Three years ago we started following the fortunes of three Sunday Times
readers who were about to quit their jobs and start businesses of their own
for the first time. Even in those economically buoyant days it was risky —
two in three start-up businesses typically went bust within three years.
The fantastic news is that three years on, and despite the credit crunch and
recession, two of our fledgling entrepreneurs are doing incredibly well,
chalking up turnover of almost £1m between them.
JULIE DIEM LE
Zoobug
THE STORY SO FAR: Julie Diem Le was 29 and an eye surgeon when she left
her job with the NHS to start her own business making and selling sunglasses
for children after seeing the damage the sun could do to unprotected young
eyes.
She attended courses run by Business Link in Birmingham, then wrote a business
plan and got a start-up loan of £35,000 from NatWest. She found an Italian
designer to help create the sunglasses and in July 2006 launched her first
range, aimed at children aged 7 to 16. A few months later she launched the
Flexibugs range for the 3 to 8 age group.
One year after starting her venture, Le was selling more than 2,000 pairs of
Zoobug sunglasses a month in Selfridges and upmarket opticians round the
country. However, she soon realised that both her initial price and target
age range were too high and had to adjust both downwards.
Two summers of poor weather also convinced Le that she needed to start selling
her products overseas and, after toying with the idea of finding an outside
investor, she managed to get a bank loan of £60,000 to fund expansion. Last
year she decided to add a range of optical frames for children aged 2 to 12.
UPDATE: Le is doing fantastically well. She launched her range of
optical frames for children at an exhibition in Milan in May last year and
they are selling so well that sales are already outstripping those of her
sunglasses.
Her decision to export has also paid dividends. She is now selling her
sunglasses and optical frames in 20 countries and has appointed official
distributors in eight of them, a move that has been helped by the fact that
she has two distinct product ranges. France is now the biggest market for
her glasses, ahead of Britain.
Her sunglasses, which are made in Italy and the Far East, are stocked in
opticians and upmarket shops such as Harrods, and are about to go on sale in
several airport duty-free shops.
Le has moved into smart offices near London’s Smithfield, which she is also
using as a showroom for retail trade buyers. As a result, she expects
turnover for the business this year to be between £500,000 and £800,000.
She said that suffering the impact of two poor summers, and discovering early
on that there was less demand for sunglasses in Britain than she had
thought, were the best things that could have happened to her.
