MY LIGHT BULB MOMENT
KATIE LOPES, 42, is co-founder of clothing company Stripe + Stare. She lives with her children, Connie, ten, and Sam, five.
STRIPE+STARE all began with my hunt for the perfect pair of knickers. For ten years, I ran Austique, a boutique where we sold an American brand of thong underwear. Women would come in every day and buy armfuls because they said it was the most comfortable thong in the world.
I thought that our customers would love the knicker equivalent. I hunted high and low, but couldn’t find anything.
That was my light-bulb moment. As I couldn’t find what I was looking for, I decided to make it myself.
This led me to six years of research and development to create the perfect pair of knickers — comfortable, but without sacrificing fun, flirty styles.
Conscious that fashion is an enormously polluting industry, I also wanted them to be made from the best fabric possible.
I found a material called modal that is made sustainably in Austria from beechwood trees.
The knickers quickly became my bestselling product in store so, when the lease came up for renewal, I decided to shut up shop to focus on expanding the range.
It would incorporate all my favourite products, from knickers to T-shirts, loungewear to sweatshirts, always in sustainable fabrics such as modal, while making use of all the knowledge I had gained after ten years on the shop floor.
I realised that I needed a more practical business partner, so joined forces with Nicola Piercy, a friend and sometime business colleague.
We believe we should shop the way our grandmothers did, by buying clothes we’ll still reach for in 20 years’ time — quality products in classic styles, with a contemporary feel.
We knew we had something exciting on our hands — even before we launched in 2017 we had a huge order placed by fashion retail giant Shopbop.com. I sat in stunned shock for ten minutes when I heard.
Then an influential blogger said ours were the most comfortable knickers she had ever worn and the website went into meltdown.
In 2019, we are set to turnover €550,000. And now, Net-a-Porter founder Natalie Massenet’s new venture capital firm is eyeing us as a potential partner. Natalie is my business icon so, for me, this would be a fall-off-my-chair moment.
You do have to be resilient to set up your own business. Make sure you have done your research, that you are passionate about what you do — and be the best you can.