Little Lies was dreamt up after good food, many cocktails, and a great gig. My name is Jade, and I’m co-founder and Creative Director here at Little Lies.

Stuart and I had been dating for around six months and had many long conversations about all the things we wanted to do with our lives – from the journeys we’d each been on up til that point, to the places we could go together. Co-owning a business was not exactly something we discussed, but when the idea came about it just felt right!

I never really wanted my own business, it wasn’t ‘the dream’ for me; I just knew I wanted to create something. My background is what I guess you’d call being a ‘jack of all trades’ (and definitely master of none). From my first job in a music venue to working in retail, creating my own charity fashion show set to live music or selling my hand tie dyed tees to indie boutiques; it’s clear looking back now that every step I had taken through my early career had an entrepreneurial undercurrent and linked directly to my two passions; music and fashion. It wasn’t a surprise then when I had that lightbulb moment of; ‘I can totally picture a brand that combines all the things I love’.

Fast forward a further six months and Little Lies was born from the spare room of our first home together in Kirkcaldy, Fife. The brand aesthetic was - as it still is now - an accumulation of inspo from the 70s music scene combined with bohemian ideals and that ‘backstage’ feeling. I curated clothing, homewares and accessories to pull together that visual and brought them to life on a website which also brought our community playlists, style guides and music reviews.

My days consisted of photographing new stock, packing orders, building product listings, engaging with customers on our socials, answering enquiries and continuously scouring the web for new product. Our evenings consisted of demolishing walls, building kitchens and painting our renovation project of a house. It was relentless! The first few years were a slog, I’m not gonna lie. There was no overnight success, no quick wins – we’re still here now purely because of determination and a total belief that we were creating something worth the graft.

As life continued to move at a fast pace – a pace which I’ve come to realise only speeds up with time – we moved back to my hometown of Perth, where we took on our second renovation project. This time it included a box room as our stock room, a living room that we transformed into our photography studio, and a bedroom which became our office and home to our first two full time members of staff.

Not long after that, it was time to get the business out of the house and fate presented us with the perfect spot; our beautiful boutique in Dundee’s city centre. Seeing my handwritten logo above the door of that shop and welcoming so many incredible customers through those doors will always be core memories of this journey – but it wasn’t all rosy, we soon came to realise that trying to run a physical shop alongside a web store was like having two businesses, and we just didn’t have the cash flow or capacity to hire more people and fulfil both elements properly.

In January of 2020 we held a team meeting where we outlined our options. We had outgrown the basement where we fulfilled online orders and our store lease was coming to an end in the September so we either; close the shop and move online only to focus on those sales, renew the lease but only as a store and move online operations to a warehouse, or, move to a bigger store to maintain our storefront but give online the space it needed and keep our small team together. We had never actually come to a conclusion when the world decided it had other plans; Covid hit and we were forced to close the store. But sometimes, the universe hands you the information you need.

The thought of closing our shop and moving solely online gave me the fear - surely cutting off one potential revenue stream wasn’t the answer? However, having all our team’s efforts going into the website alone helped to transform its performance and allow the business to grow beyond what we were capable of while there was a shop continuously needing merchandised and hoovered!

In the few months we had to figure out where we were heading next, the most perfect spot opened up. The business I bought my wedding dress from was moving on, leaving behind a stunning open plan space that was part-industrial unit, part-beautiful shop. The stars aligned and now, our boardroom is the very room where I said yes to my dress.

After a sad farewell to our beautiful boutique, we moved to the countryside of Glencarse and set up our incredible headquarters. We hired a larger team and worked hard at building our brand, providing great customer service, and nailing our fulfilment. Over the years, this space has grown to house teams covering marketing, customer service, and creative as well as being home to our photography space and design studio.

The Christmas trading season of 2020 was insane and gave us the platform and cash flow to take the next big step – Own Label. It had never crossed my mind that we might ever make our own garments, but here we were at the next natural progression for our little brand. We hired a design team and launched our first collections which enabled us to have full control over the fit and quality, as well as finally extend our size range. The switch we refer to as ‘boutique-to-brand’ was by far the biggest challenge we had ever undertaken and transformed how we approach and run every single element of our business. It certainly hasn’t been easy, and it has thrown up more issues and hurdles than any thing else we’ve ever done, but holy shit has it been rewarding. Early in the process I felt like I’d lost my vision for the brand entirely and if I’m being honest, I lost myself a little too. The massive changes in the business happened at the same time as becoming a mum, which was overwhelming to say the least. But we’d come too far to give up, and I knew you guys were there waiting in the wings for us to get this right.

And that brings us to now; Little Lies’ 10th Birthday. The products we’ve launched this year have been our most successful to date and we’ve got lots of exciting things up our sleeves to celebrate this anniversary and take us through to Stevie Season – my favourite to design for!

Having been through so many iterations of this business, I feel as though I’ve never been clearer on what we’re here to do. I’ve regained a laser focus on my ‘why’, knowing that the times we’ve seen the most success has been when we are being most unapologetically ourselves. We’ve collected the most amazing bunch of customers through this journey, we’ve got a library of epic silhouettes nailed down, we have the most incredible team and so many ideas - now it’s time to bring everything together and turn it up to eleven.

We may be celebrating ten years in business, but this just feels like the beginning.

Big Love,