After years working as a buyer for Topshop in London, Dublin-born Frieda Gormley said goodbye to the corporate world to team up with her husband, Javvy Royle, to start a brand devoted to nature. She was partially inspired by her old boss, former Topshop brand director Jane Shepherdson. “She really showed me that business could be a voice for good, and even though it was a High Street company, she was very much a pioneer of fair trade, helping young designers or using organic materials,” Gormley tells host Dennis Scully on the latest episode of The Business of Home Podcast. “She really ignited something in me.”

Gormley and Royle’s goal was to bring nature and color into their home through prints and wallpapers, after noticing the options on the market hadn’t really changed since the 1980s. Inspired by traditional British aesthetics juxtaposed with modernity and fun, House of Hackney was born in 2011. Like many nascent design companies, the duo had a difficult first year with low sales and website traffic. Then, slowly but surely, people started to order samples online, word began to spread, and House of Hackney ended up striking a deal with Liberty, a British luxury department store. Now the company has its own brick-and-mortar showroom in London and a team of 40 employees, and its wares can be found in stores across the globe.

In late 2023, Gormley and Royle decided to bring nature into the company—literally. The two made an arrangement with an advocacy collective called Lawyers for Nature, and now Mother Nature and Future Generations have been given legal personhood on House of Hackney’s board, in the form of a non-partisan individual from outside the company who comes into their monthly meetings and has a voice in business decisions across all departments. “We started with really reviewing our mission: What’s the reason for us to exist?” says Gormley. “We decided that House of Hackney’s purpose is to be a restoration project in craft, community and nature. It was the idea of officially using our sales to funnel funds into key restoration projects that could really help restore nature.” The company began by giving 1 percent of all sales, but after calculating its footprint, it actually came to equal 3 percent. And then they increased it. “We feel right now we should be contributing 5 percent of all sales into nature restoration,” she says. “We feel it’s our duty as the current inhabitants of the planet of this time to contribute toward the reparations for what’s happened in the past.”

Crucial insight: The company was an early adopter of the four-day workweek. “For us, it was about giving back time and giving people more time in nature. We call them Nature Fridays. We feel that for people to sort of be able to advocate for nature, they need to have a relationship with nature, and we want to give people time to build that relationship,” says Gormley. It has also helped with employee retention, fostering an energized team and a healthy work-life balance.

Key quote: “We’re not going to expand for the sake of expanding. We are at a size we love. It still feels like family, and I think we’re quite cautious about not wanting to upset that beautiful equilibrium and ecosystem in any way. You will not see us opening up on the High Streets of this world, because the world doesn’t need it.”

This episode is sponsored by Loloi and Klafs. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

The Thursday Show

BOH executive editor Fred Nicolaus and host Dennis Scully discuss the biggest news in the industry, including RH’s largest gallery ever, layoffs at EJ Victor, and big news from Kravet. Later, the husband-and-wife team of Winn and Lindye Galloway discuss the launch of their new brand, Le Maé.

This episode is sponsored by Kohler. Listen to the show below. If you like what you hear, subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.