Tiffany Rose, a thriving British fashion label specialising in maternity occasion wear, recently won a Queen's Award for Enterprise in the International Trade category. We asked founder and creative director Tiffany London to write our guest blog to describe the experience.
When we launched the business in 2003 we set out to fill what we identified as a huge gap in the market for supremely elegant and stylish maternity dresses for special occasions, all Made in Britain, at an affordable price-tag and available with express delivery worldwide.
Over the last 10 years, the business has grown organically from a kitchen-table project to a multi-million pound business, employing 17 people and serving customers in over 80 countries across the globe. Our collection includes a spectacular range of maternity evening wear, cocktail dresses, red carpet gowns, stylish day wear and luxury maternity bridal wear. Tiffany Rose is a brand worn by many high profile celebrities including Emma Bunton, Holly Willoughby, Myleene Klass, Una Healy, and Kate Silverton.
To be shortlisted for the highly prestigious Queen’s Award for International Trade was incredibly exciting and we decided to keep the news quiet in the office, to avoid hopes being dashed (not that we’re pessimistic!).
Several months later we received a letter from the Prime Minister’s office to tell us that Tiffany Rose had been chosen as a winner. Strictly embargoed, we had to contain our whoops for several long weeks, which was very hard!
Finally, it was time to share our secret with the team, which we did with aplomb. It called for champagne and a personal gift for every single one of our loyal team members as a heartfelt thank you for being such an important part of what we have all created together.
You cannot underestimate the positive effect of winning such a prestigious award has on every individual who is part of your business. And this extends to our highly-valued partners, which include all our British manufacturing partners and fabric mills. It’s these businesses that have helped fuel our enormous growth internationally, by offering a consistently brilliant service and for trusting us enough to expand their own businesses quickly alongside us, so that we in turn could respond to growing demand of our label overseas.
On spreading the news of our Queen’s Award with our long-term partners, we were overwhelmed with positive feedback, which not only reinforced our existing strong relationships, but has also helped forge new ones. Even our bank manager arrived for an impromptu meeting armed with a bottle of Champagne!
We were thrilled to be able to spread the news to our followers on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and to incorporate it into our marketing as well as re-print our packaging to include the prestigious logo.
There hasn’t been much time to look forward to the official celebrations happening next month – in the past couple of weeks we have been busy launching a mid-season collection for Spring/Summer ’13, finalising our new collection for Autumn/Winter and starting work on Spring/Summer ’14!
The last 10 years has been a hugely exciting and challenging journey. We feel enormously proud and honored to receive the Queen’s Award. Everyone at Tiffany Rose sees it as an official mark of encouragement and support from our country. And you can’t get better than that.
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