DAN ZELL CO-FOUNDER OF THE LONDON SOCK EXCHANGE & THE JAMES BOND LICENCE HOLDERS

Article written by Peter Brooker

For an episode of the podcast THERE WILL BE BOND, Pete Brooker got the opportunity to talk to one of the co-founders of The London Sock Exchange about what is involved when it comes to licensing a James Bond product. You can catch the entire episode over on Apple or Spotify later this month. (Links below). You can also check out the website to order your James Bond Socks here.

DZ: So my friend and business partner, Ollie, and I, we set up the business, gosh, in its very first form 11 years ago. Started life as a sock subscription company. So you could sign up, get new socks in the post and recycle your old ones. Which was really fun. And then that kind of got into the world of designing and manufacturing really nice socks, which is sort of the thing that I oversee. And since 2020, we've been working in partnership with the nice people at 007

making, yeah, James Bond socks, which is great. So a big part of my job is, yeah, doing the design work. working on those products, looking at yarn and marrying that to, you know, the back catalogue of Bond films. And yeah, I guess stepping into the world of Bond fandom, which has been great.

ME: So I think the first question I have regarding this is how does the licensing work? Is it with the 007 store? Is it, do you have to kind of have signed things signed off with Eon back in the day? Uh, and how has that moved on since Eon's now been bought over by Amazon?

DZ: It's yeah, it's, it's originally, it was all through the nice team at Eon in London. Um, It's been quite simple, to be honest, and really fun, where we worked with them very collaboratively on, I guess, product concepts, themes, and so on. And then we share ideas and prototypes and whatnot of the socks and go through a kind of review and approval process, which is always great. And then...The team at 007 Store are not super involved in that, but we know them really well and work very closely with them. They're really nice. That's more than a kind of commercial thing, but they're sort of separate. They're not really involved in the product development. And then, yes, so yeah, and this year we've obviously switched to working with the team at Amazon, who are all in California and Yeah, it's, how can I put it? We make socks. So, you know, passionate as I am about making socks, it's not rocket science. And it's a similar process where they're all really nice. We work with them. I've been working with them on our new socks for the next year. And yeah, it's sort of continued in that vein.

ME: And so when you do that, when you talk about the process, the collaboration, are you coming up with ideas and drafts and designs, submitting it to these guys Eon before now Amazon? And then do they kind of come back with tweaks or amends or is it just very much a, do they also have to see prototypes or do they kind of sign off on the design and go, we trust you guys just go for it.

DZ: Depends really. So sometimes we, so sometimes we kind of come up with the idea of, completely from scratch so a few years ago we did a little collection based on the heraldry and on her majesty's secret service which is great and there was nothing triggering that other than kind of wanting to do something a bit different I love that film it's got a sort of different feel so we wanted to do socks that had a slightly different feel and so we just sort of said this is what we're thinking as a kind of concept and then you get into this sort of nitty gritty of the design work. Whereas other times it's a little bit the other way around. So like last year was the 60th

anniversary of Goldfinger. So the team at Eon said, listen, it's the 60th anniversary of Goldfinger. We're doing a bunch of stuff. There's, you know, how might you be part of it? So it kind of goes both ways and that's great and normal. Um, and when we're designing socks, um, yeah, we, it's back and forth in a conversation. So we will come up with, um, uh, concepts and designs of digital prototypes, I guess, which we're pretty good at these days. So it's a big part of my, you know, how I spend my time. Um, So this is what we're thinking about, but this is what it looked like. And sometimes there's some feedback on that and some builds, you know, to make it better. Sometimes there isn't. I mean, it's not a process that you can do. It's not science. It's art, of course, the sock design. And then we get into the process of physically prototyping the socks, which takes a bit of a longer time. And you iterate in terms of color and finish and whatnot.

ME: So, yeah. Interesting. And so when Eon kind of signed off and Amazon then took over, do you then have to pick up the phone to Amazon and try and establish new relationships there? Or is there a handover where someone facilitates and says, look, Amazon is taking the charge now. Here's this guy's contact, making it more of a frictionless thing?

DZ: Honestly, it's been good. It's not... The world of Bond is very... We're very passionate about it and we're very diligent and very careful in how we work. But it's not that complicated, the work we do. And we have other licensed programs, we have other design processes. And it's not unusual for teams to change, be that internally or to change partners, you know, So it's not, as these things go, it's not that, and like I say, we make socks. Everyone understands what socks are. We have, you know, very specific things that we do in our manufacturing and branding and so on. They're really high quality products. But as handovers go, it's not that, you know, not that tricky. And the team at Amazon have been really good to work with so far, very professional, very very enthusiastic about what we do and it's yeah they're just in a different time zone . I say that honestly the most complicated thing is the fact that they are in California, which means that our window for correspondence and calls is a little bit tighter than it was when we were working with the team here in the UK. And like I say, a normal thing in the world of work is that teams change, things change, and you sort of get on with the new people and are great. Interesting.

ME: I'm also interested in the very start with your relationship with Eon and getting these off the ground because I've heard that Eon do actually shop the license around and they go to different brands and companies. And other times, or more often than not, it's actually the brands themselves that approach Eon and say, what's the framework of collaborating with you guys? How was that for you? Was that you approaching them or vice versa?

DZ: They approached us. It came about by chance. I don't think me and Ollie knew what a license was in 2019, to be completely honest. It just wasn't on our radar as something that we might do as a business. We were making really nice socks. We had our subscription. At that time, we were selling in Selfridges and John Lewis and doing some department store work. And I think that's how there was a really nice guy who worked at Eon at that time, who I think had received socks of ours as a gift. Right. I think from his sister, who I think bought them at John Lewis. Doesn't matter. So we got an email just completely out of the blue, autumn 2019, saying from one of the people at Eon, you know, saying, hey, we're, you know, with the brand team at Eon, we're always interested in new partners, especially creatively led brands. independent

British businesses good fit um would you be interested in having a chat about doing a range of uh 007 stocks we were like yeah I think we would be interested in that so it was very simple at the beginning and we were very honest with them and said look we don't we've not done anything like this before and I think in a way that was part of the what made it a good fit that it was a sort of unusual you know quite a sort of special thing for all concerned um And yeah, we were like, we'll give it a go. Yeah, we gave it a go. And now here we are. Oh, that's great. I mean, like at some point, did you go, yeah, that's fine. I'll come down to the office. We'll have a chat.

The full interview can be found on the There Will Be Bond podcast on the 11th December.