Written in Heavy Pencil

First off, it's story time...

This all starts in late 2018, long before the existence of UNDERFOUND. Rhiannah formerly worked as an actress and model alongside her successful barbering career, and rang me up on her way home from a job in London.

"Andy, I've had a great idea for a TV series!"

This conversation sparked an idea for a documentary/reality TV series that would ultimately consume the lives of us, and a small group of friends, for the best part of 24 months (alongside our day jobs).

A huge undertaking. We had never written a series before, never mind filmed one. We assembled the prospective cast at our house and pitched the idea with a simple mission statement.

"We're going to make a series for Amazon Prime."

In truth, we had no idea how we were going to make this happen, but the ambition and vision were clear. This group of friends we'd made through years of working together in the creative field, each one offering a unique voice or story, meant that to us we had the components of a perfect cast.

"It shouldn't be that hard, right?"

After what felt like an episode of Dragons Den, we had the cast and crew agreements and production began. Working to an absolute shoe-string budget, we devised several episodes that would follow creative projects we already had in the pipeline for that year. It made perfect sense. One such piece of content was a music video we had agreed to film for the band King Kartel.

"It shouldn't be that hard to just film the behind the scenes whilst we make the music video, right? RIGHT?"

Wrong. Running two productions simultaneously, despite Heavy Pencil being completely organic, made things incredibly challenging, especially as we had a limited amount of time at the venue (a big shout out to the Old Courts in Wigan). But looking back at Episode 2, it fills me with an immense amount of pride that we pulled it off.

You can watch the making of the video as a full blown episode of Heavy Pencil, then check out the music video we produced and see all of the scenes that we'd constructed.

And then Covid-19 happened

A truly awful time for everyone, and for us it meant slowing down production and taking into consideration a constantly changing set of rules and regulations to ensure our team was safe during the making of our show.

What followed was 4 months of filming and almost 8 months of editing. At this point the biggest thing I'd ever edited was a 3.5-minute long music video, and this project included elements of sound design that I'd never experienced before.

It nearly broke me.

At the time I was working in a field sales role for a big electronics company that I can't name but rhymes with 'Hamstrung', and I was under an immense amount of pressure juggling the two.

And let's not forget that famous promise I'd made to the team at the beginning of the production process.

"We're going to make a series for Amazon Prime."

21st January 2021, we made it

With a bit of luck and a lot of hard work, on the 21st January 2021 we launched video-on-demand on Amazon Prime. After seeing it live on the screen in our home, I'm not afraid to say both Rhiannah and I burst into tears.

And what followed was an effort to market the show with no money, no experience, and no guidance…

It all fell apart.

Despite this, our show went on to be viewed in 6 countries, accumulated over 250,000 views on video-on-demand, and was purchased twice (cheers to whoever did that!).

The feedback we received, however, was mostly incredible. Viewers loved the rawness and documentary aspects of what it is to run an independent business in the UK.

But we knew that making it in the same format as before just wasn't sustainable. And more importantly, we knew what we'd do differently if we started it all over again…

"I think I want to have my own shop again"

Since then it's been an itch we've just had to scratch, but how could we make it happen alongside our day jobs? Something had to give.

I was still working full time, and Rhiannah was renting a chair at a barbershop, PJ Barbers in Leyland. Little did I know I was about to receive another phone call from Rhiannah…

"I think I want to have my own shop again."

In a 'post-Covid' world, opening a retail entity could ruin us. How could we find a way to make it work? How could we do it the way we'd want to do it?

Enter stage right: UNDERFOUND

After months of planning (and several name revisions) we came up with the multi-faceted experience you're now hopefully familiar with.

It felt like all of the projects we'd been involved in over the years led us to this point right now.

We became passionate about independent fashion brands through my own design journey and Rhiannah's modelling. We had the pleasure of working with grassroots music through our video and event production. And finally Rhiannah's decade-long experience in hair, combined with my experience in retail management.

Discover music you've never heard, fashion you've never seen, and a hair experience you've never had.

A new mission was born.

Thank you, Altrincham ❤️

We opened in September of 2022 knowing absolutely no one in the Altrincham area. Since then we've serviced over 5,000 customers, completed over 10,000 haircuts, run wild birthday celebrations with fire displays on Oxford Road, had more award nominations than you can shake a stick at, and in late 2025 were awarded 'Business of the Year' at ThisIsMCRAwards.

And more importantly than this, we've made friends that we're incredibly grateful to have in our lives.

…and all of this in a 'declining British high street'.

So what's next?

We're incredibly privileged to have clients, colleagues, cohorts and all manner of surrounding local businesses that add value to our in-store experience, and inspire us to do better.

So it got us thinking. That may just help us scratch that itch we have.

"Heavy Pencil is coming back with a BANG!"

With our new home on YouTube, we're really hoping you can follow us on our journey, and help us celebrate and champion independent businesses and creatives within the UK.

If you've read this far, please click the link below and 'Subscribe' to what promises to be a 'warts and all' documentary series that will not only entertain, but educate around the pitfalls of running an independent business.

If you live in the Altrincham area, you may even see a few familiar faces. And if you yourself would like to be a part of it, feel free to get in touch.

For now we hope you enjoy the show, and as to where this will take us, we have no idea.

Not everything in life is guaranteed. Sometimes it's just written in Heavy Pencil.

Andy