Comments (3)

By Little Mummy, July 19, 2009 12:18 am

Q1. Give a brief description of your business.

We run an organic cotton clothing company with ranges for babies, children and breastfeeding mums.

Q2. You used to be known as ‘cut4cloth’, why did you change the name?

Cut4Cloth was started originally because I couldn’t find any clothing anywhere on the market that would fit comfortably over a cloth nappy. It made sense that our clothing followed the ethical considerations that drew us to cloth nappies in the first place so we made it organic and fair trade. As my son grew out of nappies I realized that there was a market for older children’s clothes that were also organic and fair trade and when I breastfed my second some (now nearly 3yrs) I realized that there was a lack of stylish and discreet breastfeeding wear available too. This led to me wanting to expand the range of products outside just the cloth nappy arena and the name Cut4Cloth was a bit too specific to allow that – so we changed the name to Frugi – Latin for “Fruits of the Earth”.

Q3. In the early days how did you manage childcare?

Kurt (my husband) and I both gave up our jobs, remortgaged the house and put everything we owned on the line to start this business. We knew if we were going to build a really good brand it needed a 100% commitment and so of course did Tom our little baby. So in the beginning we ran the business from home and juggled him between us – we only had one computer, so the other one had Tom. Of course running a business from home also means you do quite a lot of work in the evening when the baby is soundly sleeping!

Q3. What have been your most successful marketing strategies?

We decided a long time ago that we would rather use a big advertising budget for something worthwhile than for a paid space in a magazine so we joined 1% for the Planet – which means we give 1% of our turnover (whether or not we make a profit or a loss) to two environmental charities. We get a lot of positive PR about this and all our other ethical works and so generate a lot of magazine/newspaper inches – which tend to be more effective than advertising anyway, proving that being green can actually be a really good business strategy too!

Partnering with other companies and doing joint offers to each other’s databases in your newsletters etc. is currently working a treat as many similar ethos companies have customers that would be interested in our products.

Q4. How are you utilising social media to market your business?

We have a Frugi Fanpage on Facebook and now have over 1200 Frugi Fans – they talk to each other and to us directly and it is a great communication tool to spread all the latest news on Planet Frugi around!

We also Twitter and have a Frugi Blog – we give our Frugi Crusaders our outfits to review and put “no holes barred” comments about them on all these media. It all increases trust and a feeling of belonging to the brand.

Q5. How are you as a smaller business fighting back against the economic downturn?

We are currently seeing the majority of our growth coming from overseas – the weak state of the pound has seen our export business rocket and we essentially doubled our turnover over the last 12 months.

Q6. For mums that may be considering starting a business, would you advise them to hold off until the waters are warmer, or should they just go for it?

I think it depends what the business is in? If it is property development etc – I’d probably say it’s not the best time to start, but if you have a business that is going to fill a niche and a currently unmet demand, then now is as good a time as any I think. Banks are a lot more wary though so don’t expect too much help from them. A smaller business has a great advantage over bigger businesses though – they can respond to change much much quicker – you see an opportunity – go for it!

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