STRAP
Two into one: Portas recommends closing The Find in Sevenoaks (this page) to focus on the Cranbrook store (facing page)
Find a way forward Kent indie The Find won some stern advice from retail guru Mary Portas.
Drapers will follow the business throughout 2011 to see if it can turn itself around Words Izabel Raffy
R
unning a successful indie is by no means an easy task, espe- cially without prior fashion experience. The idea of selling
beautiful clothes in beautiful surround- ings with perfect customer service and taking a big bite of what one might think is a lucrative market is hard to resist. But does it always work out? This year, Drapers called for fashion
indies facing a specific challenge – be it with footfall, profitability, brand mix, or marketing – to apply for the chance to win business advice from retail guru Mary Portas, star of TV series Mary Queen of Shops. Four indies were short- listed and subjected to scrutiny from Portas on stage at last month’s Drapers Fashion Summit 2010, before Portas and the Drapers team chose the store they felt would most benefit from further advice and coverage in Drapers next year. It was Wendy Leat, owner of The Find,
a two-store womenswear indie with shops in Cranbrook and Sevenoaks in Kent, who won the prize which included a scholarship to workshops run by Skills- mart Retail. For the next 12 months Leat will chart The Find’s progress in a series of Drapers columns, as she implements Portas and Skillsmart’s advice.
Starting out Leat, who was previously an interior designer, opened the doors of her first
34 Drapers December 3 2010 Essentials
Two Five
Number of stores operated by The Find
Number of years in business
£95,247 £32,115
Loss at Sevenoaks store last year
shop in Cranbrook in 2005 selling contemporary womenswear aimed at yummy mummies and ladies who lunch. It was so successful in its first year of trading that it prompted Leat to open a second store in Sevenoaks in 2008, to “replicate what we already had in Cranbrook”, grow sales and extend its customer base. It has never made a profit and is subsidised by the successful Cranbrook store. The addition of the Sevenoaks store has meant the The Find has suffered continual losses overall. Asked why she decided to open her
First-year gross profit at Cranbrook store
own fashion boutique with no prior experience, Leat says: “I was always in love with clothes, fabrics, colours and fashion magazines. I partly blame my mother, who never let me have a Barbie doll, and partly the consistently bad customer service I encountered over the years. Of the opening of the Cranbrook store,
Leat says: “We [Leat and her husband] felt it was meant to be. Somehow every- thing clicked into place.” With only three brands on the shelves, Sandwich, Offshoot and Quin & Donnelly, store sold out of stock within one week of opening. “I had to dash to London and bring some new brands in on short order to keep us open. It was tough – I had to do my buying on instinct.” As a result Noli, Knitwear Queen and Gabriella Knight were added to the
brand mix and were so successful that the store made a gross profit of £95,000 in its first year of trading. “We couldn’t believe it,” says Leat. That same year The Find was short-
listed for Best New Independent at The Drapers Awards and things were looking good – so good that Leat decided to expand the business. Her husband, Ian Leat, who at the time was dissatisfied with his job at fashion logistics firm DTS Logistics, quit to join the boutique too. “We wanted to open a second store so
Ian left his job and we started searching for the right location,” says Leat. When a shop in Sevenoaks became available, the couple considered not only the location but also the competition and the type of potential customers they were likely to attract. The Find in Sevenoaks opened with the aim of attracting similar customers to the Cranbrook store.
The problem While the Sevenoaks store performed well in its first three months of trading, sales suddenly slowed and in its first year the store made a loss of just over £7,000. The opening brand mix was built around Oui Set, Sandwich, Quin & Donnelly, Noli and Blank, but the store failed to keep the attention of “private school parents, ladies who lunch and people who go to functions and garden parties,” according to Leat.
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