Tired of the lack of options for fashion-conscious female skiers, Renee Fraser-Shepherd decided to carve out her own opportunity.
Nobody could argue that Renee Fraser-Shepherd didn’t earn her first-class honours degree.
It was while studying entrepreneurial management at Northumbria University that the then 21-year-old first began work on creating luxury skiwear brand Sloobie. Early market research; consumer focus groups and design sketches: all of it made its way into Fraser-Shepherd’s final-year dissertation. “It was really practical,” she admits.
The idea for Sloobie came to frequent skier Renee amid her own frustration at the lack of base layers that appealed to fashion-conscious women like herself. Options on the market were limited to black, block colours or neon. “I’d look like a highlighter going down the slopes” she said. "I then realised that a huge part of the market was being ignored. There was a massive disparity within the industry which equalled fantastic opportunity.”
Renee Fraser-Shepherd, founder and CEO of Sloobie
For the next two years, the young entrepreneur ensured her business case was watertight. “I did consumer feedback, conducted focus interviews, collected primary data and then did secondary research to make sure that there was definitely an opportunity within the industry,” she says.
“I found out a few things. The first was that women felt that there was a lack of choice in the ski industry. The second that they felt unsupported with the current options that they had. And the third that there was an appetite to invest in good quality ski wear that was both technically focused but also had a sophisticated timeless style.”
Next, she sketched 60 possible designs, painstakingly sharing them with more than 350 people to gather more insight, using the feedback to whittle the designs down and down until she had her first small core range.
The Sloobie base layers have all the technical features you’d expect – they’re temperature regulating and moisture wicking – but plenty more you might not, such as integrated shapewear and a looser elastic on the neckline after women reported rollneck base layer tops left them feeling suffocated.
“That was 18 months ago, and we just completed our first full season of trade,” she says.
Finding a needle in a haystack
That relentless early focus on getting to grips with the target market has paid off enormously in Sloobie’s first full year in business.
“Every decision we make, the majority of the time, is based off primary data from the get-go,” says Renee. “That’s meant that there's not really been any major surprises because we did those customer interviews before we even launched. I invested the time into the market before we went into it.”
Thankfully we were able to join GS1 UK online and set up our barcodes immediately. The whole process was so quick and easy. You guys came in and saved the day!"
Renee Fraser-Shepherd
Founder and CEO of Sloobie
She hasn’t stopped post-launch either. At the moment, she’s in the process of interviewing not only every single person that’s purchased from the brand but also those that ended up abandoning their checkout and people that are yet to know they exist.
Which isn’t to say that the founder and CEO hasn’t faced her own share of challenges in getting the brand off the ground. “The manufacturing phase was the most challenging,” she says. “When you're a start-up you don't get taken seriously. You don't necessarily know all the kind of ins and outs and you want to invest in low orders too which is a factory's worst nightmare. We got messed around.”
It took two years and working with a sourcing company to find the right fit. But it was worth the wait.
“The factory that we've ended up with is incredibly ethical, has the best machinery and we’ve developed a really good communication with them.” To find that alignment Renee studied the other brands they worked with, as “the brands they work with are a reflection of the standard at which they work.
“Not all start-ups have the luxury of being able to be picky like that,” she accepts.
“We definitely found a needle in the haystack and our factory don't work with many small businesses. They work with really large global companies, and we were lucky that they believed in us and they're going to grow with us.”
In another stroke of serendipity, the brand secured its first retail presence with Fenwick in Newcastle – the same store where Renee had her first job at 16-years-old – only a few months after it first began selling direct-to-consumer. “It was really amazing to launch my brand there and for them to be our first retailer.”
Even that moment threw up its own challenges though. The night before the Fenwick pop-up store launched, the founder realised there’d been a miscommunication on who would ensure each item had a barcode. “We found out the night before,” she remembers.
"Thankfully we were able to join GS1 UK online and set up our barcodes immediately. The whole process was so quick and easy. You guys came in and saved the day!"
Other than that slight blip though, the partnership with Fenwick “has been phenomenally positive.”
Getting strategic to scale up
Just as Renee found herself balancing university studies with Sloobie’s launch, so too she’s having to juggle responsibilities as the business scales up. The founder still works a full-time job at digital and media agency, Bonded Agency. There are upsides to working: the invaluable support with her marketing plan and finding a mentor in one of the company’s founders, Steve Underwood. “He has become my business mentor which has been amazing. I always say that to get Sloobie off the ground is a complete group effort and "I couldn't begin to list the most amazing people that I have in my life offering me their support."
But the extra demands on her time has meant she’s had to be incredibly selective with where she channels her efforts.
For example, though in the long-term her aim is to grow the brand’s presence on social platforms, over the summer she pauses activity. “Because I have a full-time job it's really important to stay as focused as possible and as efficient with my time,” she explains. With the warmer months a natural moment to take stock for a winter sports brand, she uses the break to “get reflective, look at the data and see where we can improve, consider what our customers want to see and where do they feel most valued.
“It’s about being strategic and efficient with my time in a way that gives us the best opportunity to grow. If you constantly push, push, push, push, it's hard to find that time to take a step back and look at things.
“The opportunity within the industry is crazy and we're really fortunate that we have such a great product and such a low return rate. It’s clear that our customers are loving our product.”
She’d give the same advice to any founder.
“When you're a small business and you have to do everything, it can be really easy to get distracted by so many things all at once.
"Unless you have the time and the resource to do it, staying as focused and as disciplined in a few chosen areas with a specific aim and output is way more effective than doing 20 per cent of everything.”
Which isn’t to say she doesn’t have big ambitions for the brand, including more D2C sales, more listings with retailers and more brand awareness. "Our plan over the next three years is to become the best base layer company within the UK, and then Globally, with a strategic vision for growth at pace.
“I always say try and enjoy the stress of the journey as much as you can, it makes it a lot more positive,” she adds.