Speaker 1: Who is He's table for It's now a book. Paul McCartney,
Speaker 1: Michael Kaine, Kamala Harris, David Beckham, Tina fey Elton John
Speaker 1: and many more. It's full of stories, beautifully designed, and
Speaker 1: a celebration of the way food connects us all. It's
Speaker 1: available now wherever you buy your books.
Speaker 2: I bought this black Armani suit.
Speaker 1: Bal you a eleven thousand pounds.
Speaker 3: Yeah on eleven thousand pounds seventy discount in the sale.
Speaker 2: So I did it. Yeah, and then probably and then
Speaker 2: probably were in.
Speaker 1: What did that? What did that feel like? Buying an
Speaker 1: Umi suit? It? Yeah?
Speaker 3: That was That was a big moment, and that got
Speaker 3: me my next job, which was.
Speaker 2: Was in advertising.
Speaker 3: This wonderful woman called me a Dixon, who gave me
Speaker 3: my first job in advertising.
Speaker 2: And she I don't need to listen to word I said.
Speaker 2: She just loved my suit.
Speaker 1: My mother used to tell me, Ruthie, always seek out
Speaker 1: the quietest person in the room. It's advice I've carried
Speaker 1: with me as so often those who have the most
Speaker 1: interesting things to say about themselves are also the ones
Speaker 1: least inclined to tell you. This is true of my
Speaker 1: friend Claire Hornby, the founder and CEO of ME and M,
Speaker 1: one of the most successful international fashion companies in Britain.
Speaker 1: As a designer, Claire wants women to feel confident, comfortable,
Speaker 1: and at ease in the clothes they wear. Going into
Speaker 1: her stores, seeing the skirts and the sweaters, the trousers
Speaker 1: and the shoes, it's as if she anticipates what her
Speaker 1: customers might need before they even ask. Today, Claire and
Speaker 1: I are here to talk about food and fashion, food
Speaker 1: and family, the ingredients of her life, the ingredients of
Speaker 1: mine and the recipe of her success. So of all
Speaker 1: the recipes and all the books and all the times
Speaker 1: you've eaten here, are you chose well?
Speaker 3: I've been practicing how to say this with my Italian
Speaker 3: one of my Italian friends at work.
Speaker 1: Zucchinie Brilliants, that right.
Speaker 3: So you need five hundred grams of zucchini, one liter
Speaker 3: of sunflower oil, and then for the batter, one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty grams of plain flour, three tablespoons of extra
Speaker 3: virgin olive oil, three tablespoons of warm.
Speaker 1: Water, and three egg whites.
Speaker 3: You cut the zucchini into match sticks, place in a colunder,
Speaker 3: sprinkle with salt and leave for half an hour for
Speaker 3: the batter. Sift the flour into a bowl, make a
Speaker 3: well in the center, Pour in the olive oil and
Speaker 3: stir to combine. Add enough warm water to make a
Speaker 3: batter the consistency of double cream, and leave for half
Speaker 3: an hour. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold
Speaker 3: into the batter. Pat the zucchi me dry, dip them
Speaker 3: in the batter, then frying batches in the hot oil
Speaker 3: until golden and crisp. Serve immediately, so dutifully read why
Speaker 3: did you choose this recipe?
Speaker 1: Of all? Do you make it?
Speaker 2: Did you eat it?
Speaker 3: It's always when we eat regularly and every that's what
Speaker 3: everybody wants. They're they're just delicious, and they're so hard
Speaker 3: to do well.
Speaker 2: And I don't want them from anywhere else.
Speaker 1: Just here it is. It's a really nice recipe. I
Speaker 1: think simple. It's so simple. Again, you can do it.
Speaker 1: You can make the batter and then put the egg
Speaker 1: whites in at the end, and you know, dip the
Speaker 1: dip the zucchina. I really like starting a meal. Also,
Speaker 1: I was here last night and there were four people
Speaker 1: I didn't really know that well. And then everybody has
Speaker 1: a little bit you know, and you take it or
Speaker 1: some people put it on their Are you the sort
Speaker 1: of put it on your plate and take it off
Speaker 1: your own plate.
Speaker 3: We've got to be quite quick because otherwise my husband
Speaker 3: and Johnny he so we're always quite quick. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: we do again on our plate and from there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you grow up in a fact? Well, tell me,
Speaker 1: let's start at the beginning. Tell me about Oldham? Where
Speaker 1: did you grow up? Where was it?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 3: I grew up in a place called Saddleworth, which has
Speaker 3: the highest concentration of pubs in the country. It's just
Speaker 3: above a place called Oldham, which is in the north
Speaker 3: north of Manchester.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I was on I grew up on the Pennines.
Speaker 2: It rained all the time.
Speaker 1: And what was it like? Was your family? Tell me
Speaker 1: about your parents and your.
Speaker 3: So very very normal. My mum was a teacher. My
Speaker 3: dad ran a small joinery company. They made doors and
Speaker 3: windows and cabinets. They did a lot of work for
Speaker 3: the university. But I remember going because they both worked
Speaker 3: in our school holidays.
Speaker 2: You know, I tagged. I tagged along with my dad
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 3: So that sort of smell of would shaking with making things?
Speaker 3: Did it potentially?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: But yeah, I spent a lot of time in a
Speaker 3: joinery shop. We're a very very close family. They were
Speaker 3: phenomenal parents, endlessly proud, very normal, just very salt of
Speaker 3: the earth family upbringing.
Speaker 1: When you were if your mother was working, would you
Speaker 1: always sit down to dinner in the evening? Yeah it was.
Speaker 3: It was tea in the north those days, it was tea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we ate at six.
Speaker 3: I was very sporty, so I would always I'd come
Speaker 3: home late from school and then I was always starving,
Speaker 3: always starving, played so much sport, so then would always
Speaker 3: sit down at sex and have Mum cooked. Did you
Speaker 3: have the very wholesome food shepherds pies, meat pies, lots
Speaker 3: of fish and chips.
Speaker 1: Did you go abroad? Did they take you to other countries?
Speaker 1: Did you go to France or Space?
Speaker 3: My first trip abroad was when I was seven years old.
Speaker 3: It was the summer of nineteen seventy six, so it
Speaker 3: was hotter and you went in England in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 3: it was the hottest summer on record. We had a
Speaker 3: host pipe band and we went on our first trip
Speaker 3: to abroad to forment Terra, which makes it sound like.
Speaker 1: We were really cool. They found out actually.
Speaker 3: There was one apartment block just being built and we
Speaker 3: arrived just because it wasn't quite finished, so it was
Speaker 3: very cost effective way to go on holiday.
Speaker 2: So we went to Formantera, which yourself, what did.
Speaker 1: You love about it?
Speaker 3: It was the first time I'd been anywhere like that,
Speaker 3: so it was very exciting because it was the first
Speaker 3: time I'd ever.
Speaker 2: Got on a plane.
Speaker 3: And you know, the water and Formentara is mind blowing.
Speaker 2: It still blows my mind now. It's so blue and clean.
Speaker 3: And the salt marshes and lots of cycling. We cycled
Speaker 3: ever it can cycle around the Pole Island. It's quite small.
Speaker 3: It was the first time I seen live lobsters in
Speaker 3: a tank, but then I didn't like that they were killed,
Speaker 3: so I didn't like that. Those remember crying over the lobsters.
Speaker 1: Do you think that the focus, your focus and the
Speaker 1: work ethic from your parents did that form you in
Speaker 1: your early years? I'm sure.
Speaker 2: And they made me work for every single school holiday.
Speaker 2: They made me work for my holiday money. So from
Speaker 2: the age of fourteen I worked. It's on older market.
Speaker 3: My dad found me a friend who had some damaged
Speaker 3: shoes Italian shoes so I set up market stalls and
Speaker 3: sole shoes on older market.
Speaker 2: That was my first job Q fourteen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then I worked in and then as I
Speaker 3: got bit older, I worked in denh in factories. So
Speaker 3: it's lankash Is it was Lancashire. No, No, probably about sixteen.
Speaker 2: I worked in factories and.
Speaker 1: These weren't school holidays school holidays.
Speaker 3: And then I worked in shops. I was a waitress,
Speaker 3: I sold double glazing. I mean I worked and worked
Speaker 3: and worked so they they I wasn't allowed to go
Speaker 3: on holiday unless I'd earned my holiday money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there was a stayed with you do you
Speaker 1: think as an adult?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was also needs musk, like we didn't have money. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know it wasn't.
Speaker 1: I don't think they did it to be to form you.
Speaker 3: It was they needed the money. So and you know
Speaker 3: that carried on when I came to London. I had
Speaker 3: to work. I mean I worked all through my degree
Speaker 3: at Manchester.
Speaker 2: I worked. I got worked in the tyraq, I worked
Speaker 2: in pizza restaurants. I worked where it worked. I mean
Speaker 2: there was no there was no option. I didn't. I
Speaker 2: had to make ends meet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so what was it like leaving home when
Speaker 1: you got to Manchester. Let's see what's that.
Speaker 3: I was going to stay living at home, but then
Speaker 3: I met these two great girls and we actually and
Speaker 3: so we lived together for my final three years, which
Speaker 3: was good for me because I needed to break the
Speaker 3: umbilical cord. So I didn't go away to school or
Speaker 3: you know. It was a very poseted upbringing. But I
Speaker 3: was very bullied at school.
Speaker 1: How did that affect you?
Speaker 3: You know, it's funny. You just did you really just
Speaker 3: deal with it. I didn't want my mum to know
Speaker 3: because I knew she get involved. So the first time
Speaker 3: it happened, I actually ended up in hospital.
Speaker 1: What did they do?
Speaker 2: They tripped me?
Speaker 1: They physically.
Speaker 3: I was running down a hill and some boys tripped
Speaker 3: me up and I skidded across the playground and smashed
Speaker 3: into the sport the science block and knocked myself out.
Speaker 2: But I think I then put.
Speaker 3: Texted my mom from it because I was worried that
Speaker 3: it get worse if my mum knew so, and then
Speaker 3: I had this hero friend who stopped it all.
Speaker 1: You did you have food isshoes at all? Growing up?
Speaker 1: Did you ever have anything that you thought about eating
Speaker 1: in a certain way to Did you eat anything you
Speaker 1: wanted and never felt?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Love food, yeah, love food. And if you play a
Speaker 1: lot of sports.
Speaker 2: You need a lot of food.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so with the sports and sport was great. So yeah,
Speaker 1: and what about fashion in those early years? Did you
Speaker 1: know that because you were saying that you made things
Speaker 1: you watched.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we forgot the most important.
Speaker 1: How did your mother dress? Did she? Did you think
Speaker 1: clothes were important to her? Yeah?
Speaker 3: We shopped a lot together. We used to sneak it
Speaker 3: in so my dad didn't say, but we made clothes together,
Speaker 3: and trousers, and I do remember standing in front of
Speaker 3: the mirror thinking about pocket position and length and shape.
Speaker 1: And so it's amazing what you do with your children.
Speaker 3: How it can you can become you know those it's
Speaker 3: the small things that matter.
Speaker 1: It's like cooking, like or you know, many many things
Speaker 1: that you you know when you and they you know
Speaker 1: you might not have been interested at all, but that
Speaker 1: you were interested and that she could do it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Formed do you have any of the clothes that you
Speaker 1: made with her? Did you get Yeah?
Speaker 3: I remember this one pair of trousers which we got
Speaker 3: horribly wrong. Whereas when I got to school, everyone teas
Speaker 3: me that I look like at the Bear, and I.
Speaker 1: Have this kind of lens out now where.
Speaker 3: When the design teams present me with things, I have
Speaker 3: a list of characters that you might look like if
Speaker 3: you wore those, because if it's a bit overly, you know,
Speaker 3: there's like bo Peep, there's Dennis the Menace, there's bupe
Speaker 3: at the Bear, There's I can't remember them all, but
Speaker 3: there's no, no, no, we can't make that. They'll look
Speaker 3: like this, or I've got a very visual sort of
Speaker 3: no no no, that's a bit milk Madi.
Speaker 2: No, no no. But it's a great big trend and
Speaker 2: like we're leaving that trend behind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's plenty of others. I really wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you about how because you know, I started a
Speaker 1: restaurant very small. You started something that is now very big.
Speaker 1: And we went to La together and when I was
Speaker 1: in New York, I went shopping at me. Are you
Speaker 1: in other cities in America? Yeah?
Speaker 2: We have started.
Speaker 3: So we're now in what will be the next one, Stanford,
Speaker 3: Palo Alto, we're in Atlanto, Dallas, we're close to signing
Speaker 3: in Washington, and we're looking at the cargo and Miami
Speaker 3: and yeah.
Speaker 1: And also so so again looking back, this trajectory of
Speaker 1: going from making close at home was Manchester Fashion School
Speaker 1: when you went there, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well I wanted to be a fashion buyer, so studied
Speaker 3: fashion marketing. Retail marketing was called Manchester and that segue
Speaker 3: to me getting a job at Harold's. So I was
Speaker 3: on the graduate training scheme at Harrods. And I wanted
Speaker 3: to become a fashion buyer.
Speaker 1: So you didn't necessarily want to design, you're not trained.
Speaker 3: Still, my role at ME and M is really customer strategy, product,
Speaker 3: product strategy, brand strategy. Yeah, you know, growth strategy, locations.
Speaker 3: But I wanted to be a fashion buyer, which is
Speaker 3: why I did that degree, and then why I ended
Speaker 3: up on the graduate training scheme at Harold's. One of
Speaker 3: the girls that I lived with at Manchester, her father
Speaker 3: had an apartment in London, so that's how I afforded
Speaker 3: to live in London. So I was very lucky because
Speaker 3: I didn't have any money at all. And you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, if you remember those first salaries there nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety two, ninety two, the salary for working in eleven
Speaker 3: thousand pounds, so and you know you had to decide
Speaker 3: whether you were going to go on the tube or
Speaker 3: buy a sandwich or by newspaper. You know, there were
Speaker 3: decisions around the very basics in life. But then what
Speaker 3: I used to do was use my staff discount in
Speaker 3: the sale to go and buy.
Speaker 2: Beautiful things.
Speaker 3: When Georgia Emani died, I did think back and think, well,
Speaker 3: you know you helped me a lot.
Speaker 1: Do you think about that when you're when you're choosing
Speaker 1: clothes for your for women to wear to interviews to it.
Speaker 3: Really matters that first impression. It shouldn't matter, but it
Speaker 3: still does.
Speaker 1: What is your experience of being on the other side
Speaker 1: of the table when you're interviewing. What do you look
Speaker 1: for someone who comes for a job interview do obviously
Speaker 1: the way they dress, so they mostly wear me and
Speaker 1: them when they come for an interview with you, No,
Speaker 1: would you like? That doesn't matter?
Speaker 3: It matters that they've been into a store and bothered.
Speaker 3: That really understands. It depends what job they're going for.
Speaker 3: Normally you're looking for you're really wanting to see whether
Speaker 3: they really are passionate about what you're doing, because passion
Speaker 3: counts that absolutely everything.
Speaker 1: When you interview people who're just talking about interviews. Do
Speaker 1: you ever go with them to a restaurant because a
Speaker 1: lot of people that I've talked to say that they
Speaker 1: would always at some point I want to take somebody
Speaker 1: they were working closely with to a restaurant, because you what,
Speaker 1: it's like a date, isn't it. You know, if you
Speaker 1: go on a date you discovered are they coming to
Speaker 1: the waiter? Do they get impatient if the food is laid?
Speaker 1: Do they share? You know, you learn, you learn about someone.
Speaker 3: Do you feel that, Yeah, I've done that a couple
Speaker 3: of times and what did you learn?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: You learn a lot, you really do. I do a
Speaker 3: lot of customer research in restaurants.
Speaker 1: Well, tell me about that.
Speaker 3: So when I chose Madison Avenue in New York eight
Speaker 3: in all, you know, I went and had breakfast in
Speaker 3: the right places and supper in the right places in London.
Speaker 3: You're seeing the customers and what they're wearing.
Speaker 1: And when you in terms of your business about how
Speaker 1: many you say that five about five hundred people work
Speaker 1: for you and you're doing for five hundred, how have
Speaker 1: you grown? I know how I've grown. You know, we've
Speaker 1: grown slowly. We've grown from well originally two chefs. It
Speaker 1: was myself in rows, the two people. One of us
Speaker 1: would make sandwiches, one of us would make a pasta,
Speaker 1: and we had nine tables. But in a way for me,
Speaker 1: those restrictions were so helpful. If I had just come
Speaker 1: into this space and said we're going to open a restaurant,
Speaker 1: it would have been a disaster. But you also started.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what I was doing. I mean I didn't.
Speaker 2: I literally I was clueless. I mean I know I didn't.
Speaker 1: You must have known, because you succeeded.
Speaker 3: Very much like you, though started incredibly small, definitely started
Speaker 3: a business that taught me a lot, which was the wrong.
Speaker 2: Business, yarmor room.
Speaker 3: So we went, I know there's a gap in because
Speaker 3: I'd worked in advertising for twelve years, so oh, you
Speaker 3: have to look for a gap in the market. So
Speaker 3: I looked for the gap in the market and there was.
Speaker 3: There were the land where sort of revolution hadn't really
Speaker 3: started then, so everything was a bit nothing. There was
Speaker 3: nothing beautiful to wear at home. So we made really
Speaker 3: beautiful landwear, as you as you know, and you bought
Speaker 3: it for Rose when she was poorly, but it was
Speaker 3: too niche an idea.
Speaker 2: It wasn't going to grow.
Speaker 3: So we changed very quickly to me and em and
Speaker 3: that was a combination of me and my business partner, Emma,
Speaker 3: and then Emma left the business quite early on. We're
Speaker 3: still very good friends. We're still in book club together.
Speaker 3: We're going to book club tonight. But that was the
Speaker 3: start of the growth because we could there was no
Speaker 3: shortage of ideas. But because we started online, we suddenly
Speaker 3: realized that we were to consumer business, which meant that
Speaker 3: we weren't selling through wholesale, which meant we were only
Speaker 3: looking after one margin, which meant that we could make
Speaker 3: beautiful clothes for less. And then I remembered all my
Speaker 3: love of luxury through my days at Harold's. So a
Speaker 3: combination of my love of trousers, my from making clothes
Speaker 3: with my mum, my sort of consumer insight from advertising,
Speaker 3: my love of luxury from horsf I think if you
Speaker 3: melt it all together, you get me an m And
Speaker 3: because of our because we stuck to one route to market,
Speaker 3: we were able to make the clothes for less. So
Speaker 3: we suddenly had this and then we grew into this
Speaker 3: modern luxury positioning. And then we added British because we've
Speaker 3: realized people didn't know we were British, so we now
Speaker 3: position ourselves as British modern luxury and that was very
Speaker 3: important going into America to have that positioning. So and
Speaker 3: you know when we became famous for trousers, and there
Speaker 3: are very few businesses trousers are the most difficult things,
Speaker 3: are they because the fit of them is very technical
Speaker 3: and they fit on you know, women are very different
Speaker 3: around the bottom area, so you've got to be very patient.
Speaker 3: And we built up lots of DNA around our fit,
Speaker 3: which I actually did myself in the early days with
Speaker 3: this incredible fit technician from she was She's German, she
Speaker 3: called Ursula, and we created lots of different trouser shapes
Speaker 3: and I'd say, I don't like it like that. I
Speaker 3: think it should fit like this, and she was very patient.
Speaker 3: She go okay, well let's adapt it like this, and
Speaker 3: she was like a scientist. And then we started to
Speaker 3: get talked about in the press as the trouser whisperers
Speaker 3: and the trouser geeks, and that was when the thing
Speaker 3: started to get going.
Speaker 2: So those foundation pieces. I was thinking about. My favorite
Speaker 2: dish with.
Speaker 3: You outside of zucchini wish, is that how you do
Speaker 3: mozzarella because for some reason it's just the right giving
Speaker 3: us about how you can respin mozzarella endlessly. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: I always have it so good, like no one can
Speaker 3: make it like you, and how you design all the
Speaker 3: ingredients that go with it, but are always different.
Speaker 2: It's the same with a pair of trousers.
Speaker 3: You have to start with the beautiful bass fabric and
Speaker 3: then you can put lots of different ingredients with it
Speaker 3: and you can wear that trouser every single day looking
Speaker 3: completely different.
Speaker 1: I think there is a parallel between, but you do,
Speaker 1: you know, I've been thinking a lot about ingredients lately,
Speaker 1: whether I'm interviewing a writer and his ingredients or her
Speaker 1: ingredients or words, or you know, interview a business person
Speaker 1: and their ingredients are financial equations, but you know, and
Speaker 1: yours are fabric and yours are designed, and yours is technical.
Speaker 1: But if we don't have right ingredients and they don't
Speaker 1: have to be the most expensive ingredient, but the quality
Speaker 1: of the ingredient is where you start from, whether it
Speaker 1: is a word, or it is a tomato or it
Speaker 1: is a cotton, And then the technique that that then
Speaker 1: that you create doesn't it makes it, you know, very
Speaker 1: if you have that basis, then you can move forward.
Speaker 3: Sounds really simple, actually incredibly difficult to deliver.
Speaker 1: Yeah, unless you put on of course, you can't hide yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can't Yeah. You can't hide behind a bad fabric.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can't hide behind it.
Speaker 3: If you're going to do perfect simplicity ingredients, each one
Speaker 3: has to be perfect.
Speaker 1: For women who are working and doing what we do
Speaker 1: and also have a family that we care about and
Speaker 1: iry members coming to see you with Johnny, coming to
Speaker 1: see you with your children, have incredible lunches. So what
Speaker 1: how is that with your children and your dogs and
Speaker 1: your horses.
Speaker 3: Life for children is a marathon, not a sprint. And
Speaker 3: I think if you can remember that, and actually listening
Speaker 3: to Anya Heimach once on a podcast was very important
Speaker 3: because she's similar to me. She's got five children to juggle.
Speaker 3: I think she's got two of her own. I mean,
Speaker 3: she's a working, juggling juggernaut of a mother. I remember
Speaker 3: her saying that it's the really important things that matter,
Speaker 3: you don't remember the bits in between. So just always
Speaker 3: making sure that you're at the right things. You can't
Speaker 3: be at everything, but you can be at you can
Speaker 3: be at the you know all of the things that
Speaker 3: they'll remember, the holidays, the weekends, the cooking, the shows,
Speaker 3: the sports matches, and I mean, I have been known
Speaker 3: to have meetings on the sidelines.
Speaker 1: I've heard.
Speaker 2: I've heard, yeah, but it doesn't last forever.
Speaker 3: It's just it's twenty year sprint, right, But it's you've
Speaker 3: got to make sure you hit all the key moments.
Speaker 1: The other day, I was coming back in the taxi
Speaker 1: to home and I said to the driver, could you
Speaker 1: just go a bit faster because my son's at home
Speaker 1: and I really want to see him. And he said, sure,
Speaker 1: I'll try, But you know, why didn't you get somebody
Speaker 1: else to pick him up from school? And I wanted
Speaker 1: to say, he's fifty watch it's not a storable. I
Speaker 1: rather planner that I thought I had a child that
Speaker 1: could just be picked up from school. So I would say.
Speaker 4: To all of you parents, not only is it a
Speaker 4: it's a marathon, but it never ends, you know, I
Speaker 4: think they you know, you kind of show him to
Speaker 4: see your child, but no matter what age they are,
Speaker 4: and you're divided because you also were supposed to be
Speaker 4: somewhere else and you change directions.
Speaker 1: So but I think that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's so true, and you remember back
Speaker 3: to all of the moments where you were really super
Speaker 3: stressed because you were late for a round match or something,
Speaker 3: and you realize, really, you know, something just happened.
Speaker 2: But it all aggregates happy childhood, I think.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I love that, still racing home to see
Speaker 3: you're fifty on your.
Speaker 1: Old I started the River Cafe in nineteen eighty seven
Speaker 1: with Rose Gray, and she died in twenty and ten,
Speaker 1: and so there was a change and a loss and
Speaker 1: a direction that we had to sort of go in.
Speaker 1: And when you went to just said that you change
Speaker 1: for being me and m almost to me, you know,
Speaker 1: and didn't. It wasn't through a loss of me, me,
Speaker 1: me and me. It wasn't through the loss of final
Speaker 1: loss of death. And in fact you're saying that you
Speaker 1: are going to a book club tonight. But it must
Speaker 1: have been a big change for you to go from
Speaker 1: having somebody started work with to going to being on
Speaker 1: your own. Can you tell me what that was like.
Speaker 3: We've both got some resilience built in there, I think really,
Speaker 3: because losing your business partner is scary, and obviously yours
Speaker 3: was a tragedy, but.
Speaker 2: I think it was the making of.
Speaker 3: Me, to be honest, because I had to learn the numbers,
Speaker 3: and I'd let Emma do the numbers, and I was
Speaker 3: doing the products and the brand and the customer stuff,
Speaker 3: and I think I'd become lazy around the numbers.
Speaker 2: And actually the numbers really matter.
Speaker 3: And I study the numbers like you do daily, in
Speaker 3: fact sometimes hourly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And.
Speaker 3: If you don't understand the numbers, you can't make the
Speaker 3: right things because the numbers are telling you one thing,
Speaker 3: and then you need a large dollarp of intuition to
Speaker 3: go with it.
Speaker 1: Every day, I wake up in the morning and I
Speaker 1: get a text saying this is how many covers you had,
Speaker 1: this was the average spend, and this is the total.
Speaker 1: And then I look at I have what you know.
Speaker 1: At the end of the month, I know what we did.
Speaker 1: Although then I see what we did at the same
Speaker 1: time this week. If this is, if this is May,
Speaker 1: what was in April? April? And then a year ago,
Speaker 1: you know this is we all just look at where
Speaker 1: we are. I get results very fast. Richard, who as
Speaker 1: an architect or friends of ours who make movies take
Speaker 1: a lot longer to understand where they are in the world.
Speaker 1: I see it every day and it's crucial for me,
Speaker 1: you know, whether I need it every single day, but
Speaker 1: I do. And I think if we had fewer covers
Speaker 1: but we made more money, or we made more money
Speaker 1: but we had let you know, more covers, or or
Speaker 1: who was in and what what the what the average
Speaker 1: spend is? I can tell much health, how much? Yeah,
Speaker 1: the same, how much wine is being drunk? You know,
Speaker 1: because that always listenings up. So all that knowledge is crucial,
Speaker 1: I think, is it Stunstan?
Speaker 2: Who you know?
Speaker 3: Well, who's one of our early investors. One said to me,
Speaker 3: you can run your business off seven numbers and every
Speaker 3: day know those seven numbers and you'll be able to
Speaker 3: run a business.
Speaker 2: And it was the one of the best bits of
Speaker 2: business advice I ever had.
Speaker 3: So stay being data obsessed and customer obsessed gets you
Speaker 3: a long way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but do you know the seven yes? What are they? Well?
Speaker 1: Average order value? Average order value? Yes, So that's the
Speaker 1: one you mentioned.
Speaker 2: Absolutely critical.
Speaker 3: If you don't, if that doesn't stay stable, then you've
Speaker 3: got to.
Speaker 2: Get more customers. So how many customers are you acquiring?
Speaker 2: How many customers are you losing?
Speaker 3: So acquisition retention, the cost of acquisition, the lifetime value,
Speaker 3: and your three margins. Really, so I've probably done more
Speaker 3: than seven there. But are you hitting your worry less
Speaker 3: about intate margin now, but your exit margin, which.
Speaker 2: Is your margin after discounting.
Speaker 3: And then obviously profit profit critical, so sometimes you can
Speaker 3: be missing your revenue but hitting your profit.
Speaker 2: So it's just so interesting.
Speaker 1: I just love it.
Speaker 2: Because it keeps your clothes.
Speaker 3: People go your board always learning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you said you had a global best seller,
Speaker 1: what would be your global best sellers?
Speaker 3: Varies all through the year, so you know right now,
Speaker 3: I would say, if you looked at our top twenty
Speaker 3: best sellers, eighteen.
Speaker 2: Of them will be dresses and you'll have it.
Speaker 3: But in September it will all shift to jackets and
Speaker 3: trousers and it were so it varies through the year.
Speaker 3: And that's why because you base your business on ingreek.
Speaker 3: I was, I'm appointing to you the River Cafe, but
Speaker 3: you're you work on seasonality of ingredients. We do, and
Speaker 3: actually we do a similar thing, which is we work
Speaker 3: on the seasonallys of how people feel and how they
Speaker 3: want to wear. So we'll see a big shift to
Speaker 3: trousers and suiting in September October and then they'll move
Speaker 3: to coats and if you bring we find if you
Speaker 3: bring your coats in in August, no one really wants them,
Speaker 3: and then they're bored.
Speaker 2: By October at your ingredients will have gone off.
Speaker 1: I has to say, you know, we love Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: so many similarities and so many but I was wondering
Speaker 1: back to your going full circle to your parents and
Speaker 1: your family. I know you had a tragedy in that
Speaker 1: both your parents died within half an hour of each other,
Speaker 1: but did they understand they see your success?
Speaker 3: So I always say that me and m starts with
Speaker 3: my mom. Yeah, And of course my dad was large
Speaker 3: part of it. It was him that made me q on
Speaker 3: older market at six am in the morning.
Speaker 1: But it was the love of clothes.
Speaker 2: That I did with my mom, you know, made clothes
Speaker 2: with my mum.
Speaker 3: And yes, my father had been very ill for two
Speaker 3: years and my mom had been clearing the house out
Speaker 3: and she had put memory boxes together for my brother
Speaker 3: and I because when my dad died, my mom and
Speaker 3: I were going to do the house up and we
Speaker 3: had all these plans and anyway, the tragedy struck, my
Speaker 3: mom was on the phone to me and she had
Speaker 3: a brain hemorrhage, and she died, and they died with him,
Speaker 3: as you say, within half an hour of vation.
Speaker 1: I was going to tell you that your father had died.
Speaker 4: She was.
Speaker 3: I was supposed to be coming back. I was supposed
Speaker 3: to be getting to my father. So we were making
Speaker 3: plans for me to get to my father to say
Speaker 3: my final goodbye, and weirdly, she died actually a couple
Speaker 3: of minutes before him, and I had to go on
Speaker 3: a plane. So it was I'll love forget the British
Speaker 3: Airway staff. They were so kind, they were unbelievable. But
Speaker 3: I then had to go back to their house, and
Speaker 3: of course I'd always planned to go back to that house.
Speaker 2: With my mum.
Speaker 3: And remember they'd never moved, so the house that I
Speaker 3: was born in was where they died. And I went
Speaker 3: to look for her passport, and I found all our
Speaker 3: old patterns and needlework cases and the sewing machine, and
Speaker 3: it was all there, and she'd put it in this
Speaker 3: place as the memory of what we did.
Speaker 2: And at that moment the doorbell ran and it was
Speaker 2: a me and m package.
Speaker 1: Well that is a that is a full all down
Speaker 1: to mumbles circle down to your mom. Well, you can cry,
Speaker 1: we can try. I would cry. Brought chas to my eyes.
Speaker 1: And if you think that the tragedies you've been through,
Speaker 1: the joys you've been through, the children you've raised, the
Speaker 1: life you've led, and all you've done from you know,
Speaker 1: with with the control, with the rigor with the ingredients,
Speaker 1: with the demands, there's also times when you need comfort,
Speaker 1: and so we go to food for joy, We go
Speaker 1: for sharing. Your mother taught you, you teach your children.
Speaker 1: It's a way of being together. We appreciate the zucchini
Speaker 1: fretty and there is a sense of the way food
Speaker 1: is in our lives, so it can be for sharing
Speaker 1: and excitement and as for comfort. Before I say goodbye
Speaker 1: to you on this rating now day, if you do
Speaker 1: reach for food for comfort, is there food that you
Speaker 1: would reach for? Yeah?
Speaker 2: My mum Shepherd's pie made her style.
Speaker 1: With peas and ketchup. Hm hmm, okay, not very real.
Speaker 1: Tell me describe it, tell me about it.
Speaker 3: She put lots of hidden vegetables in so lots and
Speaker 3: lots of vegetables with the mince and red wine and
Speaker 3: lots of tomatoes.
Speaker 2: But it was the mash.
Speaker 1: Then lay it up with lots of cheese.
Speaker 2: And sliced tomatoes, so.
Speaker 1: You would just eat it with ketchup. She didn't put
Speaker 1: it in the recipes. She didn't put it in the
Speaker 1: ketch up on the side.
Speaker 3: Peas yeah, heinds ketchup.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Claire, beautiful, Thank you. Ruthie's Table for was
Speaker 1: produced by Alex Bell, Robbie Hamilton and Sad Rogers with
Speaker 1: Andrew Sang and Bella Cillian. This has been an atomized
Speaker 1: production for iHeartMedia.