From a hospital bed with 20 broken bones – to running one of Wales’ most successful businesses
Laura Tenison has been running childrenswear brand JoJo Maman Bébé for 27 years – and has no plans to stop anytime soon,
WHEN Laura Tenison picks up the phone, she’s just walking out the door after another marathon day at the office.
“Getting out of work is hard,” she lightly admitted. “The problem is I get to the end of my working day, and that’s when other people will know I’m around to catch me.”
Long days are par for the course when you’ve been running a company for nearly 30 years.
Based in Newport for much of its history, JoJo Maman Bébé is neither a traditional rags-to-riches tale nor, thankfully, a story of a company that has collapsed under its own weight having gotten too big for its boots.
Sitting somewhere in the middle, JoJo Maman Bébé has eked out a living as one of the leading and longestrunning childrenswear brands on the market, with more than 90 stores across the UK, Ireland and elsewhere.
You’d wonder if it’s what Laura, originally from Pontypool, could have imagined after a bad car accident while she was living in France in the early 1990s left her hospitalised for weeks.
“I was about 26 and had just sold my small property business, and was about to get back into fashion at the time,” she explained.
“I was air-ambulanced back to the UK having broken about 20 bones.
“During that period, my ward mate was a young mother with two small children.
“Her small children would come and visit her every day, and she’d keep herself entertained by ordering from mail order catalogues.
“Although we were both bed bound, we formed a relationship. She would throw over a catalogue, I’d attempt to catch it and I’d sketch a design in the margin and say something like, ‘This isn’t very nice, but would something like this work for your child’?”
“[Living in rural France] I couldn’t help noticing how well dressed the children in France were. You’d see them out walking along the beach with their grandparents whatever the weather, with their great waterproof overalls and fishermans’ jackets on, picking things out of the sand.
“She was my first inspiration to start a childrenswear company. I put together that love of the outdoors with what I knew about French childrens’ fashion, which at the time I thought was superior to British fashion, and made JoJo.”
A company with humble beginnings, JoJo Maman Bébé began as a small business run from Laura’s flatshare in London.
Needing somewhere to house her stock, Laura, 54, managed to secure a disused carpenter’s warehouse from her father’s business in Pontypool.
“My brother was running the business at the time, and gave me a lease with a nice rent-free period which was great to get us started on.”
As it grew, Laura took up more space wherever she could find it.
She remembered one particular time involving a larger than expected delivery which couldn’t get through the farm gate.
“I’d ordered nine pallets of stock, not really knowing what a pallet was at the time,” she said.
“My parents have never let me live it down, but the lorry had to turn around and come to the house for them to keep the stock in the living room.
“At that time they did actually say, ‘We think you’ve outgrown the space you have!’”
Moving to nearby Cwmbran, the company then bought a warehouse in Newport, where they’ve been ever since. They’ve been at their current premises on Oxwich Road for more than a decade.
Aside from its design studio, which is in London, JoJo Maman Bébé has its head office in Newport, which houses many of its key operations including accounts, customer service, retail operations, warehousing, distribution and more controlled from its South Wales headquarters.
“We have between 160 and 180 employees on site normally. I think we’re very much part of the Newport community, especially as we have our factory shop there as well,” Laura said.
Delving into a market that was hardly awash with flare and quality at the time, JoJo has become well known for its maternity wear and children’s clothing blending French influences with, as she put it “fun British humour”.
While the business is always taking account of market changes, there have been a number of shocks which, like any company, it has been forced to adapt to.
This, Laura assures, had bred a cautious approach to growth.
Around the business’ second or third year, JoJo lost its Japanese business after the yen collapsed.
“We lost about 10% of our business overnight. We traded through a very difficult period, technically we were insolvent, but fortunately we were able to muddle through.
“I learned very early that cash is king in business, and ever since we’ve been extremely cautious about our cash flow.
“For my very first business I was refused a loan by four high street banks, and borrowed £2,000 off one of my brothers.
“This seed capital has grown into our current business with a turnover of around £70m gross. We have been cautious about reinvesting and not taking money out of the business.
“During the credit crunch in 2008 we relied on a large working capital overdraft; as a retail business we need to fund a lot of stock holding.
“Yet again I learned that relying on bank borrowing is quite volatile. Once again with coronavirus, we are in a situation where we have these unforeseen disasters that are outside of our control.”
Like almost every business, Jojo has been hit by the pandemic; it has walked away from both its online and in-store trade in the US to focus on its UK market.
Laura added that help and advice, especially for new parents going through different stages, is part of the brand’s offering.
And the pandemic which has forced it to close its stores has meant that all important personal touch has been missing.
“We were a mail order and web business for the first 10 years, and then started opening high street stores just as our competitors were moving to out-of-town retail parks, which were supposedly the future.
“Lots of brands were leaving the high street, which presented us with a nice opportunity with our little boutique stores to plug a gap.
“If you visit a JoJo store and talk to our employees, you’ll receive advice on everything from pregnancy and birth to weaning, potty training and preparing for school.”
Although she insists online is here to stay, Laura added that the JoJo stores are “very much part of our brand”.
“We are finding digital ways to expand the experience globally. I love the idea that we are able to help a customer living in the Middle East, who would love to come to the UK but can’t often. However, we can now offer them a digital shopping appointment in one of our UK stores. It’s phenomenal what we can now achieve on a global basis.
“Our retail stores are very important, and they will be profitable again once Covid-19 passes.”
Although she is normally based predominantly in London in the JoJo design studio, Laura was working alongside her workforce in the distribution centre in Newport through the first lockdown.
“We have a fantastic, loyal workforce in Newport. Some people have been there nearly as long as I have.
“We had to keep going, and my incredible team has been coming in to work really hard. While it was tough and stressful, we had a good camaraderie going, but we are getting tired now. Everyone was surviving on adrenaline – now it’s getting harder to remain positive.”
With Wales now in a firebreak lockdown and the reality of living with coronavirus for the foreseeable future setting in, Laura admitted it “can be hard to keep morale high.
“As a director of a company it is our responsibility to stay positive and encourage the troops,” she said.
These days, it’s rare to see a company run by the same person for such a long time. After nearly 27 years at the helm, I had to ask – what makes her keep going?
“I will continue until I retire,” Laura said assuredly. “I love what I do there, I love the people I work with and I’m very proud of what we’ve created.
“The truth is I am getting older, and there will of course be a time one day when I don’t have the energy or the skills required to be CEO of a larger global business. I am totally selftaught and, of course, there are times where I question my judgement and my capabilities.
“The weight of responsibility can weigh heavy and sometimes I wish I were an employee not the employer!
“My character is such that I will continue to be CEO whilst I feel I have the competencies.
“But once I think the company has outgrown me and someone else is the right person to take it to the next stage, then I think it’s better if I step down. I won’t want to outstay my usefulness. I don’t feel that yet, but maybe one day.
“I’m an all-or-nothing person. I work long days, I want to be there working alongside my team, I won’t ask them to do anything I would not do myself.
“Despite it being really, really tough in retail, we are trading through this nightmare and are cautiously optimistic that JoJo has a bright future.”