Meet the Founders - Presca
An EIS eligible, sustainable sports clothing brand, improving the industry’s social and environmental impact.
Presca aims to be the defining sustainable sportswear brand. Founders Rob Webbon, a former environmental scientist and Guy Whitby, a specialist in business analysis and change management, share a love for the outdoors and iron-distance triathlons. Recognising the clothing industry’s environmental impact and the need for circularity, Rob and Guy set out on a mission with Presca to reimagine sportswear. To date, Presca are the first sportswear brand to commit to full circularity: every item is made of recycled materials and customers can send back their products to be repurposed at the end of their life. Read on for our interview with founders Rob and Guy.
Describe your startup in two sentences
Presca is a fast growing sportswear company on a mission to regenerate waste in a closed loop into high-performance sportswear. We’re playing all out for the planet.
What gave you the inspiration?
We were racing a lot together in cycling and triathlon events. Rob’s background is in environmental science, so we had lots of discussions around how the clothing we were wearing was completely unsustainable, and with zero supply chain transparency it was impossible to know how ethically it was made.
So in the end we sat down for a beer after a half-Ironman and decided to do something about it – the company was born!
How did you meet?
We met in Southampton through a mutual friend and realised we shared a love of bikes, beer, and the environment. We started mountain biking together, and our shared near-death experiences gave us a common bond! Then we started competing together in triathlons and the rest is history.
What has been your greatest success to date? And your greatest challenge?
Our greatest success has also been our greatest challenge – the supply chain. We started the company with an ambition to use British manufacture for all our clothing to lessen the impact of transportation and help UK factories become more sustainable. We invested so much time and energy trying to follow this path but ultimately, to get the quality and capacity we needed, we had to move our manufacture to Europe. It was an extremely difficult decision at the time but it’s the best decision we ever made.
We now work with a factory in Lithuania that make fantastic garments and are keen to be challenged on their environmental impact. They source 100% of their energy from renewables, and we’re working with them on a trial to chemically recycle our offcuts from the manufacturing process.
But our differentiator is that we look way beyond suppliers and are building a whole ecosystem to develop the most sustainable clothing we can. This includes everyone from the people making the fibres and yarns for our clothing, through to our manufacturing partners, our customers, recycling partners, academia and even some of our competitors. Collaboration across this value chain is leading to genuine innovation to improve our clothing.
How has Covid affected your business?
Our team works in three separate locations around the UK so we try to meet regularly to strengthen relationships and plan next steps. The restrictions on travel during the lockdowns have meant we’ve moved all our meetings online. It’s been a good substitute but there’s no beating real face-time and we’re looking forward to getting back to in-person meet-ups.
Both lockdowns also had significant impacts on the custom side of our business, which thrives on mass participation events. In March 2020 we saw our web hits literally drop to zero within the space of a couple of days after lockdown was announced. Our custom orders have recovered well after each lockdown and the silver lining is that lockdown one forced us to accelerate our work on launching Presca as a B2C brand. Since launching last summer we’ve exceeded all our sales targets and seen quarter-on-quarter growth in this revenue stream. So much so that we now see B2C as our big growth area going forward and will be focussing on this with our future growth plans.
What kind of impact is your business having and how do you measure it?
We’ve calculated the lifecycle emissions of each of our products, for the manufacturing stage, but also the shipping, in-use and end of life phases. This has allowed us to compare our garments to the industry standard. We have installed a widget on our website to illustrate the difference buying our clothing makes, compared to our competitors. This allows us to calculate the amount of bottles we’ve recycled, emissions we’ve avoided, and water saved.
Other impacts we’ve made:
We’ve eliminated single-use plastics from our operations
In January this year, we became the first climate-positive sportswear brand. We offset the residual emissions for all our clothing, as well as planting a tree for each piece sold.
All our tier 1 suppliers are signed up to our Code of Conduct which mandates ethical treatment of staff
We’re aiming for full circularity in all our new products by the end of 2022
When you were little what did you want to be when you grew up?
Rob: A Vet
Guy: Either an Olympic Sailor or Adventurer/Mountaineer
If you weren’t doing this, what would be your plan B?
Rob: I’d be setting up another business to make positive impact in the clothing/textiles space. Either that, or setting up a regenerative organic farm!
Guy: I would be splitting my time between various roles, social mobility charity work, yacht racing coaching/delivery, business analysis and change management.
What would you save in a fire?
Rob: My kids (and wife if she couldn’t save herself!)
Guy: My dog, cat, bike and maybe wife…
Who is your role model/ greatest influence? And why?
Rob: My grandfather was a tank commander in the second world war. He saw all his best friends killed and was the only officer in his regiment to make it all the way through the war. Yet he had the very best outlook on life and was grateful for every day that he lived.
Guy: Chrissie Wellington (multiple Ironman World Champion), incredible positive attitude, natural ability, sense of adventure. Has taken huge risks with life and continues to deliver success in sport and business.
What is your happy track?
Rob: Peaches and Cream – John Butler Trio
Guy: Insomnia by Faithless or Lookin’ Out My Back Door by Creedence Clearwater Revival
What are your company values?
Rob: “What’s the first thing you do when you fall off your bike? Get back on the bike”. My daughters hear that a lot …!
Guy: Every customer touchpoint is an opportunity.
What are you most looking forward to in 2021?
Rob: Growing and positively affecting our amazing community - both our customers and our Presca team.
Guy: Growth of our community and building beautiful products, messaging, and content that will really serve them.