My son slept under my work bench. Now my firm is worth millions
ALICE RIVERS-CRIPPS, 41 Founder Posh Totty Designs
AlICe is mum to sons Oliver, 11, and Rupert, nine. She lives in brighton with husband James, 50.
ALICE Rivers-Cripps’ first shop was so small, it didn’t even have a window. ‘It was in the centre of brighton, but so completely tucked up an alley, I only ever got about five customers a week. It was basically a doorway.’
still, with her son oliver sleeping in a baby seat under her workbench and her hand-crafted jewellery on the counter, she was ‘probably the happiest I’ve ever been’. ‘It was absolutely my vocation in life to be a shopkeeper.’
Dyslexic and hopeless at maths, Alice is proof you don’t need to be a financial genius to create a multi-million pound business. school served an odd purpose, however.
Her first years were spent at a boarding school on an art scholarship, but when her mum moved house, she was put into an inner-city state school in Nottingham, where children mocked her accent and called her ‘posh totty’. Years later, it became the name of her jewellery business.
In her early 20s, Alice went to south America, working as a chicken farmer and a cowgirl before settling in Mexico and finding herself in a jewellery workshop.
‘I couldn’t speak much spanish, so I learned by watching very closely. I’d always made things like papier mache brooches and beads and back in the UK, I worked every evening trying to find a signature style for my own jewellery. I got a temping job and used all the office sellotape and Tippex to make earrings.’
At a car boot sale one day, she found the unlikely tools to create her own style. A set of tiny steel letter stamps used to brand electric meters. ‘Very much industrial tools — but it was an absolute Aha! Moment.’
she began personalising jewellery, using stamps to write names on bangles and initials on rings. back in the mid-2000s, no one did it. ‘I moved to brighton with my husband, and all the jewellers said no one will want a name on jewellery! That’s mad”!’
Alice carried on making it anyway — until one day in walked a woman called Holly Tucker, who was about to launch a website called Not on The High street, selling gifts made by craftspeople and small businesses. Holly put it on the front of her very first catalogue ‘and suddenly it was insane’, says Alice. orders poured in.
Posh Totty now has an annual turnover of more than £3million and employs 75 people: 71 women. Famous fans include Alexa Chung, Holly Willoughby and David Cameron.
‘Everyone in the workshop is female — the only way women can get back into work after babies is to understand the pressures of that juggle.’
Alice was recently asked to promote british trade on an official Government trip to China. From windowless alley to the biggest shop windows in the world — what a journey.