Field Report - Go Outdoors It makes perfect tents


Tents with a touch of the unconventional, is what transpired when a British couple, bored with early retirement, decided to find a new challenge in life. And today, the small Derbyshire manufacturer FieldCandy is causing a stir with its unusual products in Harrods, Liberty and Heals of London and Saks of 5th Avenue


T


imber designer, John and banker Rhona Harris were fortunate enough to be able to take early retirement in their early 50s, but


after living the Mediterranean dream for a couple of years the unthinkable happened – they got bored. Both keen


outdoor lovers, the couple soon found themselves at Friederichshafen in 2010 walking the halls looking for inspiration but it wasn’t until they walked through two halls set aside for tent exhibitors that they found what they were looking for. “The tents were all green and blue and boring,” said John “and there appeared to be two types of product, either very high quality and highly technical; or there was a large number that just looked cheap and poor quality.” “There was nothing that made us jump up and down, especially not visually. There was also nothing from a feminine perspective that Rona found attractive.” “There was a clear opportunity to create a blank


canvass, to put some design work onto tents and to produce something that was more fun and enjoyable,” says John. The Harrises wanted to find the middle ground – they wanted a fun tent that was still great quality and this was how they identified the market they wanted to be in.


14 •www.sgboutdoor.co.uk But even so, you would expect someone who


wanted to manufacture tents to at least know something about the product. Not so with the Harrises and what followed was a series of trial and error events and milestones. Perhaps the best early decision made by the couple was to enlist a Korean tent pole producer – a relationship that FieldCandy still enjoys today and one the John values. But they weren’t so lucky in other avenues and


early difficulties included finding a UK manufacturer for the inner tent and outer flysheet and this finally led to the Harrises purchasing their first wide format print. “We set it up in our dining room and started


printing our own fly sheets and we had them manufactured. We printed all day and all night and sales started to take off. We were selling all over the world, especially in the USA.” But persistent problems with manufacturers meant


the Harrises had to take things into their own hands by investing in their own sewing machine. “This, turned out to be completely the wrong machine and we had to sell it,” John recalls. Today FieldCandy employs seven full-time machinists and one part time with a total staff of 24. All manufacturing and printing is done efficiently from the small factory in Derbyshire.


But just who is it who wants to buy FieldCandy’s unusual products? According to John: “I’d say they are wide and


varied. They are affluent, discerning, a bit different, they don’t wear beige and green, they are a bit flamboyant, some are madly eccentric but not all of them. They are all active people who like doing fun activities.” “It is a fun


product but it also works,” says John of the tents. “Our Orginial Explorer tent is 5m hydrostatic head for waterproofness. We do a lot of quality control, we put a lot of effort into it and that was the guiding principle of setting up the business. We wanted to create a brand but we wanted to do whatever we did to the best of our ability.” FieldCandy sells between 50 and 100 tents a


week and now also manufactures a range of other products including ponchos, snoos and a children’s range.


The products have been turning heads in


Harrods, Liberty and Heals of London and Saks of 5th Avenue plus there are some exciting collaborations with Paul Smith, Hello Kitty, Universal Music and Red Bull to name a few. The usual designs, all Johns own, are the a large


part of the success and popularity of FieldCandy’s – a charming British success story.


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