Episode 33 Keiran O’Toole Managing Director of Rock Clothing

She Made Me Do It!

Keiran O’Toole Managing Director of Rock Clothing I am 19 years old this year, born and slightly bred in York, North Yorkshire. I was born at York District Hospital at the age of 0 if you couldn’t tell. I spent my primary school years at Carr Juniors and then moved up to York High School where I was educated for about half a term before moving to Portsmouth, aged 11. I was schooled in a state school, previously known as King Richard School (now known as Castle View Academy). Whilst studying, I worked at a pub ferrying food to and from peoples mouths, then ferrying the leftovers to the bin. It was money, people say never to work just for money. At 16 years old, all I wanted in life was a £20 note. As my time at school came to an end, I started my A-Levels at Portsmouth College, studying Geography, Photography & Maths. I also changed jobs and worked in retail, which opened my eyes so much in terms of why having patients and earning respect is so important. Trust me, everyone needs to have a rubbish retail job at some point in their lives. Whilst at college, I created my own social enterprise, Rock Clothing. I wanted to run a streetwear apparel brand that gave back and worked with young people on the anti-bullying agenda. With no experience in business, just a whole load of traumatic past experiences of bullying that guided me to this opportunity, it was a tough move but I’m still here 2 and a half years on. Running Rock has been a life changer for me, I’ve met some of the most amazing and influential people ever. They’re not famous or well-known but they’ve been there for me and supported me through my journey of business and personal life. I’ve had some amazing opportunities, to attend events across Europe like the Safer Internet Forum 2018, in Brussels. Over the last 2 years, I’ve won some amazing awards on local, national and international scales. I was awarded the Portsmouth Youth Civic Award by Lord Mayor Cllr David Fuller, at the Portsmouth Guildhall. At Barclays HQ, in London, I received my very own Princess Diana Award for my contribution to tackling bullying and I also was awarded top 20 status of Best UK Entrepreneurs by TransferWise at the Global HQ in London. None of these would be possible without the amazing people around me. Since starting Rock in 2016, we’ve been on a crazy journey of ups and downs. We are continuously developing our clothing line to line up with day to day fashion trends, although this is a tough task we’re definitely exceeding our goals in this field for such a small organisation. Progress never stops though. In 2018, we decided to create a brand behind our anti-bullying work and have created the official Anti-Bullying Ambassador programme which schools are taking part in every week. There's always exciting news coming out of the woodwork and I can’t wait to share it all with you all. Finally, Rock has created some amazing partnerships with some brilliant organisations around the city. We are amazed by our partnership with The Guildhall Trust, all of the work we do together is inspiring and changes peoples lives. We have recently partnered up with GoGeek Events, this is an amazing opportunity to get creative when trying to get the anti-bullying message across to young people and our longest partnership is with the Peter Ashley Activity Centres, I can’t thank them enough for their support. We run some amazing anti-bullying residential weekends in the fort for schools, this wouldn’t be possible without their support. We have lots of partners and I’d like to say thank you to all of them. 2019! 2019 will be a big year for Rock, we’ve just got our very own office space, we've started to look at the possibility of a full-time team of 4 and we’re working with more young people than we ever have previously. Bring it on 2019!