The Story
The story of Jane and Kate, colleagues, friends, business partners.
We met over 20 years ago when we worked together for a large retailer in head office, running the babywear department. After achieving great success together in this role Kate headed off traveling, Jane to Australia to work for another large-scale retailer. After reuniting in the UK, a couple of children later, we decided the conventional office life was no longer right for us and the lives we aspired to lead. We wanted to be around to see our children grow, so needed flexible working hours, and ideally to work from home. (This was back before the pandemic when working from home was a big no no.)
So, we decided to set up something for ourselves on our terms. But the question was what. After many afternoons spent discussing options, we landed back on babywear, what we know and love doing and in May 2013 The Little Tailor brand was born. The idea, was and is still, to create timeless, heirloom high quality pieces that could be treasured and passed down through siblings, cousins and friends alike. (In Kate’s own family some of the items created many years ago are now on cousin number 4)
“the most rewarding part of the whole business is seeing our items on littles ones. We get a buzz every time we are tagged in a photo, or spot a baby wrapped up in one of our blankets. And the more worn the clothing looks the betters, means it’s had lots of good use!”
The Little Tailor 10 years in.
Fast forward 10 years and many, many hours of hard learnings, another baby, a cancer diagnosis, a pandemic, the brand is stronger than ever, going into 9th year of being stocked at all UK Selfridges Stores, into our 5thyear with Next Label, 3rd with John Lewis and 10th with one of our first stockists Childrensalon. Not to mention our loyal UK boutiques and direct to our website customers, we are forever grateful to you all for your many years supporting our brand. We now have a small team helping us run everything and the warehouse is no longer located in Kate’s garden shed. (now all kept in a proper warehouse about 100 times as big as the shed).
The future.
As we come to our 10 year anniversary we are really proud of how far we have come. Still full of ideas of what to design next and bring to our customers, and there is still so much more to learn, but we are super excited and thankful to be still be here, stronger than ever.
Kate and Jane x
