Investment package fuels expansion at maternity fashion brand Isabella Oliver
As London-based maternity clothing brand Isabella Oliver celebrates it tenth year, the company is undertaking a significant investment in people, systems and processes to help accelerate growth after securing £1.4 million from Santander's Breakthrough programme.
Established in 2003, Isabella Oliver is an online retailer of clothing for women during all stages of pregnancy. The brand has grown rapidly since creation with its focus on stylish, flattering fashion appealing to pregnant women workers and high profile celebrities in both the US and the UK. Its customers include Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lopez and Natalie Portman and around a third of its sales come from customer referrals.
A winner of the Queen's Award for Enterprise in 2010, the company is run by husband and wife team Geoff van Sonsbeeck and Baukjen de Swaan Arons from their office in Kentish Town. Baukjen is the creative director, whose passion for providing women with comfortable and stylish clothing during pregnancy has driven the success of the business. As well as its catalogue and online business, the company also has a fast growing wholesale business, supplying clothing to retailers such as Harrods, Nordstrom, Fenwicks and ASOS. In 2009, the company established its sister brand Baukjen, a non-maternity women's fashion retailer.
Isabella Oliver is undertaking an investment programme to help grow the company to the next level - including a sales and marketing drive alongside improving some of its systems and processes to manage the uplift in demand, resulting in an increase in its workforce from 65 to 95 over the next 12 months.
The funding includes £700,000 of Growth Capital investment, which is mezzanine-based finance at a low rate to help bridge the gap between debt and equity investment - in turn, helping to fill the investment funding gap for UK companies of less than £25 million turnover. The Growth Capital loan is part of Santander's Breakthrough programme which aims to support fast-growth small businesses to help them accelerate their growth potential. As well as funding, Breakthrough offers companies access to trade missions, business masterclasses, networking events and support in areas such as finance and marketing.
Isabella Oliver recently took part in a Breakthrough Masterclass with Richard Canterbury from Love Smoothies focussing on marketing opportunities for the brand. As well as a general marketing overview, it also received an individual step-by-step session on how to apply the strategic processes used by top marketing agencies to help it assess its overarching marketing strategy as well as its position in the marketplace.
Baukjen de Swaan Arons, Creative Director and Founder at Isabella Oliver, said: "I believe pregnancy should be celebrated and have always wanted my company to be a trusted friend to women during this exciting, but sometimes quite nervous, time. I am passionate about creating clothing that makes women feel better about themselves, and can help boost confidence and make life easier, especially during this time of so much physical change.
"I am so grateful to our customers and the way they have spread the word of our brand, but now is the time to take the next step and invest in the business so that we can reach even more customers at home and abroad. Getting investment finance is tricky for a company of our size on the edge of new growth, but this Growth Capital package is a perfect way to mix traditional debt funding with a flexible investment finance to help us affordably fund this next stage of our journey."
Darren Hart, Head of Growth Capital at Santander Corporate & Commercial, said: "We are thrilled to be supporting Isabella Oliver at this stage in their business lifecycle. It is the aim of Santander's Breakthrough programme to help strong, viable small companies caught in this funding gap to realise their ambitions as we know that with the right finance and the right support with marketing, recruitment, and internationalisation, these companies can be the big job creators and economic drivers of their local communities and market places. That so much of Isabella Oliver's growth has come from word of mouth and customer recommendations is testament to the quality of its business and product, and I have every faith that this will enable them to continue their strong growth trajectory."