A year ago the Cambridge Satchel Company completed what had been a remarkable rise to prominence by taking on venture capital backers, and added $21m to its growth coffers in the process.
The companys founder, Julie Deane, had not paid herself for the first three years after setting up in 2008 and suddenly had financial resources at her disposal she could only have dreamed about.
Deane was a venture capital virgin in every way, but had done enough to convince renowned investment firm Index Ventures to come on board and help with the next stage of expansion. The last year has been a very interesting one, Deane told Real Business, because of the way it had been run before.
As the company had grown so organically, like most founders I had covered lots of different areas there wasnt a single job in the company I hadnt done myself,” she said.
Going from startup with me and my mum to taking on an investor and getting ready to scale up has been a really brilliant year period. We now have the people who know what is needed for that path to growth and to be properly scalable.
Despite essentially being an apparel business, beginning with heritage-style leather satchels before moving into tote bags, backpacks, iPhone cases and even trunks, the last 12 months has opened Deane up to the previously unknown value of positions such as a chief technology officer.
Using the funds from Index Ventures, Deane secured the services of former Marks and Spencer head of web engineering Jonny Wooldridge. His big corporate experience had also been contrasted by working for a startup in the form of Photobox.
I had no idea the value a CTO could bring but I have been so impressed by him. He re-platformed the website and got in onto Demandware, smashing the previous world record for moving by doing it in 52 days.
Being able to do that in such a fast time meant we were ready for Black Friday, which ended up being our biggest trading day on the website.
Building out the senior management team has been one of the primary objectives of year one as an equity-backed business. Alongside a CTO, Deane and the Cambridge Satchel Company have brought in a head of wholesale, who had experience at Marc Jacobs and Juicy Couture, a CMO who joined from Net-a-Porter and a product developer from Mulberry. All this has been partly facilitated by the little black book of contacts the business got when it paired with Index Ventures.
You start a company and you dont really know what you dont know to get to the next stage. Then if you have a really good partner to prepare for this ambitious scale up plan then that is what makes the difference,” Deane admitted.
Alongside the growth in management personnel, Deane has also overseen the opening of three new retail stores. To go with new sites in Glasgow and Edinburgh, the companys six-floor flagship in Covent Garden was unveiled. As a mark of how far the business has come, it now sits in close proximity to technology heavyweight Apple and well-known clothing brands Paul Smith and Ted Baker.
The London site has two floors of retail, a floor for wholesale and then three floors of office space. Having everyone in the same building is key, Deane added, especially for someone like the new CMO, Mario Muttenthaler, whose previous role at Net-a-Porter did not provide the advantage of being able to step downstairs and meet customers in person.
Explaining why Deane chose the site she did for the companys flagship, she said: Index Ventures were keen we should have a London flagship that matched our ambition. That is absolutely right as the positioning of this shop just down from Michael Kors and Dior, in a key location with high footfall, gives great credibility when wholesale accounts come through.
It would be harder to prove themselves [wholesale team] to overseas stores if they didnt have that.
Read on to find out more about product development and growth in China
When we spoke to Deane she was fresh back from New York, on a reconnaissance mission ahead of planned overseas expansion in the US. With a lot of customers already in the US, she said focusing there makes sense. This coming year will be about the US and China, with the Asian nation experiencing a soft launch in December to make sure factors such as logistics and payment processing didnt see the business fall flat on its face. To cater to its new market, the Cambridge Satchel Company will be rolling out a range celebrating the year of the sheep, a follow up to what was done for the year of the horse last year.
On the product development front, alongside the new product developer from Mulberry, Deane and the business recruited two further designers, one from Karl Lagerfeld and one from Coach.
“Where as my mum and I knew a good school satchel, we need to be able to move forward in a way that has style and conviction, and keeps the brand tight but evolving and diversifying,” she explained.
That is when you need skills and talents like the ones weve brought in. So speaking to them they are very aware of what is going on in the market but also how we respond to new customer demands in a way that keeps the signature of the brand.
For Deane it is incredibly important that all new products look like the Cambridge Satchel Company, rather than just throwing the doors open and saying theyll make anything from pencil cases and shower curtains. What she is most proud of is the ability to offer customers the talents of these designers in an affordable and made in Britain way.
From new products we took a step back in our interview and examined the Google advert that really put the Cambridge Satchel Company on the map. Like young media mogul Jamal Edwards experienced, the business was made the subject of a Google Chrome advert that charted its origins as a project set up to fund school fees for her children through its coverage by fashion bloggers around the world.
From that connection, and subsequent link up with Index Ventures, Deane says she now has a profound appreciation for the digital space.
The digital space is one I feel especially comfortable in, and I really do like being with people who work in that kind of sector and area. It was a real treat to go to Mountain View [Googles US headquarters] and see what people are doing. Its go so much energy and to bring that into a more traditional business sector has really helped.
Another thing Id say is that scaling and being able to keep relevant and cutting edge has involved a lot of things like payment processing and being able to accept from China UnionPay and even something like Bitcoin.
Only just back from New York, Deane was about to ship out to China the next day when we caught up with her. Doing China property for Deane means having customer care locally in Shanghai and everything in a local language. Visit the companys website and youll be able to toggle between English, Korean, simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese.
British luxury products are experiencing a boon in China right now, something Deane is acutely aware of and keen to develop. It is much easier than people might thing to go somewhere like China and talk about our product as we own it from the first cut of leather it is something that we can go and shout about.
The Cambridge Satchel Company is a very different enterprise to the one it was a year ago. The product concept and values have remained the same, but have been supercharged by a digital overhaul, superstar recruitment process and global readiness programme. And to top it all off, Deane was the recipient of an OBE in the Queen’s new year’s honours list for services to entrepreneurship.
