Interview with Lucas London, Co-Founder at Decorating Start-Up: Lick

Lick’s vision is to be the definitive decorating brand – the place for advice, inspiration and products. The brand is changing the way we do up our spaces with access to expertise across colour and interior design, an open invitation to a community of decorators, and a carefully curated range of paint, wallpaper and blinds. 

How did you come up with the idea for the company?

While we can’t claim it all fell into place overnight, my co-founder Sam Bradley and I became acutely aware how dated the decorating industry had become and knew there was an opportunity to do things differently.

It felt like there had been little innovation to meet the modern consumer, especially from the incumbents. From our time together at Airtasker, we could see that there was a highly engaged and supportive community who were incredibly passionate about DIY and interior design. But we could also see that, while their purchase journey started online, they still had to traipse to and from an out-of-town retail outlet to find what they needed (with very little support along the way from either experts or like-minded fellow decorators).

The experience felt broken and in need of a shake-up. So we set out to build a decorating brand that could help first-timers and grand-designers alike to feel more confident about decorating than ever before. To do this, we have a strong focus on inspiring and educational content, open access to the interior and colour experts, a supportive social network and platform to celebrate all transformations – and a simplified, high quality and eco-friendly product range. 

What advice would you give to other aspiring entrepreneurs?

 
The best decision I made was starting the business with a great co-founder. Sam and I already knew how each other operated in a working environment from our time together at Airtasker. We have complementary skills, which allows us to easily divide areas of the business and achieve much-needed focus, which was extremely beneficial as we prepared for launch.

The journey of setting up a business can also be an emotionally challenging one and having someone to celebrate the highs with just as much as rally together during the lows, is an invaluable asset. Find a co-founder that shares your passion, that brings additional skills and that you can spend a huge amount of time with.

We’re also lucky to have an outstanding network of supportive investors, operators and other entrepreneurs to turn to for advice – something I’d encourage aspiring entrepreneurs to take the time building. Speaking to people who have probably experienced what you are going through and can offer words of wisdom have had an extremely positive impact on the business. It is however up to you and the team to use that network and ask the right questions.

What can we hope to see from Lick in the future?

More Lick decorators! We recently launched blinds, and we plan to continue to increase our product range to give our decorating community more tools to help them bring their ideas for their spaces to life. 

We have some really exciting collaborations with amazing influencers starting with a Lick + Natasha Coverdale wallpaper collection. We are working with very talented designers on our new wallpaper range in January and we will be releasing our multi-surface exterior paint early next year. Then we plan to offer Lick to customers in Europe as we have seen a huge amount of interest in other markets.