It’s strange how quickly a year can pass, and even stranger when you stop and think about just how much can change in twelve months. This time last year, I had left my job at Harvey Nichols to take Beatrice Bayliss on full-time. It was a decision I had been thinking about for a long time, but actually making the leap was a completely different matter. I was excited, but I was also genuinely terrified. Leaving the security of a job and putting everything into a business I had built myself felt like an enormous risk and I had absolutely no idea what the following year was going to bring.
If I could go back and speak to that version of myself now, I think the first thing I would say is that everything is going to be okay. In fact, I think I would tell her that the year ahead is going to be so much bigger, busier and more challenging than she could possibly imagine, but also that she is going to learn more than she ever expected to and realise just how much can happen when you give something your whole attention.
The past year has been one of the biggest learning curves of my life. There have been some incredibly exciting moments, from growing our network of stockists and developing new products to travelling with BB, meeting customers and seeing our wool and knitwear reach people much further afield. There have also been plenty of moments that have been considerably less glamorous. One of the things nobody really prepares you for when you start scaling a product-based business is what happens when people actually start wanting to buy everything you are making.
For so long, the dream is to have more customers, more orders, more stockists and more demand. You spend years hoping people will discover your products and love them enough to come back, recommend them to friends and tell other people about the brand. Then, suddenly, you find yourself in the slightly surreal position of having people asking when something will be back in stock because you simply cannot make it quickly enough. That has been one of the biggest challenges for BB this year. For much of the past six months, our stock levels have been incredibly limited and there have been times when I have spent far too much of my day working out what we have, what is coming back from the mill, what needs to go to customers, what needs to be kept for stockists and what we desperately need to produce next.
On one hand, it is an incredibly lucky problem to have. Knowing that people love our wool, our knitwear and our kits enough to wait for them genuinely makes my heart so full. There is something very special about someone wanting to buy something that you have created, particularly when so much of what we do is rooted in the story behind the wool and the people involved in producing it. On the other hand, when you have limited stock for months at a time, it creates an entirely different set of problems. You cannot simply order another batch of wool and have it arrive next week. Our products begin with real sheep, real fleece and real farmers, and then the wool has to go through scouring, processing and spinning before we can turn it into the yarn, kits and knitwear that our customers see. That has meant that a huge part of this year has been spent rethinking the way BB produces its wool and manages its supply chain. As the business has grown, it became increasingly obvious that the production route that worked when BB was smaller was not necessarily going to work as the business continued to grow. We have spent a lot of time looking at different mills, suppliers and production partners and working out how we can increase the amount of wool we process without compromising the quality and provenance that are so important to us. We have now moved towards a new production route, which most importantly gives us the beginnings of a production model that can grow alongside the business rather than constantly feeling like we are trying to catch up. We can start planning further ahead, think more seriously about how much wool we will need over the coming months and build longer-term relationships with the people who are helping us turn that raw fleece into the products our customers know.
I think that has probably been one of the biggest lessons of this year: growth is not simply about selling more. It is about making sure the foundations underneath the business are strong enough to support the growth when it comes. There is a huge amount of work that happens behind the scenes that customers never see, and this year has made me appreciate just how much goes into getting a skein of yarn or a finished piece of knitwear into someone's hands. It has also made me much more conscious of planning ahead, particularly when the raw material we rely on is something that is seasonal and cannot simply be ordered whenever we need it.
There have definitely been moments this year where I have wondered what on earth I was doing. Running your own business is a strange combination of feeling incredibly proud one minute and completely overwhelmed the next. There is no roadmap and nobody to tell you exactly what the right decision is. You make the best decision you can with the information you have, learn from what happens and then adjust. I have learnt more about manufacturing, wool processing, logistics, stock planning, wholesale, marketing, cash flow and customers over the last year than I ever expected to and while there have been plenty of difficult moments, I know that all of those experiences are helping to shape the business into something much stronger. When I look back at where BB was this time last year, it genuinely feels like a very different business. We have grown our stockist network, continued to develop our own yarns, knitting kits and knitwear, worked with more farmers and suppliers and had opportunities that I could only have hoped for when I was still balancing BB alongside my job. We have also started to build a much clearer idea of where we want the brand to go and, perhaps more importantly, what we need to put in place to get there.
And now, as we head into autumn, everything starts to get particularly exciting. The next few months are going to be incredibly busy; the Waddesdon Manor Christmas Fair, the Soho Christmas Market and our return to the New York City all coming up. It feels quite surreal to think about how different this year's NYC event will be compared with last year. We went into it with a relatively small amount of stock and sold everything we had brought with us, which was an amazing result but also highlighted just how much more we needed to produce if we wanted to keep up with demand. This year, we are going in with much more experience, a better understanding of what our customers want and, hopefully, a much stronger production system behind us.
The Christmas fairs are equally exciting because one of my favourite things about BB is being able to meet people face-to-face. So much of the business happens online, but there is something completely different about being able to talk to someone about the wool, show them the different colours and textures, explain where it comes from and hear what they are planning to knit. These events give us the opportunity to introduce BB to people who may not have discovered us yet, while also seeing some familiar faces along the way. It feels like we are entering a really important stage for BB. The last year has been about learning what happens when a small business starts to grow quickly and discovering which parts of the business need to change with it. The next stage is about taking everything we have learnt and building on it: producing more wool, strengthening our relationships with farmers and makers, growing our stockist network, reaching more customers and continuing to develop products that feel true to what BB is all about.
So, if I could go back to that girl who had just left Harvey Nichols this time last year, I would still tell her that she was right to be nervous. It has not been an easy year, and there have been plenty of challenges that I never could have predicted. But I would also tell her that she was right to take the leap, because the things that have felt the most difficult have often been the things that have taught me the most. Most importantly, I would tell her to enjoy it a little more. To worry slightly less about whether everything is going to work out and appreciate the moments when it does. Because looking back now, a year on, I feel incredibly proud of how far Beatrice Bayliss has come, and incredibly grateful to everyone who has helped us get here; from our incredible and hardworking farmers and mills who process our wool, to our stockists, customers and everyone who has followed along with the journey.
There is still a huge amount I want to do with BB, and I am sure the next year will bring its own set of challenges that I cannot predict yet. But if this year has taught me anything, it is that growth rarely looks exactly how you imagine it will. Sometimes it is exciting, sometimes it is stressful, and sometimes it is simply trying to work out where your next batch of wool is coming from. But if this is what the next chapter looks like, I am very excited to see where it takes us.
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