This Friday Underlines interviews Caroline Jackson, CEO of Little Women. Little Women has been the trusted go to shop for small busts for over 25 years, firstly as a catalogue business and for the last 20 years as an online store. Caroline came to the business after a long career in fashion retail – originally from London she has lived for the last 17 years in The Midlands.
Life before Little Women?
I was a buyer for the now defunct Top Shop, and a menswear buyer for Hornes Menswear. I moved into procurement analysis for several blue chip companies and worked as a consultant across several businesses and local authorities for 20 years.
Why the world of lingerie and specifically smaller cup sizes?
It was a chance conversation at lunch with a friend. Another of her friends owned Little Women and was selling up due to ill health. I had not worked since my degree and my MA and, being the person I am, I was feeling under challenged. When I discussed it subsequently with my husband we investigated further and considered that we could really grow the brand with our combined and complementary skills, and we also thought that it would be something really enjoyable for me to do – combining my experience in buying, my love of design and my innate entrepreneurial spirit. I had bought lingerie at the start of my career for Top Shop (amongst other departments I worked on) and it just felt like a natural ‘fit’.
Little Amour Range
What is different about working in this sector?
Lingerie is really tricky in many ways – it’s an intimate thing and people are understandably fairly sensitive about it – in some ways it’s almost as if it’s a ‘secret’ that bras and briefs exist, and the topic should be discussed in hushed tones. The customer service chats that we have are probably not typical – they can range from discussions around breast shape and size and which style fits their breast shape best, through to genuine tearful relief that a customer has found us at the age of xx because she’s been wearing teen bras all her life (multiple true stories!) and from men who want to understand what bra style and size they can wear. These aren’t really the typical customer care conversations in other sectors, I don’t think, and you never really know what you’re going to be dealing with on a day to day basis. Professionally, the sector is lovely – everybody that I’ve met in the last 10 years in the trade has been almost universally nice which is a massive bonus!
A Typical Week…in your life
No two weeks are the same really, which suits me. Mondays are usually all hands on deck to get the orders from the weekend fulfilled. Then an assortment of things really – I’m the MD but in a small company that doesn’t really mean I have an army of other people to do things like accounts, marketing, social media and so on. I also do a lot of expediting from the two factories that I use – so there’s always samples to view, lace and embroidery to choose, styles to contribute to the design of. I will spend a fair amount of the week talking to the email marketing person and planning our email campaigns. I also try to prepare social media posts in advance for our social channels. A couple of times a year I have an e-comm photoshoot and a lifestyle photo shoot which take a fair bit of organizing, and there is always a myriad other tasks that occur – for example stationery/packaging ordering, staff training, ordering lingerie from our external suppliers like sloggi and Royce and the never ending SEO work to keep our site on the first page of Google!
Your proudest moment to date?
Being awarded my BA Hons at the age of 40 (English Lit/Creative Writing).
Little Women Ebony
Those Special Moments in your career
Buying Little Women was a very big deal for my husband and me, and has really shaped the way we have lived our lives ever since in so many ways.
Getting the first of our own brand ultra padded bra – the Amour – delivered, having worked on it for the best part of a year – and seeing it fly off the shelves was a huge moment for me and the company. Even though we are a small business we have managed to produce a beautiful padded bra that the big brands have stopped offering in AA cups and have filled a massive gap in an under-served market where people with small boobs are literally ignored – apart from by us at LW!
If you were not working in this industry, then what do you think you would have done instead?
I would have concentrated on my writing career I think. I find sitting still quite difficult and like a challenge so I guess I would have either started or bought another company perhaps.
What is your greatest challenge?
Being in a niche as we are, size wise, our biggest headache is marketing. We can never get to the bottom of where people with small boobs live, what age they are and how much they earn. It makes placing ads nigh on impossible and, to date, has frustrated my brand awareness ambitions.
Brexit has been very hard work both in loss of income from the EU countries and now trying out a solution through the Royal Mail which seems to work but is costing so much money to get lingerie to loyal customers that it has made me feel even more embittered over the situation.
Your biggest mistake?
Is sitting in my office currently….. 1400 bralettes and 1400 briefs that I didn’t fit test. Stupid, stupid me.
The one product you cannot live without?
On a personal level, Yorkshire Gold teabags – I’m horrible if I don’t get regular tea top ups and don’t speak to me in the morning until I’m at least one cup in. Professionally – don’t know really – everything that enables us to sell a bra to a customer is an integral part of my business and it’s a whole supporting cast that gets the lingerie out of the door and delivered!
Time out?
I love to cook and bake – I’m a qualified Patissiere and love making cakes. I write a lot – mainly poetry but I’m currently working on a book of short stories. We currently live in the Peak District National Park and I’m a fair weather walker, with the office dog, Her Majesty Millie Jackson in tow.
Pet Hate?
Bad spelling and grammar, people with a lack of basic manners, Reality TV Shows.
Little Women Blossom
Little Women stock bras with cup sizes from AAA cup, through AA cup to A cup and back sizes from 28 to 44. The offer includes underwired bras, wire free bras, multiway bras, strapless bras and seam free t-shirt bras many with matching knickers as well as bralettes and loungewear.
