the brothers blog

A new year means new designs here at Gandys. To kick the year off to a flying start we previewed our limited edition range which will be available this Spring\Summer, which proved to be popular amongst Gandys fans…watch this space for their launch soon!

We are just reflecting on our year and discussing the New Years Resolution for Gandys...

A couple of years ago when Paul and I created Gandys aged 21 & 23, we had a simple vision to create something positive for others from our own negative circumstances.

We wanted to find something that would encompass our unique upbringing of travelling and volunteering around the world. The idea then came for flip flops which symbolizes all of our travels and the journey we have been on, in which since then everything from our logo to the designs of flip flops represents the different cultures and experiences of all of our travels. We have personally volunteered and assisted with funding of various projects in India & Sri Lanka places we previously spent travelling.

From day one, even when we were small with one of us sleeping on the sofa in our flat we have something back to help others and as we continue to grow our attitude will not change but it will mean we can do more.

When we started we didn't doubt our random idea of flip flops, we just knew if we focused & put in hard work, alongside a good attitude we would progress. If we ever have a bad day and get stressed out the other would pull the other threw, along with surrounding ourselves with positive people too in and out of work.

So since starting out of our bedroom 2 years ago with no experience in fashion, retail, footwear, logistics, distribution and many other things we have come along way not without many mistakes though, so thank you for all the patience, we have learnt a lot to say the least.

We have walked around Downing Street and met with our Prime minister David Cameron in our Gandys, managed to get our flip flops in the Worlds best department store Selfridges, we now even have them available on Sir Richard Bransons Necker Island, we went back to Sri Lanka the place where we lost everything in the tsunami. We are now launching this year into some of the best stores around the World. This year Gandys will be launched into over 20 new countries, we hope that our message and product will be recognised around the World.

Like most we will try to cut down on the beers (Unless at another amazing music festival this Summer) and chocolate after a great Christmas with our family, along with a better diet and more exercise this year we have a resolution that we will continue to work relentlessly for this year. We know a lot of people also look for a new job in the New Year as you don't want to go back into your mundane routine, this is something we won't be doing but if you fancy a fresh challenge come join us at Gandys and make part of our resolution yours too then say hello or go start something by yourself and again you can say hello if you want a point in the right direction with something (Not that we know everything but we know what mistakes we have made).

Other than the homes we have already supported, the ONE BIG RESOLUTION for us is opening our very own children's home in memory of our parents for the 10th year anniversary of the tsunami and others affected by natural disasters or simply left in a vulnerable situation! All of the help from our customers, media, retailers, staff, brand ambassadors, friends & family have helped us even closer to reaching our dreams and hope that you continue on this journey with us.

A resolution only has to start small but if you believe in it share it with the World and you can only hope they listen.

Rob & Paul

Lots of great memories and successes this year, but we've managed to narrow down these moments into a Top 13 of 2013. Throughout December we'll be sharing these with you guys....starting today with #1 'Gandys Giving Trip to India'.

Sometimes it's the simple things in life that make a difference...giving a piece of fruit, a smile or a hug. Rob & Paul made their annual trip to India, supporting children who need it the most. This year they visited the Mumbai slums and volunteered in a local school in Goa. As this year comes to a close it is moments like these we look back at remember what the Gandys journey is all about. Explore And Inspire.

#2 'Gandys go Underground'

At the beginning of June, we launched out first marketing campaign. Over 300 posters were seen at over 60 central underground stations - creating a successful brand awareness across the UK capital!

#3 'Festivals'

Summer 2013, well what can we say...not only one of the hottest but also one of the craziest! Up and down the UK we had the Gandys globe out spreading some flip flop loving, and sharing about our brand with lots of lovely festival goers. Some of the Gandys team favourites were Latitude, Bestival, Isle Of Wight, V-fest and Boardmasters...Massive thank you to all involved! Until next year...

#4 'Necker Red'

Our first international stockist and collaboration was with none other than adventurer and entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson and the rest of his Virgin team who in full force put on their flip flops to mark the exciting day. It inspired us to rename our red collection ‘Necker Red’ after the renowned island and they are now the only flip flops available to buy there.

What a way to celebrate international flip flop day?!

#5 'Youth ambassadors for Diana Awards'

It was a huge privilege when the brothers became the first Youth Ambassadors for the Diana Awards. Not only did they meet the Prime Minister at Downing Street, but they presented Sham Mamoun, a teenager from Syria who has dedicated her life to ending the unrest in Syria, with the 40,000th Diana Award.

#6 'Front Page of the Evening Standard'

Come rain shine and snow, we wear Gandys!

#7 'Winning WGSN global fashion award'

Winning best ‘footwear and accessories design team’ award at WGSN Global Fashion Awards placed Gandys firmly on the fashion map as a summer staple..

#8 'Sri Lanka Trip'

This was the brothers first return back to where they lost their parents in the 2004 Tsunami. The reason they returned was for more hopeful reasons though, to mark the start of our exciting collaboration with Monsoon Accessorize. The combined mission: to educate over 1000 children for a year. It also marked the brothers second meeting with David Cameron, who whole heartedly supports the exciting venture.

The new collection is inspired from the same place where our drive to make a difference comes from, with Indian sub continent themes, innovative designs and creative colours.

S/S 2014 Monsoon Accessorize and Gandys collaboration is set to make a stamp in trend, comfort and social responsibility.

#9 'Gandys Pop Up Shop - Boxpark'

Our first ever pop up store in No 13, Boxpark, Shoreditch, LONDON. Giving us our first little taster of when we get our own store! We also teamed up with STA travel and one lucky customer won a £25O voucher to spend in their Boxpark store.

#1O 'Celebrities love their Gandys'

2013... the year celebrities discovered Gandys and did they do it in style... Jessica Alba, Niall and One Direction, Michelle Keegan, Jamie Oliver, Jessie J, Little Mix (to name a few), everyone’s jumping on the band wagon with their Gandys.

#11 'Bedroom in Brixton'

Gandys started with the brothers in their one bedroom flat in Brixton, to their kitchen in Clapham with a few more people and now we have our first ever official office! Complete with table football and a ping pong table... It’s been the biggest and most exciting move to date.

#12 'Selling 7O,OOO pairs'

This year we have sold 7O,OOO pairs through all our independents, corporate stores on the high street such as SoleTrader, Topman, Schuh, Selfirdges, ASOS and USC, and online to our customers via our website, so a massive thank you to our customers for making this happen, we hope that you are enjoying your Gandys! Next year we hope to make it even bigger!

Niall from One Direction has been spotted rocking out in the LA sunshine wearing his Durban Green Gandys.

Get Jessica Alba's trendsetting look! Jessica has been spotted shopping in her hometown of LA, in the well fittingly named 'LA Purple' style!

Paul and I really didn't expect such an overwhelming response for our first blog 'Filling your parents shoes.' It was viewed by almost 1 MILLION people - we are extremely humbled and touched by all of your support! For all of you who shared and liked the blog post, thank you. All of your kind words meant a lot to us and really helped us through the whole trip.

Paul and I were planning on writing a blog every day but unfortunately it was just too challenging to do. We know a lot of you have been waiting but here we are... I am writing this on the return of our trip. It has been an action packed trip and we have barely had a spare moment to stop but we want to share some of the highs and lows we had during this incredible yet emotional trip.

The start of our journey was really tough for both of us, and a bit of a shock. We’ve both been working really hard recently so neither of us had thought too much about returning to Sri Lanka, but as soon as we were there it suddenly hit us.

To start with, we were our usual chirpy selves! We both enjoyed racing around in a hectic city in rickshaws and visiting some of the projects our Accessorize partnership will go on to fund. Paul and I laughed about the difference in rickshaw prices - for a one mile journey one driver will charge 500 rupees, while another will charge 10,000! Some tourists might get angry about this but we realise that they're just trying to make a living.

At the first project, we met some incredible kids that were all filled with such energy and excitement! Paul tried his hand at teaching chemistry but before long the teacher recommended that she took over again if the kids wanted to pass their exams! The children's energy rubbed off on us and we played some football with the kids at the end of the day, but we had to retire when the heat got the better of us.

At the end of the day, we met a young boy who had also been caught in the Tsunami and lost both of his parents. When he was just 5 years old he was taken into care by relatives, but due to bad care he was now in a home. The locals explained our story to him and even though there was a bit of a language barrier, we saw his face drop once he heard our experience, and saw tears well up in his eyes. We only knew his pain too well.

Then, we found out that after the tragedy of the tsunami he had gone on to be abused too. Hearing that after an horrific tragedy things didn't really get much better was incredibly upsetting for us. This really highlighted for us why Gandys exists - so that any child will be cared for properly after experiencing such an event. This young boy particularly liked cricket so we are buying him some new cricket gear as well as paying for his cricket coaching to give him an outlet. Having something to focus your energy on is something Paul and I have done over the years via sport and now Gandys.

Our rollercoaster trip then reached another high the following day, when we had the chance to meet David Cameron at Colombo Cricket Club, where we also met the worlds best test bowler of all time, Muralitharan. The inspiring player has a great charitable project in the South near to where we were affected by the tsunami, so they have a lot of young victims in their care.

We met another young man who had lost both parents in the tsunami, and then had gone on to be captain of the Under 19 national team at the latest World cup! This young man deserves huge credit for turning his life around. This was all possible because he was given an opportunity and because he worked very hard to take this chance. We had a great day at the cricket club and it was brilliant to gain recognition and support from our Prime Minister for all our hard work and effort.

As I said, we had some great moments but we were very aware of being back in the country that took everything from us. The moment that it really hit us though was meeting a young boy who would have been close to Paul's age upon our last experience. It's hard to explain but looking at this young boy and seeing his distraught look and the fear in his eyes was something we were only too familiar with.

That day had been really long, we had been travelling for most of the day and we couldn’t sleep on our first night. We were up all night watching out the window to make sure if something was going to happen we were ready. As children we learnt upon our travels that mother nature is the most powerful thing out there and we certainly experienced that firsthand.

Watching the disaster in the Philippines unfold has been horrendous for us - we really feel their pain. Seeing this just before going on our trip dismissed all our thoughts that it would be a safe trip, as we started to get paranoid that something could happen again. This might have been a selfish thought perhaps, but it was almost impossible to not think about it all. On the middle of the second night our anxiety actually led to us both waking up and we were considering just calling it a day to come home.

At that moment, we thought back to all the messages of support we had received on Facebook and those words gave us the strength to keep calm and carry on!

We continued our trip though and kept looking at other projects with Peter Simon of Monsoon and Accessorize. Peter was a complete pleasure the whole trip and we learnt an awful lot by listening to his years of experience in retail, fashion, and ethical trading, which has enabled him to do so many charitable projects over the years. Something that made Paul and I really smile - as well as a lot of children too - was seeing the founder of this global retailer start singing a rendition of the Beatles "Yellow Submarine" after the children asked him to. It was great to see so many smiles as the day went on as there weren't that many upon arrival as within this house these young girls had been exposed to situations no one should have to deal with and some of the case studies were truly horrific!

Upon this particular visit we learnt so much and could draw so many comparisons, what was quite interesting was that these young girls now make beautiful jewelry. When they start designing they are very dark pieces of jewelry, but as time passes they turn into stunning bright pieces - which shows that they are recovering and in a better place. The girls also use a lotus as their logo because it resembles how some things may start in muddy waters but eventually they can emerge to become something of beauty and hope. For us such strong meanings behind their designs and the significance of their logo really captured us as it is something we have applied ourselves to everything we have done with Gandys. We put a footprint in our logo to represent ‘Footprints in the Sand,’ our mum’s favorite poem, and to taking a step in the right direction. We also put a Kingfisher in the logo as it was our Dad's favourite beer whilst in India, and we felt that lots of bright colours showed our vibrant upbringing!

Whilst we were there we were asked to explain to many of these young girls how we had managed to take a negative situation and work towards something positive. After we had shared with them, we were told that they were completely moved to hear about our experiences - it shows that it doesn't matter where you are in the world anyone can be exposed to a tragedy, but there can also be light at the end of the tunnel. One of the young girls cleverly asked how we have achieved what he have and how she herself could do the same - Again, a touching question that we answered with "Belief and perseverance will take anyone to their dreams!"

We also had one beautiful young girl innocently ask "Please can I have an education?" which instantly melted and broke everyone's heart in the room! This is why my brother and I set ourselves such a tall order! We have had to learn an awful lot of recent in order to do what we now do, and we have pushed ourselves by working around the clock. We constantly challenge ourselves to do things we have never done before, and to know that our hard work will now see us distributed around 17 new countries that will help others, like those we have we met on this incredible trip, makes it all worthwhile.

We also learnt something great from Peter of Monsoon and Accessorize, that every month he challenges himself to have at least one experience he has never had in his life. On this occasion this may have been singing 'Yellow Submarine' to a lot of children! What a great way to live, to try something new every month that may inspire, and bring a smile to someone else. This is now something we will be sharing with our team in hope that they apply this rule to their own lives.

It has been a trip of a lifetime and something that started so raw, actually left us wanting to stay longer - we even walked down the beach on the last day! This has been due to everyone that has got behind our brand and our vision from day one, as well as the welcoming hospitality and beautiful smiles of the Sri Lankan people that we have met.

We thought this trip may help us to forget. It didn't. We know that the scars will always be a part of us and represent the life that we have lived….therefore we show ours in the hope that you can see healing is possible.

Rob & Paul

Paul and I are about to return to Sri Lanka, the place where we lost our parents. We have decided to write a blog about this experience, because a lot of people have told our story, but we haven't yet told our story. We want to tell this part of the story

Writing this blog has been very challenging for us as it stirs up a complete mix of emotions. I have already written this first entry many times, only to delete it and start writing it again... Today, we are going back to Sri Lanka, a country that took everything from us upon our last visit. This is going to be one of the toughest things we have ever done, but it will also be one of the most rewarding as from our darkest moments, there is now some light.

When we were younger, Paul and I were fortunate enough to travel around the sub continent, volunteering and enjoying new cultures. We were given a truly unique education that gave us an appreciation for other cultures and an awareness of how people around the world lived. Unfortunately, during our travels we were in Sri Lanka when the Boxing Day tsunami happened. That day changed our lives forever. Tragically we lost our parents and then had to find our own way home along with our younger brother and sister. After all the devastation and being left with nothing, we somehow found the strength to get home, using all the lessons we had learnt from our alternative upbringing.

Even then, straight after such devastating tragedy, moments of generosity deeply touched us. A memory that stands out for us was the unity shown by all the local people. After losing so much, local Sri Lankans were helping Western people and fellow Sri Lankans. No matter what your religion or ethnicity was, people just wanted to help.

In particular there was a local boy who had lost everything, including his mother, who decided to help us. We remember him saying that he had nothing left so he wanted to help us. This selflessness and courage deserves our deep gratitude, but we also want to honour his bravery by trying to make a difference in the lives of others.

We were fortunate enough to return to family and friends who helped us to rebuild our lives. Since then we have been searching to do something that allows us to continue with our travels and use all the important lessons that we have already learnt. Almost two years ago, we came up with the idea of a flip flop brand that would help children around the world.

We are returning to Sri Lanka to go on a trip with Peter Simon, the inspiring founder of Monsoon & Accessorize. Peter was born in Sri Lanka and started his business from humble beginnings on a market stall at Portobello market. Peter now supports projects around the world through Monsoon and is a dedicated philanthropist. We believe that Peter shares our ethical values so when he approached us about a collaboration between Accessorize and Gandys we jumped at the chance. This is the first collaboration Accessorize has done in 30 years with another brand and through this global distribution agreement we will provide an education for over a thousand children in the next three years. We are looking forward to seeing the positive impact that this partnership will have on the lives of many children.

Nine years ago when we were travelling home from Sri Lanka, we didn't have any shoes on our feet. Now, we are returning to Sri Lanka not only with shoes on our own feet, but with a flip flop brand and a global partnership that will help thousands of children have a brighter future.

Life can be what you choose to make of it, but we now live by a simple rule - Explore & Inspire

Rob & Paul

Last night the Gandys team attended the launch of the 2014 National Enterprise Challenge, alongside 'Dragon's Den' investor Theo Paphitis and one of his retail chains - Rymans. Gandys launched their first design competition across secondary schools in the UK. Over 20,000 students will be taking part, with a chance of one of the designs being made as part of the Gandys range next summer. We look forward to being part of this really exciting challenge, and working with many great young people with bright ideas.

Rob and Paul were invited to talk on BBC London news about becoming the youth ambassadors for the Diana Awards, and about the plans of building the children's home.