You could say brothers Ash and Ish Siddique’s venture into online retail was a happy accident.
The pair are founders of fast-growing fashion business, Missy Empire, selling a range of stylish but affordable dresses, knitwear, coats, shoes and accessories to women aged between 16 to 35.
Employing 50 people at its new 30,000 sq ft distribution site in Manchester’s textile district, Cheetham Hill, the business has gone from strength to strength since its inception in 2015.
Revenues have grown 50% year on year and are forecasted to reach £25m by March 2020.
With a background in knitwear manufacturing, Missy Empire was founded after a major retail customer cancelled a bulk order of Christmas leggings, leaving the brothers with stock they couldn’t shift and the push they needed to explore online selling.
Ish said: “In the knitwear business we mainly took in bulk orders for customers and they were usually orders of one style and one colour that only specific high street retailers wanted.
“So the Christmas leggings cancellation was a huge blow because nobody wanted one style at clearance.
“We then decided to put it all on eBay at cost price and to our surprise they sold out overnight and that’s how we started to make that transition to selling online.”
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The pair had grown up in the rag trade. Their father, Mohammed, founded AKL, a knitwear manufacturing business in Ardwick in 1992, supplying mostly market traders across the north west.
As teenagers they often spent evenings and weekends helping out on the factory floor from making sure the garments were ready for press to helping to box products for delivery.
Said Ish: “I was 14 when I started helping out as dad was stretched. It was also a chance for us to spend more time with him.
“Ash went to college for a year and I had just started when we had a conversation about whether college was right for us or whether we should work with our dad full time.
“We both decided to join the business.
“There was a lot of responsibility but working with dad for a few years had already taught us so much, so when I joined the business it was an easy transition. I already knew how to manage the operational side and work towards tight deadlines.
“Slowly I took over the night shifts too. Our dad was also relieved we joined as he could rely on us especially when he wasn’t around.”
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The brothers saw an opportunity to expand the knitwear business and supply directly to retailers.
Eventually they had deals with major retailers including New Look and Primark. they took the business in a new direction and stopped selling to market traders as that side of the busines had slowed down while retail picked up.
But when a retailer cancelled the order for Christmas leggings, they decided it was time to do something new.
“We started exploring knitwear on eBay when we saw a US seller offloading Christmas jumpers which were selling at a ridiculous high price but he was selling lots of them. We thought we could make that garment for a fiver and still make a profit.
“We trialled a few styles and they sold out immediately which led us to selling more online.
“The hype around Christmas jumpers started building and we even went back to the retailers to see if they wanted to sell them. They told us nobody was going to be interested so we decided to flog them ourselves.
“It got to a stage where we were selling so many we couldn’t produce enough.”
In that first year they sold more than 30,000 units.
The brothers started outsourcing the knitwear to keep up with demand but, as it was small-knit community, other manufacturers caught on and started selling similar items on eBay.
“It came to a stage when people were selling items far cheaper than us and so we decided to do something about it and started our own online platform and Missy Empire was born.”
They closed the knitwear side of the business in late 2014 as their energy and focus remained on their new website.
“It was hard to shut my dad’s business, but he was fully supportive of our decision, he trusted our strategy and our vision,” Ish said.
The first year as Missy Empire was a challenging one and at one point the brothers questioned whether they had made the right choice.
Ish said: “We made the wrong hires and lost focus as we thought others knew best.
“It came to a stage where we took back control in 2017 and went back to basics, did what we knew best and what worked.
“We know the ins and outs of the garment industry. We know how a piece is constructed, how it should be made and what changes can be done.
“We knew the technical lingo too so we know how to reduce the cost of a garment with little changes and that worked in our favour.”
Ish also believes that fast fashion doesn’t necessarily mean ‘throw away fashion,’ and he says this ethos makes them stand out from the competition.
“I’ve seen dresses sold for a fiver, but they’re made up from a single layer fabric and you can sometimes see through the garment, we tend to stay away from that.
“We use fabrics that are double sided and can be worn over again. Our focus is to be different and make sure our products are well made so that a consumer wants to keep it, it’s not about ‘wear it once and throw it away’ mentality, we want people to buy key pieces in their wardrobe - that’s what we are heading towards.”
The company’s work with influencers and social media marketing has also been a key factor in its journey.
This month Missy Empire reached 1m followers on Instagram - a huge victory for the company.
It has also been working with fashion and lifestyle influencers but insists partnering with the right person is crucial.
“Social media has always been a part of our journey.
“We understand the kind of female we are catering towards so using every influencer isn’t good either as you’re sending the wrong type of message to customers. And so we work with influencers that suit our brand and style.”
As for the future, the brothers want to grow export sales. The company has been selected as the number one firm in Britain with the fastest growing international sales in the last two years.
The brand was included in The Sunday Times SME Export Track 100 that ranks Britain’s private SMEs with the fastest-growing exports.
The league table is produced by Fast Track, the Oxford firm that researches Britain’s top-performing private companies.
Exports have grown 330% between 2016/2017 to 2018/2019 with Europe, US and Asia big markets for the group.
International sales currently make up 22% of revenues, growing to 30% by March next year, with plans to increase that to 50%.
Ish said: “We have started a process to tap into each country as we want to be truly global.
“We have a huge marketing campaign at the moment. Each country is diffrent so we’re trying a diffrent approach with each one. We are testing and we are learning from it.”
He added: “People think selling online is easy but it’s actually a challenging process and a lot of hard work goes into it.
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“We design our products, we do the fitting, we make lots of changes and we can turn around samples within a day but people don’t see that.
“We also work hard to make sure the customer journey and after sales process is seamless.
“For us it’s about getting it right. We’re not chasing big numbers as steady growth in a market that is fast expanding is important.”