Bluebella

Bluebella

Industry	Lingerie
Founded	2005
Founder	Emily Bendell
Headquarters	London, England, United Kingdom
Key people	Emily Bendell
Website	http://www.bluebella.com

Bluebella is a British lingerie company founded in 2005 by entrepreneur Emily Bendell. The business – which also sells in the US, Australia, France and Italy – has won a number of corporate awards.

Early investors included James Averdieck, founder of luxury chocolate pudding brand Gü, as well as the investor network Incito Ventures and the South East Seed Fund. Bluebella was the first company to get funds from the London-based female investor club Addidi Business Angels.^[1]

The business has experienced rapid growth – recording a 100% increase every 12 months between 2007 and 2010.^[2]

History

As a politics, philosophy and economics student at Oxford University, Bendell took a summer job at a High Street lingerie store. She has said that the idea for Bluebella began to form as a result of that experience. She also cites the huge popularity of the TV series Sex & The City as a key inspiration. After graduating, however, she started a career in journalism. In 2004, she left her job as the editor of a legal and business journal and began working on the Bluebella concept.

Bendell summed up the ethos of the Bluebella brand in an interview with the Nordstrom fashion blog, The Thread. "I think we women buy shoes and bags not for anyone but ourselves. We buy them because we feel great in them. I think it’s very strange that traditionally lingerie has been in a totally different category. Lingerie is the thing you wear closest to your skin; it’s your most intimate purchase. The idea of that purchase being for someone other than yourself is really alien to me. We consider ourselves a new feminist brand. We’re very much designing product to make women feel amazing. The design and our aesthetic is always very strong. There’s no submissiveness in anything we do."

In an interview with the UK's leading fashion industry trade magazine Drapers, Bendell explained how she overcame sexism to secure investment from well-connected female investors. "There is an issue in this country, particularly with female-focused businesses, because the investment community is very male dominated. Before crowd-funding, we had previously been through some angel investor rounds. The business angel community is 95% male and typically invest in businesses they understand and have experience of. After one early round of funding, I was quite disillusioned and just put on an event myself, cold-calling high-net worth women asking them to come along."

Bendell road-tested her idea for six months, doing parties for friends and family members. She told Jazz FM’s Elliot Moss: “It was just me in my bedroom initially. I’d go out and do the orders, then I’d do all the packing and, if someone called, I’d answer the phones too.” ^[3]

By 2008, Bluebella had 100 agents operating across the UK, from Aberdeen to Southampton.^[4]

Online retailer Lovehoney invested a six-figure sum in 2010.^[5] Other online retailers, including ASOS and Figleaves, also began stocking Bluebella's lingerie range.^[6]

In February 2014, the luxury department store Selfridges announced that it too was selling Bluebella lingerie.^[7]

The brand raised over £1m in a crowd-fund in December 2016 in order to expand into the USA. They appointed East and West coast agents to find new stockists and by summer 2018 they were stocked in Bloomingdales and Nordstrom department stores and leading online retailers Revolve and ShopBop. They also had PR success with celebrities such as Hollywood star Gyllenhaal and Minaj wearing their lingerie.

Fifty Shades of Grey

In 2013, Bluebella won the official licence for UK and Ireland to produce a Fifty Shades of Grey themed lingerie range based around the series of EL James novels after Bendell personally pitched the company’s range to the author. She has said: “Fifty Shades has created, or perhaps reflected, a fundamental shift in women’s attitudes to sex and sensuality.” Several items were sold over Christmas 2013. The full range is due to be launched in 2014.^[8]

Ann Widdecombe Controversy

In March 2011, Bluebella won the Small Business Of The Year Award at the East Midlands Women Of Worth Awards. However, at the prize ceremony, which was held at the East Midlands Conference Centre during the annual Women in Business Conference, former Tory MP Ann Widdecombe refused to give the award to Bendell after watching a short film about the company. Widdecombe, also a former Strictly Come Dancing contestant, instead handed the award to another judge, Penny Mallory, to present. “It was clear that she didn’t know the nature of the business before she saw the film,” Bendell told The Daily Mail.^[9]

BeStrongBeBeautiful Campaign

In 2016 Bluebella worked with three GB Olympic athletes on a body confidence campaign called #BeStrongBeBeautiful to get more schoolgirls back into sport and fitness. The brand launched the campaign as statistics showed that more than half of secondary school girls drop out of sport after the age of 13 because of body issues and negative experiences of PE lessons. Windsurfer Bryony Shaw, shooter Amber Hill and Paralympic long-jumper Stefanie Reid did a provocative shoot in Bluebella lingerie and discussed their body confidence issues growing up to try to encourage girls to do more sport and fitness activities.

Business Recognition

Bendell has been invited to receptions at both Buckingham Palace and No10 Downing Street as a result of her high profile as a young entrepreneur. In 2012, she became one of a dozen ambassadors for the government’s newly formed Start Up Loans company, which provided mentor-supported loans to young people looking to start their own businesses.^[10] The scheme, which also involved Dragon's Den star James Caan, was promoted by Bendell alongside other young entrepreneurs such as James Eder (The Beans Group) and Romy Lewis (Lola's Kitchen).^[11] In 2017 Bluebella won Draper's Lingerie of The Year award ^[12] In 2018 the fashion-forward lingerie brand won the Lingerie Insight Marketing Campaign of the Year for their innovative Dare To Bare campaign launch for London Fashion Week in September 2017 which had 19 non-professional models cast from all walks of life doing a catwalk show across the Oxford Circus diagonal crossing.

Collaborations

In June 2018 Bluebella has worked with a young designer Tigerlily Taylor, daughter of Roger Taylor from Queen, launching a new exclusive summer lingerie collection ^[13] In July 2018 the brand has formed a creative swimwear design collaboration with Amber Davies, winner of reality TV series Love Island Series 3 ^[14]

References