Sternian, Shelley Lawson reveals how she forged a path from LWC to the front pages and beyond…

When pictures to mark Prince Louis’ third birthday were released three years ago, they had a huge impact on one Sternian.

“That was when we knew we’d made it,” explains Shelley Lawson, Co-Founder of Frog Bikes. “Louis’ birthday photo was on one of our bikes, with the brand right in shot. We were flabbergasted and very excited. The website went mad. The picture was in everything from Hello Magazine to The Telegraph. We’d actually completely run out of that range of bikes at the time and so we didn’t quite get to capitalise on the sales, but it was cool!”

Shelley joined LWC as a Sixth Former in 1991. “LWC was a big part of my life before I’d even started,” she reveals. “My brother joined Junior House sometime in the mid 80’s. Many of his best friends now are the boys he started with and he’s now 50.” She spent two years as a weekly boarder in Gosden House. “I really loved it”, she offers. “It felt familiar from the beginning because of my brother and it was just a really fun and vibrant place to be.”

That love for LWC heavily influenced Shelley when it came to choosing a school for her daughter, who is now in Upper Sixth. And it was her children who would initially provide the spark of inspiration for Frog Bikes.

“My husband Jerry’s a really keen cyclist,” she explains. “The bikes we were looking to buy our kids when they were young, were rubbish. They were heavy, badly designed and hadn’t really moved on since the bikes we had in the 70’s and 80’s. We thought ‘this could be done better’ and believed there was a market out there. Both of us had fairly normal jobs. I had been with Accenture and Tesco. Neither of us had worked in a small business environment before. We hadn’t worked together before and we probably didn’t give it enough thought.”

“I think it’s really healthy and quite inspirational to have this landscape around you all of the time. Unless you learn to love nature and are introduced to nature when you’re young…when you get older, you won’t do anything to protect it”

—Shelley Lawson

But even without ‘enough thought’, this was a leap of faith that would pay off. Shelley and Jerry set up Frog Bikes in 2013, having sponsored and purchased data from a friend who was studying for a PhD in the Biomechanics of Children on Bikes. Armed with the information, they set out to design an alternative type of cycle and it became a hit.

“There was a gap in the market that we were able to jump in and fill,” Shelley reflects. “At the time, we’d had the London Olympics, inspirational cyclists like Bradley Wiggins and Chris Hoy and lots of people were keen to cycle and get their kids out cycling. It just worked.”

Together, the couple built a factory in South Wales to assemble their designs and began exporting all over the world. “We’ve since sold half a million bikes, won a Queen’s Award and a King’s Award for exporting. It’s been an absolute rollercoaster, but we’ve learned a lot.”

Designing and building bikes is a long way from the career in business strategy and marketing that Shelley had previously been honing. This causes her to reflect on LWC’s strategy of encouraging students to investigate as many pathways as possible, to ready them for an ever-changing world. “I’m a big supporter of the school ethos of giving you the skills you need to survive in all sorts of different environments,” she points out. “These kids will be doing jobs that haven’t yet been invented and so it’s really hard to prepare someone for one particular career. That’s not going to work. It’s got to be about having a wide range of skills.”

In keeping with her varied and dynamic career, Shelley has now stepped back from her role at Frog Bikes, but remains a Non-Executive Director. Once again, it was seeing the opportunity in something else that led to her becoming a sustainability consultant.

“As Frog got bigger, we become aware of how large our environmental footprint was becoming,” she admits. “Both my husband and I are passionate about sustainability and when we realised how much energy and aluminium we were using and how many pairs of tyres we were sending out, we realised that we were indirectly responsible for some quite high emissions. We wanted to improve things and it took a life of its own. I saw an opportunity to have a bit more of an impact by doing this kind of work for other businesses. So, for the last couple of years, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve got an amazing range of clients; from a blanket manufacturer, to a steel supplier. What they all have in common is that they’re desperate to be more sustainable.”

Photo Credit: Her Royal Highness, The Princess of Wales

Shelley is evangelical about increased sustainability having all kinds of benefits for business. “There are huge commercial opportunities in being greener,” she said. “It’s partly because of cost savings, but also it’s often really motivating for the wider team. I think everyone is so anxious about the climate and what we should be doing about it. Small and medium-sized businesses are more nimble and can take these opportunities more quickly than the big guys.”

For someone who spent a couple of years immersed in LWC’s glorious 1200 and who continues to be part of the school community as a parent, has Shelley ever drawn a link between her love of the environment and being a Sternian?

“It probably has influenced me,” she reflects. “I’m always happier in the countryside than in the city. I think it’s really healthy and quite inspirational to have this landscape around you all of the time. Unless you learn to love nature and are introduced to nature when you’re young….when you get older, you won’t do anything to protect it. Why would you go out of your way to protect something that you don’t value?”

As for Frog Bikes…it’s clear that they still hold a special place in Shelley’s heart. “It’s still lovely to see kids on our bikes if we’re out at the park.” She admits. “Or if you’re driving on the motorway and you see a car with a couple of Frog Bikes on the bike rack. When friends send us photos of our bikes they’ve spotted on holiday, it’s always great.”

Cover Photo Credit: Andy Aitchison