Lessons from a Global Clothing Brand That Started Very, Very Small
By Tiffany London and Christian Robinson
If you’re a budding entrepreneur, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about the very modest beginnings of some of the world’s biggest companies. Some of the most famous tales focus on the birthplace of some of the globe’s most recognized brands, including the Palo Alto, California garage where Hewlett-Packard got its start in the 1930s or the small Bellevue, Washington home where Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.
Because those companies are now so large and influential, it’s easy to discount the fact that these stories are actually real and possible. But the tale of the growth of our company, Tiffany Rose Maternity, from mere idea into a worldwide clothing company and outfitter of European royalty and Hollywood stars should underscore the fact that the business idea floating around in your head today can ultimately grow into something beyond your imagination.
That is exactly what has happened with Tiffany Rose Maternity. It’s a journey that hasn’t been without its bumps and challenges. But along the way, we have learned plenty that we believe can help guide entrepreneurs and small business owners as they strive to reach their goals.
Tip One: Find Your Niche
The fact that Tiffany Rose Maternity is now one of the world’s leading providers of occasion and bridal wear for pregnant women has everything to do with how we started and stuck with one main focus. Over the last 17 years, we have honed our skills, designing beautiful dresses for pregnant women that make them feel fabulous while attending special occasions. One of the reasons we have been successful is because we honed in on a super-specific niche: Pregnant women in need of occasion and bridal wear. Everything we have done since our launch has been devoted to building our brand exclusively around this concept.
This focus was particularly important in the beginning. When we started, we didn’t have money to invest in marketing. So, we built our reputation, and our sales, through word of mouth and by becoming a recognized authority in serving the unmet demand of pregnant women. Word spread quickly because we provided a totally different product to what was available, and we delivered it with awesome customer service.
Tip Two: Look Beyond Your Home Market
In many ways, Tiffany Rose Maternity is a decidedly British company. We launched and grew our company in the United Kingdom, and our dresses are designed and made here. We could have easily focused our time and investments just on growing our brand at home.
If we had, though, we would have missed out on huge opportunities. Indeed, today Tiffany Rose is a multi-million dollar fashion brand that exports to over 100 countries and generates 80 percent of all its sales from outside of the United Kingdom, including a large chunk from the U.S. If we had been content to serve only expecting British moms, it’s unlikely we would be carried by respected retail brands like Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus. And we definitely would not have earned two Queen’s Award for Enterprise, one of the highest business accolades in the United Kingdom.
When you are starting and growing your company, ask yourself this: How can you extend your product or service outside your city, state, or even your country?
Tip Three: You Don’t Necessarily Need Funding
Many people feel they have a killer business idea but are unwilling to pursue it because they lack funding to launch it. We know from experience that money is not a reason to trap a great business idea forever in your head.
Tiffany Rose Maternity was launched with less than $2,000. Most of that amount came by using Tiffany’s MasterCard, and the funds allowed her to buy a domain name, get her website hosted with DreamHost, and begin designing her first collection of outfits. Her DreamHost website was crucial to building her business. The first online orders that came in helped expand the range of what Tiffany could offer, and she continually reinvested in the business to help it grow organically.
It’s even easier to start a business online with limited funds today than it was when Tiffany Rose Maternity got started. When Tiffany was building a business plan for her fledgling fashion label back in 2002, click-to-run platforms like WordPress, Magento, and Shopify did not exist. Nor did communities like Etsy or simple payment solutions like Stripe and Square. With all of these online tools and communities, the barriers to entry have never been lower. All of which means that securing some early success (and revenue) and proving the potential of your idea is possible without investing a lot of money.
Tip Four: Planning Is Everything
Even when your company is in its infancy, it’s smart to prepare as though your huge break will happen tomorrow. Because it might.
In 2013 our Amelia Dress was worn by Princess Madeleine of Sweden and photos of her were featured on the homepage of Bunte, a huge German website. Soon after, our website was literally flooded with traffic as thousands of German readers clicked on a Bunte link and came to our site. Fortunately, our DreamHost account allowed for unlimited bandwidth and unmetered traffic, so we weren’t held back by limited technical capabilities. As our business scaled, we moved from shared hosting to dedicated hosting with the click of a button.
Scaling our internal processes has been harder. Finding additional manufacturers to allow us to meet growing demand, hiring additional team members, and cash flow planning to ensure we could afford to do everything were all challenges. Planning for success is everything. Otherwise, you’ll be vulnerable to Lewis Carroll’s observation, “if you don’t know where you’re going, then any road will take you there.”
Tip Five: Ecommerce Does Not Sleep. Ever.
If you’re fortunate enough to create a brand that has global appeal, be prepared for what that means when shoppers across multiple time zones are making purchases on your site. Nothing is more chilling than seeing your website go down at 2 a.m. when overseas shoppers are browsing and ready to buy. That’s especially true if your webhost has 9-to-5 office hours. Make sure your webhost can provide support 24/7 and is responsive if you run into trouble. We have relied on DreamHost’s 24/7 support on multiple occasions and know they have our back whenever we need them.
Tip Six: Outsource and Delegate
By their very nature, entrepreneurs take on huge volumes of work. Usually, it’s a necessity: When you don’t have any money or staff, you have to rely on yourself to grow your business. But as you start to bring in some revenue, it’s important to tap the skills and energy of others. This is critical. You can’t be an expert in every single area of your business, but you can hire others who complement your skills, allowing you to focus on what you do best. We opt for managed web hosting with DreamHost for precisely that reason. Our expertise is in designing dresses that make our pregnant customers feel fabulous, not necessarily keeping up with the latest Ubuntu patches. We leave that to the experts.
Tip Seven: Protect Your IP
Whether you realize it or not, you’re building intellectual property as you grow your business. Make sure to protect it.
If, like us, you make products, look into patents, registering design rights, copyrights, and brand protection through trademarks, both in your home market and around the world. In the early days, we saw designs similar to those created in-house at Tiffany Rose appearing on competitor websites. That was soon followed by images of our products cropping up on overseas wholesale platforms. We soon learned to protect our IP rights in the markets we operate in.
We also learned the hard way about issues with domain names: As a British brand, we initially registered our site as “tiffanyrose.co.uk” (because “tiffanyrose.com” was already taken but not being used by the owner). Within a year of launch, we found that www.tiffanyrose.com had started operating as an adult site. Eventually, we were able to buy the tiffanyrose.com domain, which has happily been our home ever since. But that was a situation that could have been avoided.
Tip Eight: Love What You Do
Starting and growing a business is a marathon not a sprint, so you need energy for the long term. This means you absolutely need to love what you do so that you have the motivation and drive to keep sticking at it when the going gets tough, which it inevitably does. A little under half of all startups won’t make it past their fourth year, so you’ll need to be fueled by passion for what you do to see you through the inevitable dips on the way to success.
Launched by Tiffany London in 2003, Tiffany Rose creates beautiful and elegant maternity dresses, nursing dresses and bridal wear for expectant mums with an occasion in mind.
