From second-hand stalls to KSI and Marvel - how a Black Country business is forging a global fanbase for funky mouthguards
It started with pop-up stalls selling second-hand sporting goods at student events and has morphed into a £3.5 million-turnover mouthguard business boasting high-profile relationships with movie franchise Marvel and YouTuber KSI.
Safejawz had the humblest of humble beginnings when university friends Ewan Jones and George Dyer were offloading unwanted kit and clothes before deciding to specialise in designing and selling snazzy versions of this otherwise mundane piece of safety equipment.
The pair, both 35, are now firmly embedded in the Black Country, with an 11-strong team based at offices and studios in Aldridge and are hoping to show the world that the humble mouthguard can be fun as well as safe.
Ewan, who grew up in various towns across the UK and is now based in Cheltenham, opted to study criminology at University of Manchester after being inspired by Eddie Murphy's Beverly Hills Cop movies and was planning a career in either the police or legal sector.
He met Erdington native George who was studying business and management and the housemates started to think about teaming up to launch a business after graduating in 2010.
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Speaking exclusively to BusinessLive, Ewan picks up the story.
"It kind of happened slowly. We were selling second-hand sports equipment we would pick up from wholesalers at pop-up events at university and the initial ambition was to have a bricks and mortar sports shop," he said.
"We didn't have the capital for that so we had an online sports shop but we realised we couldn't compete with the likes of Sports Direct so had to be more niche. There were a couple of products we honed in on that were selling quite well - one was whistles and the other was mouthguards.
"Not only was it something a big portion of the population needed to wear for sport but the sector had also been stagnant for so long. They hadn't changed in years - they were uninspiring, boring and had become that product you had to have because you were told to by your coach or mum.
"We really thought we could make it something people actually wanted to wear so that's when we brought out the designs."
To fund development and conduct market research, the duo set up a website called The Mouthguard Shop, selling competitor products in order to learn what customers did and did not like.
They eventually launched their own mouthguards on that site and it became the best seller which told them they were onto a business winner.
Ewan says it took a while to gain traction in the market which he mainly attributes to a lack of capital as the pair have remained staunchly self-funded since day one.
That self-funding came via a string of "side hustle
