COMPANY PROFILE 23 Classic fashion THAT ENDURES With the words ‘colourful, happy, honest and helpful’ at the heart of the Miss Milly brand, Founder Sarah Watmore talks us through the company’s ups and downs, and how she’s ready to conquer 2025 When did you start up and why? Miss Milly was established in May 2012 and our first day of trading was at the Autumn Fair in September 2012. The brand was born out of a previous business split, which dictated the timing. What prompted you to launch the business? A change in personal circumstances led to the creation of Miss Milly, the logical next step after eight years of running another retail and wholesale business in the gift industry. The evolution gave me the freedom to fully develop the brand I’d been striving for. What challenges have you overcome since the company’s launch? It’s only when you look back properly that you realise how many challenges you have actually been faced with and overcome! The first one came when the deal to split the previous business was only signed a nerve-wracking day before Autumn Fair, our launch event. Since then, we’ve had upheaval with the move from doing our own warehousing, picking and packing to partnering with Tidal Fulfilment, a local company who was also in the early phase of growth. There were a lot of teething issues, particularly with syncing the inventory but as we’ve both grown, it’s been a huge success. Then there was Brexit, which basically wiped out a fledgling export channel, the ‘will we survive’ lockdowns of Covid and now we’re trying to make our way through the General Product Safety Regulations to ensure we can still supply our Irish customers. And if you add on changing website twice, integrating new technology, trying to predict the US Dollar exchange rate and more, you realise that setting up and managing your own business really is a huge learning curve. Resilience, patience and the ability to decide not to take up every opportunity are key. Tell us about your product offering. Our primary collection is colourful jewellery made mostly with base metal, resin and paint. We work with a couple of key factories in China to produce two seasonal launches a year that fit with the Miss Milly brand; reasonably priced, great quality, colourful, co-ordinating pieces that endure. And we try to offer designs that are practical, so all our rings are either elasticated or adjustable, and our bracelets are hinged, elasticated or have a pull-through fastener. These options make it easier for the end consumer to put jewellery on by themselves and for the retailers, there is no sizing dilemma. A couple of years after launching, and following customer requests, we launched a range of scarves to co-ordinate with the jewellery. We have tried different styles from cotton (dropped because they crease too much) to ponchos but have settled on compositions of 100 percent viscose or super soft 20 percent cotton with 80 percent viscose, which can be worn year-round. This has proven popular with retailers looking for lighter weight scarves for Autumn-Winter and is where we’ve grown our sales. We have offered a couple of limited collections of purses over the years and in January will be launching a brand-new range of recycled leather purses and handbags, handcrafted in India with offcuts from the leather industry. We’re really excited about these beautiful, practical products with a great backstory and a colourful appearance that really fits with the Miss Milly brand. What are your most popular products? The resin jewellery, hands down. We have certain styles that we have been selling for a decade with no let up in popularity. Our resin heart pendant with matching drop earrings is one such piece, and we mix it up by using different backings to the resin, such as aluminium foil and iridescent paper, to create a variety of effects. For this Spring, we have introduced a sunflower yellow and can’t wait to see how that does. Another
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