Two Decades of Nicholas Deakins
Nicholas Deakins celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, marked by a new clothing launch and the return of some of the brand’s most iconic footwear styles.
Nick Cook visited Deakins’ recently expanded premises in Leeds to find out more from the men behind the brand.
Nick Cook visited Deakins’ recently expanded premises in Leeds to find out more from the men behind the brand.
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| From left; Lloyd James Tate, Stuart Roberts & Craig Nicholas Tate |
Like many a good menswear story the success of Nicholas Deakins has its roots in friendships and fashions forged during the heady days of the early 90s club scene.The fact that it’s still around today and enjoying the kind of profile it does with the likes of Oi Polloi, Peggs & Sons, Pavilion and Van Mildert, however, is a testament to the adaptability, determination and talent of the men behind the brand.
The first collection of Nicholas Deakins boots, matching commando soles with ski-hook and eyelet fastenings and elastic side panels, was launched for autumn/winter 1991. Manufactured in Northampton by WJ Brooks, the range retailed at £85 per pair and with a run of just 500 pairs becomes an instant sell-out with some of the best known menswear stores in the North of England. “They say that you shouldn’t design for yourself,” says Craig Nicholas Tate. “But with that first boot we absolutely did. At that time we were all clubbers, going backwards and forwards between Back to Basics in Leeds and the Hacienda in Manchester, and at the time you couldn’t get into those clubs in trainers. It really was a case of the right thing at the right time.” It was also a case of the right stockists in the right places. Tate was working in Strand in Leeds,one of the region’s most sought after stockists of the time for any brand with serious fashion credentials, and owner David Dalby put down an order for around 60 pairs. Middlesbrough’s Psyche followed suit, and with the Flannels-owned Life also on board in the first season little more recommendation was needed for other stores to follow suit. “Once our sales guys got asked who else was carrying the brand the whole run sold out within a week,” says Tate. “This was also at a time when clothing stores weren’t really doing that much footwear, and if they were the shoes were treated as an add-on, and were usually on the floor underneath the clothes. I’d like to think that we were one of the brands that got them off the floor and onto the table tops.”The £85 price tag also pitched the brand at a level which was aspirational yet accessible for its target market, with other popular brands of the day generally falling well below or significantly above in terms of pricing. Although the original partnership was dissolved in 1992, the brand continued under Tate’s ownership, with Stuart Roberts, now the brand’s logistics manager and a core member of the Deakins team, coming on board at around this time. “I think we met at the Hacienda or Back to Basics,” says Roberts, who, with Craig Nicholas Tate often out of the country on design trips, is one of the backbones of today’s business. “There were so few of us in the early days, and over the years I’ve done pretty much everything apart from design.”
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| The boot that started it all |
Despite the company’s perceived size, and the fact that it now produces in excess of 200,000 units a year, Nicholas Deakins today employs just seven full time staff in its Leeds headquarters, meaning that every member of the team needs a fully rounded understanding of how the company and its brands work.The years which followed the brand’s 1991 launch were characterised by hard graft and many memorable milestones including the opening of a retail store in Leeds’ historic Corn Exchange
development, and the brand’s first steps into export.“Opening the store gave us that interaction with the customer which you can then use in terms of design,
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| Nicholas Deakins clothing |
really finding out what’s working,” says Tate. “It was all very hands-on, but also invaluable, and we’d be driving down to Northampton every Friday to replenish the stock in the store.”
With the collection growing each season
Nicholas Deakins made its first appearance at GDS in the mid 90s, and at its peak was exporting to 13 countries worldwide including Israel, New Zealand, Japan and Hong Kong. Amongst the more memorable moments of the period, says Craig Tate, was a party thrown for the brand in Tokyo to celebrate the signing of a new Japanese distribution
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| Nicholas Deakins Showroom |
deal. “Looking back, we were just a couple of young guys from Leeds who suddenly found themselves guests of honour at a party full of models, Japanese poets and musicians. It was quite a big deal, and I don’t think we could quite believe it was happening
to us.”
Memorable moments have in fact been in
no short supply over the years, with Tate also
recalling the time the brand first made a bespoke pair of size 15 boots for boxer Lennox Lewis. “Our London showroom at the time was next door to his PR, so we ended up doing a special pair for him,” says Tate. “Because he’s so huge he was always in High and Mighty, so he was absolutely made up to get something made for him by us. He was also an
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| Deakins Showroom |
absolutely lovely guy, and the only celebrity we’ve dealt with who was always happy to pay for what we produced.”Hearing that Tate would be in the US in the run-up to his fight with Evander Holyfield, Lewis then invited Tate to visit him at his training camp in Big Bear. “I watched him sparring at this log cabin on the edge of a lake, and then joined him and his
family for dinner in the house he’d rented. Eight of us from the UK ended up going to see the fight at Madison Square Garden. It was quite a weekend.”
In terms of the development of the brand
itself, however, the last decade has seen just as many
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| Deakins Showroom |
milestones as those first 10 years, with Lloyd Tate
being the person who would set in motion changes
which have seen Nicholas Deakins develop from a
one brand footwear business into a company that
now produces three distinct footwear collections
and, from autumn/winter 2011, two of its own
clothing lines.
“When I joined the company in 2001 we
were at a point where we had to think about how we
could grow the business without damaging the
brand,” says Lloyd Tate, the company’s UK sales
manager. “The distribution policy for Nicholas
Deakins was one account per town, but for
something more commercial we thought we could
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| Nicholas Tate Showroom |
have more.” The year 2000, then, saw the launch of which would also allow the company to capitalise on the growing trend for more casual fashion footwear styles. With an eye also on the top end of the market, 2004 saw the launch of Nicholas Tate, a collection with a strong heritage feel which now sits at the top end of the company’s offer. Nicholas Deakins clothing was launched in 2008 and is being
redefined for autumn/winter 2011, with the debut Deakins collection launching for the same season.
“As well as it being a significant season in
terms of our anniversary, autumn/winter 2011 is
also a big season for us in terms of redefining each of the brands,” says Lloyd. “The changes we’ve made
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| Nicholas Tate Showroom |
to both the footwear and the clothing collections are about strengthening the identity of each line,
and making it very clear where each of the
collections should sit.”The classic boot design which started the whole Nicholas Deakins story, for example, will now be part of the Nicholas Tate collection for autumn/winter, underlining the brand’s focus on top-end heritage design. Nicholas Deakins clothing, meanwhile, has been refocused on classic designs with a heritage twist and features a strong focus on
key outerwear pieces, while the new Deakins
clothing line features a younger utility look across jackets, logo tees, hoodies, trousers and denim.For the first time each of the three brands is being shown from its own dedicated showroom at the Leeds head offices, following major expansion of the premises earlier this year.
The newly refurbished interiors of the Victorian era-building marry perfectly with the brand’s very British ethos, with fittings chosen to reflect the particular attributes of each brand. January this year, meanwhile, saw the opening of a new London showroom in Shoreditch, a move that has already helped southern and midlands sales manager David Jackson open accounts with the likes of Peggs and Son, Zee & Co, Therapy and Author. The new Deakins collection will also be showing for the first time at national trade show Moda Footwear at the NEC, Birmingham, next month. “I think we’re all really excited about the potential for all of the brands this season,” says Tate. “I still feel like a kid in a sweet shop whenever samples come in, and when you see something come together in the way I think these collections have it’s still every bit as rewarding as it was when we first started out. If we ever lost that enthusiasm it would be time to move on.” •
The newly refurbished interiors of the Victorian era-building marry perfectly with the brand’s very British ethos, with fittings chosen to reflect the particular attributes of each brand. January this year, meanwhile, saw the opening of a new London showroom in Shoreditch, a move that has already helped southern and midlands sales manager David Jackson open accounts with the likes of Peggs and Son, Zee & Co, Therapy and Author. The new Deakins collection will also be showing for the first time at national trade show Moda Footwear at the NEC, Birmingham, next month. “I think we’re all really excited about the potential for all of the brands this season,” says Tate. “I still feel like a kid in a sweet shop whenever samples come in, and when you see something come together in the way I think these collections have it’s still every bit as rewarding as it was when we first started out. If we ever lost that enthusiasm it would be time to move on.” •