Let me tell you three stories.
They explain why this year's Makers + Mavericks might be the most important one we've ever done.
Story One: There's a new Algorithm in town.
I was in London running a workshop when a woman approached me.
She said, "I was on ChatGPT on Tuesday. I asked it what AI workshop would help me most. It told me to take your course. So here I am."
By Thursday, she'd flown in. Booked. Acted. Trusted the advice.
That was the moment I realised:
People won't just find your business through Google or social.
They'll discover it through AI.
ChatGPT. Gemini. Claude.
These aren't tools. They're the new gatekeepers.
If you want your business to be found in the future, you need to understand how important this is about to become.
Story Two: You can be small - and still be a giant.
In two weeks, we'll launch a new feature on our new website:
It will finally answer the most common question we get: "Where are my jeans?"
AI didn't solve this.
It was Raspberry Pi, barcodes, and elbow grease.
And yet...
It will save 3 minutes per order.
That's 12.5 weeks per year.
Reclaimed.
But here's the bigger shift:
Every jean we make is now a dataset.
Every dataset teaches us how to lower our impact.
If one experiment gives us a breakthrough, we can license that to a brand making millions of jeans.
We have a small factory.
But it's becoming a big lab.
And that lab could help shrink the footprint of the whole industry.
That's what being a "Small Giant" means now.
And yes, there's an AI in giant.
Story Three: The Old Guy with a walking stick.
On Monday, I saw an old man in a rainbow-coloured blanket walking slowly down a hill on my way down to the factory.
He suddenly stopped. I caught up.
He turned to me and said,
"I suppose you're wondering why I stopped."
I smiled. "Yeah."
He said:
"I'm using Copilot."
That's when it hit me.
This isn't fringe. This isn't geeky.
This is everywhere.
And it's only going to accelerate.
We are not early.
But we are early enough.
