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Interview: Peter Jeun Ho Tsang of The Dandy Lab

The Dandy Lab opened in London’s fashionable Spitalfields district in August 2015 to a blaze of publicity. Effusive column inches and TV reports waxed lyrical about the shop’s intriguing mix of retail, technology, marketing and fashion, and the shop even attracted attention from international media outlets like Wired, GQ and TimeOut. Not bad for a small retail startup that started life as a tiny pop up shop in the capital.

Co-founded by Peter Jeun Ho Tsang and University College London (UCL) graduate Julija Bainiaksina, the shop styles itself as an ‘interactive men’s lifestyle shop enhanced by technology’ and harnesses the latest in retail tech as a platform to promote small British fashion brands.

Six months on from that initial burst of publicity, and ahead of an imminent move to new premises, I spoke to Peter to take stock and get his verdict following a whirlwind half a year.

With Storm Gertrude lashing 90mph winds against the window, I start by asking him to sum up what the Dandy Lab is all about:

“We started out with a desire to support ‘made in Britain’ products and British Brands. We wanted to provide a platform for independent designers with a focus on menswear.

“However, it wasn’t enough to just do another shop. Our focus was on offering more of a customer experience. We wanted to innovate and provide a glimpse into the future of retail.”

In such a crowded retail environment, this focus on providing a pioneering retail experience by straddling the boundaries between retail and technology has differentiated them from the masses and secured them ample media exposure and recognition.

“As we’re a small and recently established business, we’ve got the flexibility to do whatever we want to do.”

Peter’s ample experience in fashion retail, with a Masters in Digital Fashion from the London College of Fashion, along with experience consulting for big name high-street retailers including Peter Werth and Urban Outfitters, brings the retail nous. Julia, with her civil engineering background, brings the technological impetus. Touching upon this harmonious balance he explains:

“I’m more the fashion, creative and product side. Julia takes charge of the technology side as she went to University College London and trained in Civil Engineering. So she’s the mathematical one who does all the spreadsheets!”

The Lab’s innovations go far beyond the lowly spreadsheet, however. With support from Cisco and UCL, the shop is chock full of the latest smart technology.

From ‘Internet of things’ software to NFC readers and RFID loyalty cards, the shop is mapping out the next decade of retail innovations and confidently charting a course which the notoriously conservative fashion sector is reluctant to embark upon.

Peter goes further: “Fashion is really slow to adopt technologies. The larger retailers are so established that they’ve got existing legacy systems to contend with.

“That’s where we come in. As we’re a small and recently established business, we’ve got the flexibility to do whatever we want to do.”

“The Lab is part fashion store, part retail lab. We have 12 technology partners who we work with to look at how we can push the customer experience a bit further.”

It is the flexibility and agility afforded to startups and other new businesses that allow them to innovate and experiment, and the Lab was consciously set up with this approach in mind.

Throughout our chat, Peter repeatedly uses the word ‘iteration’ to describe the shop in its current form. A curious term to use for a bricks and mortar retail site, but one that makes sense when taking into account the shop’s close relationship with London’s booming tech community.

“The Lab is part fashion store, part retail lab. We have 12 technology partners who we work with to look at how we can push the customer experience a bit further. This includes Cisco, but also small startups like Hoxton Analytics and Reward Technology who we help to test and reiterate their products.”

The capital is fast becoming a world leader in tech, with new investment schemes and accelerator programmes being announced on an almost daily basis. It is a fertile community with much cross-pollination and exchanging of ideas, and the Dandy Lab perfectly encapsulates this collaborative spirit.

“I believe we are at the forefront of what we’re doing; we’re pushing boundaries and working with UCL will only help us push them further.”

From its work with the IDEALondon innovation centre and collaboration with local tech startups to the workstations housed in the Lab’s basement, the entrepreneurial tech spirit of open cooperation and exchange has been there from the very beginning.

As Peter explains, each partnership is different and brings its own challenges: “There’s a difference to dealing with the various partners, from the big boys like Cisco and smaller startups like Hoxton Analytics.

“It’s really down to each collaboration and partnership. Some have been very hands-on and here everyday, while others have worked more in the distance.”

He has particular praise for UCL, a central figure in IDEALondon, and their role in helping the Lab push boundaries: “As part of IDEALondon, we have a great relationship with them and work with them very closely. I believe we are at the forefront of what we’re doing; we’re pushing boundaries and working with UCL will only help us push them further.”

“We want to think big and have a presence in the key cities around the world.”

Ironically, for a retailer with its sights so firmly trained on the future, it is the limitations and legacy of London’s built environment that is the motivation behind their imminent move—their current site is housed within a Grade II listed building which makes it difficult to incorporate physical adaptations to the shop.

With their technological ambitions outgrowing their physical surroundings, Peter and Julia, in typical style, have viewed this not as a limitation but an opportunity for further innovation.

As Peter tells me: “We want to develop the retail lab a bit more and you can only learn so much in one place. We, as the Lab, are very open to ideas. We embrace and welcome all kinds of ways of working.”

Having begun life as a pop up store in Seven Dials, and taking into account their close relationship with online booking platform We Are Pop Up, it is clear that the Dandy Lab, as a concept, can work just as ably in non-traditional retail environments as it can in traditional retail sites.

This flexibility means the Lab has already started to plot an expansion across the UK as it looks to establish different labs in cities across the country.

But Peter does not just want to stop there. Owing to their links in the wider tech sector, plans for international expansion are on the cards: “We’re already looking to take the Lab international, starting with New York in conjunction with We Are Pop Up and then into China thanks to UCL’s contacts.

“We want to think big and have a presence in the key cities around the world. Of course, each environment poses different challenges.”

“Our challenge is working out how to evolve the customer experience with the use of technology.”

With such big plans and ambitious ideas, there seems little to get in the way of the Dandy Lab’s further expansion into new environments and contexts.

However, when I asked him about the biggest hurdles they have had to face in the last six months, Peter explained how one of the hardest obstacles has been the public’s confusion about what the lab is and what its innovations are for:

“The general public still don’t understand what we’re doing. That’s because we’re so unique that it’s going to take some time to figure out. They don’t understand why this thing is needed. Our challenge is working out how to evolve the customer experience with the use of technology.”

As our conversation comes to a close and Gertrude continues to rattle insistently outside, it seems clear to me that the innovations currently being experimented with at the Dandy Lab will eventually become the norm sooner rather than later.

Much like the whistling winds that have upheaved a bin in the car park, a similarly forceful gust of innovation is about to blow through an increasingly sluggish retail sector, and it is hard not to view Peter and Julia as anything other than harbingers of this coming retail tech storm.

The big boys of the retail world would be wise to take note.

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