What inspired us and the nitty gritty of starting our Skarlette lingerie business
05 February 22What inspired us and the nitty gritty of starting our own Skarlette lingerie business was something we wouldn't have been able to write a single line about a couple of years ago.
Having proved our market, we want to talk to you about finding suppliers, choosing how to sell and how to take big steps beyond building our website and designing our Skarlette patterns. Traditional post mastectomy bras weren't working for me, Kate fixed that with the unique design of the Skarlette. Being a nurse of many years, I wanted to fix that for many more women facing the same challenges.
We've learned so much from our short existence:
- You can't please everyone - that's too big an undertaking
- We don't put all our eggs in one basket
- It's ok to get it wrong, learn, adapt and try again
- It's good to ask for help, accept advice and adapt again
- Talking to people - anywhere, everywhere. Honestly, the support and guidance offered to us has got us where we are. You don't know what people know, and what you don't, until you start having conversations
- It's crucial to understand the market and to market effectively, and that costs money, but without it the task could be impossible
- To take a break. Recharge, re-evaluate and you will be surprised with the ideas and solutions you're capable of
There have been challenges! Launching our Skarlette lingerie brand has been challenging and exciting from the beginning, and still is. Both working alongside our part time jobs and being part of our families is a huge challenge for our time management. Building the website, communicating with our customers and followers, learning about how to grow a company - the marketing and financing, legalities of investors and intellectual property... there's so much!
The biggest cost is our time, but getting our logo, branding and marketing right and making sure our website and social media are speaking to our visitors and customers the way we want them to takes time and money. We want to get it right.
To think we have nearly reached 1000 followers on social media, and we have customers in several countries, with our own inexperienced marketing skills, that's amazing. Just imagine our potential when we have marketing specialists taking Skarlette to the next level on this exciting journey?
Our launch was our homework, the best way we could find out what we needed to know. Good things take patience and planning. Keep following us and sharing our brand and story and stay with us for this exciting journey - Skarlette is about to grow a little bit bigger.
One decision we have made is that we're going to remain an online company. The Skarlette is such a beautiful and specialist piece of lingerie that it needs to be everywhere, and online accessiblity makes that possible. Keeping our lingerie out of big retail stores means that we can keep our prices affordable for those who want to buy it. There are two very important reasons for our decision. However, we are continuing to explore having Skarlette lingerie in breast care centres, alongside traditional mastectomy bras and prosthetics - so anyone with any advice or connections, please do get in touch?
