The Drapers Interview: Michelle Mone

The founder of lingerie business Ultimo has just finished rolling out shop-in-shops in Debenhams. So how has the brand fared during its first foray into retail?

Michelle Mone prefers beetles to acorns. At her regular London haunt – the Dorch-ester Hotel in the capital – Scottish entrepreneur Mone opts for the French-inspired suites, which are characterised by a picture of a beetle on the back of the chairs, rather than the English-themed rooms and their acorn symbols.

But with her leopard print blouse, peep-toe heels and tight jeans, Mone's on-trend style seems at odds with the more traditional, country-themed suite and its pastel blue and cream colour palette.

Style is important to Mone. She meets Drapers fresh from a visit to high-end hairdresser Charles Worthington and plays hostess while applying her make-up. Still, when you're in the public eye as much as Mone is, it pays to look good.

Mone, who set up lingerie business MJM International with her husband in 1996, has been busy opening 10 shop-in-shops for Ultimo in department store group Debenhams, and insists on being present at every launch. "My team tell me it's not necessary for me to be at every single opening, but it has been a dream of mine to open shops so I want to be there, even though it means travelling the country in such a short space of time," she explains.

Lingerie label Ultimo, which accounts for 60% of MJM International's business, is fronted by celebrities including Girls Aloud singer Sarah Harding and former Hollyoaks actress Gemma Atkinson, and represents Mone's first foray into retailing. "I want Ultimo to become the Victoria's Secret of the UK," she says, referring to the US lingerie retailer. "That's why we launched concessions. I totally respect Victoria's Secret, particularly for its marketing, and Ultimo has all the same qualities except for the shops – until now."

Mone hopes to roll out the shop-in-shop concept – the last of the initial 10 opened at the end of December – to as many Debenhams stores as possible. "We're currently looking at 60," she says. "After the first five shop-in-shops opened, Debenhams said sales of Ultimo were up 200%."
But her plans for Ultimo do not end there. Mone's retail ambitions for the brand include standalone high street stores, which she hopes to open within the next two years.

"I'm not a retailer, so I'm looking for a partner to open the shops," she admits. "We know how to design bras but I'm not going to sit here and say I know how to do it all. I've discussed the possibility [of opening shops] with Debenhams and depending on how well the concessions strategy goes, who knows?"

On the design front, Mone is confident she can grow Ultimo further and last month launched a new Ultimo sub-brand called Ultimo Extreme Shapewear, designed to smooth bulges and lift and shape the bottom to reduce the appearance of cellulite. The new range could allow Mone to capitalise on the growing shapewear market, trumpeted by the likes of TV stylists Gok Wan, Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine.

She is also working on a new Ultimo sub-brand to take on high street rival La Senza in spring 2009. The idea came from a conversation with her 15-year-old daughter. She is discussing with her daughter potential names for the sub-brand and potential celebrities who could front the campaign.

"My daughter told me that she and her friends can only afford to buy lingerie from La Senza, but they don't like the product," she says. "Ultimo can offer product that is streets ahead of La Senza but at the same price – about £16 for a bra. With our amazing PR and marketing, I think the range will be very successful."

She also believes she could take on yet another brand. "I'd love to develop a brand for a retailer," she says. "We're very good at launching and managing brands." 

Mone has never shied away from the media and promotional activities, and is arguably one of the lingerie industry's most well-known figures, but her self-promotion is not welcomed by everyone.One lingerie rival says Mone is famous for her exaggeration. "You read and hear about Michelle more than anyone else in the business, but she exaggerates so much that you can't believe everything she says. She's particularly liberal with figures," she explains. "It's a shame because she's a great self-publicist, which can only be good for the industry."

But Mone is quick to defend herself. She estimates that Ultimo is worth £45 million, but prefers not to comment on the business as a whole. As for the publicity, she admits that she "PRs the hell" out of her company, but keeps her personal life private.

"When it comes to Ultimo I do everything I can to ensure it appears in the right press as often as possible. We don't have big advertising budgets, so it's important to shout about what we do," she explains. "But when it comes to personal press, I steer clear of that."

She admits that she allowed Hello magazine into her home late last year, but insisted that all she talked about was the business and the Ultimo shops. "Who would turn that down?" she asks.

It's a fair point, but Mone is also savvy enough to realise that her height, blonde hair and good looks set her apart from her traditional industry counterparts, who are mainly male "suits". As the lingerie source says: "You can't divorce the person from the brand."
Mone is certainly embracing all the promotional initiatives on offer. She is set to star in TV series The Apprentice this year, as well as a new TV show to find the new face of the Ultimo brand with WAG Coleen McLoughlin.

The partnership with McLoughlin marks a change in strategy for Ultimo, which is famed for using celebrities to front its campaigns. But in Coleen's Real Women, set to run early this year on ITV, Mone and McLoughlin are tasked with scouring the UK's streets to find an ordinary woman to be one of the five Ultimo Angels.

"I said we'd never find someone suitable, but we did," says Mone. "She's a 24-year-old single mum from Liverpool. The great thing is that Ultimo is so successful now that it can actually make people famous – their profiles skyrocket once they get an Ultimo contract. Before, we needed a celebrity to make us famous."
But Mone says she will continue to use celebrities as well as 'real' women to advertise Ultimo. "We look for celebrities with personality, who are down to earth and who customers can relate to, not someone who is stuck-up or trashy," she explains. "Sarah Harding and Gemma Atkinson tick all boxes. But we don't keep our models for more than two years otherwise it becomes more about them than the brand."
As well as TV, Mone does a lot of charity work and has been on the board of young people's charity The Prince's Trust for six years, which helped her set up her business 11 years ago.

"I get so much pleasure from working with the charity because it helped me to get started," she smiles. "It's important for me to see other entrepreneurs get a chance to realise their dreams."

Such exposure has resulted in string of loyal followers for Mone, who receives more than 2,000 letters a month from customers, asking for her advice on the sort of bra they should buy. She duly answers every single letter.

"I try on every single bra we make so that I understand how each one fits," she says. "I don't know many other people who could make that claim and be so involved in the design process. The result is that when you try on Ultimo, you just feel so much better. Ultimo gives customers the solutions that they can't find anywhere else – it's glamourous but everyday too."

But it has not always been plain sailing for Mone. Only a few years after starting the business, Mone says that she came close to bankruptcy after she signed up a US distributor to help her supply US luxury department store group Saks Fifth Avenue.

"We gave the distributors £500,000 in credit, but after a couple of months we had no way of contacting them. They ran off with our money and disappeared off the face of the earth," she laments. "We were about 15 minutes away from bankruptcy, but we came into some inheritance, which saved us."

Mone says she has "never taken her eye off ball since", and her subsequent successes certainly vouch for this. She went on to launch a value lingerie brand for supermarket group Asda in 2004, called Michelle for George, followed by another brand, Adore Moi, for Debenhams two years later.

Mone says she doubled MJM International's turnover in 2006 compared with 2005 and that profits are "high", but numbers are undisclosed in Companies House accounts. She even went into labour in the boardroom, before the launch of an Ultimo sub-brand.

One of her latest projects has been building a new MJM International head office from scratch. The new 25,000sq ft building in Glasgow replaced the group's comparatively tiny headquarters, which measured just 6,000sq ft, and the £5 million investment has funded a gym, a mini shop, a sample room and a video conferencing room at the HQ. Mone has even bought the parkland at the rear of the building, just in case the business gets even bigger.

Growth is in Mone's sights and she is currently on the lookout for designers and an expanded e-commerce team. "Our website is big business for us, with 10% of our sales coming from online," she says. "And this is without online marketing, so I'm looking for an e-commerce team of about six people to drive that side of the business."

On the design front, she is hunting for someone to lead the brand's team and wants to bring in an extra 10 designers across lingerie and swimwear.

It's no wonder, then, that Ultimo has attracted interest from potential investors. Currently the Mones own 75% of the company, with Sir Tom Hunter taking the remaining 25%. "In the last six weeks I've had several calls from private equity firms, particularly from the Middle East," she reveals. "Never say never, but the company's not for sale at the moment.

"If it comes to a point where I can't take the business to the next level, then it may be time to hang up my bra and sell it to someone who can. But I have a two-year plan and I'm enjoying it right now. The day when I don't is the day I leave."