The British-made mask was founded in 2019, by three best friends; Harry, Alex, and Elliot - with the purpose of protecting wearers from city pollution.

Before we launched Airhead, we met at the University of Bath while studying Economics. After graduating, we all pursued careers in banking; like many Economics students do! As part of the banks’ graduate programmes, Harry worked at RBS and Elliot & Alex worked at Barclays before all progressing into permanent roles. On paper, it may seem like the three of us had similar experiences with our careers, but we have learnt since launching Airhead that there are significant differences in what we enjoy doing and what we each bring to the table. 

Elliot worked as a Product Manager on the Barclays mobile banking app where he developed a deep understanding of product creation. He is also a bit of a numbers whizz and, during the placement year of our degree, worked at HSBC in quantitative equity analysis, which taught him a lot about data analytics and financial modelling. Needless to say, Elliot now runs the finances for Airhead!

Harry is our brand, marketing, and creative head. As a former corporate strategist for Esme Loans, he has a deep understanding of start-up creation, as well as highly relevant experience in design-led thinking to form long term strategy. His previous copywriting and marketing experience fuels our growth and has been crucial to our brand as we launch and scale. 

Alex oversees all things product at Airhead, which mainly involves managing our design team supply chain. As a Commercial Manager at Barclaycard, he was responsible for managing significant budgets and revenue-driving partners, which is where he developed his knack for negotiation and relationship management. His experience in real estate operations at UBS armed him with skills crucial for the strategic vision and end-to-end project management. 

While we learned a huge amount from employment in the corporate world and also built a fantastic network, we all knew that the only way we would be fulfilled was by building something ourselves… and so Airhead was born.

There’s always a lightbulb moment before the beginning of a new venture. What was that moment for you? 

Before we founded Airhead, we had been running several eCommerce businesses, selling mainly on Amazon. The four businesses we had between us were all very different brands and products. From this, we learnt a huge amount on how to build and nurture a business from the ground up.

The idea of Airhead came about as a result of our passion for being active but remaining protected from air pollution. As London commuters, and given the amount of pollution in the city, we liked the idea of something to combat this issue. Our business experience and knowledge told us that there was a great market opportunity to launch a revolutionary pollution mask. We started by writing down every question we could think of in a shared document, researched answers to all of them, and this formed the basis of our plan of attack to start the business. 

We ended up all leaving our corporate jobs on the same day in January 2019, which was both liberating and frightening at the same time. What wasn’t quite so liberating was that we decided to share a one-bedroom flat between the three of us for a year, in a bid to keep costs to a minimum as we got the business off the ground. It was our version of the Silicon Valley ‘garage’ start-up!

Working with a co-founder can be tricky, so understanding and compromise is important. How have you all found the process of building a business together? What makes it work?

Luckily, we all get on very well. We’ve been friends for almost 10 years since meeting at university, have lived together for four years, with one of those years being in the one-bedroom flat we mentioned earlier. So having survived that, running a business together feels comparatively easy.

We have found that what makes it work is that we all want the best for each other. There is a huge sense of not wanting to let the other guys down and that we’re in it together, no matter what happens. 

Honesty is also a big part of our recipe for success – not only with work, but also with our feelings and emotions. Our working environment is incredibly open and harmonious because of this. A book that we have all read and would recommend to any co-founders is “The Chimp Paradox”; it really helps you understand your emotions as well as of others around you.   

The final thing we have learnt is that three is the magic number when it comes to decision making - we always have a majority to make a decision, which means we’re never at loggerheads with two opposing opinions. 

We’re a solid team.

How did you fund the business in the early stages? 

We did a family and friends private investment round early on so we could start paying ourselves and to prepare for the Kickstarter campaign. Then we launched on Kickstarter (a reward-based crowdfunding platform) where people could pre-order their Airhead mask.

The outcome of the campaign was better than we could have hoped for, with a total of £460,000 raised in pre-sales to help fund manufacturing and distribution. 

Grant funding has also been an excellent source of funds, to help fund manufacturing and set up of our UK supply chain. Since the start of our Airhead journey, we’ve been extremely passionate about supporting British business, and we are proud that Airhead is 100% British designed and manufactured. 

If you could be in a room with 4 entrepreneurs, who would they be and why? 

• Tim Ferriss for his efficiency

• Elon Musk for his wild ideas

• Whitney Wolfe for her tenacity and brand culture

• Richard Reed because his journey is so similar to ours

What would your top three tips to fellow entrepreneurs be to look after their mental health?

1. Surround yourself with the best possible people, who you can be open with and laugh with. Laughter is a mini vacation. 

2. Enjoy the journey, worry less about the end result. 

3. Exercise regularly, be active, and enjoy the outdoors. As founders it’s easy to neglect this and to put 12 hours a day into your business, but it’s so important to keep you feeling energised.

As keen cyclists and active lovers of the outdoors, we are all strong believers that looking after your physical health has an extremely positive effect on your mental health. This is something that drives much of Airhead’s mission – to protect people’s physical health and promote the importance of the link between the two. 

Tell us about your journey into this market. Or why do you think your business has had such a positive impact across your industry?

We are all seasoned London commuters and would often find ourselves stuck behind cars and buses during our commutes, becoming acutely aware of the impact this could be having on our health. When you research air pollution, as we did, the facts and stats are simply shocking. 

It causes 8.8 million premature deaths a year worldwide, 40,000 of those in the UK. It’s linked to a huge range of health problems including cancer, dementia, and depression. Interestingly, it has also been shown to reduce workplace productivity by up to 6%. 

We tried and tested lots of masks available on the market and found that none of them were suitable for cyclists wanting to protect themselves from air pollution. There were a number of common problems with nearly every mask: they were hot, uncomfortable, embarrassing to wear, and many had little gaps in the sides. We knew we had an opportunity here to make a real difference. 

Combining this data with our prior experience of selling a pollution mask, we knew what to improve. We were selected to be part of the NatWest accelerator programme and through that, we secured a partnership with Brunel University to help us design the Airhead mask. The partnership was funded by a government programme, Impacting Business by Design, where we collaborated with a team of ex-industry design experts at the university to create a new mask that addressed failings of existing masks on the market.

We launched on Kickstarter in April 2020, just as the global pandemic came along and made a monumental impact on the market, normalising behaviour of mask-wearing and increasing the demand for face masks. It brought a lot of competition and exposure to the market, which reinforced how important it was to remain true to our core values of quality, sustainability, and community. 

Almost all our supply chain is UK-based, and we designed the mask without using any solvents or glues so that it is as recyclable as possible. We also chose to work with the Devon Disability Collective for all our assembly - they are an amazing organisation helping to provide employment for people with disabilities.

What does your business offer its target audience?

Simply: a way to protect yourself from air pollution, comfortably.

We shouldn’t have to wear masks whilst commuting or walking to work, and we believe that clean air feels like a human right. However, the truth is that many of us breathe air that is well above the WHO recommended levels of pollution. WHO has recently announced that air pollution is even more dangerous than previously thought, and has slashed the maximum safe levels of key pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide. The changes to these guidelines mean that the UK’s legal limits for the most harmful pollutants are now four times higher than the max levels WHO recommends. It is, therefore, more important than ever to protect ourselves. 

We understand that some people might find wearing a mask uncomfortable, and the Airhead mask offers its wearers a comfortable solution with maximum breathability, protecting them from the impacts of air pollution through its filters capable of blocking >99% of particulate matter. 

What are your thoughts on failure?

We strongly believe that failure is crucial in order to learn and succeed. We have failed numerous times in our business venture, and it feels like our journey is only just beginning. Thankfully, we always manage to see the bright side and we always find a way to laugh at mistakes or failures – which makes running a business a lot more fun. 

One instance of failure that springs to mind is when we tried to launch a new product on Amazon (bread boxes) and all of our stock started warping. Cutting a long story short, Amazon ended up disposing our entire inventory just weeks after we purchased it. Moral of the story? Quality checks are very important! We have learnt our lesson, though, and we needed to experience that failure so that we could learn from our mistake and feel confident that it won’t happen again. 

How important is company culture and what is your top tip to get it right?

Company culture is hugely important to us. We all left the corporate world because we wanted to work in an open, fun, and empowering environment. So, whilst we take a lot of learnings from our employment, our culture is the core of our business – to have fun and enjoy the journey. 

We haven’t yet had the experience of employing anyone, but we can’t wait to have a team of people that all love working at Airhead. We want our passion and enthusiasm to be infectious to others, and to lead from the front with compassion while having fun along the way.  

Describe your business in three words.

Ambitious. Empathetic. Trustworthy.

What are your top tips for entrepreneurs wanting to get their business out there?

Just start. Just go for it. 

We spent a good few years talking about starting a business before we ever bit the bullet and actually did it. Even if it’s just starting to make a website or asking a supplier for a meeting… just do something that gets the ball rolling. The first step is always the hardest but once the business fever takes over, you can’t quit. 

It’s amazing how many people are worried about their business ideas being stolen, and as a result keep their cards close to their chest when starting out a business. Our approach was the opposite, and we were very much of the mindset that we could benefit from learning from others. We talked to everyone as far and wide as we could, asked for advice, sought knowledge and expertise through every avenue we could think of, and the support we received in response was astounding. 

We would recommend this strategy to anyone starting a business, as it is only going to benefit you if you let people guide you and learn from others. You, your skillset, and your business will develop further than you thought possible.

Finally, the principle that has always worked for us is the 80/20 rule: 20% of the effort provides 80% of the results. There’s so much to do when you start a business, so it is important to focus on the high value stuff that makes a big difference to the business.