Startup interview: Lick CEO and Co-founder, Lucas London

RTIH: Tell us about yourself

LL: I’m the CEO and Co-founder of Lick, the online home decor brand, and I’m fast running out of rooms to decorate in my house. 

Unsurprisingly, I’ve completely caught the painting bug. I think my fiance might soon put a stop to me “testing colours”.. so the team should be prepared for a weekly change of backdrop in our new office to satisfy my cravings. 

RTIH: What was the inspiration behind setting the company up?

LL: Starting my career in finance I moved to work in high growth startups, launching the Australian marketplace Airtasker in Europe as VP International. While I was there, I became acutely aware of how the decorating industry is dated, and how ripe the $93 billion paint and wallpaper industry is for disruption. 

My co-founder, Sam Bradley, and I decided to focus on building a direct-to-consumer home decor brand that replaces the stresses of decorating with a simplified journey and customer-centric experience. 

Our products are created with the modern lifestyle in mind: from the durable and low-odour paints, artisan wallpaper to the high quality decorating tools and our true-to-colour stick-on samples, all delivered right to your door, we are determined to make it easier to decorate than ever before.

RTIH: What has been the industry reaction thus far?

LL: We’ve been thrilled with the traction so far. It’s clear that customers are looking for their homes to be more of an outlet for self-expression than ever before - a trend we see outlasting the pandemic. 

Industry analysts are forecasting that online purchasing of paint will normalise at a 100% increase on pre-Covid levels - meaning our immediate market opportunity has doubled, with online adoption accelerating. This has been reflected in the volumes we’ve seen for our first few months trading, which is very exciting.

Our decorating community is also growing, which is great to see. They’re all passionate about sharing their transformations, offering advice to others and generally joining in the decorating conversation. Our ambition is to build the business with them at every step of the way. 

RTIH: What has been your biggest challenge/setback?

LL: The combination of our higher initial traction and our suppliers closing their doors temporarily due to Covid-19, has resulted in some temporary stock and supply chain challenges but these have now significantly improved and we are now ready to scale. 

“We’ve been thrilled with the traction so far. It’s clear that customers are looking for their homes to be more of an outlet for self-expression than ever before - a trend we see outlasting the coronavirus pandemic”

RTIH: What are the biggest challenges facing the omnichannel retail sector right now?

LL: We’ve seen many larger retailers struggle to adopt e-commerce at the rate which customers have expected during the past few months. 

On a positive note, customers are seeing previously clunky online experiences improve at a rapid rate, often at a pace of weeks on what would have taken many years. We think it can only be a promising change that brands are shaping their experiences around customer needs and desires

RTIH: What's the best question about your company or the market asked of you recently by an investor?

LL: By an investor: Are you concerned about low frequency purchasing?

As a home decor brand, and not a paint company, we are building a business to help customers build the perfect canvas for their spaces - effectively the post-construction, pre-furniture stage. It’s why we launched with both a paint and wallpaper offering, paving the way for expansion into other decor verticals as we evolve.

Creating a brand that scales up as we enter new categories is crucial to our future plans, and avoids us being pigeonholed into one particular niche. We want to delight our customers at each touchpoint so that they know they can expect the same simple, painless process with each new product we introduce. 

By a customer: Where did Tash get her jumper from? Tash, our Lead Colour Consultant, does an Instagram takeover every Tuesday (in between her day job conducting one-to-one video calls with our customers) where she answers each and every decorating question from the community, live. 

We want to be the customer’s ally all the way through the decorating process, by helping everyone choose the perfect colour in no time at all. While 99% of the questions are always brilliant and on-topic, every week Tash’s jumper gets a mention.

RTIH: What can we expect to see from your company over the next 12 months?

LL: Lick Pro is our trade offering and we’re rolling out some innovative ways for our trade partners to order, including instant reordering by SMS. We’ve listened to these professionals and come up with a proposition that is tailored to their specific needs.