Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 8: Julie Deane

Episode Date: August 24, 2020

Spinning Plates this week sees Sophie talking to the founder of the Cambridge Satchel Company Julie Deane. Julie started her company in 2008 when she didn’t have enough money for school fees so she sat down with a spreadsheet and a load of ideas and worked out the most profitable. The company was started with just £600 and is now worth over £10,000,000. Julie is mother to two children: her daughter Emily is 20 and her son Max is 18.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Sophia Lispector and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing but can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates.

Yo! See, I don't always want to start with hello. So last week it was good day. This time it's yo. How did that work? It wasn't very good, was it? Don't worry, I'll go back to hell next week. Anyway, yo, spinning platesters.

Oh God, this is terrible. I sound like someone who's trying to be young and down with the kids. That's not even my normal stance. I know I'm not cool. I'm not the Fonz. How are you? I hope everything is okay.

I have a lovely guest this week, actually, someone I thought of right at the beginning to speak to for Spinning Plates. She's someone I've known for a little while. Her name is Julie Dean, and she set up a company called the Cambridge Satchel Company. She's built up this company all by herself, starting off with making her satchels, her beautiful satchels, in the kitchen of her own home. And now it is a multi-million pound international company. But actually, that for me is not the most exciting bit of her story. Sure, it's exciting. The most exciting bit for me is that she set it up in response to needing to find some cash for her kids' school fees. So her children are now, I think they are now 14 and 18, I think.

Julie will help me clarify this in the early bits of our chat. But when they were about, let's say, 8 and 12, she really needed to find money for school fees and so sat down with a bit of paper and a spreadsheet at the end of the uh the final bit of summer term and worked out all her best ideas for getting enough money to pay the school fees at the beginning of the autumn term so i think she had something like you know two and a half months to find this money um so you know what an amazing thing that is to find this money. So, you know, what an amazing thing that is to have that drive, but also how incredible that out of the idea just to start school fees, she didn't stop there and think, no, no, there's more I can do. There's more ways to build this

company, more ways to expand. I think that's pretty exciting. So I'm looking forward to hearing her story. And she's someone that I first met because I love the satchels, actually. I'm a big fan of them. I found them when I was looking for a satchel and a friend of mine called Peter said, oh, I've just discovered this new company called Cambridge Satchel. Have a look. And he sent me a link to the website. And I thought, oh, they're really gorgeous.

And I've bought them for my sisters and my kids. They all have their own little monogram satchels they're very classic leather british made um little sort of traditional school satchels and she now does other things too but it's the satchel that is kind of the the sort of keystone of what the company is about and they're gorgeous and so is julie so i went to talk to her at the british library uh one of the quietest spots we did a podcast recording. And she was very generous with her time. And I think also will probably inspire a few of you if you've got any entrepreneurial leanings. She's your woman. She's got your back and she's hoping

you succeed. So have a listen and you know what I'm going to do. I mean, I might start with a yo rather than a hello, but I'm still going to finish with a bit of tea making because it's my favorite drink of the whole day. So I'm off to go and put the kettle on and I'll see you on the other side. Enjoy. Thank you for coming to find me again. Tiendit. When I first had the idea to do this podcast about being a working mother, you were possibly the first name I wrote down, actually, Julie, because for a long time now I've been so in awe.

You know I'm a big fan of your company anyway, the Cambridge Satchel Company. And I like to think I had one of the original satchels. You did. Hi! You did. And I was trying to think how long ago that was now, and I'm thinking, was it 12, 13 years? It's 12 years. It's 12 years, okay.

It's 12 years. Cool. And it was literally from the very unimpressive website that I coded myself. Ah, did you? And so how you manage to process that payment is a complete mystery. Very easily.

Oh, don't worry. If I want to buy something, I'm dogged. Yeah, don't worry. It's going to happen. You're going to carry on. You're going to carry on. Yes. And I remember it so vividly because we didn't have that many orders every day.

And anyone starting their own business starts out that way. And it's like, I've got an order. And you set up a notification on your phone so it pings when you get an order and and so it it pinged and we had two orders that day so I was already feeling like a winner and we were watching um Emily and Max had one of these slightly you know when your children are six and eight and you take them to do like a tennis lesson after school or something yeah yeah and you're sitting there and you're trying to look like you're really engaged, but you're sort of thinking, oof, this isn't, you know. Yeah, I did that at my swimming lesson yesterday.

That's right. And I just remember it so well. We were sitting, it was me and my mum, and I heard a ping. And I looked at my phone and it said, S. Ellis Baxter. And I looked at it and I thought this is so exciting and dashed off, dashed off and phoned the number on the order and I said, you know, are you the Sophie Ellis Baxter?

And I was so impressed because you said I'm Sophie Ellis Baxter, the singer. And sort of like, as opposed to Sophie Ellis Baxter the home decorator or painter or the baker. You know what, I'm always open-minded to the fact there might be another Ellis-Bexter out there. I've never met one, as far as I'm aware, the only one. Yeah, but that really impressed me. That really, really impressed me.

But you were one of the first. Ah, yay. Well, I have heard, actually, that when there's a new business set up by an entrepreneur such as yourself, that every time someone makes a purchase, someone out there does a little happy dance of, yay, another order. So I'm glad I was responsible for a little bit of a boogie that day. And so that was really around the beginning.

The reason, as I say, I wanted to speak to you is because I really am so excited and motivated when I hear stories about women like you who have a desire for something, see an opportunity and just think, I'm just going to go and do that. Because I think probably, possibly, the logic of you starting a Cambridge satchel company from needing to find a satchel and not being able to find one, that might seem like something, well, anyone could have had that thought and then started a business. But actually, I think you're so in the minority when it comes to actually the practicalities of getting started and now we sit here today and we're in uh the British Library where you tell me you're is it entrepreneur in residence I am which is an awesome title I feel like I should have a flag yeah flag and a badge or something ribbons on it I don't know um And the reason you now are Entrepreneur-in-Residence

is because you can now speak to other entrepreneurs about starting their own business, as Cambridge is actually so very, very successful. And, I mean, I often think of it as... The only way I can describe it is it's like my third child. And that makes it very different to the way that CEOs, if they're just brought in and it's a job and then they go to another company and it's a job

and then they go to another company, they'll never quite have that connection that you do. And Cambridge Satchel was set up so that my kids could go to a brilliant school, you know, because I'm such a believer in the best, best thing you can do. The best gift you can give your children is a good education because then they can just go and take on the world, you know, because they'll just and have the confidence to go anywhere and do anything. the confidence to go anywhere and do anything um and I think that it was really important in in the whole journey of Cambridge Satchel that to keep in mind why you start your business you know because whatever happened and it made me very brave whatever happened with Cambridge Satchel along the way after I'd paid those school fees,

I would feel like a winner because that box was ticked. You know, that's why it was set up. It was set up to do that. And, you know, my mum and I, we did that. You know, and that's just such a huge sense of pride. Whereas I think that if you're setting it up with some goal post that keeps moving, you're never going to feel like you've achieved something.

And I think that the really important thing is that people just think why they're doing it, because it might be they want to make enough money for a nice holiday every year, and they want to do it as a lifestyle business that doesn't make it any less valid than a business that ends up being big you know there I think that's the really important thing you can have a small business that is just a beautiful business and it fits in with the way your life works it doesn't have to be you you get up at five and you do yoga and you read every single magazine and then you you get into work and make yourself miserable and you never see your children and yeah it doesn't have to be that way and i think that that's why

in many ways having your own business works so brilliantly for women, with children particularly. So it was when they were six and eight roughly when you actually set up the business. Yeah. And I know you're talking a lot about that important connection with your own business, but it must be intrinsic to also what the product is because surely it must be possible to love the idea of running a business but fall in and out of love with the thing you're actually doing or does it not really quite work like that I don't know I think that I I knew that I had to make school fees you know this is really really clear target and a clear target helps right I see that sometimes speaking to people in startups here when they come through

the business and IP center, sometimes they'll say, well, I have this idea, but I need to read a few more business books, or I have this idea and I can't quite decide what to call the company yet. And sometimes if you have enough constraints constraints so my constraints were I needed to make enough for two sets of school fees and those school fees were 12,000 per child and there's two children and that's after tax yeah wow I had a startup fund of 600 pounds I know I'm not comfortable with debt or borrowing. And I had to school some holidays. So when you've got really, really clear constraints, it sort of makes it so that you can't sit around and think, oh, I'll read another book.

So for you, that gave you real... Because for some people, because you call it constraints, for some people that's just an immense pressure, which maybe finds it a very difficult place for creativity kind of can actually kind of go like make you feel like I just actually don't know the way to do that I know and afterwards you know because I worked a lot with Google and was on the Google Chrome advert and all that kind of exciting stuff later later on but speaking to people at google they said oh at google the set of constraints you had do actually qualify as a moonshot you know google would have called it a moonshot a moonshot is when you set out to do something virtually

virtually impossible and so i was quite glad that it wasn't i didn't know you've got to do a bag called the moonshot bag by the way yeah yeah this a bag called the moonshot bag, by the way. The moonshot bag. Yeah, yeah. This is the one to do. But I think that in those early days, it was a very logical thing. This is the amount of money that I need to make. This is how much I have. This is how long I have. I'm going to make a list of ten ideas. Okay, I was going to say to you, where did you spring from?

Excel spreadsheet. It's always the place to start. Ten ideas of things to make school fees. Did you try more than one of them? No, I'm quite binary really. I'm sort of, it is literally a nought or one. And so I made the list on the spreadsheet and then I had the columns, you know, will it, does it need more than 600 pounds

up front um what would happen if I was run over by a bus or had a heart attack because I worked too hard um there's a column about that yes okay um and then there was there was one then that sort of said does the cash flow work would the cash come in a way that would meet school fee bills? Right. And so there were, you know, a few columns. Yeah. And then each of the ten ideas was given a number out of ten for each of the columns. And then it was literally the one with the biggest number.

Okay. Was what I was going to do. Can you remember some of the other ten ideas? I can, but I've been offered a really good big deal in the future and that is like the plan b that's if if you know everything goes pear-shaped and we're all like eaten alive by locusts or viruses or something awful god forbid so that's in that column the one with the bus running that's the locust yeah that's that's right and so it was that's the idea that had the most points so

that's what i'm doing and um i look back on sort of my my notebook and it was once i've picked what i'm doing the amount of time i allocated for each job was tiny you know now that now you know now that I know what startups are like and I've met so many people who've started up and met so many people in the whole venture capital private equity world and and the corporate world and so the one thing I would say is at the time it seemed perfectly reasonable it's just like think of a business name 20 minutes you know because you can have a cup of tea 20 minutes break it's the business name talk to my mom what about this what about that it's not going to take more than 20 minutes uh logo maybe use the rest of the hour for that but you know there could be some leeway in there and there were all

these things that seemed completely reasonable and logical and now that I've seen how much people spend on some of these things yeah and these agencies yes I bet yes and the number of so the logo was well the the name was quite funny I remember talking to my mum and and I said I sort of feel like no need to overthink this you know where we're in Cambridge and we sell satchels Cambridge satchel company what do you think yes okay I'm thinking oh what do I do with the rest of my 20 minutes? Yeah, I've got 19 minutes. Yeah, exactly. 19 minutes 40 left. I'm really winning on this. And then the logo, I thought, I need something, because everybody knows a logo, you have some words

and you have like a little drawing. So the word should be the Cambridge Statual Company and the drawing should be something to do with Cambridge. And so I thought punting, punting is to do with Cambridge. So I drew a little man with a punt pole and I looked at it and I thought, no, this looks really dodgy. It looks like, at best, a man with a snooker cube.

Yeah, yeah. You know, at worst, like a pole dance so this is really bad yeah this is bad so i thought no take a step back uh what else cambridge bikes you know it's a nightmare to drive their bikes let's do like a little bike uh and uh and then went on to word and and got a sort of copyrightfree clip art thing of a bike and then wrote the Cambridge Sexual Company above it. And I thought, what font should it be in? And I remembered at some stage,

somebody when I was in college saying, use Garamond or Constantia because all of the numbers are clear. And I thought, it's a good thing so i'll use one of those chose the one i looked liked most um and then it looked actually a bit rubbish because it was just you know the the name and i sort of centered the spike under it it really didn't look like anything um and i wasn't i wasn't clever enough at it to do, like, overlaps or underlays or any of this kind of thing, so I thought, well. But then, under edit, there's this thing that says word art,

and if you go there and click on it, you can bend it. Right, yeah. So it's like, bent it, Cambridge Sexual Company logo right there. You look at it and you think, yes, because the bike, as my mother said, the bike can't go forward or backwards. It's safe there. Oh, yeah. She's right, actually.

You're not going to lose the bike. Yeah. And we just thought, yeah, that's fine. We've got a logo. We've got a name. And I think since then, the number of times, it'll happen at least once, sometimes twice a year, albeit a big event in london and there will be some branding agency presenting at some some business thing and they

will say something like um oh we were these are the logos we were involved in and at least once or twice a year our logo will be on there ah and i And I'll just think, no. No, you weren't. Hand up. Yeah. I don't think you were. I'd remember because it was just me and my mum in the kitchen. Yeah. You definitely weren't there. No.

But that's, I suppose, when you know you've done something that's good. And it does make me laugh because some of these agencies, they cost an absolute fortune. Yes, yes. And if they're taking credit for my bended sort of word art yeah logo then it must be good so i'm keeping it well i do wonder as well if there's a correlation between the people that tend to pay those agencies to do that big big stuff and the ones that actually end up being successful because part of um making this all work is about it being something

that you wake up in the morning and you're feeling motivated and connected yeah that must be such a key part of it and if you've been the one who's had the inception of everything you sort of so much of the groundwork's already there yeah whereas if it's through another company yeah you're sort of once you're disconnected and that was another reason why you know I really it was important to me and still is important to me all the satchels are made here in the UK because I wanted to see them being made you know I wanted to I just wanted to feel connected to the product and and to me a satchel is a very British bag very British you know so it needs to be made here and I just know that it would have been cheaper,

it would have been easier in many ways to have made it overseas. But if they just arrived in the shipping container, like loads and loads of them from, you know, I don't know, anywhere else, it just wouldn't have felt the same as going and just picking them up. It was important. And that connection to what we do is important. So it's, and I just love that my mum was there, you know, right through every step of the way.

And she'd be in dispatch sometimes and she'd say, I've got to get these bags to these people. You know, I've got to get these bags. She'd have the sort of, we'd be standing in the post office. We were the nightmare people because we would be armfuls of parcels going all over the world. And we were the people who didn't want to stand behind.

Oh, no, it's those people from the Cambridge Sculpture Company again. You've got so many, oh, I've got to work out the postage. I know, and all the sizes are different, and they're going to different places. Actually, there's quite a nice serendipity when you're talking about the way that you came up with the the name of the company and the logo and actually the fact that there is quite sort of um sort of practical really suits a satchel doesn't it you don't really want it to be something where you can't imagine what it is or where it's from yeah and i think it all it actually all ties in really nicely what what was it is it true that it's because you couldn't find satchels for your kids then yeah that's it it is and and that's why it sprung to mind when I was trying to think of my

list of 10 um because I just got so sick of of going to somewhere I think it was you know you'd go to some some sports place and get some school bag and then it would be nylon-y, so it would get dirty and then you can't clean it and it looks a bit grubby. Or it would have some logo on it that they liked at the time and then they don't like six months later. And the zip is really, really cheap, so it breaks really quickly. Or then it's some plasticky way that they attach the strap on and then it's sort of like you can you can see the cracks

going across and then it sort of starts just falling and then the strap's gone yeah um and at the end you're just saying i've just had enough of this i don't want to keep buying these rubbish bags and and i was thinking back to when i was in school i had a satchel and it never gave me any cause for concern it took me all the way through. Looked better at the end than at the beginning. That's what I was going to say. The thing about those other bags is that they start their life at their best and then they get worse. Whereas with a satchel, the more you use it, the softer it gets,

the more that the old warning is part of its charm, isn't it? It is. It is very much part of its charm. And I just thought, this isn't right. And I was so shocked when I was looking for Satchel's family and Max I was so stunned that you couldn't get them anywhere so it was that irritation made it

like forefront in my mind I think the necessity is mother of invention you're looking for something what did your kids think when you started sitting down at the table and working out what to the business, were they totally aware at the beginning of working out what to, you know, the business? Were they totally aware at the beginning of like you're going to start these schools? And I think that's the, you know, your children pick up on the attitudes in the house.

And my mum is just sort of like, your mother's starting a business. It's going to pay for you to go to a good school. It's just like black and white. That's what she's doing. Okay, great. it's going to pay for you to go to a good school it's just like black and white that's what she's doing okay great and um and i think if you've got somebody in your corner with that kind of sort of real belief in you yes that's what you'll need because the minute you go out and you go to the yard and and somebody says oh i i hear you're going to start a business you're going to sell satchels well if it had been a good, somebody else would have done it by now.

Yeah, it's very easy to be demotivated, isn't it? It's so easy. And so many people have got an opinion when it's new. Yeah, and it's just because they haven't done it. It's just because they are choosing not to do that. And so it's like, well, if it was so easy, somebody else would have done it. If it was a good idea, somebody else would have done it. And you hear it so many times yes you really need that person who is just going

to come up and say she she doesn't know what she's talking about yeah you know you're you're on to something here and it's so exciting as soon as we get home we'll do the reading magic key get it done and then um take some more photos of the bags. It'll be so exciting. And just getting everybody involved. I think that's the other thing. Emily and Max were so involved. You know, from the first photo shoot,

you know, picking them up from school. And I had six satchels at that point. That was like stock. And I didn't know there were you know the difference between stock and props and there they were we'll take some of the back of kings and then we'll go to the orchard tea room and then we'll do some more and and at some point one of them fell over and their socks were dirty and you just think just pressing on just pressing on pushing on but it felt like the family sorting out their problem.

You mean the kids too? Yeah, everybody was in it. You know, it's like, did we sell any today? How is it going? Do you want me to do FedEx labels? You know, and they were always really, really helpful. And I remember even when they were little, I'd just say to them it's really important to know how many you have of each size who's going to help me count you know and all

these various stock counts would go on and the stock locations were sort of like the spare room wardrobe yeah you know the boxes under the stairs and all this kind of thing but getting everybody involved it doesn't have to be a thing that you feel takes you out of the family and I think that's different to a lot of work things yes where they can't be part of what you're doing absolutely yeah if you ask um most people what their parents were doing in their workplace when they were age six or eight they won't really be able to tell you what their working day looked like or you know imagine that environment or what kind of issues they were having or the how it would even begin the inception of it so I think your children must actually have real memories of that time real memories of it

you know real memories of um I remember one of the first shops that we were selling to was urban outfitters in the states wasn't even urban outfitters here and they phoned and they just that's the great thing about the internet it you you can't really tell the size of company you're dealing with although my misaligned buttons should have given them a bit of a thing but um they said do you have any photos of famous of celebrities wearing your bags and and all that and this was in the early early days no because i did have a photo of you but it was like really disrespectful to use it so that would not have impressed urban outfitters usa anyway i don't think they well like we've got our own sophia and she's a plumber

she's a plumber yeah and she can make muffins exactly um and so i thought i need celebrity i don't have celebrity shots it's not like we had some huge budget to go and do gifting or anything like that. We just didn't. But I did have this little app that I downloaded. It was something like £15 maybe. Because I didn't have Photoshop, but I had to do all of the photos for the website. And it was this little app. It was called Pixelmator, and it did everything Photoshop would do.

Did you Photoshop your satchels onto celebrities? Yes, I did. That's brilliant. 100%. Here's P. Diddy wearing a Cambridge satchel. No, I was cleverer than that because I thought, I don't want to get into trouble. So the way to get around this is to make it obvious that they're Photoshopped on.

Oh, that's clever. And then I'm not going to get into trouble. So I sent them... Obvious, obvious, or obvious if someone's really looking to know about it you mean like which we're still hoping to that they would look well my first one was I had King Kong on top of the Empire State Building with a red 14-inch satchel on got it which I think looked good he would have actually really liked it i think it looked good the scale was questionable yeah but uh so i had i had him then i did elvis presley from the jailhouse rocks scene because

the colors were working for me yeah and put a put a bag on him and then i thought even if people are sad and depressed a good bag makes them feel happier and so I put um a little bag on that painting you know the munch the scream yeah it's like and I sort of put a little bag on it and I sent those those three off and um they really they really really liked them and they said you know these are the most memorable celebrity shots I've ever had and I think that is something don't think that because you don't have the budget you you can't say yes I do you know because there's usually a way around it that might be a little unconventional um but it's going to make you more memorable anyway because you you're not going to out budget Michael Kors on theors on the gifting front

or the celebrity placement front. So do something that actually makes them laugh and says a bit about your brand and makes you better with Pixelmator. Yeah, no, I think that's an amazing way to think. I suppose that's part of the sort of practical side that you have to have a little bit of sort of problem-solving and thinking there's got to be a way around this yeah and you know in keeping a character and in the dialogue and every aspect all the sort of satellites that come off your business so that

it always has the heart of it the ethos of what you're doing you're just trying to get something done you know that's all you're trying to do and i think that um the the urban one was hard then because they wanted them in these big boxes with that nylon banding tape around with the metal sort of closures on. Yes. And I didn't know how to do that. So I asked Alec, who is manufacturing the satchels up in Hull, and he said, oh, I'll send you the machine I've got you know a few of these machines they're just like a handheld thing you can get it from eBay or something but he sent me one of these machines and some metal clasps and some nylon banding and I looked at it didn't have the first clue what to do with this machine but then it's like thank you youtube yes on youtube there

it is and somebody's doing it and i'm sort of following it along on my youtube thing and and urban got their order and the the bands were on there and felt really really good about it and i think that that is we're so lucky yeah right now because it's like when your washing machine doesn't drain this f22 error you go to youtube and you give it a go i literally did that the other day with my washing machine i managed to fix it with something on youtube yeah and i felt great otherwise i would have just got a plumber out and i know and you've got loads and call our fee and he would have been laughing and yeah and they say something really condescending like don't worry love i'm here you know you just don't need it no so um youtube has it's a game changer it is it's brilliant yeah

um so with i know you're not going to talk about the other 10 ideas you had about that before the satchel but is is starting business is something you've done lots and what was sort of happening pre-cambridge satchel with you had you been working since your children were small so um i had um i went to cambridge did natural sciences when um when i was 17 i was obsessed with going to Cambridge obsessed and um did that but then my my dad was very very ill and when I graduated I needed to to go home and sort of be helpful so I went back to Swansea and I thought I I need a decent job you know I need a good job and I know, I need a good job. And I remember saying to my mum, I'm going to get a job today and going in. And I went to lawyers and accountants.

And I ended up being offered a job by Deloitte because I sat on their stairs and I wouldn't go away. And in the end, I was offered a job and I trained with Deloitte. And that was an excellent grounding, it really was because it meant that suddenly numbers, you know, cash flows and tax and things like that were fine because I'd done it and I qualified as an accountant. That must be a pretty helpful skill to have if you're setting up a business. It's a fantastic skill to have, it's a fantastic skill to have. It's a good skill to have full stop actually, accountancy, I'd imagine. It's a really, really,. It's a fantastic skill to have. It's a good skill to have full stop, actually, accountants, I would imagine.

It's a really, really... Just confidence around numbers. And going around as an auditor. I mean, at times was quite boring, but there were times as well. I was part of a small practice in South Wales, so the places I'd go out to audit were small businesses. And that was really interesting because I could see issues they were having and problems they were having and how cash is king and cash

flow is king yes you know all of that kind of and what a stock take is and why you need to know exactly how much of everything you have and and so that was a really it was a brilliant base and it was a brilliant base and I actually moved with Deloitte over to Chicago and lived um over there for five five years um but then when my dad got really ill moved back and um started up the fundraising office the development office in my college in Cambridge which I mean I had an accounting background but and I think this is all pre-babies pre-babies and and so that was really really good because they gave me the the sort of the the latitude to just I needed to raise money for for the college and and raising money you can just go around and ask people to give donations and all this and support their college which you know it's got a a really lovely base of people

that went there but it also meant I got the chance to do some limited edition prints and and raise money in more of a kind of entrepreneurial way and then um I have a real love of the gargoyles on the front of the college and so we did some garden ornaments and some bookends based on on the gargoyles as another way of of making money and so that was I think that was really helpful going through that going through those processes was helpful yeah um but then when I found I was expecting Emily, I took a career break. I was a stay-at-home mum for, in the end, eight years. Oh, right. And so all the way up to actually the Cambridge Satchel?

Yeah, up until Cambridge Satchel. And I sort of think that sometimes a lot of women are very nervous of taking a break. They think they lose their career momentum and they can't do. And for me, that definitely wasn't the case. You know, it really wasn't the case. I think you're very right that a lot of people are really frightened of that. They're really frightened of it because there's this... I suppose if you're on a corporate ladder

and you want to stay in that particular place on that ladder then that may be different but but if you're going to take time out and then I didn't really want to go back um into accountancy because I I loved taking them to school I loved picking them up from school. And I just couldn't see how some of the things that meant the most to me, being there and taking them on little day trips or if they're ill, you know, if they're ill,

I didn't want them to feel like a nuisance because I'm supposed to go to work. You're an inconvenience. You're ill. What am I supposed to do with you? You've been sick. That's another 24 hours hours you can't go in that's really really stressful so I just thought if there was any way at all I could solve this school fee problem and do it in a way that fitted around having a six-year-old and an eight-year-old

then that would be the dream and I think that once you recognize that that's the dream you you accept all of the challenges and the things that are a lot less comfortable than having a regular paycheck and pension and health insurance and all these things that you just don't have when you first start out yourself. So do you think you always thought you would ultimately go back into some kind of business, even if it hadn't been born out of needing these school fees? I remember being a little bit devastated when I realised that my children were reaching that age when other children were more interesting than me.

And so they wanted to see their friends and spend more time. And then there's sleepovers. And as they grow up, the stay-at-home mum part for me was never that I wanted to be home cooking, cleaning and washing up. But as they were growing up, I could see that the fun stuff, the reason I was staying at home, the really fantastic bits were getting less and less. And it was getting more about taking care of the house and, you know, all of that kind of stuff. And I just didn't, I really started noticing as well that they'd come back from school and every day they had learned something

you know they were developing they were moving forward and they were learning things and they were doing things and they were excited about things whereas I at that stage wasn't really learning things I wasn't doing things I wasn't developing things I was I was still as you know TED talks weren't a big thing then so I'd have probably been obsessed with TED talks probably at that stage but it it just was becoming more apparent to me that I wanted to be part of something in the world I wanted to to be in the world and not just watch the world. I didn't want to just watch people do things on TV and read about people doing things in the newspaper

and not be doing stuff myself. And so I think that that's what Cambridge Satchel has managed to do. Yeah, and then some. Then some. Yeah. Own each step with Peloton. From their pop runs to walk and talks, you define what it means to be a runner.

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Peloton All Access Membership Separate. Learn more at onepeloton.ca slash running. You know, you're clearly someone that's quite into your problem solving and the practicality stuff so some people that would be a thing they say well we'd love to send you to that school but we simply can't afford it so we have to find a different thing so maybe somewhere consciously or subconsciously they're seeking out a challenge having this thing going i'm gonna yep they're gonna be starting in september and in the meantime i've got 600 pounds on the spreadsheet and um mustn't get run over by a bus but if i do it's okay with the satchel so exactly exactly yeah alex making them so it's still good yeah yeah exactly something had to sort of give it that shape that that drive because that that is definitely not the way

everybody's mind would work in a similar and i And I think that I've learned that the hard way because it was easy in the beginning when it was just me and my mum. And then, you know, there was Lottie, a girl, it was her first job and she was just out of school. And before I started hiring a team and before I started hiring a lot of people I didn't realize what a poor communicator I can be you know I I thought that things were so obvious because everybody must think the same way yeah yeah and and then so I wouldn't bother explaining them because it was so obvious everybody would think the same way and then gradually you know people would come back and

say here it is this is what we've done and I'd look at it and think why would you do that you know why why would you obviously not do that and so that's that's been a learning and it's been something that I've tried to get better at, but with, I don't know, limited success, I think, sometimes. And I'm in the process at the moment, and this is 12 years on, that I'm in the process of we've just had a another investment and so the company is is growing and because i'm aware of the importance of a culture within a company and the feel of a company yeah that um we were at this this meeting with the investors who who have loads of experience and they said don't we need a brand bible uh julie you can do that and and my instinct is always to say, you know, with confidence, yes, I can. You know, yes, I am. Absolutely.

That is what I'm doing. And I made a note at the side and said, Google brand Bible and then do one. Yeah. And I think that that's kind of the approach that you've always got to take. You know, if your gut says this is a good thing, you say yes, and then you sort of work out how to do it afterwards. Yes, yeah. I quite like being like that myself, actually.

Yeah, you have to do that. There's always a way. There's always a way. You know, nobody's asking me to do brain surgery on them this afternoon because, you know, I might probably be best advised to say no to that but some of the other things if it's just getting a bag sent to Japan I mean that can't be hard can it because the post office knows how to do it I've just got to wrap it but in the days when customers would find the website and loads of people particularly in Sweden were were buying them it was interesting

because I look back and I never thought of that as exporting right yeah because it was just these people live in Sweden yeah that just happens to be where you're sending so I'd take it to the post office and they'd send it to Sweden and it costs more than if you're sending it to Brighton you know but I didn't think oh hang on this is exporting I haven't done a course on exporting and I think that can be a real pitfall for people oh yeah I bet there's a few pitfalls that can and actually talking about the happy ending to having your 600 pounds at the beginning of summer holidays is that did you manage to get all the school fee money by the yes and they're through so so they're both out of school out the other end so was it

really how did that summer go for you then that first summer was really hard I mean the first summer's really hard because trying to get yourself noticed is very very difficult you know um I I love learning new things and thank goodness for that and thank goodness for the internet because yes it's one thing to know you're going to have satchels but then you've got to find a manufacturer for them and when nobody is selling satchels in the uk that's really really hard so this was this all complete learning curfew is it all was it all new information everything everything everything um and so trying to find um a manufacturer driving around and and in my head it sort of goes with the theory of everybody knows what i know and thinks the same way you know i would stand in a manufacturer and say a satchel and they'd look

you know sort of blank and i say and i think why are they being awkward it's a satchel and they'd look you know sort of blank and I say and I think why are they being awkward it's a satchel it's a school satchel that's all it is and so then I came back and said to my mum they've been really tricky about this you know they're all of a sudden there's like pouches on the side and zips and all these kind of things I said they're just making out they don't know what I'm talking about so I'm going to build one that's what i'm doing which i now know you know it's a prototype but it was out of two cereal boxes really did it it's like two cereal boxes like a giant rice krispies or something and then a smaller crave or something and sticking it together putting the brown paper on yeah on the outside getting black sharpie drawing the buckles on perfect it's perfect and then I you know I

would feel a little more prepared for my manufacturers meeting school well it's much easier to show people isn't it then that's what it is yeah um but it was you know it is this this thing and then pricing how do you know yeah how to charge and is there an accepted amount you're supposed to make is there a markup is there a percentage you know how are you supposed to even yeah know that and so i think everything everything is a learning curve where were you getting this information where's this all the internet internet yeah i remember um googling what is a press release and and then you know reading and then said how do you write one and I read it what I wasn't as aware of then that I am now is look at the date of the thing that you're reading oh yeah of course so I wrote this press release i was pretty pleased with myself and it said press releases

always end with three hashtags okay you know so three hashtags at the end and then you put end of release in caps and i thought nailed it send it off and um somebody phoned me and they were just laughing i think it was somebody from the daily mail and they were laughing and they said haven't seen one like this for a good like 30 years oh yes that's how it used to be done you've gone on the internet and found something for 40 years ago yeah this is how you this is this is how they used to write a press release probably when when people were just printing in sort of like 1920 or something but it's fine I could have done that deliberately it's fine exactly it got me noticed yeah I didn't have the budget for a PR agency so it was just having to get it done well I guess as well it helps that

the thing you're creating is something that's actually a very classic thing it's actually it's not like you're doing something incredibly modern can you imagine 1950s 1950s press release exactly so it could have been all part of this sort of i'm taking you back to yesteryear i am i'm taking it right back yeah i'm being authentic exactly exactly and how did your kids react to suddenly seeing their mum who'd previously not really been you know just been completely available to them and been what you know being at home with them all the time suddenly doing all this work and presumably being under quite a lot of stress with all of it? Or do you not remember it that way?

But they were... Because six is still pretty little, isn't it? Yeah, they are. It's not like they're... But we would still do... We would still do loads of stuff with the kids. But it just meant that when they went to bed, I would really hit it hard.

And that's sort of the way, because for the website, I remember I had to, I found this free learn how to code thing on the, I think it was on the Microsoft site, and I did that over three nights after they'd gone to bed but you know very often I'd be working um from sort of like 18 in the evening till three in the morning really yeah oh wow and that's why for me it was important I was doing this for the kids right because nothing else would have made me there's no car in the world that would have made me work

with the kind of determination and give me the stamina I needed to do that. But when it was for Emily and Max and the school, it's like just keep going because this is the only way out of your situation. And this is what's going to make things better for them. So once you had the school fees and things were chugging it on because the thing i've always really impressed me about your company is it's constantly evolved because you didn't just say well we've made a classic satchel and you can buy in three sizes and there you go there's always new designs coming up and new collaborations and gorgeous color palettes and all these things if you if you've got the

original thing done of the school fees what's the i think the thing is then what i didn't realize is how attached i would get not only to the business but to the people working in the business well as you did describe it as an extra child so i guess yeah that's a draw and so we have like 150 people. And that's 150 mortgages every month I sort of feel responsible for. That's 150 Christmases I feel responsible for. And I've had people that have worked for me now for 10 years. We've seen our children grow up together. We've seen them.

And it's that stability you know for for people and and that kind of responsibility was a real big driver for me that I wasn't going to just give up and go under because I ticked my box yes these these people had stood by me at some extraordinarily difficult times. And so it needs to be fought for. And you remember in the relatively early days, one of my manufacturers was stealing the leather. Yeah, I do remember that. And making rip-off copycat bags of it. And it was just after we had been noticed um at new york fashion week because

some of the bloggers had worn the fluorescent bags oh yeah the fluorescent yeah the fluorescent bags and and they'd been noticed because the lights had gone down in shows and the the flash photography picked up all these fluorescent bags in the audience and new york times that you know is gorilla takeover of New York Fashion Week. King Kong. I know. It's all about primates. And then Bloomingdale's and I think it was Saks came over

and wanted to sell the bags there. And suddenly on the website I had at that stage, it was 16,000 bags on on backlog and i had four small uk manufacturers and each one could make a maximum of 150 bags a week oh well so how what did you do how do you move forward and so then i found a a manufacturer who was a a bigger bigger manufacturer and who wanted to scale because some of these, the other ones, they didn't want to scale. They had as much work as they wanted and complete respect to them.

It goes back to when people know what they want their business to be and they're not drawn into the sudden expansion or whatever. That's what they wanted it to be. the you know sudden expansion or whatever that's what they wanted it to be and um but i found this this this one that was in sort of financial difficulties and and had the the potential to to really really scale this and to fill this demand but um equally they they were not the kind of people that I'd been lucky enough to come across early on. And I think at the library here, it's one of the very first things I say to people starting up

is just always get a manufacturing agreement in place. You know, you have got to protect your ideas. You've got to protect what you do because what is a money for someone like me doesn't really know that what does that mean it sort of sets out the way you're going to work with your manufacturer so that you know your designs are your designs that they can't just take those designs and sell them sort of independently that um yeah that makes total sense actually because once you've told them would you given them the cereal box and you know how it's exactly you know the genius of the cereal box prototype

they've got to know that they can't just start making that for someone else that comes longer oh i see you make them for her can you please make some exactly yeah and and i had been incredibly fortunate those first four that i worked with it had all been done on a handshake and they were really good decent people and I would trust them with anything um the one that was going to scale was a different kind of person and and I think when you present someone with a manufacturing agreement it will show you if there's any hesitancy on their part to sign that, that maybe this isn't the person you want to be doing your manufacturing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but I didn't know about that.

Anyway, so I get a call and lovely Sasha, Liberty London girl, had called and said, I've just seen, been sent a bag. It looks exactly like yours but it's got this different name on it have you changed your name I said no I haven't changed my name she said I'm pretty sure it's the same bag and and then two nights later I got a call from someone who was actually working in that factory and he said are you the lady that comes down with the boxer dog because I would always take my dog down and I'd be walking through the factory and see how it was going in the orders because it was scary having that many people waiting for bags yeah I said yes yes um and he was funny because he said um oh um and Rupert

Rupert's the name of the dog isn't it he didn't remember my name at all just saying it was Rupert it was Rupert's the name of the and I said yes I'm definitely the woman who comes with the dog called Rupert yeah that is me and he said um well I can't sleep because we're we're taking your stuff and we're making these copy bags and and you know it just felt like the world was crashing in because on one hand I was feeling like as long as I keep communicating with these customers that we're trying to fill their order and they will get what they want then we'll get there on the other hand suddenly I thought but how can I work with the manufacturer who is my only hope at this stage of filling these orders, and yet now I know that he's not a person I can trust. That's really hard.

And as if it wasn't stressful enough, we were making bags for Comme des Garcons Paris Fashion Week show that were due in like a month's time. And so in the morning I had to phone com and say um there's there's been this issue but you will still have your bags but they're not coming from that manufacturer because in my head I just tried to reconcile it and and I thought I know myself and I can't work with somebody that I know is doing this yeah I just can't do it yeah and I remember um thinking well I've got to I'll drop the children at school and then I'm going to have to drive to this factory and somehow

take out all the leather and raw materials that's down there and cancel all the orders and get out get my stuff out and and I thought um there's probably a lot of leather down there because we'd had to to buy in a lot so I phoned the the person I bought the leather off and said I'm going to need you to help me get all the leather out and he said where are we taking it and I said I'll give you that address when we meet down there and I was thinking I have no idea literally no idea and and went down and drove down and went in and it was just it was totally bewildering to think that somebody that I had seen every week yeah and had these meetings with I had no idea this was going on in the background. And it was a really, really, it was a difficult one.

And I said, I know what you're doing. You know, I know you're doing this. And he decided to sort of like just brazen it out. And he said, yes, but you've got so many people waiting. I'm your biggest manufacturer. You've got really no choice. Oh. And he said, you've got so many people waiting. I'm your biggest manufacturer. You've got really no choice. Oh. And he said, you've got to suck it up.

And I didn't appreciate that either. No, I don't appreciate that from him. No. No. And I was sort of, you know, I was already cross going in. This is winding me up a bit more. And then he did the worst possible thing. And he said, and anyway, you're just a stupid woman. You don't know about manufacturing, so you've got no choice.

And he just walked out. Wow. And I thought, you know, I'm not actually stupid. You know, I did go to Cambridge at 17, so that's not true anyway. But I don't know how to manufacture these bags. And then I just remember feeling like, but these people do. Yeah. You know, these people do.

And if he would do that to his best customer, because he was actually making more per bag than I was making on every single bag, but it wasn't clearly enough. And so I thought, I'm just going to appeal to them. And I said, you know, I'm really sorry I can't give another order here because, you know, you know what's going on. And I said, but, so I'm just guessing this is not a good person and a nice place to work uh but if if you want to work for me then you can always just send me an email um

and and let me know and because I'm I've got a factory and I'm making these myself and I left and I remember driving home and being on the A14, going to pick Emily and Max up from school and thinking, did I really say, because I've got a factory and I'm going to make these myself. And I went back and, you know, we had dinner and everything and I remember saying to my mum, we've got to start a factory.

And pretty soon, because we've now just lost our big manufacturer. Wow. And I think that was the most stressful point. I was going to ask you about that. How soon into your business was that that was two and a half years in so pretty pretty early on really early days just just as you think you've cracked it you know you've yeah been noticed you know you know and then you get

something massive like that yeah but but that's why I do say to people, you know, protect your ideas, protect your IP. And that's why I love being part of this place, you know, the Business and IP Centre, because they allow people to do that free of charge because you don't have budget for that in the early days. Exactly, yeah. But it's so important. And that's a hole I fell into yeah so others behind me don't need to fall into the same hole and so when you're doing all this

and it's you know so new but did the sort of entrepreneur hats always sit quite happily in your head or did you sometimes feel a bit like I didn't feel like I should just uh stop I don't really you know I'm still learning or I mean no because then I was really angry yeah I was really angry because this person who totally didn't deserve it was trying to take my business from me but did you always feel all the situations from the beginning that you could there was something in you where you thought I think I'm just going to be able to get on with this actually well just because there wasn't a choice. You know, there wasn't a choice. I was sending, you know, the children were going to a nice school. They weren't going to be pulled out after two terms. You know, there isn't a choice.

So it'll be fine. It's a challenge. It'll be fine. And the challenges, luckily, don't all come at once um and so as long as you do just focus on the one that's just left closest to your face okay yeah yeah then you'll be fine i think that the problem is if if you see that one and then you start overth breaking it down so it was um if if i'm going to have a factory i probably should have a building yeah so um i need to look on right move you know um because that's how people find things yeah uh and on right move hopefully

there's a thing that says commercial and there was and so that was good and and so I sort of put in the postcode of the evil manufacturer and um because I needed to to be able to if these people did contact me then I needed to be able to say yes you can still use the bus to get to to work or whatever I couldn't say well actually we're gonna be in Sheffield or something you know we we just couldn't do it um but but the hard thing is because the master plan hadn't included starting a factory yes i didn't have um a fund to set up a factory you know it wasn't i was reading at that time of of the new mulberry factory and it was just i was so envious it was like it'll open in 18 months to two years time and we're getting this European grant and we've got this fund and and it was being so well thought through and they said we'll be working on the footprint of the factory and all this and I was thinking I just

need a factory really really quickly because these people are getting cross and the only way I can do this is is by doing it fast and doing things cheaply so it's gonna have to be the the I'm gonna I'm gonna need to see factories tomorrow and I'm going to have to have really cheap places that I'm looking at yeah and just get it done and by the end of the day I need to have accepted one I need to have made it an offer on one and these were the worst places in the world that I mean I trudged around and it was down to two and um they they had sort of different different sort of pros and cons but they were sort of equally okay um and so I thought I need some kind of objective measure to make the decision between these two and so I chose the one

with the fewest rat traps that's actually pretty strong criteria I think as I would go that's like less less pests fashion is glamour yeah exactly so we'll go with the Fierce Rat Traps. That's the one that I'm going with. Unfortunately, that was also the one with the very curved frontage to the building, which did fall off two months after we took it on. But, you know, all good in the end. And now we have an amazing factory run by someone who does actually know what he's doing. And that factory, Prince Charles was there

with the Duchess of Cornwall last week. And we've won sort of like British Manufacturer of the Year. And we were in the same group as McLaren. And honestly, if I was McLaren, I would be so cheesed off. But they were so classy and they invited me down and told McLaren i was looking at us and and this was sort of pre our factory being as brilliant as it is now and i was looking around thinking oh my gosh i really must have bigged up our manufacturing because they are like heads and

shoulders above us but you know we we we got there but it was it was a tough time and are you you know astounded by how much you've managed to achieve sort of post-haste because a lot of people have been talking to you might have been doing something and then they have their kids and then they sort their life has to sort of shape like this around what they're previously doing but for you this is all the stuff you've been doing is all out of necessity of something you were doing for them so you know how does when you think about it like that like the idea of i spoke to you before you'd had any kids so what would you think of all that's gone by i i i didn't you know before that i didn't know what

your your kids can make you so much better than you are. They can drive you to be so much better than you ever knew you could be. They just give you that willpower to keep going at three in the morning and think, yes, I can get through this, I can do this, because this is important and this means something. And I think that before they came along I could never have pictured some of the brave choices that I've had to make but I didn't um know how how powerful the drive was you know and it'll be different for different people but but for me it was it was just to make things really nice for them. Yeah. And I think it's been good for them sort of witnessing this, but for them, a lot of things seem ordinary to them

that wouldn't have seemed ordinary to me. You know, when I was growing up in South Wales, I remember going into Smiths and there'd be glossy magazines on on the shelves and in the magazines section in Smiths in Swansea and I'd think oh my gosh that is another world you know that's a that's just an untouchable another world whereas Emily and Max will look at things and and the magazines that would have seemed most out of reach to me like you know the Vogue and the Harperpers and all they look at that and they think oh yes i remember um you know the mum was in that and she was featured in that and oh

vanity fair came to our house and and did that and it's just so different from them and and for them it just seems so so normal some of the things that they've they've seen me do and be lucky enough to take part in. Whereas I just look back on it and think, wow, that was just incredible. Definitely. And you've talked about your mum a lot. Did your mum work when you were growing up? No. You had a working father, your dad? Yeah. And my mom was really funny because i remember when

we we made cambridge satchel into sort of like a limited company and i made her she was the obvious other director of this company and i i gave her business cards at christmas this box of cards and she took the cards out and and she said um well it was a a long time coming but I think I've got a career it sounds like she's been intrinsic so yeah completely she's had a very important job for a long time I know a very important job but it's um it's it's just another time you know my dad would never have allowed my mother to work that he would have seen that as a real affront you know he would have failed as as a husband and a man I think and so he was really adamant she couldn't and so she was

stuck doing the boring things and she could have done so much more um but at least you know through this she's had the chance to to see and be part of some really exciting stuff yeah absolutely i was i was thinking when you were talking about you know the you know we've talked a lot about the pressure of the school fees and that summer and the 600 pounds but from sort of listening to you i wonder if maybe you it seems to come so naturally to you the sort of problem solving and those moonshots that you talked about the thing about succeeding is that it's not just about having the idea it's that if you know you're sat in I don't know a lecture and they're talking about entrepreneurship and making a big business out of

a small business you know if they say in this room there's 200 of you and the likelihood is you know we'll be lucky if two of you make a successful company that lasts and you have to have that little thing in you that goes I think that's me I think I might be that person um I wonder if if you hadn't have had kids and motherhood if you still would have I feel like you still would have started a business because it seems to be something that's so tessellates with you and how you are about things maybe just needed a bit of permission or a bit of a incentive I don't know and I think I'm just you know I got to the stage of of being a bit too awkward to work for other people you know I think it works really well for everybody that I just do something else, you know, because it's frustrating to have to work for somebody that you think might not be doing a great job.

You know, that would be a really tricky one. Or to work in surroundings that don't let you have a go at trying something a different way or because people are very very comfortable with saying that's not possible because of this or that's not possible because that's the way the industry does something but when you you come to an industry with no prior knowledge, that gives you such an advantage. It gives you such an edge because you don't know that you're supposed to pay guests to come to your party.

You just don't know. And so you come to it, especially as I was doing this after having children and in my 40s. So I had common sense at that stage. And I had enough self-belief to think, you know, when people would say, you've had this investment, now we'll have this great party. You need to pay all these celebrities to come to your party i was happy enough to say i'm not doing that you know if they don't want to come to the party don't

come to the party i thought if people aren't honestly excited to be part of the opening of your new shop if they aren't thinking i really love this brand i'm going to be part of this and i want to be part of this i i don't really want them there yeah you know and i think there are so many opportunities where people try to tell you that oh you don't do that you need a branding agency or you don't do that you need a pr agency or you don't do that you know no PR agency I've come across would have come up with that idea of taking the fluorescent bags lending them to fashion bloggers and seeing how it goes you know it was just a sort of a why not this this might work and and it might not um and i think that by doing as much for yourself as you possibly can you're really reducing your your risk because i would have found it crippling to have had debt hanging

over me yeah that would have been a scary thing i would have hated that. Yeah. Absolutely hated it. So every step of the way, like the first office, when we moved out of the kitchen, which was, I think, a relief to everybody, but when we moved out of the kitchen and thought, I was quite risk-averse in many ways and thinking, okay, we'll move out of the kitchen, maybe we can have a garden building, you know. Yeah, yeah.

But then, you know, we had 16,000 on back orders, so maybe a garden building you know yeah yeah but then you know we had 16 000 on back orders so maybe a garden building you've grown out of yeah and um and but i was really clear on minimizing my risk because i didn't want to feel terrified about this debt obligation if things went wrong so yes we'll have an office but I'm not going to sign up to something that has a six-year lease on it you know or so as it was great I was able to find something that was a lot more flexible and so you could just give three months notice and it was and it was dog friendly so I could take Rupert with me and it was just getting something that fitted and I think that in the current challenging climate it's good in many ways because

it does challenge the way that things were before and so you can try a pop-up shop and not have to take something on yeah that's very true for a long lease period because you you aren't sure it's going to work or that you don't actually need it until you've done it yeah and i think actually the internet is also like you were saying when you go into something not really knowing all the rules about how those things are normally done i think actually the internet's been really good a lot of ways for so many different industries about people just thinking, sort of a freer way of thinking about making a start in any sort of business, really.

Yeah, because Paris Fashion Week, you know, we went over because that's where the buyers from, you know, loads of different parts of the world come. But we didn't have budget for a showroom, but we took an Airbnb budget for a showroom but we we took an airbnb that was really sort of close and it had a bedroom so that we could sleep there as well and it had wi-fi and we were we set it up in in a way that people felt comfortable actually when they came yeah it turned

out the buyers loved it you know because they could they could come we could give them a cup of tea some british biscuits from Marks and Spencer or something. And it was a bit more of an experience instead of like trudging around the big trade show places. And there was one, I think it was IT, and they came over and there was a bunch of people that we didn't speak the language they were speaking. And I mean, we didn't have translators. We didn't have, we didn't Airbnb, you know, just around the corner. But what we did have was Wi-Fi. And that meant we had Google Translate.

And so I would type in, hello hello where are you from and what would you like to see yeah sort of and they'd select their language which was really nice and sort of like auto detect language and they'd be typing something in it would go back and forth and we we'd both laugh as maybe the translation wasn't as yeah i'd probably just ask them something completely different but you know it got the job done yeah and and that's how we started selling to um some some great places in Asia amazing places in Asia but it was it was Google Translate we didn't have a translator but there's a way of doing it there's a way of getting it done and and you don't have to pay some amazing person who

speaks 12 languages because likelihood is the person who comes through the door is going to be one of the 13th yeah exactly so yeah no thank you google yeah exactly well um just a sort of one and last question really you've said that the business is like your third child and in in what ways is a business sort of similar and dissimilar to child raising really do you feel like you're the same sort of person when you're a mother as you are when you're having to raise the company yes because I sort of I am very aware that I adopt the same kind of like fierce outrage if Cambridge Satchel is being threatened. Oh, you've got a fierce outrage setting?

I've got a fierce outrage setting. Okay, and this is something your children see sometimes? Not usually at all, but I do have that same fierce outrage setting in like a parent's evening if I think that somebody is being overly critical of something. I have that setting. You know, or somebody out making some comment about your child or something. It's that fierce outrage setting that really can kick in.

It's like so deeply personal. Sort of protective, isn't it, to the point of like... So protective, you know um say don't don't tell me my son isn't good at time management when you've just started this appointment 20 minutes late yeah and it it is that very deeply personal kind of thing and i think that that's what i feel with with cambridge satchel you know that that is that that's what I feel with Cambridge Satchel. You know, that is something that is right. And also the kind of excitement that you feel when you see an opportunity that is so good for one of your children

or so good for Cambridge Satchel, that you're really properly, genuinely excited and joyful about it. Yeah. You know, and it's sort of like, this is going to be great for them in that kind of altruistic way that maybe people aren't in a more corporate environment. Yeah, I can completely imagine that that's true. Yeah, the happiness resonates so much more because it matters.

Exactly. It matters to you. You know, just the the pride that you can feel when when you know you get to work with something in some some fantastic place an amazing brand like Comme de Garcon or Ines de la Fressange in Paris and you think of all the bags they want to work with, do a collaboration with, they've chosen Cambridge Sexual Company. And that kind of pride, it's almost like a bring-to-tears pride. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's special. It's really different from any kind of work experience I've had. Yeah, and I can totally imagine that because it feels yeah the whole thing of it is personal from the get-go it's personal yeah yeah it comes right from the middle of you doesn't it it does yeah you sat there once and wrote it down and had all those ideas so to see it kind of come to fruition like that must be incredibly yeah exciting and rewarding and actually I did wonder when you said that you you started the bags firstly for the school fees obviously but also so your kids would use them at school did they use the satchels when

they went to school or did they go and have like other bags they they were encouraged okay okay yeah that's what I thought thank you for the school fees but I want that nylon what was really really lovely though is is um I remember I remember when Emily went out and started at uni and she phoned back and she said, oh, there's these people in the flat and they've heard of Cambridge Central. And this is sort of just like two years ago. And you think, yeah, yeah, we do actually ship to 120 different countries now Emily's gone outside Cambridge and and um and and and seeing just the roles that that they have found to still be involved you know in like we named

the Sophie bag after you and and yeah that's exciting thank you yeah and and um Emily was was there and she was involved from an early stage. And Max was totally brilliant at photography and an incredible artist. And he's got involved in like product development. And I think having the chance to be involved in something that's a real thing, it just gives them an idea of of worth as well you know that that this skyline that he did of cambridge that's appeared on some of our packaging that's something he did we didn't get a graphic designer to do that he did that and and emily then getting involved in some of the photo shoots it's just a very empowering thing and so i I do love having them and having my mum

really involved the dogs are the problem they're the ones that always bomb the photo shoots but yeah the the family's been great so they're still all very much involved now all of them your mum everybody's involved everybody's involved yeah yeah yeah because they if they get to they need to understand what's happening with the business to sort of understand why maybe I'm sort of more stressed or more tired. I need them to understand why maybe next week I'm going to need people to really help out at home a bit more because all of this is going on and I need them to pull together. because all of this is going on and I need them to pull together. And I think it's a real mistake if you don't allow them to feel part of it. Yeah, well, do you think it sort of encouraged your closeness with them, the fact that they've been through all of this?

I mean, you would be close with them no matter what, but it's quite a special bonding thing, isn't it? I think there is. And I think that as well, they look at what's been created with with Cambridge Satchel and they know that their mum did this so that they would have these opportunities and chances and that that gives them a sense of just how important they are and and I think that that is just such a real kind of like demonstration that yes, it's going to increase your closeness no end. Yeah, no, that's powerful.

I mean, there's not many people I know that could say that their mum or dad actually started a business with just the sole intention of helping them get a better education. That's pretty powerful. I'd imagine quite good for sort of giving them a bit of an emotional guilt trip sometimes it's kind of like I'm doing so much what do you mean what do you mean you're not taking the bin out exactly exactly I started a factory for you exactly I bet they appreciate it now and that's amazing yeah oh thank you so much Julie what an amazing conversation thank you really inspiring well I think that's the the best thing

if it just means that somebody out there thinks she did that with 600 pounds um I'm going to give it a go yeah definitely because it can feel almost a bit um not elitist exactly but just sort of out of your grasp that there's sort of business over here somewhere and you and your ideas down here yeah because you know what I didn't come from a rich family i didn't come with with a business that somebody was going to pass down to me and i didn't come with a network i've got a the most amazing network now i didn't have that 10 years ago but those things can't stop you from doing something no not at all and do you think that the business will be handed down to them? Is that something they've made any noise about at all,

your kids? They do from time to time. Yeah. You know, when something looks like it's really fun. Yeah, yeah. Then it looks really, really attractive. Yeah. Not so much when you're counting rat traps. Yes, exactly.

Well, there's the rough with the smooth, isn't there? That's the nature, I'm sure. Well, that's actually parenthood as well as businesses, isn't it yeah exactly exactly so that was julie dean wasn't that great story how amazing is that um and actually the story that she told about uh the the guy that had been secretly um selling off her designs to another satchel company um when he shouldn't have been doing that she actually when she said to the company i'm gonna set up by myself who's coming with me everybody left and came with her except for two people that's it i mean that is testament to how

amazing julia is isn't it what an incredible thing um and how amazing that what started off as a sort of a need to find money and a sort of necessity to pay for the kids education turned into something that's become so much more than that and so big and so important um anyway next week i have thomasina my. So she won MasterChef. She set up Wahaka. And she has lots to say about finding yourself after what she calls her wilderness years. And that noise. Richard walking into Belgium and discovering I'm talking to you.

And slamming a door anyway. He's the one that will have to wait that out. Anyway. Speak to you next week when you find me and tommy talking uh thank you so much again lots of love see you soon bye Thank you.