I Fell In Love With a Problem

I read recently that there are 30 billion blogs written in a year. If you are like me you will read or scan a number of blogs each day probably on a range of topics while accepting that you will miss some content that would have been good to know about.

One of my favourite bloggers is Sylvana Caloni, an Executive Coach who runs the Peer Advisory Board programme. Sylvana recently published an article Test, Learn, Tweak that resonated with me. She had attended World Forum Disrupt to hear entrepreneurs and thought leaders talk about learning from their failures and successes. 

I am always interested in the stories of other entrepreneurs as not only am I a curious thinker but I know that it is essential to learn in order for a business to grow.

One truism for me and I was reminded of it from Sylvana’s blog is that a successful business that disrupts an industry often starts out as a niche created to solve a problem. I thought about my own business, a growing womenswear fashion brand created because more and more professional women just hate shopping for clothes. 

Theoretically, we like the idea of shopping but are fed up of going into shops, online too, and coming away with a compromise garment. Some even go as far to say that they hate shopping because the experience is so unfulfilling. I fell in love with the problem.

I asked myself three questions. What would I like as the ideal shopping experience? How can I have greater control over the provenance of what clothes I buy? How many other women have the same thoughts and experiences as me?

As a result the Semple Womenswear Collection was launched in March 2015 and last week 60 clients attended our birthday celebration at the wonderful Foundling Museum in London. Each woman wore one of her Semple dresses that she had co-designed with us and it was clear that there had been no need for compromise. 

Our success has come about because we test ideas, critically assess ourselves and learn how to do things differently and as a result we tweak ourselves again. 

I’m still in love with my problem.