I mean, you want someone like the butcher’s son. You want someone like KP, Chris Gayle. Someone with swagger. The brand has a very cool youth association – so many of our bats are sold to kids, so for me it would be someone young, aggressive.
I remember one of the first proper games my father took me to was England vs the West Indies at the Oval. I remember seeing Viv Richards come out and he took his time. He took his time, and I’d want someone coming out with a Mongoose bat to take his time.
I was at a dinner with Viv and I told him I still have my Slazenger Viv Richards bat from the eighties, and we talked about it. I told him I was involved in Mongoose and he didn’t seem to ascribe too much value to bats. I know that some of the really good cricketers just pick up any bat in the changing room and come out. He just didn’t seem that interested in bats.
You look at someone like Graeme Hick and Marcus Trescothick and how absorbed they are. At one event I had Graeme Hick take my bat and look at it like a craftsman himself. Marcus Trescothick has taken all our Mongooses and customized them in his own woodshed. I think there is an interesting split.
But back to the original question, I think Viv (in his prime) would have been the archetypal mongoose pro.
Do you insist on Mongoose pros using your bats or are they free to take labels and sticker up whatever they like?
It’s a very good point. We had a problem with a professional player who was contracted to us in the early days who I won’t name. He went out with a completely different bat. We do like them to use Mongoose bats. We currently sponsor a raft of players at the county level (people like Gaz Andrew, Jade Dernbach, Marcus Tresocthick) and there is an expectation that they use the bats. These are good bats.
When Mongoose originally came to the fore, the MMi3 was a well made high quality bat. The current MMi3s in the shops seem to be a distinct drop in quality and feel to the original. What difference, both in manufacturer, and manufacturing technique have changed for this perceived drop in quality to come about?
The originals were made by Hunts County and Sareen for the lower end ones. It’s almost the reverse of this. The quality has improved. The MMi3 only represents about 20% of sales. Super Premium is Grade 1, down to Kashmir for the kids bats. We still have Hunts County making the higher quality and Sareen making the lower quality bats at the moment.
The majority of sales (50-60%) are the ToRQ and Rebel (the full length blade bats). The COR3 (the hybrid) is about 20-30% of sales.
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Topic: Interview with Nick Lawson, majority shareholder in Mongoose - Part 1 (Read 15348 times)