IN 2001, Natalie Gladman, heavily pregnant with her youngest daughter, had been invited to a number of Christmas parties and didn’t have a clue about what she was going to wear. Not wanting to spend money on a dress she was going to wear two or three times at most, Gladman looked for a company that hired out formal maternity wear. After a fruitless search, she realised that there was a gap in the market and in 2002 started her company, Does My Tum Look Big In This, offering the service to pregnant women.

Gladman, originally from Glasgow but now based at Farnborough in Hampshire, studied at Thames Valley University and worked as a contracts director for an IT firm before starting her company. “I had no retail experience at all,” she says. “But as my husband will tell you, when I decide to do something I don’t stop. Once I had the idea for Does My Tum Look Big In This, I knew I was going to do it.”

Six years later the business is thriving. The formal maternity wear hire has expanded and now has six agents across the country, with a seventh soon to be added in Aberdeen. “It’s a great business because it’s something a mum can do from home,” she says. “They all have their own collections and cover specific geographical areas.” Gladman has also opened a shop in Farnborough (and online) and even designs maternity wedding dresses through her own label, madeline isaac-james (named after her three children). She says: “Thankfully social attitudes have changed and it isn’t seen as a problem if a woman is pregnant when she gets married any more.”

Gladman is ambitious about the future. She plans to build the madeline isaac-james brand and to expand the number of agencies as well as roll out the shops across the UK over the next two years. “I want Does My Tum Look Big In This to become a high-street name that everyone recognises,” she says. “It’s funny. Who knows how things might have turned out if my daughter hadn’t been due on New Year’s Eve?

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