S8 E6: What It Really Takes to Scale a Rental Fashion Business with Lyndsay Mason

In this episode, we sit down with Lyndsay Mason, founder and CEO of For The Creators, a business transforming maternity and early parenthood fashion through a sustainable rental model. What began as a personal frustration with the lack of stylish, practical options for expectant and new mothers has evolved into a comprehensive platform offering curated clothing rental, thoughtfully selected lifestyle products, and soon, a dedicated community space.

Lyndsay shares her journey from global digital marketer for baby brands to building a fashion-tech rental business without a traditional fashion background. She talks candidly about launching with just a 10-dress capsule collection, navigating the operational complexities of rental logistics and technology, and scaling the model through wholesale partnerships with brands including Whistles, Hatch and Rykä.

We explore the clear gap in the maternity and postpartum market, and how Lyndsay built a rental model from scratch to serve women during a significant life-stage shift. The conversation covers curating for bump-friendly and breastfeeding-ready styles, developing a membership model that enables unlimited wardrobe swaps, and the realities of inventory forecasting in a stock-heavy, capital-intensive rental business.

Lyndsay also explains how the platform is evolving beyond clothing into beauty, wellness and lifestyle, driven directly by customer feedback and community insight. At its core, For The Creators is not only providing a more sustainable and stylish solution for modern parents, but also creating new customer acquisition channels for fashion brands - all while building a supportive ecosystem for women navigating pregnancy, postpartum and identity transformation.

Three Key Takeaways

1. Underserved life-stage markets present powerful opportunities. The maternity and postpartum period represents a major identity and lifestyle shift, yet many women feel unsupported by existing fashion options. Spotting these gaps can unlock meaningful and commercially viable business ideas.
2. Rental requires operational depth, not just great branding. Success in fashion rental depends on sufficient sizing, variety and stock depth at all times. It’s a capital-intensive model that demands careful forecasting, utilisation management and forward planning.
3. Customer feedback should shape evolution. From expanding into maternity wear to introducing beauty, wellness and lifestyle products, For The Creators has grown by listening closely to its community - building what customers genuinely need, rather than what the brand assumes they want.
   
   
   

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Welcome to Buying and Beyond. The Pokemon takes me behind the scenes of retail buying retail and we are talking all things retail buying and beyond with real people in retail. So grab your drink of choice and come and have a gigger with us. This episode is sponsored by the Buyers Club and a membership created for buyers by buyers. If you work in retail buying, you'll know that this role is unlike any other.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

It's creative, commercial, fast-moving, and incredibly rewarding. But it can also be high pressure and full-on.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

The Buyers Club exists to support you through it all. Built from feedback from over 400 retail buyers, it's a dedicated community designed to help you grow, connect, and thrive in your career. Inside you'll find in-person networking events, monthly online catch-ups, career clinics, mentoring and sounding board support, curated trend edits, retail insights, members-only podcast extras, and a few exclusive perks along the way. Because while tools and technology can support your role, nothing replaces community. If you want to feel more connected, more confident, and more supported in your buying career, head to our homepage for more information on how to join our club. The future of buying isn't just smarter, it's more connected. Now let's get into today's episode.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

So, hi everyone. What started with one rental capsule collection is now growing beyond clothing rental and evolving into a one-stop shop for everything a parent today could need, whether they are facing motherhood for the first or the fifth time. It is the place to go for all things modern motherhood, combining style, sustainability, and community. So in today's episode, we're going to dive deeper into Lindsay's story, discuss the innovative business model she's built, and explore what we can learn from this brand when it comes to trend-sensitive sourcing, circular models, and meeting evolving consumer expectations in the parenting market. So, hi Lindsay. Hi, thank you so much for having me. Thank you for joining us. We're so excited to talk about this today. Find it really interesting. We've not had any discussions yet on the podcast about rental models. We would love to know how you got started.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

I had a baby. So I think the first thing to say is I'm not from a fashion background or a buying background. I am a marketer and had led the global digital marketing for Appsmill and Cowagate, the baby milk brands and babysitters. So I'd been a motherhood marketer for many years, and I was so excited when I got pregnant to finally be that consumer that I'd been trying to talk to for so many years and go down the baby aisle in Sainsbury's and go to all the places in the stores that I had never had permission to go to. But when I was pregnant, and even more so after I'd had my son, I was just so shocked by how little there was available for me as a woman. Everything seemed to be catered to baby. All the brands I was met with were catered to baby, and I really felt like there was nothing that was there to support me. Um obviously your body's changing it at an ordinary rate.

SPEAKER_02 4:58

More than you expect it to as well. I think that's the kind of thing you kind of go into it not realising how much it's going to change you. Yeah. You know that you're going to have someone there that you're going to need to look after, and you appreciate your life's going to change, but I don't think you quite realize the depth in which that will affect you.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

No, completely. And I think that was the thing that shocked me. I really had this identity crisis, and I don't think I really appreciated how much how I dressed empowered me and gave me confidence, particularly in a workplace situation. I was dressing a body that I didn't recognise and had no idea how to dress. And at that point, I had a marketing agency. So I was walking into big pictures, trying to feel empowered and assertive and confident. And instead, I felt trumpy and not like myself. And I was ended up buying cheap, you know, tassy clothes that I could find for meetings that I didn't really like, but that fit.

SPEAKER_02 5:58

But I think that's the thing, isn't it? You don't really want to sometimes when you had a baby, like the baby's what you need to concentrate on. And you're not in the shape that you want to be necessarily. Your body's gone through a huge amount. And I think sometimes there definitely used to be this image. I think it's only recently that the kind of the perception maybe has changed, and people are being a lot more honest that you don't bounce back.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

I definitely thought I'd have a baby, but I'd still be the same. Yes, I'd have a baby and it would get big, I'd get bigger. But once I'd had the baby, I would just be back to me again. And you don't necessarily want to buy investing clothes because that's not who you see yourself as. That's not who you want to be. And they don't fit the same as they used to. None of the old clothes feel right anymore.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

No, and that for me was a huge even more so after I'd had my son. I'd he was he was quite premature. And I remember coming back from hospital to go out, put out put on some actual clothes to go out for a walk for the first time with my baby. And I remember looking at my wardrobe and being like, oh God, I don't fit in any of my pre any of my pre-pregnancy clothes. That's never gonna happen. I'd had a C-section, so I needed something that was loose around the waist. I was breastfeeding, so my so my clothes needed to be functional. I couldn't bear to look at my maternity clothes. I was like, God, I've got to buy more clothing again. And I went, this is how you know the the business began. I went to the went online and was like, right, post-person clothing. Oh, that category doesn't exist. Okay, maternity clothing, all you know, fast fashion brands, all online, all in dis all in different places. And I was like, someone needs to pull this all together in one place and at least make it discoverable and make it at a time when you have no time, you need ease. And and I just thought, right, I'm just gonna try and put everything in one place, and that's how that was the genesis, I suppose, of the of the idea, and it evolved from there.

SPEAKER_02 7:53

So you curated kind of like a capsule wardrobe.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

I thought, let's just put all the maternity clothes in one space first. And also, I think for me, I was I didn't really identify with any of the maternity brands that were on the market, and I really wanted to start curating bump and feeding friendly styles from brands that I already shopped with. So, you know, sort of high and high street brands think sort of Whistles Anthropology, for example, where they're not going to invest in a maternity collection because it doesn't move the bottom line. But if I could curate on their behalf collections that I knew would work, how brilliant as an entry point for customers to discover a brand at a time when they really want to feel good about themselves. And so that's how it started. I built a Shopify Site, I went and bought 10 things from my local high street in my size in case I couldn't shift them, and um just started playing with this idea of curation with the pregnant woman and and a feeding woman at the heart of it.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Fantastic. And how did you come up with a name for the creators?

SPEAKER_00 8:56

What is that name? I I really I really wanted it to be about her, about the woman, and that is everything that we that's what everything we're about. And I I really believe that you know you are at your most powerful when you are cre you know creating a life. And there's this disconnect between the power and the confidence you should have, I think, during that period and actually what you're met with from the outside world. So for the creators was really a big, you know, me putting a big banner across the proposition of being like, this is for you, this is for you at a time when you're creating a life. Yeah. So that's where it came from. In the middle of the night, actually, I woke up and I was like, Yes, that's it, I've got it.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

That's sometimes when the best ideas come, aren't they? In the middle of the night. I'm always like, oh, I should write that down, but I'm so asleep. And then I always convince myself I'll remember it. And in the morning, I'm like, I had something really good last night. What was it? Or it's when you're in the shower and you're there and you're like, I really need to get out and write this down. And you're like, oh, I need to remember this.

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Drying my hair, I always think drying my hair is really good thinking time because you're just focused on one task, you know. Mindfulness. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I love that. It's such an amazing name and really like encompasses everything that you've just talked about.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Yeah, I remember pressure testing it with my with my friends and family and being like, What do you think? So excited about it. And they're like, Oh, oh, I get it. I'm like, okay, okay. And then it's, you know, and it's it's such a bringing a brand into birthing a brand into the world is such a nerve-wracking thing. Um, it's really exposing, but it's been met with it seems to really connect with women, and that's what it was all about in the first place.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

So it was all really memorable as well, you know, and it and it stands out, and I think that's what's quite important as well. And so, how did you sort of see sort of traction start to gain? Like, did so when you set up the Shopify store, was it under for the creators?

SPEAKER_00 10:57

It was under for the creators. Uh, I knew I had the name, I built the website, I had decided at that point that I was going to experiment with rental as a as a method, because purchasing everything new just doesn't make sense for this life stage when everything, your body's changing so fast, you don't need there are some things that yes, you need to buy, things that you'll live in over and over and over again, but sort of the cost per wear of a dress for a meeting or a wedding just doesn't didn't feel right to me, and I hated the wastage. So at that point, so this is where I we early 2020, there were no off-the-shelf plugins to make Shopify work for rental. So I really had to botch it to make it work, and it was a botch. And uh it worked because I had the stock in my I say stock, the 10 dresses that I bought in my house, and a very basic level, does this have you know, is there a demand for this? It worked. And yeah, I set up an Instagram handle, and that's how that's how it started. And I remember Claire Bourne, who is an amazing physio and pelvic floor specialist in in the pregnancy space. She uh and quite a big influencer in the in the pregnancy space. Remember, she followed me and I was just like, oh my god, it started. I remember she posted, she she did a post about for the creators and she rented something, and I was just like, oh my god, this is amazing. And I start getting new followers, and then people started renting, and it just sort of trickled from there. And I was putting things on list, started listing things that I didn't own. But if I got an order in, I would order next day delivery from John Lewis. That's how it worked. I was just burning cash, but I wanted to understand what the demand was. Was it bees, was it jeans, was it dresses?

SPEAKER_02 12:51

Yeah. Um, you're super creative with the way that you were doing this, you know. There's no platform for it, but how can I make this work?

SPEAKER_00 12:58

That's me, GMP. Just yeah, I will make this work.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

And I I love your testing process. You've really, really thought about it and done it in a really thorough way, you know. I think, you know, just 10 dresses to start with, such a simple, you know, process, really focused, and then start drip feeding in other categories. It's like such an amazing for someone that's not, you know, got like a buying background, that's incredible. How did you sort of like come up with the idea of how to start that, the the testing process?

SPEAKER_00 13:28

I think I just wanted, I think. Well, first of all, I sent out a uh questionnaire to all of my mum friends and was just like, please share this. And it was trying to understand whether women would rent clothes because this is before her uh by rotation high street had they were still early, early days, and no one really I think her was on wait list. So rental, women's wear rental was not mainstream in the UK.

SPEAKER_02 13:57

And I think it's even fair to say, probably secondhand wasn't like we're in a very different place now about wearing something that someone else has worn that you don't know to where where you were back then.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Yeah, exactly. And yeah, vintage, for example, was nowhere near as mainstream. And and it was met with this is a brilliant idea, but I'm not sure I'd do it. And so the testing process for me was like, right, well, if I if I make this as easy as possible for her, you know, if I if I bring what kind of brands is it that she wants to rent from? If I can give her access to a 300-pound anthropology dress for 30 quid, would that tempt her? You know, what is what what is it that's driving her? And so I I think it was it was more me, maybe that's the marketer and me, and me enjoying like consumer psychology, just trying to understand what it would be that's that tempted her and that and and that and that made her convert. But interestingly, the collection started as a post-partum collection. It started as a breastfeeding friendly collection. So button-down dresses, for example. And then it was customers going, actually, I want to see more maternity. And that's when I started to bring in different pieces and tested jeans and tested elasticated waisted jeans and the more functional pieces that everyday wear. And that I think is what makes us very different from a rental perspective to what actually exists in the mainstream rental market, anyway, is the is the functionality and the utility of the clothing that we rent. Is we're not really going after an occasion where customer we're going after where we are replacing your everyday wardrobe.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

Yeah. And I think especially when you're kind of moving into that space and you know, you've never worn these kind of functional things. You know, for example, you've said about the jeans with the elasticated waist, and you're like, well, do I really want to invest in like that could become a core staple in my wardrobe for that kind of nine months, but I am gonna get bigger, is that gonna actually work with me? Do I just buy a cheap pair and try it? Or actually, do I rent something that is a good quality piece and test it that way to then know, okay, that's great, like that's gonna work with my wardrobe. So it's making it things that you wouldn't necessarily wear and you're not sure whether to take the plunge. It gives you that option, but also from a sustainability point of view, which we can't ignore. It's like you're pregnant for sort of nine months, but for the first three, you're not really showing too much depending on what number of baby you have, because I've heard you do get bigger sooner, uh, the more you have. But you know, it's only for a short period of time. So that's quite a big investment in clothes that actually aren't going to stand the test of time. So it makes more point of view as well to kind of turn to to rental for breastfeeding, for postpartum, for pregnancy.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

I think the the stats are, and these are these are probably five years old now, these stats, but the average woman five years ago was spending £750 per pregnancy on 21 new items of clothing. Wow. Which is and that so that will include underwear as well. But that's an enormous, that's a whole wardrobe.

SPEAKER_01 17:03

Yeah. Such a short period of time.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Yeah, and I think what's interesting is what we found as well is this journey through postpartum. So we I think we we talk a lot about how much your body changes during pregnancy, but then there is this journey that happens postpartum. Different women have different recovery times, they've been through different births, and you know, some women will go on to subsequent pregnancies sooner rather than others, but even if they don't go on to subsequent pregnancies, their bodies have changed, and they're the way that they identify with themselves has changed. And I think we are as mums, we look at our lives in as a in the whole and go, right, well, how am I in the right job? Am I do I want to live here anymore? Like what what what your belief system changes a little bit, and I think that also changes sometimes how you dress and how you express yourself. And so being enabling women to experiment with their identities, you know, during that new chapter of their lives is also really exciting from and being able to provide rental as a mechanic to do so, hopefully is more cost-efficient and better for the planet as well.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

And also curated. So, as you say, like they're struggling sometimes with identity and who am I and not really sure where to go or where to start. And it can be very overwhelming walking into a store and seeing all these options, but where you've selected pieces and kind of show like this is what you could wear, and you could wear it like this and have you thought a bit like this.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Yeah, exactly. And I think I think there's also another interesting piece here around the brands that you can afford or want to buy into. I think what we've seen is more so, I suppose, during postpartum, when you know you're on maternity wages and the bulk of your money is kind of going into baby because it's here, women tend to tend to sort of hold back on how much they spend on themselves. So they might not necessarily go in and buy that, I don't know, £120 whistles dress, for example. But if you can enable them to rent it for a fraction of the price to buy new, it feels like this the impact that dress has not only on how they feel within themselves, but the satisfaction of being able to get it, I think, is really powerful. And it's really interesting from a brand perspective because we're enabling this fresh entry point into brands that other that some customers might have seen as unaccessible up until that point because of a price barrier. But what we have seen is that women that rent with a brand that they've never shopped with before, 80% plus will then go and purchase from that brand at some point. So we're really providing this new acquisition channel, which is exciting for the brand and exciting for us to be able to bring brands and introduce women to brands that they haven't perhaps shopped with before.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

Yeah, yeah. That's amazing as a marketeer. How did it feel moving from being a marketeer at heart to kind of moving into the buying space where you're kind of curating a range, you're, you know, you're planning a product assortment, you're pricing. So you're doing your price architecture. How does it feel sort of moving from one space to another? And what similarities do you sort of see?

SPEAKER_00 20:07

It was terrifying. I remember well, because for so long I was kind of listing product without permission, you know, I was buying it, owning it, and listing it for rental. And then I had, I was like, I need to get some structure to this. And I I got introduced to the whistles buying team. And whistles was a brand that I'd shocked with for many years, and I was like, oh my god, how am I gonna say? What how do I know how any of it works?

SPEAKER_02 20:30

I was so green. That's quite good sometimes, though, isn't it? Because you just come and you throw out the ideas that they're like, okay, we never thought about it like that before.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

This is what was interesting because we'd had this call, they really loved for the creators. They were the first brand we ever did a wholesale deal with, and I have I'm so grateful to them for taking a risk and doing that with us. But they invited me to go to the showroom and and do a buy, and I'd never done that before. I didn't know what the process was, I didn't know how it worked. And I remember going into the showroom, I think I almost spring summer we were buying on my own, and all these clothes, you know, on display. And I was going round each piece, being like, Can I get a bump in there? Can I get a boob out of it? And that was like my criteria. And she was like by it at the time, was like, no one has ever thought that before. I was like, this is so interesting. And I was just like, you know, because how I think this is our challenge, like, especially when we're buying into women's web brands, like we can't go in and buy a whole collection, we can't take it, it's not applicable to our audience, and and our power is in our curation. But it was such an I think to your point, very refreshing for them to be like, oh, this is how our brand could be bought, and really satisfying to be able to take that curated capsule to our audience and be like, here you go, we've done all the heavy lifting for you. So yeah, it was a steep, a steep uh learning curve.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

And you a whole new customer for them, a whole new kind of way of, as you say, a whole new acquisition channel. And what so what whistles was your first brand? What other brands have you been listing since then?

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Well, we had, you know, we had like these sort of I suppose there's two ways to look at the business. So we have our maternity brands, and you know, they are the ones that can offer that functional, the functional, functional clothing, you know, the jeans, the the breastfeeding tops, etc. And so over the years we've been working to build up uh and try and get as much share of that maternity market as possible. Obviously, there's been some big changes in the maternity market of late, so I think going into administration. Uh, a lot of uh mainstream uh maternity brands have come off the high street and uh aren't perhaps putting as much investment into stock. So we started uh buying into international maternity brands. So hatch was our sort of second big fish that we brought in, which is uh, for those of you who don't know, the US's largest maternity brand. And that again was a huge win for us because we were the first wholesale deal they had in the UK. That's incredible. And they are today still one of our biggest partners. And that was across not just clothes, but also beauty and wellness products. So they have belly oils, they have a swell relief gels, they have deodorants that are all pregnancy safe. So that was a huge win. And we've started since then beginning to bring on Australian brands, Nordic brands, and expand that side. And then from a mainstream women's wear brand perspective, I think Rickso for me was always in Rickso was really at its height during sort of like 21, 22, 23. I was just like, if we could get Rickso, like I'd feel like I'd really got, you know, put us on the map. Yeah. Yeah. And we it took us, it took us a while, but the like the founders that are incredible, and they both had babies during that time. And when I met with them, they were both really, you know, understood the problem.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:00

And related to it. And uh obviously sustainability is very much at the heart of their business too. And so that was a brilliant wholesale partnership. And then and I think that's that's the key, isn't it? It's and that's what I hadn't really understood was it's the alignment of the brands and the order with which you, you know, you bring them in and and how they all fit together and sit as they would do on a high street, you know. That's how when you're creating starting, creating brands on on a marketplace like ours. That's what you you need to be mindful of. And that was a new learning for me.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Yeah, where they all sit, they need to sort of all share the same values as you as well, don't they? You know, and the same message. Otherwise, it's kind of you know, so many marketplaces out there can become incredibly busy and noisy, can't they? But it's so important to sort of, I'm guessing, cut through the noise, and that's why when you started this in the first place to make it really accessible for for women, and and what an amazing partnership. I'm better, you know, really grateful to meet you as well, because to have that exposure with the UK for that brand, I think it's an amazing entry for them.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

Yeah, it was, it was. And it's been, I I think one of the one of the most interesting pieces actually for me was discovering the smaller independence as well that had previously gone, you know, they've been lost in in the Google ether because they were competing with ASOS and Next and, you know, Sheen. And actually, there are these incredible, like Clary and Peg, for example, amazing British-made maternity clothes that are so thoughtfully made in such thoughtful collections that have been born out of women that have become mums and wanted to create amazing clothes. And to be able to meet these women and find them and source collections from there and put them on, you know, and sit them alongside so, for example, is is so satisfying. And I just love that we get to work with so many mums that have built businesses, whether they're, you know, of whatever size, because the majority of the businesses that we work with are female led, which is really exciting.

SPEAKER_02 26:06

Yeah, they all all identify with it, and you're able to give them that stage and what a presence it gives them. So, how did the platform sort of evolve from clothing into this kind of broader parenting lifestyle offering? You've talked about sort of with hats, you brought them on from the US, they have the clothing, but they also have a lot of this kind of beauty and wellness. Was that the first step, or had you already, you know, was it the ability to be able to use a current partner to expand your range within them, or had you already started to sort of work in that space?

SPEAKER_00 26:35

So I think what we've seen is that we had when women were coming to us being like, I think, I think during this life phase, there is so much overwhelm, not knowing what you need. You know, you're thrust into this brand new category, new brands. Do I need a belly oil? Do I need what vitamins do I need? What it there are so many decisions that you're having to make, and there is such disparate information. And we had a customer coming to us being like, you know, what's the best, you know, vitamins take, for example, supplement take. We were actually, maybe there is further we can go with this, which is just outside clothing, which is actually providing women with building on that curation, the best product that they within a certain case, whether that be across health and health and well-being and clothing, you know, at the best nursing bar, but also we'll tell you what the best supplement to take is and we'll tell you, you know, what the best moisturizer is, for example. So really, and we did that through going out to our customer base and community and polling, like in what is what would you recommend to a friend? And then we took that data and we went to brands and we're like, right, this is what our community wants. And that's when we started to introduce dropship. And so the majority of our retail is dropship, and that allows us to experiment with different brands and see what where there's demand. It allows us to increase our range without risk. And again, like, you know, begin to increase this beautiful curation of products for her. And also from a business perspective, it increases lifetime value. You know, we're able to continue, we're able to build on what we're able to give her at certain points in the journey and not just stop at the point of you've had your baby, but here are all the things you need for when you get home from hospital. If you've had a C-section, we've got scar relief, whether it's silicone strips or you know, we'll help them support you with nipple shields or whatever it is that you need, the best of the best throughout this phase, and really be there for her past just the clothing.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

It's interesting as you say about community, because I think I mean it's one of the most original communities, and they say that it takes a village, right? Takes a village to raise a child. And so often these days, maybe people aren't living close to friends and family for whatever reason. And so creating that community through for the creators is so important to feel heard, feel understood. And and also I think while, you know, as the years have gone on, there's definitely a lot more people being a lot more open and honest on say platforms like Instagram about the realities behind it, it's not always easy, it's not always perfect. With rise of things like AI and misinformation, how can you always trust it? So knowing that you've got a community of women on a platform that are sharing products and and it's being vetted almost and it's being kind of curators, as you say. You're not relying on just, oh, I saw this thing on Instagram that I think I might try.

SPEAKER_00 29:38

Which is so often because you're in this, you're in this break at heart echo chamber of like of baby and and mum products. But on that point, we're launching in a couple of weeks a commit a community platform within the site itself. And that will be a safe place for women to come and meet and connect and talk, share style advice, share stories based on where they're at in their journeys and support each other.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

Incredible. It feels like the next natural step that you've been sort of supporting women all this, all this time and asking them for their views, but to be able to actually fully connect people.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

Yeah, it's really exciting. And it's a whole new element of the business and it's a different muscle to exercise and to and we're really conscious of getting it right. So we're gonna we're gonna start just sort of focused on that later stage of pregnancy and into birth, and we'll just begin to open up the community over time to to different points within the journey. But I think if we can increase, you know, the help that we give to women and the support that we give to them, then we're doing our jobs.

SPEAKER_02 30:44

It feels very holistic and very kind of like a well-rounded support system. I hope so.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

I hope so. And I mean, at the core of it, it's like how do we make her feel empowered, confident, good about herself? That is what we are to our core, and this is a natural extension of that.

SPEAKER_02 31:01

And do you predominantly work? So you're talking about having, you know, you can buy directly, so you've got this sort of DTC model, you've talked about dropship. Have you explored the subscription area?

SPEAKER_00 31:13

Yes, so we have a uh rental membership, which we've had now for a couple of years, and it's taken different guises, again, based on what the technology has permitted. But women uh can rent four or six items of clothing at a time. They can swap endlessly. So you can rent something one day, wear it to a meeting, send it back, and swap it for something else. So it's basically an unlimited wardrobe. And it's not capped across brands or price point. You can you could rent six RICSO dresses for £450 each if you wanted to. And that has been that again was developed based on looking at what she was doing on the site. So what we found was that women, before we introduced the the membership, women were coming to the site to rent for uh 30 days. We had a 30-day rental window, and she was keeping things in her basket. And as soon as she sent one back, she'd get another one. Actually, it made this makes sense to if we open this up and provide packaged it up in a way that she could not have to worry about, you know, uh the admin behind it and it could just roll. How would that work? And yeah, we have we have women that come to us in the second trimester of their first pregnancy, and they're you know, rolled all the way into second pregnancies. We've got one coup our longest standing customer, is on her third baby and has stayed with us the whole time. Wow. Yeah, and it's great, and I think that's testament to the fact that we, you know, we aren't just providing pure play maternity brands, we're doing that curation piece and the product discovery. And we're there with her as she experiments with her style throughout different parts of her of her life, which is great. And that and again, it's brilliant from a sustainability perspective because you know, like your life moves so quickly, and a lot of our a lot of our customers have big jobs and they are, you know, different meetings every day or events, and they need, you know, they need a a wardrobe that works with them to do that, so that the membership really helps with that.

SPEAKER_02 33:22

Yeah, being able to kind of swap those garments in and out as you kind of please is is brilliant because so many subscriptions can be quite limiting. And I think that's what's so wonderful about this is like it's not to limit people. This is actually to give you so much more opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

Yeah, and I think, you know, for us, used to be all felt how do we make this as low lift as possible? And it's something we've really had to, we've done a lot of work on it over the past 12 months to really try and make this as easy as possible because we've because we're operating in a new territory within rental, the tech has had to catch up with what with the vision. And so there have been some really clunky, you know, experiences and our customers bless them, they've like really stuck with us at times. But now, you know, it's we hope it's as slick as it as it can be, and you know, simple things like rather than having to trek to the post office, you know, which you used to have to do, the postman will come and collect your rentals for free, you know. So just trying to make when you're you know eight months pregnant, you don't want to have to get go anywhere. So how do we make it as easy as possible for her? And we're doing a lot of work around sizing, which is obviously a huge challenge anyway, but more so within this life phase, where we're really trying to tailor sizing recommendations based on where you're in your pregnancy and postpartum journey, and how we can then feed review data into that to try and enhance the accuracy of sizing even more so. And it's again like we're really hyper conscious that women can't go onto the high street anymore and shop maternity because it's not there. So, how do we provide them with a nice at-home experience where they can, you know, very easily try on without any risk of you know we're having to wait to get their money back and then and then have a post-monton collect it from them?

SPEAKER_01 35:11

Brilliant. My gosh, the whole end-to-end the thought process of the customer journey is is incredible, like what you've achieved. And what has it been six years now that since you since you launched?

SPEAKER_00 35:21

Yeah, well, it will be this September, yeah. Amazing, amazing it's the same age as my son, so that's how I track it.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Very nice. What's been your sort of proudest moment in that in those six years? That's a good question.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

We my proudest moment, there's been a couple. I think we got investment from Morgan Stanley last year, and as part of that investment, they publicised the their investment in Times Square on a billboard. So for the creators was on a billboard in Times Square. That's cool. It was the same time that my son Hamish was really into Spider-Man in New York City, and so for mommy to be in New York City for him was like that's big, mind-blowing. And I think there is this lovely synergy between, you know, the journey, because I I've built this business with him, you know, like he was the in so the inspiration for it in so many ways. You know, my journey to becoming a mother is what I wouldn't have come up with this idea had I not lived it. And for so many years, the business, you know, stock was in the house, and he came with me to, you know, deliver parcels and sometimes local deliveries we'd go and do them together and things like that. And so I think that for me was a kind of a bit of a lovely full journey, full circle moment, which was really nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:39

Amazing. What have been, not to kind of flip it, but what have been kind of the biggest challenges that you've you feel like you've faced? Obviously, there's there's a huge amount in terms of you know, brand perception, but you're a marketeer, but in terms of logistics, and as you said, like having the vision before the technology's caught up, and how do you scale it?

SPEAKER_00 36:57

Yeah, yeah, there's been a lot of challenges. I was saying this yesterday through an investor. I was like, how'd I have known how complicated the infrastructure and the business model was gonna be? I'm not sure I would have quite so willingly jumped into it. But I was so passionate about fixing this problem that I was like, I'm just gonna get stuck in and see what happens. But it was, it has, it's not, it's not an easy business to run. It is complicated. The tech has been complicated. We decided not to build our own tech because we didn't want to become a tech business. We wanted to focus on the curation and the customer experience and the buying. And uh, so we have had multiple different iterations of our platform, and we have perhaps moved slower than we'd wanted to because we've been handicapped by the tech that we've had at that point in time. So the tech has been a challenge. It's a very stock-heavy business. You've had, especially when you're running a membership, you have to have depth of sizing, you have to have variety, you have to have at any one point in time enough availability within certain collections for it to be appealing. And not just appealing to to uh recruit new members, but also to retain them, you know. So they have to come back. So there has been a lot of money invested up front in getting the stock to where it needs to be and a lot of like trial and error, you know. We know now not to buy into certain uh materials and fabrics because they don't wash well or they shrink or you know, they rip or whatever. We know that actually she's much more interested in durability and and and sort of you know, the genes, the staples than she is perhaps in the occasional air. So there's been a lot of trial and error in learning that. And because of that, it's a so it's an expensive business to run. And raising money, I think I say this as the been the ch the most challenging thing, not because it's been necessarily challenging to raise the money, because we're very fortunate that people love the idea and they and we've got an amazing team and people buy into that and want to be part of the journey and help build the category. But because if you've never raised money before, it's a completely different skill set. And it's really uh it takes you away from the operating of the business. Uh, and that's what's hard, especially in the beginning when you haven't got team around you.

SPEAKER_02 39:27

Yeah, yeah, and you have to focus on those things. It's interesting about building the membership and then having to have the availability of stock. How do you kind of address the the the forecasting and those conversations that you're having with with those retailers, I guess? You know, you've moved in some areas to kind of a DTC, but if you need to have things always on and always available.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

Yeah, so we have we have a utilization rate that we know we need to keep to, and that differs slightly depending on category and season. We have the amazing Zoe who is, you know, she's our chief commercial officer and she's decades of experience at Arcadia and she knows what she's doing. So she luckily is in charge of how much stock we need to buy when we need to buy it. Thank God for Zoe. But uh yeah, it's a really delicate forecasting dance that we regularly have to do, and it's dependent on churn, obviously, of membership, so retention of members, seasonality, and then looking at, you know, within any season, we need more knitwear, we need more quotes, less occasion wear, et cetera, et cetera. So just doing that balance and then forward buying into seasons, which again is something that takes time to get into that cadence of because you haven't necessarily got the funds at the beginning to forward buy and to be able to commit money. And that for me has been again another learning. I didn't know you had to do that before because I wasn't from this background. So I was like, oh, I have to buy what for when? For why? Exactly. And also just like building up, you know, payment terms and trust with suppliers. And at the beginning, everything is pro forma and you have to pay up front, and that's like it's crippling to a really small business. But you want to play with the big boys, so you have to, you know, it's it's a tricky balancing act.

SPEAKER_02 41:07

But as you say, surrounding yourself with the right people, it's just like the community you're building. You've you've known what you've needed, you've known where your points are that you've need support, and you surround yourself with the right people and the experts to help you make sure that this vision comes to life.

SPEAKER_00 41:21

Yeah, and that's where I've been so lucky. Like I have the most incredible team. They are exceptionally talented women. Um and that that has, you know, the testament to what the business has got to because of that team. Like extraordinary.

SPEAKER_02 41:35

Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Lindsay. It's been so interesting hearing about the model and your kind of your journey through it all and the all the points that you've had to consider. And I I totally get what you're saying. Sometimes you do get to a point where you just think, God, if I'd have known what this was going to be. There's something really lovely and refreshing about being green in the beginning and just having that vision and then just making it work.

SPEAKER_00 42:01

Yeah. Dog with a bone.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Knock on every door. Exactly, exactly. Great, amazing. Well, thank you so much. It's been so interesting and so enjoyable. And yeah, let's let's speak soon. Yeah, lovely to see you both.

SPEAKER_00 42:16

Thank you so much. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 42:28

Kate, are you a drama queen? No. Drama just makes things interesting. That's true. All these thoughts and opinions are on our own and based on our own experiences working for a wide variety of retailers. These are all in the hope to entertain and educate and not to reflect negatively on any place we currently or have previously worked.