Retales: E-Commerce Growth Stories
Welcome to "Retales: Ecommerce Growth Stories," a podcast series that brings you the unique and captivating stories of ecommerce retailers from every corner of the globe.
Each episode delves deep into the journey of different ecommerce entrepreneurs — from scrappy startups to established multinational chains — shedding light on the strategies they deploy to ride economic waves and seize new opportunities.
We feature candid conversations not only with these trailblasing entrepreneurs but also with the venture capitalists who back them, creating a comprehensive picture of the ecommerce landscape.
The entrepreneurs share their stories of innovation, growth, and resilience, while the investors give their insights into what makes an ecommerce business stand out and attract funding.
Every discussion covers topics critical to every ecommerce retailer's success — scaling operations, enhancing customer experience, optimising logistics, leveraging social media, and navigating market fluctuations.
Our guests share their experiences, insights, hard-learned lessons, and personal tactics for achieving success.
Whether you're an ecommerce veteran or just starting your journey, "Retales: Ecommerce Growth Stories" is your passport to understanding the dynamics of ecommerce, transforming modern day challenges into engines for growth.
Join us and draw inspiration, knowledge, and practical strategies from those who have journeyed before you in the exhilarating world of ecommerce.
Retales: E-Commerce Growth Stories
Bluebella's Disruption of the Lingerie Market’s Dated Playbook
In this episode, meet Emily Bendell, the inspiring brainchild and CEO of Bluebella, the fashion-forward brand that is redefining sensuality for the empowerment and comfort of the women who wear their products.
From founding Bluebella to disrupt the priority of the male gaze in the industry to recent strides in challenging sexual discrimination in a private members club, Emily's mission aligns perfectly with our focus on growth, empowerment and innovation. Her journey with Bluebella illustrates the importance of creative efficacy in propelling business growth.
In recognising the need for lingerie that reflected women's individual style and prioritised their comfort, Emily tapped into an underserved market and created a distinct brand identity. This emphasis on innovation and creativity has allowed Bluebella to stand out among its competitors, engage with a younger audience, and drive sales through e-commerce channels.
Emily's activism outside of Bluebella, such as her campaign challenging sexual discrimination, showcases the importance of aligning business values with social causes. Her commitment to empowerment and inclusivity resonates with customers seeking brands that stand for more than just profit. Innovative usefulness extends beyond product design and marketing; it involves connecting authentically with customers to make a positive impact in their lives.
The conversation also shed light on the ethical implications of using AI in retail, especially regarding reproducing photographs of women in lingerie. Emily raises meaningful questions about how AI could impact diversity, body image, and the appearance of robotic women. As e-commerce businesses explore the potential of AI, it's becoming crucial to approach its implementation conscientiously, ensuring that it aligns with the brand's values and considers potential risks and consequences.
Join us for this thought-provoking conversation with a trailblazer who's making a difference through retail with a heart.
Subscribe to Re:tales and get an instant notification when a new episode is released. We’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi everyone and welcome to Retails. I'm Caroline Baldwin and this week I set down with Emily Bendall. She is the founder and CEO of Laundry brand Blue Bella. I absolutely adored this conversation. She is such an inspiring and genuine leader. There were two particular things that stood out to me. The first one was her stories about how difficult it is to gain funding as a woman and the really proactive things she did to make sure she got that investment. And secondly, like many other businesses out there, blue Bella is looking at AI as a solution for some of their problems in the future. But what's really interesting is that when it comes to photographs of women in lingerie, that's an area that AI could potentially reproduce for them. But there's a lot of ethical implications about the diversity of AI and what these robotic women might or may or may not look like. It was a really fantastic conversation, really thought provoking. So, from Bright Pill, this is Retails.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Retails e-commerce growth stories, where we unveil captivating tales of triumph, hard earned lessons and the secrets to success in retail and e-commerce. Join us as we sit down with e-commerce titans, disruptive challenger brands and industry experts to explore winning strategies, market and leadership insights, and future shaping trends and innovations. From AI to venture capital, global expansion to automation these powerful conversations will fuel your growth trajectory. We believe every story contains valuable lessons. Retails is your ultimate destination to uncover them. Now to our host, caroline Baldwin.
Speaker 1:My guest today is Emily Bendel. She is the visionary behind one of the UK's leading lingerie brands, blue Bella. She's an e-commerce restructor, a passionate advocate for women in business and a true embodiment of modern leadership. Emily, welcome to Retails. How are you doing today? Thank you for having me, I'm good. Thank you, how are you? I'm good, I'm good. I am fascinated to learn more about your business, so you set it up in 2005. You're the founder and CEO. Talk to me about the inspiration behind you finding Blue Bella.
Speaker 3:So for me, I've always loved lingerie. When I was old enough to appreciate it, I really felt that the industry at the time had sort of lost touch with women. Lingerie at the time was presented in a very binary manner. It was very much like oh, here is your sexy dress up in for someone else, which is very male gaze, very problematic from a feminist perspective. Or it was very much here's your boring everyday underwear, smooth lines, and neither of those spoke to me or my friends. For me, laundry was a fashion purchase. I wanted it to reflect my personal style. I wanted to move it away from this male gaze, patriarchal nonsense, and I couldn't find that on the market. So I thought there was a gap and I decided naively to give it a go, not really knowing anything at all about how to go about it. So yeah, that's how it started.
Speaker 1:And talk to me about how you think the market has changed over the last what pushing 20 years now?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's changed hugely, you know, and I think, in a good way.
Speaker 3:I think, first, a number of ways. I think, first of all, inclusivity, which is something we've been at the forefront of in terms of showing diverse beauty, really sort of that message of, you know, female strength and diversity has become more normalized, which is great. There's still a long way to go, for sure, and some of it's quite sort of surfaced deep, I think, with some brands, but it's certainly becoming more normalized, which I think is a good thing. I think the other thing that we've sort of been at the forefront of is the underwear as outwear trend, which moves lingerie out of this kind of weird patriarchal. This is a product we wear next to our skin for somebody else's space, into the fashion space, which I think is also very positive, and it's become much more normalized to wear lingerie as part of your outfit, to style it up and so on, and details that were considered very sort of overtly sexual, sensual and now fashion details. So I think, gradually, the category is starting to move in a positive direction.
Speaker 1:Do you think e-commerce has been part of that delivery into this new space? Has that been helpful in some way?
Speaker 3:I think e-commerce is allowed brands like mine or younger you know, brands that are connected to a young audience, to grow through social media, through e-commerce. You know, Andre used to be this very much, this kind of department store product. You'd go and get measured with your mom and then you'd go back and you know the person serving you was your mom's age and it was kind of this. You know this quite sort of traditional category and I think e-commerce has opened that up. It's allowed this younger customer to access it in a different way, to talk about it in a different way. So, absolutely, I think that's been part of it and, interestingly, people thought, oh, it will never work online. You know, measuring and fit is so important. It's the one category that won't work and, of course, that's proven to like everything else, not be true.
Speaker 1:And how have you overcome that? Because, to your point, you know going down to M&S to get measured and things as part of a lot of our ages girls. You know memories, but there's a time and a place, obviously, for that brand and there's a time and a place for different brands. But how have you moved away from that? You know, sometimes when you come to a new e-commerce store, you might be a range of different dress sizes, never mind different bra sizes. How does that work for you?
Speaker 3:I mean, it's a nightmare, you know. I will say this like if I knew before I started the implications of 40 sizes. You know, in one product and the stock, and it is very challenging. But I think you know what do you do. First of all, you take a lot of care over your fit initially. So we, you know we have a very wide size range. We we make from a 30a up to a 40f and we're continually seeking to expand that size range so more and more women can enjoy our product. And so we spend a lot of care, time, money etc on perfecting the fit.
Speaker 3:Initially we're not known as a fit brand, we're a fashion lingerie brand, but our return rate is really good. So we know that we do do a really good job on that. And the other part is, you know, make it as easy as possible for the customer to give her confidence, you know. So free returns, easy returns. You know there's obviously fit tech. We've looked at various options. We haven't yet put one in laundry Again, it's laundry has been a bit left behind. There's some very good options on fit tech For mainline fashion lingerie that's starting to come through and we are looking to probably introduce one next year, so that can help as well. So I think it's yeah, it's really product initially, customer experience when she does buy, if she does need to change, and technology is the answer.
Speaker 1:So let's talk a little bit more about your customer acquisition model and such. But before we get into the nitty gritty of that, I've got to bring up that last year, a petition that you started surrounding sexual discrimination in a private members club, which I'm going to let you explore more a little bit about that, actually reached Parliament, and this is a petition that you started. It must be something you're so proud of. Talk to us about that. And also, how did you do that for you? Did you do that for the brand? Has it had a good knock-on effect for the brand? Has it got a lot of press inches at the time? Didn't?
Speaker 3:it. Yeah, I mean this is something I did personally, right, this was not a CEO of BlueBella and actually I've had. I've tried to actually purposely keep the BlueBella part out of it because actually it's been quite distracting of the main issue. I'll explain what I mean by that in a moment. But to give you the background, the GARIC is a private members club in London and it is one of a handful of clubs that has a no women policy, so women are not allowed to be members. Now I've got no issue with men choosing to socialise only with other men. That's their prerogative. But when it's problematic is when it's negatively impacting women's professional advancement. And the problem with the GARIC is it's got a very high proportion of the legal profession as members. So it's estimated about 25% of the senior judiciary are members. The law is a profession that's based on personal connection the judges, if you're a barrister, the solicitor, etc. So it's problematic that this club that's highly dominated by senior male legal professionals doesn't let women in, and lots of women in that profession, like Lady Hale etc. Have spoken out about this and it's still a problem. I stumbled across it by accident. I couldn't believe it. I thought I would try and do something about it and then I sort of have carried on trying to do something about it. So there's been various kind of iterations of the campaign, from a petition that over 125 cases now have signed. We've had some politicians involved, there's been a legal challenge and so on.
Speaker 3:In terms of relevant to the business, I mean, yes, it's relevant in the sense that we are a mission-led business. So at BlueBella we are known as a campaigning brand. We start conversations and we seek to share our worldview around empowerment of women, around inclusivity, etc. So I guess it does fit with that, because I'm the founder of BlueBella is kind of my vision and so on. But I did, it was a separate project and actually the sort of slightly not great thing was there was a lot of quite salacious headlines in relation to what I do. You know, I think the Times headline was Brar Queen's Rising Passion, right. So actually I've actually sort of tried to keep sort of set me and the business sort of out of it, really because it's just distracting, to try and keep it focused on the issue. So yeah, it's sort of a hobby. I have that poke the establishment.
Speaker 1:I love it, I love it. I guess the differences you know and I'm coming from a journalist background and how those headlines come about is you know, I definitely do not, do not agree at all, but for your audience was it actually quite interesting in terms of an acquisition, because actually were those headlines probably winding up the wrong people that weren't going to come up with your products anyway, but actually catching the attention of, you know, young, empowered women that might do, was that, was that noticeable.
Speaker 3:I mean we had, I think you know retrospectively, there was, you know there was traffic to the site for the first round of press. But then, like I say, what I then did is actively try to move it away from me to the KC's because you know they're the ones and so. So you know, since then I haven't really I mean I haven't really looked at it because that's not the point of it and you know, and so on. So, and it's not that you're getting, you know, generally with you kind of need product images to drive. You know what I mean. It's not sort of the amount of time and effort and energy. If I wanted to spend that on a commercial marketing campaign I'd have a lot more impact than this. Yeah, so it is a different thing, yeah.
Speaker 1:So a bit of an organic potential growth there, but nothing, nothing giant I would not recommend challenging the establishment as an acquisition strategy for your e-commerce business?
Speaker 4:If that's the question, I would not recommend that. Very time consuming, soul destroying and probably not a great rower, so yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness. Well, and what's the latest on it at the moment?
Speaker 3:Well, they promised the club eight years ago now promised a new vote in five years time. So that was three years ago. It still hasn't happened. So I'm just trying to continually apply pressure, you know. So we're sort of looking at different ways of doing that. So it's just a kind of drip drip to try and keep the pressure up. That they'll, you know. I think if they call a vote, the members will vote to accept women. I hope.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, good for you, emily. Well, moving on to you know more traditional forms of customer acquisition models and you've got major A-listers that are big fans of your brand Maggie Gyllenhaal, halle Berry. Firstly, how's that come about and how's that impacted your brand visibility and customer engagement?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that you know, I think the brand sort of pieces like that are more important than ever. And it's just in terms of how did it come about? It's just lots and lots of seeding. So, you know, we do a lot directly ourselves. We work with stylists, we work, you know, with influencers etc. We have a US PR agency and I'd recommend the one we work with has sort of an East Coast base for press but also has a West Coast base for celebrity seeding. That have got those relationships. So that's been quite effective. And then we built, you know, our own relationships as well.
Speaker 3:So it's a lot of, you know. To get each, you know, get a hit. It takes a lot of grunt work, but I do think it's important. I think it gives credibility to your own audience. You know it really kind of helps. And sometimes, if you get, you know, I mean we had one with Halle Berry where those pictures were used again and again for different reasons, so you kind of get it sort of the gift that keeps on giving. So I think, with all the you know, with prices at meta going up, with the cost of acquisition going up, you know finding ways to kind of have those brand moments are more important than ever.
Speaker 1:Retails, the renowned e-commerce podcast from BrightPill, is hosting a virtual panel discussing e-commerce finance and fundraising, exclusively designed for e-commerce brands. Hosted by me, caroline Baldwin, and featuring seasoned e-commerce players, challenger brands and industry experts will guide you through financial management and fundraising in the fast-paced world of online retail, from maximizing holiday sales to the right funding options for your business and attracting investors. Retails has you covered. Secure your spot now at brightpillcom. Forward slash. Retails-takeover. Spaces are limited, so act fast and we'll see you there. You once said that BlueBella is a brand with strength and modernity at its core. Is that how you would describe the brand today? Do you think that's really been important for getting it in front of the right people?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the secret to our success has been that we understand this. We have this innate understanding of what contemporary women feel about lingerie and about their sensuality, which is very different from. I'll give you an example a typical lingerie shoot that if you imagined. A lingerie shoot would be like a girl lying on a bed, and that's a beautiful lingerie, but that's submissive. Who are you waiting for? That's not our aesthetic. We would never put out that image. It's always very strong. It's empowered. We might have a very beautiful open bra that sometimes she'll wear over a white tee as a fashion look, or she might want to wear provocatively. It just depends on her mood. It's about moving the bra out of this patriarchal space and making it into any. It's like a t-shirt, a layering piece. It's reframing that product and reclaiming it. For us as women, that's the bit I find most driving and inspiring, because I think it's important. Fashion is important politically. When women started wearing trousers, that was a big moment in women's rights. These things seem trivial, but I feel like they're important.
Speaker 1:No, of course you touched on how the industry has completely changed from the days of going back to the department stores. But nowadays you're actually in some really big department stores Selfridges and Nordstrom in the US, and you're also in Victoria's Secret. How has that come about and that association with your market positioning? Was that deliberate or has that come about quite naturally? Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3:I've always believed in wholesale as an important part of what we do in our strategy, which actually was out of fashion for a long time. If you'd asked any VC or they were like DTC, only E-com why dilute the brand, whereas now which shows these things are fashion, it's back to Omni Channel and there's a place for it. I've always believed in it because I feel like with the right partnerships it's a win-win. Obviously increases your sales or distribution, but you also, in working with partnership with the right retailer, can enhance the brand. There are learnings both sides which are really valuable If you have the right relationship with the buyer. It's great For us. I think it's introducing new customers to the brand. It's helped us understand new markets more quickly than we would have done if we were building from ground up on DTC. Also, for physical retail, we don't have physical stores. It allows customers that want to see, feel, touch the product to do so without us having to open our own stores. It's definitely got its place.
Speaker 1:Let's move on to talk a little bit about money and capital investment. How have you gone about raising working capital over the years?
Speaker 3:I've done three rounds of investment. The first one was a painful business angel's little bit of trade investment. The second one was a follow-on from that and the third one was a crowd fund. We haven't really had institutional investment. We've had a small amount of money from a fund as part of the angel round. That's how we've done it. I think it's quite problematic. Certainly in the UK the angel community is 95% male. They tend to invest in businesses. They understand understandably, which means if you're a female focus business like mine, it can be quite challenging. I do think that we've got quite a lot of problems in that space here that hopefully are gradually starting to change. I very actively looked for female investment for that first round and managed to find it, but there weren't that many women in these forums.
Speaker 1:Do you have any advice for any similar entrepreneurs starting out?
Speaker 3:now. I think you have to be quite proactive. It was quite disheartening. I was getting a lot of that first round a lot of a nose, a lot of. I didn't really understand why the brand was different, why what I was doing was different. What I did was I went out cold to High Net Worth Women. I put on my own event to pitch the business and reached out to various trade investors I thought would be suitable. I had to very practically go out and find people to invest. I think you just need a lot of what my mum would have called a chutzpah and not be disheartened by the nose, because it is really miserable fundraising, because you have to get a lot of rejection before you get it.
Speaker 1:Do you think this is one of the reasons why there's so many fewer women venturing into business?
Speaker 3:I think there's a whole host of issues which contribute to the appalling stats on investing in women. You know, I think we need more women in STEM. I think that you know women have. You know there's a lot of data around women. You know they don't apply for jobs if they've got a much higher proportion of the qualifications. I think some of the same issues are around sort of funding. Because you're not, you know, you're sort of having to say look, I don't know for sure this is going to happen, but I think I'm going to get there, and there's a lot of kind of that behind it and, for whatever reason, I think it's cultural and goes back to sort of very young age. With women we're sort of shaped to be people pleases to be, you know, less bullish about things and so on. So I think there's a whole, a whole lot of issues. I think it's getting better, which is great, but there's no one magic bullet.
Speaker 1:Do you do any mentorship in this area at all?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I mentor young women. I mean I've been, I've been really lucky to. I found women to be incredibly supportive of other women and of me and of giving their time and so on. I try and pass that on. So any one time I sort of mentor to women. I also try to both, because some women from underrepresented backgrounds as well.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, what did they? What's the phrase? There's a special place in hell for women that don't help other women. I think it's the one. Yeah, definitely. And so, yeah, how your leadership skills are. Just, you know they're coming through thick and fast in this conversation. How would you describe your leadership style then? Oh, this is a good one.
Speaker 4:You should ask my team and ask me and see if it matches up. I don't know.
Speaker 3:I'd like to think it was what they probably say chaotic and hilarious or something, and no, I would say I think it's very collaborative. For sure I'm very much, you know, and it's very non hierarchical. I want to hear from everybody you know, and actually even very junior people contribute, you know. They're often closer to our customer than some of the more senior team. So I'd say collaborative, certainly. I would say energetic as well. I get excited by things we're doing about you know what, what you know we can make that. How can we do that? And it sort of inspires people, I think, to get more done. We get an incredible amount done for the size team that we are. And I would say, yeah, flexible as well.
Speaker 3:I work very differently with different people. I've done a lot of self development in understanding different types of people and how best to manage them. I feel that my view of leadership is that I feel, as a manager, a responsibility to adapt my management style to different individuals rather than them all having to adapt to me. I've found that a more effective way to lead and I'm a big fan of the different ways. You know the different sort of ways. You can do that and we do a lot of that as a company. So we do. You know, we've recently done a full team exercise. Where everyone in the company goes is this shapes exercise, where you kind of all get put you know, you say where you are on different things, and it helps us understand each other so that we can work better together. So I think these things are really important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Fantastic. And you actually. You come from a family of entrepreneurs, is that correct? So how has that influenced you as a person today?
Speaker 3:I think it was very natural to me to start a business. You know I grew up my parents worked together and you know I was used to think. You know it was talked about over the dinner table. You know I come from sort of an immigrant family where there was the sort of the markets still, then the shop, and you know so I suppose it didn't feel unnatural to me, to my family interestingly especially the older generation you know I was I went to a very good university. I was educated to them. You know why would I start a business? Because that's what you did when you couldn't do something else. You know, in their mind it was like you get the degree, you go into the professions, you don't have to do this. Entrepreneurship, it's something you do when you can't do other things. So that was a bit of a sort of surprise and you know a different generational mindset on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, things have definitely changed, that's. That's a really interesting mindset, though I wouldn't wouldn't really consider it that way. So let's move on to technology and all of the digital solutions that power Bloop-Bella. Let's run through some of the core technologies. The kind of question I always like to start with is what's the one piece of software or piece of hardware that you're using that the business would fall apart tomorrow if it just disappeared or went offline? What's the one thing that you're really, really pleased?
Speaker 3:with I mean there's no one thing that we've got a very integrated web of things, which can be quite problematic, and then actually the integration the integrator is as important as the.
Speaker 4:You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:So I don't think I can sort of point to any one thing, which is, you know the sort of pros and cons in that and we're looking at so talk me through the web. What are you doing there? Well, I mean, we're on Shopify, as you'd expect, we're using NetSuite as well, and then Red Prairie as the WMS, and then we're yeah, we're in the process of introducing a merge system as well, but then there's various kind of unique integrations around that as well.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, have you always been quite tech focused.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think I've been really lucky. We've got a really great team. One of our non-executives, also involved in the business, has been really instrumental in sort of pushing us forward. I'm very interested, you know, in, you know, new. I think we're all the whole senior leadership team are very kind of into change and what's coming and there's sort of not resistance there, which is great. So we're all really excited about AI. We've done, you know, we're building a whole strategy around that. We're trying, you know, seeing, you know where we can use that most effectively in the business. So I think we probably are quite forward thinking. But we're a small team as well, so it's always a resource thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you touched on AI. Where in the business do you think that's really going to impact?
Speaker 3:So we've kind of we're building you know I don't have all the answers yet, so we're building the strategy on it. I mean, I think the most obvious well, I think the lowest hanging fruit is on branded creative rights, obviously, copywriting, image creation, you know, asset development We've been looking at all that and comms you know, around customer service etc. It's not as far along as you kind of think. It is, in a way, particularly for lingerie because of skin, and so it's quite prohibited. We've just done a whole exercise, testing, you know, a number of the sort of main providers from mid journey and Dali, and stable diffusion etc and it's, and also there's a lot of ethical questions that we're trying to navigate as well. So that's coming, but I think it's not as immediate. On the copy, it's here, but on the actual visual assets, I think that's a bit a bit later because it's obviously moving so quickly.
Speaker 1:So tell us a little bit more about the ethical queries that you're when you've been testing these solutions.
Speaker 3:Well, if you're creating images that are not real people, right, so we've always had a. You know the issue used to be that you know models was that an attainable body type? Right, the sort of the skinny white girl? And then you know, happily, that's. You know, and we certainly use a much diverse set of models. So if we move away from that and we start using AI, so one how you know how is that? You know ethically in terms of models and their career trajectory, but also who is then deciding? You know that there's still an issue around diversity in AI.
Speaker 3:And then you know how you make decisions around what you're when you're moving away from real people, about what you show. You know if anything ends up too close to a real person, obviously the IP. You know there's a whole, there's a whole kind of myriad of issues there that you need to kind of think about and the cost. You know how does the customer feel about being served an image that's not a real person. So I think that needs some careful thought. You know there's been in the press, obviously, some reaction, some sort of quite negative reactions to some brands that have moved in that space. I think the message is really important that goes alongside it to the customer Very open, clear what it is. You know, I think if you don't say what it is, I think that's that's. That doesn't ethically feel right to me. The customer should know.
Speaker 3:So I think there's that, there's, there's things there. And then obviously, you know I mean there's already a lot of AI and a lot of the apps we use already from you know personalization and so on. So that's you know, that's obviously already feeding through. And then data and analysis, you know merchandising, finance. We do a lot of that and you know there'll be, there'll be, benefits to that. So, yeah, all, yeah, all aspects, and I'm sorry, in production as well. Obviously, product development in terms of you know the manual process of you know sketch to CAD, to sample, to see on body, being able to kind of you know, do that much more quickly and in the kind of design and sort of inspiration process, is definitely place for it there as well. That's, that's already here.
Speaker 1:Moving away from technology but still talking about the future. You've grown so much in the US, in Australia and Germany and many other countries. What's your international expansion strategy?
Speaker 3:We're very US-focused. Us is doing great Obviously a really big market, so we see a lot more that we can do there. In the EU, we've obviously been a nightmare with Brexit. We're now sorted out, but it's taken quite a lot of operational changes. We're now getting there. So now that we're there, we'll look to put our foot on the pedal again. For EU there's so much more room in the markets we're already in. That's not to say we're not. I think there's a lot of other markets that could be great for what we do, but it's just about a sensible timeline because there's a lot more space in the ones we're in.
Speaker 1:Definitely. Which are the new markets that you're particularly keen on exploring, then Montguré is great in the Middle East, for example.
Speaker 3:We've done some small tests there that have been quite successful, but it's not a market we're focused on Currently. You need a local partner. It operates a lot differently to the European or US markets. There's a few markets like that which should be interesting, but it would be about timing.
Speaker 1:And five years from now? Where would you like the business to be? What's your dream for it?
Speaker 3:I want BlueBella to be when a woman thinks I want a little pick-me-up, treat myself, little fashion fix, the think of BlueBella Really building that brand, that brand recognition, us, europe. We're working on some new categories. I can't say too much yet, but very exciting, they watch this space. The category of Soma would be much broader as well. I think, with that mission of redefining sensuality, that we can expand that to a number of different places.
Speaker 1:Emily, so exciting and all the best with everything. Before I let you go, we've got our very rapid fire round. Sit back and loosen those muscles a little bit. It's a very quick, just the first thing that comes into your head. Are you ready? I'm nervous, we'll start your Feezy. Do you prefer watching Netflix or Disney Plus?
Speaker 3:Oh, my God, is this without my kids? What's up to you Without my?
Speaker 4:kids Netflix because I've got to freeze them one more time. I've got to really shoot myself.
Speaker 1:What do you do to stay mentally and physically fit? Yoga what's your Sunday morning guilty pleasure?
Speaker 3:Oh, Sunday morning, guilty of staying in bed even when the kids are tearing each other apart downstairs.
Speaker 1:And if you have five minutes with the Prime Minister, what would you ask them for that?
Speaker 3:is a great question. I mean it wouldn't be related to the business. I'm afraid it would be just to have a heart, basic, humanitarian, around immigration and so on. So I would say that they're risking our reputation internationally and they need to sort themselves out.
Speaker 1:Keep prodding that establishment. And the last one what do you know today that you wish you'd known at the beginning of your career?
Speaker 3:That it's absolutely fine to make those mistakes, that they're part of the entrepreneurial journey, they're how you learn, and so it's all about just picking yourself up about after making them and learning from them, but not worrying about them.
Speaker 1:Oh, emily, that's a really lovely place to end. Thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 3:Oh no, thank you, it's been fun.