Electric Founder & Creative Director, Mark Woolley discusses the opportunities lockdown has presented for himself and Electric.
"The lockdown for has been a massively creative time because I feel like it’s been several years since I’ve had the time to get back to the heart of it and think 'right, what are we really about?'
I’ve spent every day working on Electric, we’ve worked on 3 new product formulations, which I'll be providing more details on over the coming months.
During lockdown I’ve done loads of art. That’s been my creative outlet whilst I haven’t had models and clients in front of me. We’re working towards artwork being represented on our bottles, in a similar way to how artwork goes on to a band’s album cover. Everything that we’ve got going into our formulations needs representing in the ultimate way.
Since before lockdown, we’ve been working on a juice bar concept for the salons. Where we are using natural ingredients in our products, we’ll doing the same with our juices. We’ll be using fresh UK produce that we’re growing ourselves to create fresh juices to serve in the bar in the salon. This is will be under the banner of a new exciting sub-brand: Mammoth Juice.
Although it’s a cliché, it really has been a time to press the reset button. We’ve had time to think and develop lots of new ideas, which we aim to turn into reality pretty quickly.
We’re establishing a new site in Soho, London to launch Electric Space. A shared workspace concept which I’m really excited about that will be launching soon.
We’re starting to earmark work that will be done in Brighton, Reading and Liverpool, as well as Oxford, which will also be a shared workspace: Current Works By Electric. This gives us new opportunities to work with people with fresh ideas. It’s a really exciting time.
I got some emails yesterday asking “what’s got you through lockdown?” Honestly, it hasn’t been too much of a struggle of me but I have been relying on plenty of Yorkshire Tea and Red Stripe Lager to get me through it! In all serious though, it’s been a great opportunity to take the time to catch up with our people, sharing ideas together and plan for exciting times ahead post-lockdown.
Like everyone, 2020 has thrown some real curveballs at us. But by the end of summer we should hopefully be returning back to normal and our focus is making the second half of the year a real success for Electric, moving forward in the way that we’d always planned."
- Mark Woolley