A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF WHAT GOES ON BEHIND THE SCREEN...

If you follow Wop-Wops on social media, you’ll know that we love to interact with our Wop-Wops Community of Farmers, Equine enthusiasts, Electricians,Builders, Mechanics, Game Keepers and everyone in-between! Over the past twelve months we have built up a great community on our social media; especially on our TikTok page, where you can ask various questions about the brand and get a personal response from myself.

Following on from our social media, I felt we ought to create a blog for those of you who perhaps haven’t felt the drag towards TikTok and would rather stay away from all the parody dances and trends.

So here it goes…. a bit more about Wop-Wops, our achievements, plans and long-term goals!

I would like to thank everyone who has bought from us so far, none of this would be possible without you! We started with our first shirt, the ‘Rangiora Work Shirt in Pink & Blue’…. What a popular shirt that was! We ordered 500 in the late spring of 2021 and launched the brand in September. We soon realised we would need to order a lot more shirts and start to expand our product range, so we started work on colour variations and new products. Bringing out the popular Rangiora in Green/Green just before Christmas, along with some plain colours for the more conservative of you. In addition to the shirts, we could see there was a demand for the popular Harlequin style rugby shorts, only sold in NewZealand and expensive to import to the UK.  So, we launched the first two colours of our very own Harlequin style rugby shorts…during the Autumn of 2021.  I know, it’s not a time when much of the UK are wearing shorts, but that’s one benefit in having a large following from the agricultural community; they don’t do ‘normal’ so we quickly sold them!

With a small but adequate product range we decided we would have our first ‘trade event’, at the AgriSocial Tractor Run (Thame, Oxford).  We were unsure how the event would go due to it being December, a new brand and having a product range aimed for spring/summer. I am delighted to tell you that it went incredibly well considering all that was against us. We had agreed we would donate 15% of all sales made that day which were contributed towards the chosen charity, Thames Valley Air Ambulance, bringing the total raised for the event to £20,000. A massive achievement for Jesse Smith and his team!

What a way to end 2021, not the best year for most of us…..to say the least

Starting 2022… a new chapter for everyone!

Again, thanks to all our early followers we were able to continue into the New Year with new product ideas and even the thought of attending our first ‘large’ trade event. In early January we started communicating with ‘TheGame Fair’ and began to start putting together a plan for attending. By mid-February we had decided we would take the plunge and book a 3x15 metre pitch for the event held at the end of July. With the Game Fair looming over us, I decided we would take a trip up to the NEC,  have a look around and get inspiration for our trade stand. We spent the morning snooping around the stands not really finding anything that stood out or that fitted with Wop-Wops. We then came across the HighlandOutdoors/Ridgeline stand. Whilst taking some photos of how they had displayed their stand (not quite our style, but certainly the most fitting we had seen at the show), their Brand Manager approached me with his hand out as to shake hands.As I had no idea who he was at the time I thought I was about to get some stern words regarding the photography of their stand! But to my amazement he knew exactly who we were and was very excited to meet us! We were introduced to a few members of the show team and he informed us that they were interested in working with us. So we agreed we would get in contact at a later date and arrange a meeting to discuss the possibilities.

Sales were slow through January, February and even into March, we knew something had to be done to turn this around quickly! So, I set to work on ourTikTok Account and Instagram profiles, which really meant putting as much content online as I could with the hope some of you would notice. I am unsure if you gave in having seen my face on your ‘For You Page’ and thought if you started buying some of our stuff it would shut me up or you just genuinely liked our gear!? I am going to assume you liked what we were selling. As sales started to pick up, and we gathered a larger following and more funds to invest in new products ready for The Game Fair, what could go wrong…? Well what I didn’t mention was at the beginning of 2022 we filed for a trade mark in order to protect the name and logo.

On the face of it, a very simple and standard task for any new business that wanted to protect their name and image. Once the application is filed it is checked and then put on record for any other companies to appeal over a 2-month period. With 5 days left (including a bank holiday weekend) of our 2-month period we had very nearly secured our trademark registration, that was until we received an objection from a particular well known sportswear brand! Not something we had even thought about as we were so sure that our name and kiwi bird design were unique to us here in the UK. I must say a very naive way to think, as this company also had a similar logo to ours that hadn’t been used for around 10 years so had not been on our radar as a particular threat. So, with only 2 working days out of the 5 left we set to work with our legal team to understand whether it would be cost effective to fight the case or accept defeat and design a new logo. After all we were known, and still are known, for the catchy brand name and not the logo.

It was made clear from the start that we stood a chance on winning, but it would likely be costly and to only pursue if the brand had built our reputation surrounding the logo, obviously it was a no brainer that the money was much better spent on purchasing stock and building the brand rather than saving a logo for the sake of my ego. You may be putting two and two together now having noticed our new logo is of a Dabchick bird. The new logo was thought up around the dinner table, my father suggested the idea of using a Dabchick bird as it had a much stronger connection for the brand than the Kiwi bird. I hear you questioning this, well the Dabchick happens to be an endangered bird in New Zealand, as well as being the local mascot to the village I grew up in. It seemed to be the perfect fit, so we set about creating the perfect design and creating the new logo. I must say that I’m rather fond of the new logo and find it portrays a much sharper feel to the brand, so I’m rather grateful for what happened, despite it seeming like the world had ended at the time!

This takes us to the middle of April where I will leave you to question what happened with Ridgeline, how The Game Fair turned out, how our new logo turned out and all the interesting bits in-between. Until next time guys and girls!

Have a cracker,

Jake Flett,

Founder