Interview with Dominic Johnson-Hill of Plastered8
Dominic Johnson-Hill arrived in China in 1992 with a passion for adventure. In 2005, he opened the first Plastered store to celebrate his love for Beijing using images he collected over his many years in China. Now a regular on TV and radio in China, Dominic prides himself on continually reinventing the brand to move with the fast pace of Beijing.
PMA had the opportunity in summer of 2016 to sit down with Dominic and interview him about his upcoming projects, ideas, and the future of Plastered 8:
Describe a typical work week at Plastered
Dominic: Christ I mean, there’s no typical one really at Plastered. Around 20% of my week is taken up with media, some regular TV shows I do, radio shows, and online content. That’s how I market the brand - through getting myself on television and shit like that. I spend around 30%-40% of my week working on the creative process: Working with the artists and designers that we have to conceptualize the ideas which then slowly by surely turn into artwork. Now that artwork might end up on a poster, or a wall at a restaurant like Moka Bros. Right now I am working with LuluLemon. It could also end up on a t-shirt. Within the company, I basically only do 3 things: I lead the business in terms of setting strategy, the mission, and the vision; creative side, and marketing. I don’t do any accounting or management. My week is primarily taken up by those three. We have morning huddles, weekly huddles. We spend a lot of time on communication and culture. Making sure the company is solid and the team is driven and aligned in their goals. I spend quite a lot of my time walking or swimming. I am a very active person - I spend maybe 2 hours every day walking and then half an hour of every day swimming. It’s from exercise that I get focus.
Let’s try to condense that to make your article easier: 30% on creativity, 30% on marketing, and whatever’s remaining on leadership. So we have a new piece of new artwork every 10 days, we don’t do seasons. So it’s continuous work on coming up with creative ideas and that can be quite a strain because you get creative blocks. So the way I deal with that is I have a morning routine, I get up very early, I walk around Hou Hai, I look for inspiration every morning, think about inspiring things. Then trying to execute the ideals with an amazing group of artists. I leave work every day at exactly 6 o’clock along with my team, we don’t do overtime. I spend a lot of time with my family, I have 4 girls so I try to put family before business as much as I can.
How would you say that China has influenced your working style?
Non-fucking stop basically. When you’ve grown up in a city like I have for the last 23 years that’s in a constant state of flux, you get affected by that in a beautiful way cause then you’re always looking to innovate yourself because if you stop for a short period in time, you fall behind. You fall behind with the change, you fall behind with what’s going on in social media, you fall behind with what’s going on with technology, you fall behind with what’s going on in this country. And in terms of my business, I do a new piece of artwork every 10 days and that’s got to be relevant so we celebrate Beijing, that’s what our concept is. So I have to be looking at the changes in Beijing and celebrating that through the artwork we create. So Beijing has made me a hard working person, which I don’t think I would have been if I stayed in the UK. It’s made me embrace change and throw out tradition. In coming to Beijing, I got to throw out my home and rebrand myself. In doing that, I sort of started to look at tradition very differently. I used to think tradition was very important, especially going to traditional schools in England and I came to Beijing where everything changes and I kind of threw out tradition in my life and embraced innovation and creativity.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced doing business in China?
Finding and keeping talent is definitely a massive challenge. Finding talent is hard, because you put up adverts on these shitty job sites like China HR. You get a shit load of applicants and half of them don’t even know what they’re applying for, half of them don’t turn up for interviews. And then when you onboard someone, you have to persuade them to stay. Retention is difficult because I have a small business and a lot of young people would like to work in a large business because it brings Face for their family and what they perceive as stability. So talent, getting onto it, holding onto it, is my biggest challenge.
What is your biggest failure that you’ve had and how did you handle it?
My biggest failure came when I tried to scale my business. After about 4-5 years, my business had a considerable amount of money and we had a registered company with a strong brand that people knew about. I thought it was my job to make the business really big and I fucked it up along the way big time. I became very unhappy and I realized my goal wasn’t to build the biggest business. But in fact, I went to build the best business. So I had to do a deep dive on myself. What I had to do was let go of a lot of people and size down the business and start from the beginning again. And I’ve been an intensively, insanely happy person ever since.
What are the most difficult decisions to make?
Decisions that affect other people’s lives. Letting go of people is the hardest thing. I build relationships with the people I work with and I love them intensely and then for economic reasons every now and then or for performance reasons you have to let people go. And that really fucking hurts. And then on top of that is making creative decisions for people, so now our business designs for other companies and a lot of companies come to us and they want us to do creative artwork in their restaurants, cafes, and work spaces. The beautiful thing about Plastered is I am the client and I’m also the agency, so I’m pitching to myself. I only disappoint myself when a design doesn’t work but when I design for other people: if I send them a draft and I put a lot of heart and soul into it and they get back to me and say they didn’t like it. It really upsets me.
What is the most satisfying part of your job?
Being answerable to myself. I don’t like being told what to do and I don’t like working for other people and I can step out of the office whenever I want, I’m a very restless person. And I think that inspiring people, it sounds like I’m showing off, but this brand inspires a lot of people. Because we do things differently and we’re fun and immature and a bit naughty and we’re small. So a lot of people think that they could possibly do it. When you look at a small business and a creative business, you think that I can do that myself but with a large business I can’t create that it’s too far. So it’s inspiring. We managed to change this whole street, we made the first store on this street. Changing people’s lives like the people in my business, inspiring people through creativity, and being answerable only to myself (is the most satisfying part of my job).
Was there anyone in your life that made a big impact on the path that you took?
My wife, without a doubt. Before I met my wife, I never thought of or even dreamed of going into the creative industry. I’ve always started businesses, but just grabs at anything to make money, but thanks to my wife I found my passion. She was the one that put the confidence and belief that I could do it, otherwise I never would have done it. I would have been too scared, she basically pushed me into trying things out and eventually learning on my feet and finding my passion. I was born with an energy. Because I always did bad at school, I learned to do things on my own. So I think I was born to be an entrepreneur, but I lacked confidence and I feared failure. So the relationship I had with my wife, I was able to overcome those.
You’ve been interviewed a number of times, what’s one questions that you wish you were asked, but never were?
How long is your cock? That probably won’t work, how about I used to be a bikini model, but I became a journalist and your story has really inspired me, will you come back to mine and give me a breast massage? Yeah a journalist? No, hmm I think, that’s a tough one... What’s the question again? (question) This one.
