Underlines chats to Susana Lorena, founder of Maison SL, multi-brand lingerie and swimwear store situated in London’s fashionable Notting Hill. She explains how her business has developed and advanced over the last 12 months.
How has lockdown been?
Lockdown has been nerve-wracking and full of uncertainty for us, as it has been for many people. When we were able to open last year, business was good. But it was frustrating having to keep closing our shop in Notting Hill. It is hard to run a retail shop without any revenue! Fortunately we had help from the government schemes and our local council, Kensington and Chelsea. The lockdown also made us rethink how we communicate with our customers. We knew the customers were still out there – the question was how to reach them.
How have you kept in touch with your customers?
We made much more use of social media – Instagram and Facebook – to connect with customers. We were helped by having influencers like Ashley James posting about us on Instagram and we’ve focused on promoting comfortable bralettes and sports bras – the kind of lingerie women wanted during lockdown.
We also introduced online styling and bra fitting for customers over Zoom and Facetime and speeded up a redesign of the Maison SL website. It is hard to replicate the intimacy of a lingerie shop in the online world but we’ve just relaunched with a new design which we think gives a feel closer to the shop – the sense of warmth and comfort and the idea that you are visiting a special, intimate place.
Finally, we have put a lot of effort into learning about SEO (search engine optimisation) and digital marketing to make sure customers could find us in the digital world. It is very detailed, technical work but it sure pays off.
Tell us more about trading online? Do online bra fittings really work and how do customers react?
To be honest I’ve never been keen on online meetings and didn’t like Zoom but I’m totally converted now. Online bra fittings have been amazingly successful and it is interesting how different the experience is from doing a fitting in person. There’s no background noise or distraction like there is when you are in the shop. There’s just the two of you on video. So the fittings are very focused and intimate. You tend to get straight down to business – there’s less opportunity to chat about general things – but it is very important how you talk to the customer. You need to put them at their ease and make them feel comfortable.
I’ve ended up really enjoying it and it’s worked better than I expected although I’m looking forward to having my clients back in the shop again. Of course the great thing about online fittings is that you can help customers from all over the place who wouldn’t otherwise make it to the shop. We’ve done online fittings with women from across the UK and overseas – Americans and Italians for instance. We have also been able to help a lot of pregnant women who are shielding. So we’ll carry on doing it in the future, after all it allows us to reach a global clientele.
What about your suppliers? Have they been supportive?
Our suppliers have been great – we have more than two dozen brands and, with a couple of exceptions which I won’t name, they have all been very supportive. Some suppliers agreed to reorganise deliveries, some cancelled collections or changed the way we were buying for future seasons and in some cases extended payment plans. We were disappointed that one brand changed the payment terms they agreed with us – they wanted us to start paying a deposit when we ordered and then pay in full on delivery. We told them ‘no thanks’. Those sorts of terms do not work for a small business. Since then we have added a couple of new brands on our usual terms and we have also introduced a great new athleisure collection by Maison Lejaby.
The new brands you have brought in – how will they complement your existing brand portfolio?
Athleisure is a new product range for us. It is very much what our type of customers are looking for – chic but informal. Lots of women want to incorporate this casual style clothing – leggings and crop top styles – into their everyday life.
We also think there’s also going to be a big demand for elegance and fashion as life gets back to something closer to normal. Women want to get out their high heels and dress up again and that includes wearing beautifully crafted and designed lingerie. So one of our new brands is Fleur of England – it’s a great combination of British design, amazing workmanship, excellent fit and a wonderful mix of lacy romance and sexy couture style.
How do you think your business will progress now?
All our regulars say they cannot wait to come back to see us in the shop and look at the collection. The experience of touching and feeling the product is an experience you just cannot get online. We are planning to reopen with some spring reductions for the first two weeks to whet customers’ appetites. I expect we will all still be wearing masks for some time to come but it will be so nice to have that face-to-face human contact again. We will take bookings for appointments and we have another floor where we can do private fittings if customers want privacy on their own.
How do you interpret the role of quality independent shops in 2021 and beyond?
I am very excited about the opportunity for independent retailers. The world has changed and I don’t think we’ll go back to life as it was. I’m sure many people will continue to work from home much more. They won’t want to travel so much into town or to busy department stores. And they’ll want to support their own local communities. Specialist independent stores like ours will be pivotal in ensuring that local communities and high streets survive and flourish.
The key will be to provide customers with an experience they cannot get just by shopping online on Amazon. That extra special experience could be the excellent service, the expertise we can offer, the curation and the diversity of the products, the range of price points for different customers. These are all the kind of things that make shopping an experience rather than just a quick transaction. Having said that we all need to operate in the digital world as well as and make online shopping an integral part of our business. The way I see it is that in the future we’ll have some customers who just shop online, some who only come to the store but a large number will use both physical and digital channels. They’ll check out bras or swimsuits they are interested in on Instagram or Facebook or the website but they’ll also want to come to the store to try things on and discuss styling with us.
Will you take advantage of longer opening hours or by appointments only?
No. We’ll let customers decide what they are comfortable with. If they want a private appointment we’ll arrange that but my guess is that most customers will be happy to come to the shop as they always did. Of course we’ll limit the numbers in the shop and ensure people wear masks and so on. And bra fitting is not a problem since we fit by sight and do not use measuring tapes.
Have you had many problems with the levies for goods coming in from Europe?
Brexit is certainly having an impact. Deliveries are much slower from pretty much all our suppliers. Most delivery companies are taking two to three days longer because of the new border controls and this affects our B2B ordering cycle. It’s very frustrating because unlike department stores we often order in items for customers and before Brexit we could usually have things in within three days. Now our deliveries from Europe are all taking a week or more. I hope this is just temporary but I am not counting on it.
We also have to pay duty on several European brands because some of the manufacturing is done outside Europe and therefore they cannot be imported tariff free. Some of the suppliers are absorbing this but prices have still gone up by an average of 7% or more as a result of Brexit. This is not going to be temporary unfortunately and it may affect our buying and choice of brands in the future.
