Good taste, authentic style: the team behind children’s clothes company Belle & Boo
November 9, 2013 Leave a comment
Good taste, authentic style: the team behind Belle & Boo
In the third of a series identifying the most innovative businesses in Britain today, Abigail Townsend meets the founders of children’s clothes company Belle & Boo.
Team effort: Kate Shafe, Patrick Shafe and Mandy Sutcliffe Photo: Gemma Day
2:18PM BST 21 Jun 2013
Setting up any business involves challenges. But at Belle & Boo, the biggest hurdles Kate Shafe and Mandy Sutcliffe faced were biological. Sutcliffe was selling her exquisite illustrations of children online when Shafe, a friend from university, suggested that together they turn her talent into a business. Six months later, however, Shafe was pregnant with her first child – soon followed by her second. Sutcliffe then upped the odds by having twins. So family life has always been part of their business.Says marketing director Shafe, 39: “I used to go to meetings with Robyn when she was about three months old. I’d stroll in and apologise, but then carry on quite comfortably. After all, life is life and life has children.”
Creative director Sutcliffe, also 39, and Shafe and her husband Patrick, 43, who joined the business two years ago as a co-owner and commercial director, clearly relish challenges.
Belle & Boo is intended to be the opposite of garish, hyped brands, which young children adore but taste-savvy parents don’t. Using Sutcliffe’s delicate drawings of an idealised childhood, Belle & Boo produces books, stationery, clothing and other lines, for sale in the UK and overseas.
“There’s an authenticity about Belle & Boo,” argues Shafe. “It’s not a mass-manufactured, money-driven brand; there’s an honesty about it – the artist is creating something her own children will cherish and pass down through the ages.”
Without a television show or film to establish their characters, building profile for Belle and her friends has been harder.
Yet five years in, the company is profitable and they expect sales to jump significantly this year as more revenue streams come online.
What advice does Kate have for start-ups? “Be patient. I believe it takes 10 years to build a successful brand.”
So the Bristol-based trio continue to juggle families with business, with Shafe’s girls and Sutcliffe’s boys often seen in the office.
“They are our little models,” laughs Sutcliffe.
Factfile
Company Belle & Boo
Established 2008
Turnover £500,000 in 2012/13
Number of staff 8
Website belleandboo.com
About bambooinnovator
Bamboo Innovator 