A simple idea with a big impact
Julie Deane was a stay at home mom when she started her company. As her children grew older, she wanted to be able to offer them the best quality of education possible. That’s what started this entire project – the goal of being able to pay the school fees of a private school for her kids.
So, one summer before her daughter, Emily, started at a private school in Cambridge, she sat at her kitchen table and started thinking what project could become profitable with a start-up budget of only £600. The satchel idea came to her as she noticed the state of her children's school bags that always got worn out too quickly. Whereas, she remembers that when she was little she had a satchel that lasted her at least the entire school year. This is how she decided what she would do: satchels.
She wanted the entire product to be made in Britain which wasn’t an easy task since the satchel wasn’t really a common product anymore. She first started to work with a school uniform supplier that made satchels but he was only able to produce 200 satchel a week.
However, the demand increased quickly and they were unable to keep up with the current process. So, without any experience in manufacturing, she decided to open her own factory with the money she had earned from her bags. She never needed an external investor and did everything in house.
Ms. Julie Deane has always been proud of the fact that she started the company on her own, with nothing but her and a computer. There was no team behind the creation and development of the company. Starting alone and with such a small budget, presented a lot of challenges of course, but this forced her to be involved at every step of the process, allowing her to develop a real expertise in her own product.
Today, she sells more than 10.000 satchel and other leather goods per month and her company is worth more than £50 million.