How to build a dynamic brand with Henrietta Rix, Co-Founder of RIXO

With the UK fashion sector’s annual revenue estimated to be just under £60 billion, it is a highly competitive sector in which you need a strong brand to differentiate your offering. Given this, I wanted to speak with an expert about how to build a fashion brand that stands out from the crowd. 

In this episode, I speak with Henrietta Rix, Co-Founder of RIXO, a leading British womenswear brand. Together with her co-founder Orlagh McCloskey, the pair founded RIXO in 2015 to bridge the gap between great fitting pieces and unique designs and offer a dynamic in-person experience too. 

Keep listening to hear Henrietta’s advice on starting a fashion brand and why sticking to your roots and gut feelings will help you to distinguish your brand from its competitors. 

Henrietta’s advice: 

• When building a dynamic brand, be true to yourself and to your original idea
• Find a gap in the market 
• Be passionate about what you do
• Timing is vital but stick to your original mission to bring back the dynamism
• Instagram is a readily accessible and fast way to spread your brand’s image once you know what you want to do 
• Immerse yourself in the product and become familiar with every single aspect of production and sales
• Know every department of your business inside out even if you’re delegating a lot of it
• Listen continually to your customers - imagine you are one of them, learn from their feedback
• Pay attention to company culture and make sure your staff are loyal to the ethos
• Know your competitors but don’t worry about them, no need to copy them
• Don’t overproduce; try sustainable initiatives like rentals/preloved/alterations
• Avoid wastage and dead stock at the year’s end 

FF&M enables you to own your own PR. Recorded, edited & published by Juliet Fallowfield, 2023 MD & Founder of PR & Communications consultancy for startups Fallow, Field & Mason.  Email us at hello@fallowfieldmason.com or DM us on instagram @fallowfieldmason. 

Let us know how your start up journey is going or if you have any questions you would like us to discuss in future episodes. 

FF&M recommends: 

• LastPass the password-keeping site that syncs between devices.
• Google Workspace is brilliant for small businesses
• Buzzsprout podcast 'how to' & hosting directory
• Canva has proved invaluable for creating all the social media assets and audio bites.

MUSIC CREDIT Funk Game Loop by Kevin MacLeod.  Link &  Licence

Transcript

11 How to build a dynamic brand with Henrietta Rix, Co-Founder of RIXO

Juliet Fallowfield: [00:00:00] Welcome to season 10 of How to Start Up, the podcast helping you start, scale your business with advice from entrepreneurs on what to do now, next, or never when scaling your company. This season, we're focusing on all things brand. So you'll hear from a series of amazing entrepreneurs on what they've learned in their own journeys.

Hosted by me, Juliet Fallowfield, founder of the B Corp certified PR and communications consultancy, Fallowfield Mason. Our mission is to enable you to earn your communications in house with a long term view. 

With the UK's fashion sector's annual revenue estimated to be just under £60 billion, it is a highly competitive sector in which you need a strong brand to differentiate your offering. Given this, I wanted to speak with an expert about how to build a fashion brand that stands out from the crowd. In this episode, I speak with Henrietta Rix, co founder of RIXO, a leading British womenswear brand.

Together with her co founder Orlagh, the pair founded RIXO in 2015 to bridge the gap between great fitting pieces and unique designs, [00:01:00] as well as offering a dynamic in person experience too. Keep listening to hear Henrietta's advice on starting a fashion brand and why sticking to your roots and your gut feeling will really help you distinguish your brand from its competition.

. Hi, Henrietta. Thank you so much for your time today on How To Start Up. We're going to chat all things brand and especially dynamic brands for Rixo.

Juliet Fallowfield: But before we get into that, it would be wonderful if you could kick off with an introduction as to who you are and a bit about the brand that you started.

Henrietta Rix: Of course, Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's always nice to take time out of your day and kind of reflect back, I guess, because you don't really get much time to do that. My name's Henrietta Rix, so I'm one half of Rixo so Rixo is a female womenswear contemporary brand that Orlagh and I founded roughly nine years ago now, back in our uni living room. So we met at university and then found it up from extremely humble beginnings. And we still own the business ourselves 50/50. So we have no external investment. And it's been a real journey.

Juliet Fallowfield: That's amazing. Congratulations. Cause I know [00:02:00] a lot of people know the brand, but they might not know too much about who founded it. And also now I've become self employed. I understand how incredible that is that you haven't had external investment and you've achieved so much. That's a whole other podcast episode, I think.

What, How did you begin creating the Rixo brand? There's something about starting the business, but the brand in particular, how did you tackle that? 

Henrietta Rix: I think when it comes to the brand. When we first launched it we were comparing ourselves to massive powerhouses that we'd walk around the floors of Selfridges and Harrods and look at what everyone else was doing and I think we actually thought we're going set ourselves up to fail so let's just be real and we were so ashamed at the start. We were like, no, no, we'll come to you. We literally used to meet people in Whole Foods. . And we pretended we had this office. And then I think it was only about six months in. And we were like, look, let's just stay true to ourselves. And as soon as we kind of like literally opened up our living room, which is where we did everything from. We met All the buyers would come from Harrods, Selfridges, Net-a-Porter, Liberty.

They'd come [00:03:00] to our uni living room, see the collection, press would come round and we just kind of just, we were ourselves. We were just showing people what we were doing, and we didn't really know the right and wrongs were. wrong way of 

doing it. We hadn't had training beforehand. We'd come literally fresh out of university, I mean, tiny stints, both of us within buying, but pretty much non existent careers before RIXO.

We were just coming at it from a completely fresh fresh, 

angle and just being really passionate about what we were doing. We felt so passionate about the gap in the market and the product that we were creating.

And at the time, no one was wearing really 10 years ago, dresses with trainers, really casually. And we were just really. We just, Orlagh and I never wear jeans. We wear skirts and dresses and vintage, and that's kind of what we wore the whole time. So we wanted to be able to create something beautiful and a lasting product that was printed in silk, at an attainable price point that you could then wear over and, over again. I mean at the time in the market, if you filtered on Net-a-Porter by a silk dress, you were only getting something that was over two thousand pounds. There was nothing really in that space. So I [00:04:00] think we felt really passionate one about the gap and then the whole branding around it is

we did everything ourselves.

We didn't have a massive budget, we didn't have investors, so we didn't have the money to pump into something. So we spotted models in the gym, used our friends, we literally found this random building in London that was kind of a squatter building that we shot our first lookbook in. I mean, it was a right mess. There was pigeon poo everywhere. So literally before the shoot started, we went, we cleaned it up. It was just awful. But we did everything. Even like all the flat shots would shoot that. And then we launched Instagram and I think timing obviously helps as well. Instagram was starting to come up and it was really a free platform that anyone could access.

And within one second or two seconds, a journalist or a stylist or a buyer could look on your profile and see straight away. I like the vibe or I don't like the vibe. So within an immediate look or glance at someone's profile, you could kind of get your brand ethos across. So I think Instagram definitely really helped [00:05:00] us at the start.

Juliet Fallowfield: What you're saying is that you anchored it right back to the roots of who you guys were, what you were doing, how you were doing it, you weren't doing any false pretenses and that ethos came through in the styling and the shots and then your Instagram aesthetic. So it all brand touch points, you were consistent and at the time, and by the way, you shouldn't be ashamed of that in any way.

It's amazing what you've managed to build over the years, but it sounds like you had a bit of imposter syndrome of, well, we should be doing it this way. We should be doing that way, but we kind of don't really know what other people doing, so it doesn't really matter. We're just going to do it our way and it, and it works, but do you think that level of consistency was important in that brand understanding from the external eye?

Henrietta Rix: guess, I mean, we couldn't, We couldn't afford to employ anyone. So customer care, we had the same inbox. It was literally info @ RIXO. Cause we are not tech savvy at all. We don't even know how to set up emails. So we literally had the same email address for the first like two years of Rixo and everything came into info at Rixo.

My personal phone number was the customer care line. So I would answer every customer care call, get back to all the customer care emails. Instagram. I [00:06:00] did every single Instagram for the first eight years of Rixo. So it was my tone of voice.

We did all the emails. Orlagh and I were on the photo shoots, we were styling the models with all our personal jewellery because we couldn't afford to get a stylist or anything. And so it was literally, we were grabbing things from our wardrobe in the morning and styling the model and doing 

everything. 

Juliet Fallowfield: pro and a con, having no budget. The 

pro 

is that you have to be consistent. 

Henrietta Rix: at the same time, then we were young. We had no external responsibilities. We didn't have kids.

We didn't have mortgages. We didn't have boyfriends or husbands. So I think we could put everything into it. I mean, a whole life became RIXO. So So like, it just was so all

things, I think you've got to do that for the first couple of years, if you don't want to take investment, so. Yeah, I mean we did every single touch point the whole customer journey from design all the way through to like we opened a store within the first six months.

I mean it was a pop up store but Orlagh and I were in the store every single day talking to customers then working in the evening then coming back the next day or if I was on the shop floor Orlagh would go to the coffee shop across the road with her laptop and be working and then we'd swap over so we didn't we were hearing, I think in, in one way, then you hear straight back from the customer and you can implement change straight away, whether it be the fit of a garment or

the price point of something.

[00:07:00] So we were constantly absorbing all that customer feedback from literally day one. So I think that helps you then enhance the brand on, but we've not really checked. we've not really changed in regards to what we think the RIXO brand is. It's all about kind of empowering a woman to feel amazing. And hopefully if a woman likes the style of RIXO and the vintage and the prints, Then we've got something for her across the different shapes. And we're not saying we're for everyone, like. Some people might not like kind of the aesthetic of RIXO, but if they do, then we'd like to think that if they came into one of our stores or online, like, we can offer them something. And I think sizing as well is something we've always wanted to do and improve upon that.

So I think from the get go, we've tried to push the factories that we work with to increase our size range, and do things like that, but always staying true to what we really believe and just what we love, really. Like, Orlagh is still doing literally, she signs off every single print that goes out. So, she's still behind all the prints that we we design and we do. So I think there's still that kind of real emotional connection where it comes, everything from RIXO pretty much comes directly from Orlagh and I, [00:08:00] but albeit now we have the most amazing team to help us do that and that experts in their own right, like I wouldn't pretend I'm experts in all areas, but we.

we've been through every single

department and we've done it ourselves so we understand what goes into it.

Juliet Fallowfield: Also, you appreciate it as well. Like I know I'm not going to be an expert in social media templates, but I appreciate how hard it is and how much time it takes to get there. And I think when you know when to delegate, that's a game changer because you're like, I know I'm not the best person for this job, but I really am sympathetic to how much time it might take someone else.

But I love that because I know having watched the brand grow and seen the editorial and looking on a a page, shopping page, and you see various products laid out by the editors. You know, when it's a RIXO dress and in fashion, I think that is really impressive to have achieved that because I mean, not just my opinion.

I know many other people can identify RIXO dress as well, but to stand out amongst the crowd in fashion, especially ready to wear and especially women's ready to wear is no mean feat. Is that because you haven't deviated from that design ethos from the beginning? You [00:09:00] wanted feminine, beautifully cut, beautiful materials, dresses, skirts.

Have you deliberately just stuck with that and carried on iterating from there?

Henrietta Rix: Yeah definitely and I think it's something that we, we haven't followed trends so it's not like oh there's a trend let's jump on the minimal quiet luxury trend. That's just not, that's not RIXO,

we're not normal and so I mean if the trend's against you it's against you and it can be difficult in trade if that kind of, you know that happens, but we've really stayed true to what the DNA is of RIXO.

I think ultimately it goes back to the fact that Orlagh has stayed consistent and across the whole design team for the last nine and a half years almost. It's not as if you've

had different designers coming in and they have an ego and they want to mark their territory. It's, It's very much true to who we are as a, as kind of, even as if we were customers, like we always say, what do we want?

And when we're pricing garments, what would we pay for that? And how can we style it? So we can show the customer that she can wear it multiple times, like how we would wear it to the office or to the airport or

weekend or with your kids. So I think we've always definitely stayed, stayed true to that.

Juliet Fallowfield: Well, I think it brings it to life because whenever I [00:10:00] browse your website or been into a store or seen your clothes on friends, it is understandable and digestible, but interesting. And this is what I wanted to focus on today was how do you continue after nearly a decade, bring that dynamic approach in.

Do you ever get worn out? Are you ever exhausted by it? Like, how do you keep that nimble, exciting, approachable, fun element to your brand? Cause any piece that you see or try on has a kind of joie de vivre. It's playful. It's fun. It's gorgeous. The fabrics, the colours, it's all of it is cheerful. And any girlfriend going to any wedding will always go to RIXO first.

And I think that's testament is the joyous thing. How do you do that? Give 

all your secrets.

Henrietta Rix: I guess, I mean, it's, it's endless, like there is so much hard work that goes into it. I think people think that having a fashion brand is all glamorous. I think as the business evolves and the business gets bigger, it's really, it's, it's hard work. There are really hard days and where you've kind of, there's loads of different challenges.

It can be financial, [00:11:00] logistics, it can be customer 

care

Juliet Fallowfield: Oh, 

Don't worry, everyone in PR was like, Oh, you're definitely going for long lunches every day if you work in PR. I'm like, are you joking? Oh, and the classic, you're self employed. You get endless holiday. I'm like, you get none. But yeah.

Henrietta Rix: So 

yeah, there's definitely, there's definitely that, but I think if you're passionate about what you do, like there's 

nothing better than seeing a customer randomly on a tube or on holiday and even like. I'll get photos like my husband or some of my family will send me random pictures of like a news presenter on the TV or, and they always get it right.

Like it could be like a star print or a floral print, but they know when it's RIXO and they're like, they spot something and we get tube pictures from, we call it RIXO in the wild. But when you see that, that gives you the enjoyment. And when you get DMs from customers telling you how happy they are, how many compliments they got, and they've worn something for a really special occasion, like. That's the most amazing feeling and keeps you going. Like, we've got such an amazing community of humans at RIXO, and I think that community is what keeps you going. So even at night time, like, I can't help myself, but every single night I'll scroll and go into [00:12:00] the tagged humans at RIXO pictures, and I'm commenting on them, telling them they look better. And I just, it's just that. That kind of, like, you get enjoyment of seeing

how they've styled it as well into their lifestyle. Like, we obviously design dresses and we're like, that's the perfect piece for a wedding. But someone can wear it on holiday, or they can kind of wear it to brunch, or on a dog walk, or however they're wearing it.

And they can style it in so many different ways. So I think that's ultimately then inspiring for us to then, you know,

elevate the collection and even feedback like about some of the shapes and the fabrications and stuff. We're constantly getting feedback so I think that helps and we kind of we're probably both very competitive as well.

So we always want to improve improve improve

Well 

Juliet Fallowfield: you've got the hunger for it, which keeps that energy there. But something also that I wanted to talk in detail about was your beautiful store on the King's Road that I've been into often. And when I was back in the day, when I worked at Chanel and various other retailers. And brands, the competition was always, how do we get them to come into our door and not our competitor's door?

How do we get them to walk through and visit us regularly? And someone else said this in the podcast, I think it [00:13:00] was Aaron Chatterley in his episode few seasons back or a few, sorry, weeks back. You can always sell something to someone once, but it's getting them to come back. That's the hard part. And your store, and correct me if I get any of this wrong, you have a really cool coffee shop at the front, which is very Instagram friendly.

You've got an incredible store design that it's always like in the round and you walk around and it's not a square room where you walk in and there's hanging rails, it's, it's like, almost like backstage at a theater. Then you've got a concession area where you've got secondhand RIXO. You can come in and buy upcycled.

Pre loved, thank you. And it's almost like this magical mystery tour through room after room of beautiful clothing after beautiful clothing. But then the pre loved is a price option for clients all on the King's Road, which is obviously probably the most expensive real estate you can get in London, short of Knightsbridge.

How have you made that? How did you come up with that concept? Because I don't think I've seen anything else like it on a high street. 

Henrietta Rix: Everything. So she was absorbing and she's Orlagh's twin as well. And we're so close that she absorbed

everything about the brand. And we had to build [00:14:00] this business pack. And when we were like two years in and we were building like what our dream concept store would be, and within that store, we had, we wanted it to always feel as if someone was walking into our living room, because we had two years of customers coming into our living room, trying things on, going to our, literally our toilet upstairs,

coming down, showing us whilst we were just working away and we were saying yeah, no, wrapping it up, off they went. and we wanted to have that living room feel, but just obviously in a bigger way. So we wanted people to walk in straight away and not feel as if they couldn't touch things or anything. So, we made sure that we had everything was like kind of, you know, Not perfectly done, so we've got like gorgeous vintage furniture in there, but it all needed to feel like wow, and colorful, and maximalism.

We didn't want a minimalistic, quiet store that felt quite, I don't know, just not RIXO so really. So

Juliet Fallowfield: Well, you come out of it with your batteries recharged and 

I think got a bar in there as well,

Henrietta Rix: We've got a cocktail bar,

yeah.

so, and they're, they're, the cocktail bar team that do that as well, Black Lines, they're amazing, they're a young company as well, so, they kind of [00:15:00] support us when it comes to like, Chelsea Flower Show, or different activations throughout the year, they can make bespoke cocktails for that time, so it's just really nice, and on, honestly, on the weekend, on a Saturday and Sunday, when it's, the bar's busy, there's a real buzz, the fitting rooms, customers are coming out and they're helping each other and they're saying, Oh, I've not seen that.

Can I try that on this size? And then people are swapping and saying, I'm not going to, and that whole community feel is exactly what we wanted. And we're so lucky that it kind of, it has paid off. I mean, there was lots of blood, sweat and tears put into it before.

Juliet Fallowfield: I was going to say, how long from concept to door opening did you take?

Henrietta Rix: probably about, I mean, we did it pretty quick if you compare it to probably about a year from when we first spotted the location. And then by the time we did the legals and get the lease and everything, and then the works happened. But I'd say the works were around six, seven months.

it was completely empty space. So we had to just build every single wall in there was kind of constructed.

Juliet Fallowfield: But it doesn't come across that it comes across like it's always been there, but for a young brand, I think that is something incredible that you've achieved. 

Henrietta Rix: And then the bridal boutique as well, we wanted that to feel quite separate. So that's got a lower ceiling [00:16:00] level, it's got the skirting boards. It kind of feels like a little, you're in a boutique, an independent boutique at the very back. So it feels like if you're going just for bridal, you've got that dedicated space that can be

private. And then we've got the private apartment upstairs, which we use for supper clubs. And, again, it's just more, more community activations.

So getting the community in the store, talking to each other. And it's not about the sell, sell, sell at all. Like, lots of people come in and they're like, Wow, they take pictures, they post it on Instagram, and they don't buy. Which is, Which is fine. I mean,

Juliet Fallowfield: They're 

doing 

Juliet Fallowfield: your PR 

for you,

And I've seen you pop up at Wilderness as well, I think, and some festivals where you've, you've been active and everyone talks about brand activations, but actually you are actively doing things. You're, You're present and you're saying something you said about, it's not all about sales.

I found in my business, it's a service based business, not product. So it's very different. But when you start recruiting more people into the team. Hoping that company culture filters through to everybody when you're not in direct contact with everyone reporting to you, how have you managed to instill this excitement and [00:17:00] fun into your sales associates?

Because you go in there, they are the most helpful people on the planet and they're really kind and really humble and nice, which often in shops, you don't get that feeling, you're a bit intimidated and they look like a supermodel. I was like, well, I'm never going to look like you in that. Don't, don't make me try on that.

I feel awful. They are so helpful. How have you managed to sort of train them to be on brand for want of a better expression?

Henrietta Rix: I guess it's come from the fact that both Orlagh and I worked in retail. So for three years throughout uni, I worked at Selfridges, on the shop floor, and then Orlagh worked

at Reiss as well. So the two of us

knew how important, you know, how you can change how someone feels like someone's obviously coming shopping for a reason, they've either got, like, I know you can say to a customer, we always have open ended questions that you want to ask a customer and say, Oh, are you looking for anything in particular?

And often customers going to say no, but. There is a reason they're out shopping that day. They've either had a shit work day and they want to cheer themselves up. They've actually got an important occasion coming up. They're shopping for some other reason. For some, something to fit into their lifestyle.

So

there is a reason someone's shopping. Or they're just having a nice fun day out with [00:18:00] their friends. And can you cheer them up? And like, you know. Talk to them about the brand, inspire them a little bit. So we always ask the girls to ask open ended questions. there's a lot more we can do on the service.

Like definitely. I mean, I sometimes walk in and I think as, as the founder, you always see things that you think, Oh my God, this isn't right. We need to change that. We need to change that. So it's nice to hear, obviously that compliment that you've always had good experiences there, but I think it's so, the customer is why we're here.

We wouldn't be here without the customer. So I think even the customer care team. We used to do the customer care every single email for three years. So I understand how 

important that is and how just the tone of voice you're talking to someone can make them feel either really shit about themselves or really good.

Like you ultimately get into the same solution. If someone wants to return and something's happened, it's just being understanding of their situation and treating people, I think as an individual, rather than just, this is a blanket rule. And so we always do try and make sure that the team, have power to kind of use that common sense really like if someone has really 

struggled or they've wanted an alteration and maybe it's later and they've come to pick it up and it's not ready [00:19:00] or little things like that then they can use the common sense to please that customer and try and try and do something and we have a little surprise and delights as well.

So like free scrunchies for customers So there's like free coffees as well and just bits and bobs like that really and the flagship allows us to do that 

Juliet Fallowfield: Well, I think what 

Henrietta Rix: Yeah.

It all makes 

Juliet Fallowfield: perfect sense now that you wanted to emulate your living room. So you've got a girlfriend around, she's come around to maybe borrow something for a fun party and they're trying on the wardrobe in your living room and have a coffee or let's have a quick chat.

That is the vibe. And it's so different. It comes through in the clothes and that I imagine when you get that loyal customer, that repeat, obviously everybody always wants a repeat client. That is a genuine loyalty there. And are there any things, where you go back over the last nine and a half years and do differently when it comes to creating this kind of fun brand or dynamic brand?

Henrietta Rix: It's such a good question. I mean, I'm sure there's lots of things we've made mistakes along the way. Definitely. I think COVID actually,

even though it was a really stressful time and a bad time, it allowed us to really kind of Orlagh and I to rethink and take a [00:20:00] step back and think, actually, why did we create RIXO in the first place?

We've had like, structural changes as well within the teams where potentially we've gone down a path or been really narrow down attributes and trying to comp things from last year. Like we were saying, do you know what? Straight after we came out of COVID, everyone was obsessed with sequins. We couldn't keep them in stock.

So the year after we were like, right, autumn, and winter sequins go crazy for it. No one wanted them the year after. So there's, there's definitely mistakes that you make where you think

actually. In the first couple of years, we never would have done that. We would have just gone with our gut, what we thought was right for the customer and 

created something new  

for them instead of just the sequin and comping the sequin sales out of last year. So, there's definitely things 

as you evolve, you think actually 

 you let's just 

Henrietta Rix: take a step back and I think always just taking that step back and thinking actually why are we here, what does the customer love about RIXO , what can we offer them that's actually new, exciting and not getting bogged down on comping the year before kind of offer.

Juliet Fallowfield: Well, I 

was going to ask With your competitors, I was going to [00:21:00] ask you how you differentiate the RIXO brand from your competitive set, but it sounds like that if you're not at tunnel vision in a negative way, but you're so sticking to your guns on what you guys want to do for your client, you're like, yep, there's competition over there somewhere, but we don't really need to pay attention to them because we're doing our thing and we know we're, we're good with that.

Is that fair? 

Henrietta Rix: I think you want to be ahead of the curve. Like when we

first started, we don't, I don't get bogged

down about what other people are doing. I think, yeah, great. You've got to be aware, but I mean, people in the team can be aware of it, but all, and I wouldn't be driving the business forward by saying they've done this, let's do this, that's

definitely not how we operate and run the business.

We've got so many ideas of what we, there's a gut instinct of what you think is right for the brand and just being out there in the market, like. I would never say that I have to do customer research or market research. I'm just constantly obsessed with fashion and Instagram and exploring new brands and when you're on holiday going to vintage fairs and constantly keeping your eyes open so. I think if you love it It's not like we have to put time into market research and seeing what other brands are doing but I think what I think [00:22:00] one thing that

People always ask us, who is your customer?

But for RIXO, we don't have an age group or a specific, like my mum can wear RIXO and look gorgeous. And so can my nieces who are now kind of like, one of them is nearly 18 looking for a prom dress and she, she wants something to wear, but there's not many brands or our competitors that I think you have that broad age group.

That someone like. Your mother, like We have customers, We've got this one amazing customer who wears RIXO to Wimbledon every single year, like print upon print and she's in her seventies and she's fab. And then we have customers that literally come in and they're in their young twenties and they've kind of got a really important wedding or a job interview or they've graduated from uni. And then you've got the woman that's kind of a career power woman, traveling loads, and she's got more disposable income. So

there's a real wide variety of customer that comes. to Rixos.

Juliet Fallowfield: The good news is when you're self employed, you're so busy that actually you don't have time to worry. You just have to crack on with the next thing. So if you're worrying about your competition, you probably got too much time on your hands.

Henrietta Rix: I mean, we're definitely aware of what our competition are doing just because we're instinctively

in the market. So we, we're aware of

what's going on. Like, [00:23:00] you'll get people say like, Oh, M&S have copied this dress, or someone's copied this dress, or this is identical to ours. And it's like, you can't dwell on that.

You're not, it is what it is. Move on. And

actually, yeah. So we don't really dwell on that.

Juliet Fallowfield: And in your view, what is the most important aspect when you're building a fashion brand in particular?

Henrietta Rix: I think having the real kind of identity behind it, like, what is it You, you're trying to do, and what's your tone of voice and who's the customer you're talking to?

And I think if you're true to yourself and it's a product that you, you believe in and you don't have to ever do, I never felt like I've had to do the hard sell with RIXO.

When I'm talking to buyers or I'm talking to stylists or anything. It's not something where I'm say it's just a genuine product that I, that we love. and we feel like it's, it's different to what's out there. So it's not. Doing something that's genuine to you and something that you really believe in, I think you never really have to do the hard sell.

Um, you have to present the brand and you, you know, you have to really kind of talk it up in particular meetings and stuff, but it's not, it's not something that feels disingenuous.

Juliet Fallowfield: Yeah, well, we, when we're speaking to our clients about their PR and branding communication, we often say paid, owned, earned, paid is an advertising placement where you're paying to be [00:24:00] there. Doesn't hold as much power as editorial, which is earned media. 

Where it's a genuine journalist saying a genuine opinion of their things, cause it's not bought.

So that genuine ethos and someone else said, I can't remember now we're 105 episodes in, but someone said, as long as you have this almost deluded belief that what you're doing is absolutely right, that will carry you through. And that unshakable faith that will, you really believe in it. And that genuine thought around your designs and your prints.

Henrietta Rix: Yeah, I don't know how you'd do it if you didn't. Because there's tough days, and there's days when I'm like, Why do they, why can't they see, like, this is, like, your, it's like your baby, you're obsessed with it,

and you so believe in that everything about it is right. So, I mean, and there are, so I think if you didn't have that, it would be, it'd be really difficult.

I mean, you'd be, yeah, it'd be, it'd be tough. But like you said, look, we've never paid for any like, press coverage at all. It's all come completely natural from just building relationships with stylists.

And if it's right for the page that they're doing, then

great. But if it's not right, we wouldn't really. pay to be there. And the same with like influencers, you've got to be so careful getting down the route of paying people to [00:25:00] wear things because it does come across as like a sponsored ad or something.

You want 

someone to genuinely love the product and then they request it and they want to wear it.

Like, yeah. 

Juliet Fallowfield: They're doing your PR for you then. They're actually a brand ambassador because they genuinely love the product. We work with a fragrance client and it's become the sort of word of nose. It's almost cult following because some journalists, it's amazing. They're like, no, I love it, but I'm not going to write about it because I want to keep it privately for myself.

I want it to be my, it's like, no, you're not helping me here. We want the coverage.

Henrietta Rix: That's not, honestly, if I had a pound for every time someone said, but I want RIXO to be my little secret. And I'm like, no, no, no. I was like,

Juliet Fallowfield: We 

need people to buy it to 

Juliet Fallowfield: Exist.

Henrietta Rix: Not the aim of the game here. .

Juliet Fallowfield: No, definitely and I think there's no shame in admitting that. I mean, we got B Corp certified last September when 

Henrietta Rix: Congratulations, 

Juliet Fallowfield: thank you. I mean, it was obviously a chunk of work, but for me is this new small business. I wanted that validation that we are practicing what we preach, but it was more the fact that they, they, they.

Are big, you have to be a company. You can't be a charity and you have, it's where you put people and planet above profit, but you need [00:26:00] profit to be able to help people and planet. And there's no shame in that. And I met Grace Beverley last week at an event, a founder forum event. And she was saying when she started a second business, she had a lot of backlash about, Oh, this is obviously a cash grab.

I'm like, It's a limited company. It's a business. We're here to make money. There's no shame in that. But I think when you can do it for something that you genuinely love, same with the podcast, I would do it if nobody listened because I get to learn so much from amazing founders, but it has to bring something back to the business.

It can't be just a hobby. So I think that's it. If you get to design a product that you see people have complete joy with, but you're also keeping a roof above your head, then win win. It's 

Henrietta Rix: but also not just your own head. It's like we employ over a hundred people. We're responsible for all their mortgages. Like you,

you've got to make the right decisions for everyone else. Like ultimately as business leaders and founders, we're not responsible for a lot of people. So if we have cashflow issues or profitability, I mean, it's not

fair.

When I'm on, I mean, we've got to do what's right for the business at all times. So I think definitely you've got to [00:27:00] kind of. You've got to have the business acumen as well to, it's got to make

Juliet Fallowfield: Hmm. 

Henrietta Rix: what you're doing.

Juliet Fallowfield: Yeah, there's some statistic about it's not the idea that fails in the first five years of startups, it's the cash flow. The idea could be amazing if the cash flow isn't managed and it just ceases to exist and it's such a shame. I just wanted to touch on briefly around sustainability. Is that something that you've woven into your brand as well?

Henrietta Rix: Yeah. I mean, from day one, really, I mean, so we don't. Mark, we're not a markdown cultured brand. So we don't do mid season sales. We don't do kind of like the typical two big sales a year that's not something a trap that, RIXO has ever really fallen into so I think that's I mean over producing in the first place is the most unsustainable thing you can do so we have to almost retrain our merchandisers when they come into the business because we don't buy for markdown and that is what Pretty much, I'd say 9 out of 10 fashion brands do they buy for markdown, even all our wholesalers. So that's to start off with, we don't do that. One. We can't afford to have excess stock and a dent into our cash flow, so we've gotta be really careful. So we buy for really high sell throughs, and then with anything that we can't sell, we have a small limited archive section.

and then we've got our pre loved section as well.[00:28:00] 

So the pre loved section is really nice. It allows a customer if they've got something in their wardrobe, we'd hate for them if they fell out of love with it or they couldn't wear it or they've just changed their size or changed their style over the years, they can bring that back into us, they get a credit note to buy

something new, we then take that and then we'll kind of put that up for sale at a discounted price of exactly what we've given the credit note for, so a customer can then come in and

buy a RIXO top for £70.

Juliet Fallowfield: and

Henrietta Rix: It's basically a vintage or secondhand top, but it just allows a circularity of the product. So anyone can do that. We are working on being able to offer that online as well at the moment. It's just in our stores. So we're really excited about doing that this year. Then alterations. We offer alterations as well.

So customers can have things tweaked or, or kind of altered as they wish. And as it fits into their lifestyle and then rental as well, we offer Rixo rental. so there's lots of initiatives we do. And then we've done collections as well where we don't have excess fabric left in any of our factories, so we either use it for scrunchies, because we don't order massive amounts anyway, so we don't have rolls and [00:29:00] rolls upon rolls

of fabric, but anything we do have left will make it into our sustainable wash bags or scrunchies so there's not that excess fabric as well. But I mean, I think that comes, you have to be more sustainable because ultimately, you need to be careful of your cash flow. So it kind of goes hand in hand. It makes you

more profitable if you are more sustainable, if you're not overproducing and having loads of dead stock at the end of the season. So we have to be really, really careful.

And we've always had to be really careful about every single garment that we produce.

Juliet Fallowfield: And it protects your brand as well. I remember, I think it was at Chanel, they stopped doing press sample sales because they, and they would limit people to buying one to two classic handbags in the store, any given transaction. They didn't want everyone to have it. And obviously they kept putting the prices up as well, which helped.

And then Burberry, the same thing, they wouldn't do sample sales and they wouldn't I think there was some terrible article about burning stock rather than it going out on sample, but it, it was trying to protect the brand. But if you can protect the brand by not overproducing in the first place, everybody wins and the 

Henrietta Rix: And also, yeah, There's lots of missed opportunities that we do look at our missed opportunity and think if we ordered more of that we [00:30:00] could have sold more of that within a season. So, but we don't have investors that are kind of saying you need to drive X amount of revenue so you need to buy X amount of stock to make sure you're getting every single opportunity. So, yeah, there's lots of missed opportunities if we only order 50 of something instead of 200 of something.

So we do miss, but that's fine. Yeah.

So that's, that's okay for us. We're comfortable with that. So I think that's kind of very, very important. Every

Juliet Fallowfield: Have you had, this is a bit off topic, but have you had a bit of a funny question from other founders saying, Oh, are you going when you're ready for investment or why aren't you going after investment? Cause I've had this like, Oh, surely you want to go and raise. I'm like, why would I want to give myself a boss when I spent four years making sure I don't have another boss?

I, I, it's bizarre.

Henrietta Rix: every, Honestly, I'd say every week, either people pushing you into it, why are you not doing it? Have you thought about doing it? And I just think we, what,

we don't need, Why? do I need to do it? our cashflow is fine. We're kind of, We're still in control. We're still passionate. We still want to work 

in 

Juliet Fallowfield: still 

a sort of 90s attitude of world domination. Like people assume growth is best and actually I've learned less is more. Less team members means less payroll, less worry, less responsibility. I mean, less [00:31:00] stress.

Henrietta Rix: That's the hardest thing that I think Orlagh and I have found. We're not, I wouldn't say we're naturally managers per se. Like I wouldn't, I mean,

I 

think 

Juliet Fallowfield: But also

So you've never worked anywhere else. 

Henrietta Rix: Exactly. So I had to manage teams or build teams or what different teams, like we've got IT teams now, finance teams, e com teams, merchandising teams. I've never, I've never done that before.

Neither of us have ever done that before. So I think that's the hardest thing and making sure that, cause you want everyone to be happy within the culture as well. So that's the kind of, that is always like a difficult thing, making sure that, and everyone that we have is, they're so ambitious, which is, which is brilliant.

But you've also got to be like, if you're not growing or you've had two tough years or during COVID and people want promotions all the time, that's the tough thing, cause it's kind of like, you want the best for them,

but also if the company can't do it at the right time, you've also got to be careful of your cashflow and the company growth and everything.

So

managing, Yeah.

I think that's, as the team grows from going from like 20, to 30, to 50, to 100, that is, that's kind of been one of the hardest things I would say. The

Juliet Fallowfield: The growing pain analogy is real, I think, and everyone, everyone says, get a good accountant and be okay with the rollercoaster and the weight of responsibility. I'm like, [00:32:00] I'm not okay with it. I accept it. I know it's there, but Oh God, it's a lot.

Henrietta Rix: The accountant is definitely a thing. Orlagh and I hired our first accountant because we were making, we were literally doing all the POs and the invoices on PowerPoint and screenshotting them and sending them to, like to people like, like, 

big customers, we were just, we couldn't afford an accountant. So we were like, okay, we'll just like do that. And I said, well, you know, I always laugh. We remember we sat down next to each other in the sofa and I was like, what if you called that PO? And she was like, just add a zero zero on the end. So all our POs. And then when we did get an accountant, he was like, I can't trace any of this because they're just like ABC at the end of it.

Honestly, no joke. Oh

god, it was a disaster. but we got there, so now we have a finance team 

Juliet Fallowfield: team 

for. Yeah. 

Henrietta Rix: get go. 

Juliet Fallowfield: Yeah, something we do is the question of the previous guest has a question for the next guest and actually really interesting. It was Eshita from By Rotation, 

um, who had a question for you, which was what was the why when you first founded your business and is it still the same today?

And if it's changed, how has it? 

Henrietta Rix: I'd say the why was because Orlagh and [00:33:00] I were, 

obsessed with vintage and we couldn't find anything that we were willing to pay a little bit more for. 

Juliet Fallowfield: There was nothing on the market 

else 

Henrietta Rix: a week and new outfits for the weekend and never wearing it again.

And we were going to vintage fairs at the weekend instead of going to Zara at the weekend and getting gorgeous dresses that were from like, they were almost, they were like, 70 years old, or 100 years old, for like 60

pounds. So, no one else had it, and they were gorgeous, and we'd have it in our wardrobe for forever.

So the why was a genuine product gap in the market and because we were both so passionate. And I don't really think that's changed. We still really believe in the product that we're developing and bringing something different and at that price point that we think for the product that we're delivering we genuinely believe in that value for money and how the customer can wear it over and over again and we we've always said that we want RIXO to become future vintage so that people can wear it, or donate it to a friend, or bring it

back into sexuality with the pre loved.

And so I don't, I

think, nailed it. 

I think it's remained the same, Juliet.

Juliet Fallowfield: Well, I think for a dynamic brand, I think that is absolutely as it should be. And you've absolutely nailed it. So congratulations. What was your question? Well, there's always, I mean, this is the problem, isn't it? And especially I [00:34:00] laugh because in comms, it's a hundred percent proactive anyway.

And in podcasting, same thing. You can always do more, but when you run a business, there's always another email you can send, another idea that you can have and knowing when to like draw the line and be like, I'm just going to read a book, it's fine. And what would your question be for the next guest?

Henrietta Rix: I think my question would be what is the most, or what was throughout your career or during your time has been the most instrumental meeting that you've had with someone?

Because I think throughout your kind of career, you can, the biggest, I found the beauty of RIXO is I've met so many amazing people that I would never have met if I hadn't have started RIXO.

And I think there's some key people along your journey that really help you along the way, so it'll be interesting to find that from the next guest.

Juliet Fallowfield: Amazing. What was your most instrumental meeting? I'll throw it back to you immediately.

Henrietta Rix: Oh my god there's been loads. We've been really lucky. We've had 

Juliet Fallowfield: Meeting 

Orlagh. Oh, 

Henrietta Rix: of course, yeah, that's it. You've answered it for me.

Juliet Fallowfield: And I was going to say What, How, why RIXO, how did you come up with a name really quickly? I've 

Henrietta Rix: Yeah, of course, so my surname, I mean it's really simple, and then people [00:35:00] are like, Oh, so my surname's Henrietta Rix, so it's, the Rix is from me, and then the Orlagh is her first initial, so it's our two names joined together. Exactly, there

was a domain that we could buy straight away, no one else had 

it, so 

it 

Juliet Fallowfield: of people that we meet and.

Henrietta Rix: was all good.

Juliet Fallowfield: Yes. Always check that before going into some branding work. No, That's brilliant. Thank you so much. It's been wonderful chatting to you. I've learned a lot about everything. So thank you. I'm really grateful.

Henrietta Rix: Oh, likewise, thank you so much for having me, really appreciate it.

Juliet Fallowfield: Thank you. I'm going to click stop quickly. 

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