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"The fab thing about having a family business is that you would go to the ends of the earth for each other. And there's just that real sense of being united in the quest."
Not every successful business is the result of a life-long ambition or dream realised, some are, to quote Bob Ross, “happy little accidents”. In the case of Alice Rowen Hall, her happy little accident side-hustle of selling clothes on eBay grew into a multi-million pound fashion giant - the hugely successful Pink Boutique.
Alice exiting that business in 2020, but rejoined in early June this year as Director. In tandem, Alice is three years deep into scaling luxury homeware brand Rowen Homes. A journey that began with Alice sharing photos of her own home on Instagram, that has now resulted in her opening a flagship bricks and mortar store in the Metrocentre.
Calling Pink Boutique and Rowen Homes ‘accidents’ may seem a bit reductive, because Alice has put in countless hours of hard work to make them a success, but she certainly never planned for the journey these businesses took her on. From teaching assistant to hugely successful entrepreneur, it all began in 2012 with just £90 and a pack of dresses.
“I definitely didn’t intend to start a business,” Alice explained. “I never expected Pink Boutique to become as big as it did. I started it just in an attempt to earn a bit of money on the side with my teaching job. I had just bought my first house at the time and I really couldn't afford the bills. So, I thought I'll sell some stuff on eBay and hopefully that'll help support my income a bit. But before long it just took off!
“I bought the first pack of dresses for £90. I got my friend to model the dresses, put them online on eBay and they sold. Then I thought, right, I'll buy two packs, then I bought four packs, then I bought eight packs
and I just kept on doubling up and reinvesting! “It moved from the living room to my mum's loft room and then to her garage. Finally, it had grown so big that we got a 60,000 sq ft unit. I could never have imagined it getting so huge.”
It was when she moved from a garage to a huge warehouse that Alice knew her online clothing store was no longer simply a side-hustle and it had the potential to become an incredibly successful business. But, the question remained, could she afford to take the leap and leave the security of her teaching assistant position behind?
“It was getting to a point where I physically couldn’t handle the amount of orders alongside work, but I wasn’t sure if it was financially viable for me to leave my job,” Alice said. “So, I sat down with my mum, did the maths and worked out the amount of sales we’d need for me to make it my full-time job. I ended up hitting that target pretty quickly and taking the leap. It was quite a daunting experience leaving my job, especially being a homeowner, it was all very surreal at the time. “Obviously, I couldn’t do it on my own, so I asked my mum to get on board officially and we went in one share each. She looked after a lot, the operational side of things, the finance side of things. I concentrated on the marketing, the buying and the online strategy.”
Pink Boutique only continued to grow from that point, with Alice’s husband Andrew coming on-board as a director not long after. Alice then began growing her team and her turnover over the next eight years, eventually deciding to exit the business in 2020. Alice's involvement with Pink Boutique took it from a one-person operation in her living room to a £25m turnover business, with 70 staff, shipping out over 4,000 items of clothes per day at its peak. It had been a hands-on introduction to the world of business, but Alice took to it like a duck to water.
“I really learned absolutely everything that there was to learn about running an ecommerce business because we didn't outsource any of it,” Alice said. “We had a 60,000 sq ft warehouse in Newburn and had all of the departments in-house. We had a digital marketing team, an IT team, fulfilment and returns, a big buying team, customer service and finance. Everybody under one roof! It was a really good grounding in business.”
So, what was the secret when it came to the success of Pink Boutique? Well, creativity on social media played a big part. “We had a good couple of years where we didn't pay for any marketing, it was all through organic social media,” Alice explained.
“I had a fascination with utilising the algorithms and finding ways around them to be able to effectively sell to our target audience. We had a third-party content strategy and a competition strategy as well. It was around the very early days where people really first started sharing third-party content, like celebrity stories and funny memes. We were one of the first to do it.
“From that we got a huge amount of engagement. We were going global with our reach, and we were in the top three Facebook pages in the UK for engagement. We often had the number one spot! That's really what made it blow up so quickly.”
It’s often said that restriction breeds creativity, so when the pandemic hit and Alice’s plans of a relaxing holiday were scrapped it's not surprising that she ended up on a new business journey! This time it was the popularity of Alice’s home renovation related Instagram posts that led her to consider how she could disrupt the luxury homeware sector. “At the time we actually launched three businesses to spread our risk,” Alice said. “We set up a team and looked at an agency model, having various brands under one umbrella. But the other two brands were food; the margin wasn't strong enough and the operational overhead didn't make sense. So we quite quickly said, let's just close those ones down, refocus the whole team in the homeware side of things.
“But in terms of why we ended up setting up another business, I just found myself doing it again! I definitely didn't intend to set up an ecommerce homeware business, but we love interiors and it was fuelled by our passion. So, we're just selling something that we love again.” Aside from social media skills and bags of passion, another key to Alice’s success has always been her family. But, running a family business comes with its own challenges as the line blurs between work and family time. “I think family businesses are probably the toughest businesses to be in,” Alice said.
"The fab thing about having a family business is that you would go to the ends of the earth for each other. And there's just that real sense of being united in the quest. But you might also say things that you wouldn't with a non-family business partner, and this can affect your relationships outside of work.
"I'm really fortunate that Andrew and I work very well together, but we have set boundaries when it comes to our personal time. We try not to talk about work in the evening, which means we have to ensure we have a hearty weekly meeting to catch up on strategic and operational decisions." The next step in Alice’s journey has taken her from the virtual world to a bricks and mortar store for the first time ever with Rowen Homes’ brand new Metrocentre unit. It turns out you can’t quite beat the experience of shopping in person.
“We’ve decided to open our very first flagship store in the Metrocentre, which is a place quite close to my heart because I had some of my very first jobs there in retail,” Alice explained.
“It's something that we mulled over for a long time. But with furniture, lots of people want to sit on sofas or just see it up-close. What we find, even in our in-house studio, it's not open to customers, but the sheer scale of the product really translates in person. We were getting people walking into the studio and falling in love with the rooms. So, we wanted that magic to be experienced in person.
“We thought we would start with the North East flagship, but the dream is to expand across the UK and even internationally as well with our stores. I really can’t wait to see how customers take to the store and see our passion actually come to life in person.”
The store is now open with footfall to its stunning Metrocentre base extremely high, reflecting huge interest in the Rowen Homes brand.
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