Three friends and a brilliant business idea
Annabel Astor
The history of the furniture company Oka reads like a success story for female entrepreneurship. Dreamt up in 1999 by three friends – Annabel Astor, Sue Jones and Lucinda Waterhouse – it started as a mail-order brand with a small collection of furniture and storage, opening its first shop in Fulham in 2000 and launching an e-commerce website the following year. Almost 20 years after it opened, it is now a thriving company with 15 UK stores, the largest of which opened in Guildford last week.
In the beginning, the founders struggled to secure investment for the company – not surprising, perhaps, considering that even today female entrepreneurs receive nine per cent of funding for UK startups, according to figures released as part of the
Telegraph’s Women Mean Business campaign. Perseverance paid off, however: after building up and establishing a successful brand, earlier this year the company sold to investment firm Investindustrial, owners of Aston Martin, B&B Italia and Sergio Rossi, for a reported £40million plus.
The secret of its success lies partly, Lady Astor believes, in the relationship between the three women. “We have completely different styles, and we work separately, then pile all our designs together and start talking about them. If two of us say no to something then it’s absolutely a no-no… but occasionally if you’re really passionate about something then it goes through. And,” she adds, “there’s no ‘I told you so’ afterwards if it doesn’t work.”
The trio’s chemistry works because “we were friends to start with, and we’re now even better friends. We’re all very careful not to overstep the mark in terms of criticism, and when we’re together privately we never discuss work.”
Lady Astor, the mother of Samantha Cameron, may be the “face” of the brand, but a figurehead she is not. She is in the office most days, and still draws out all her designs full-scale on to paper, with detailed measurements: “That’s the only way I can do it,” she says. Since the sale, Sue Jones has taken on the role of creative director, while Lady Astor has become the chairman. When we meet at the new store, she has just returned from New York and is about to head off to Hong Kong. “There have been times, in the early years, when you just didn’t sleep for three days because you were moving stuff from one place to another,” she recalls. “All that hard work, those long hours... That’s why it’s all so exciting.”
The Guildford store is the company’s largest yet, with 11,000 sq ft of retail space spread over three floors. Four years in the making, it symbolises the way the company is aiming to move forward under its new owners, with more supersized stores on the cards. “It’s been our dream to really get the company up to another level internationally,” Lady Astor adds.
The company’s overarching style is English country with Eastern influences – “the sense of centuries piling up on top of each other” – but that’s not to say it doesn’t deal in current trends.
Rattan, for example, is all over the high street this season; Oka has been doing rattan since it launched its first collection. The gallery wall is currently one of the most searched terms on websites such as Pinterest and Houzz; Oka has been quietly selling sets of matching prints, giving its customers an instant gallery wall effect, for several years. And as for faux flowers and plants, another big trend this year, Oka started doing them around six years ago; they are selling like hot cakes.
With its expansive interior space divided into sitting areas, bedrooms and dining areas – plus a “seasonal” space, currently done out as a conservatory – the Guildford store offers the company plenty of opportunities to show off its greatest hits; the rattan, the painted bedside tables and consoles, the colourful cushions and tableware and the extendable dining tables. “That’s the one I want,” Lady Astor says, indicating an enormous 18-seat dining table. “It folds up to half its size; it’s brilliant.”
That lifestyle-store concept is important, she believes, because “people get nervous about making a decision. Customers come in, and they often want to see how to arrange a small area, for instance, and what will go with what.
“We don’t want to dictate to people though,” she adds. “Your home should look like your home, with your things. Hopefully what we do is help people make the decisions, and give them enough variety to pick from. We’re enablers.”
The new Oka store is at 18 Tunsgate, Guildford (oka.com). To find out more about the Telegraph’s Women Mean Business campaign visit telegraph.co.uk/women/business/