The secret to bagging £20m from making bumps beautiful
Weeks after selling her chic maternity line, the founder of Seraphine reveals she’s now retiring at 47
HAnDS up those of you who would like to retire at 47 with a small fortune. Cecile Reinaud, the glamorous founder of London- based maternity brand Seraphine, has done just that after selling the business for £50 million, netting herself £20 million.
Covid permitting, she looks forward to spending more time on her twin passions of scuba diving and horse riding. It is what she always dreamed of.
‘Growing a business is like raising a child, and it was always my idea to let it go when it was 18. I started it in 2002, so the timing is perfect.’
Born near Paris, with her grandfathers supplying fabric to couturiers including Chanel and Lanvin, Reinaud has business and fashion ‘in her blood’.
After moving to the UK in the 1990s to start in advertising, she spotted a gap in the market for stylish maternity wear when her friends were pregnant but couldn’t find anything beyond Mothercare.
With £100,000 of her own money, plus £ 150,000 from investors, she opened a shop in West London stocking her designs.
Low-waist jeans with a hidden jersey panel, little black dresses cut to accommodate an expanding midriff, silk cocktail frocks — this was revolutionary stuff then. And Cecile was the perfect figurehead — chic, Parisian and, very quickly, pregnant. The bump, though, was both literal and metaphorical. ‘new motherhood was the biggest challenge I faced,’ says Cecile, whose sons Lorenz and Florian are now 17 and 12. ‘It’s exhausting being a new mother and you need energy to be ambitious — especially when women have to be twice as good as men to succeed. ‘If you think starting a business offers flexibility for a family, you soon realise it’s not the case.’ Cecile thinks Covid will help women climb the ladder. Home-working has ripped up the rulebook, she says, revolutionising the culture of long office hours and presenteeism that has held women, especially mothers, back. ‘If you can drive more of your business without having to do the commute, or be in the office for hours on end, that has to be a positive.’ She also believes women should refuse to feel bad if they don’t do it all. ‘I’ve always said the best tactic for women is to think like a man. Men don’t feel guilty if they haven’t cooked all the dinners from scratch that week or if they don’t do the school run. neither should we.
‘I never did the school run. That was my conscious choice.’
It surely helped that her husband then was Austrian venture capitalist Markus Golser, who kept the home fires burning while Seraphine was in its infancy. (Reinaud is now divorced, with a new partner.)
BUSINESSticked over nicely, becoming a favourite of supermodels Elle Macpherson and Claudia Schiffer, until its big break in 2013, when the Duchess of Cambridge wore a dress from the brand while pregnant with Prince George.
Kate then chose a £46 fuchsia Knot dress from Cecile’s range for his first official family portrait. Within hours of that photo appearing, the dress sold out and had a five-week waiting list.
From then, celebrity approval — from Kate Winslet to Gwen Stefani — formed a big part of Reinaud’s marketing strategy.
A swift pivot over the past 12 months from office outfits to less-structured loungewear has paid off. As big brand retailers topple, Seraphine’s growth — 30 per cent per year is claimed — perhaps proves niche is the way forward in fashion.
Her top tip for other women who want an early retirement?
‘Don’t fall at the first hurdle,’ she says. ‘ My company was almost always profitable and it looked from the outside like a very smooth ride. But there were lots of hurdles. You’ve just got to keep on jumping.’