As a parent, you’ve probably experienced that gut wrenching feeling when your child has grown out of their clothes and you know the time has come to buy them a whole new wardrobe. Bags full of clothes start piling up around the house, you know you could probably sell them, but you just don’t have the time, so what do you do? One woman who’s trying to change this is mum-of-two, Charlotte Morley, who recently appeared on BBC’s Dragons’ Den (and became one of their most successful contestants) with her kids rental clothing business, The Little Loop.
“Children grow so quickly so there is very little sense in paying the money and wasting the resources needed to buy things new, because you're not going to keep them for long,” she tells us from her sewing machine. “We all know the best thing you can do to be more sustainable is to buy less and to use things for longer, but with children that just doesn't work. I had two small children who were growing like weeds and rental just seemed like the obvious option. Why buy children's clothes when they'll just grow out of them, when you could borrow them instead?”
We sat down with Charlotte to find out more about how The Little Loop works, her top tips on shopping more sustainably and how she finds a work life balance…
What is The Little Loop?
We’re the first shared wardrobe for kids, so we rent clothing for children from 12 months up to 10 years. Rather than parents buying lots and lots of things they possibly won't use, or need, they have this shared wardrobe to choose from that they can take things out of when they need them, and they put things back into when they don’t need them. As a result, there's far less wastage.
What inspired you to create The Little Loop?
I genuinely hated it when my kids grew and I had to change and clean out their clothes. You’re like ‘oh God they've grown again, what am I going to do with these clothes?’ And particularly when I had my second daughter, and I knew I wasn't going to have any more children, I was like where are they going to go? Not only did I hate that process, I felt like I ought to be selling the clothes, but it's such a time consuming, tedious thing to do. I could send them to charity, but I’d spent quite a lot of money on them. It just genuinely felt like the system wasn't working and that's where the inspiration came from.
How does The Little Loop work?
Customers subscribe to one of our plans, which will then give them access to all of the clothes in our shared wardrobe. They then choose what they want and when they want to swap them they send them back and choose something else. As long as they’ve bought a subscription they can take things in and out of the wardrobe as often as they want to. It's that simple. The whole idea of it is it's a way to be sustainable without adding cost or burden.
How much are the different subscriptions?
We have three different subscriptions, an £18, £27 and £36 and these will get you different amounts of clothing. So £18 gets you on average about six items, £27 gets you around 10 items and £36 gets you around 12 to 13 items. But the way we've done it is we use a credit system. The way it works is everything in our system has got a credit value, depending upon its retail price and its condition. So if you were to choose a really expensive item that was brand new, then that will cost you more credit than an older item, which is maybe less expensive, for example, a t- shirt. So if you had a small subscription you could get maybe 10 t-shirts or three coats. So it's designed to be really fair, because you're actually getting what you're paying for.
Who were you most nervous about standing in front of on Dragons' Den?
I think Peter Jones because he's quite well known for being controversial. I think he's the one that will pick holes in you. Someone I was chatting to before the Den said I think sometimes he just does it to play devil's advocate, so don't worry about what Peter says, because he probably doesn't really mean it. He's kind of saying it just to probe and see what happens.
“I had two small children who were growing like weeds. Why would we buy things for children who are growing so quickly, when we could just borrow and give them back instead?”
How did it feel when Deborah Meaden said to you that she wanted to be a part of something that makes a difference?
It was quite funny actually, I was standing outside the lift doors and you can hear because it's only a studio so you can hear quite a lot and I heard her go ‘Oh, this is a circular business I can tell from the packaging’ and from that moment I think I really relaxed because I could tell from her voice that she was excited. So from that moment I was like, ok all I have to do now is not lose her, I didn't need to win her over, I just needed to not lose her at that point, and that was that was a real relief. She was wonderful, I think she's such a fair person.
Some parents would argue they could walk into a High Street store and buy five new items for £15. Why should parents sign up with The Little Loop?
I understand that as a parent you often don't have time to plan ahead and you may just be like ‘Oh I’m just going to go to Primark’. But I think the thing that got me and what gives me the energy to get up every day and keep building this business, is that this is for my kids. I'm not trying to guilt trip anybody, but our children are not going to have a planet to live on and enjoy if we don't change what we're doing, because we can't keep exploiting resources and thinking that it's ok to just keep buying stuff and throwing it away. We can’t keep thinking ‘wouldn't it be nice if we live better?’ this is a we absolutely have to do something about the way we consume and the way we live. If your inclination was to go to Primark maybe just try doing something slightly different, like buying fewer items, that would be a start because the planet can’t support it. But it’s the people too. If you think about what it takes to make a t-shirt, to grow the cotton, to turn that into fabric, to dye it, cut it, to turn it into a t shirt, do the design, the marketing, to ship it around the world, it's not possible to do that in five pounds or less. Someone is losing out and the people that are losing out generally are the people who are in those factories in other countries who are being exploited.
What are your three top tips for parents who are looking to shop more sustainably?
• Buy less - it's very easy to just buy five vests for your kids because they're cheap. But think 'do I actually need five vests or do I need three?' Don't just go buying everything because it's cheap.
• Buy better - try and buy things which have been manufactured in a way which is more ethical and sustainable if you can afford it. It ties in with buying less, because actually instead of buying five vests that are fiver each you could buy three that are a tenner each. It may be slightly expensive, but it starts to balance out and you don't need to buy as much stuff. So it's about being a bit more conscious about how you consume.
• Look after what you’ve got - it's become almost unfashionable to do laundering and to repair things, but actually it's really simple and it's an easy way to make things last. A lot of parents will say, and I totally get this because I've been there, ‘oh my kids trashed their clothes’, but actually most things are rectifiable. I think we also don't tend to look after our stuff anymore because, we've got use the fact that if it's dead we can get something new to replace it. I think where we need to get to is thinking ‘actually I bought a really nice thing and I spent a bit more money on it therefore I'm going to look after it’ and that whole cycle just continues, because then you're more likely to buy better things, you're more likely to look after them, they last longer, which is the best way to be sustainable.
It’s great to see that you’re a successful mummy entrepreneur, what are your top tips for balancing family life and work?
I think having kids, certainly for me, forces me to be a bit more balanced. I make sure that I get home or that I stop working in time for bedtime; I do bath time, I read stories, I give them cuddles, it just brings you back to earth and you go 'ok, work is work and really important, but these are the things that are the most important in my life'. Right now I'm working around the clock, but on the weekend I won't work and I’ll spend time with my children. I have to carve out that time because they need it, I need it and actually when you're with them I think it makes you more productive, because your brain is freed. When you're not obsessing about work your brain is much more able to process things and you end up being more creative and more productive.
If you missed Charlotte on Dragons' Den you can watch her episode here.
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