JoJo Maman Bébé’s founder has turned the fashionable mother and baby brand into a multichannel success after spotting a gap in the market. Lisa Berwin finds out how.

Lying in a hospital bed with 20 broken bones after a head-on car crash, Laura Tenison came up with the idea for her business - multichannel mother and baby mail order chain JoJo Maman Bébé.

The lady next to her was trying unsuccessfully to order clothes from her hospital bed for her children. Her frustrations made Tenison realise that there was a gap for good quality clothes for children that were well made, fashionable and comfortable.

Tenison started in clothing young, beginning to make clothes after her parents bought her a sewing machine at 12 and was bringing in money from selling her designs by the time she left school.

After writing to all the manufacturing retailers in the UK for work she landed a job at British luxury brand Aquascutum but could not settle working for someone else. “Being impetuous I left after 18 months,” she recalls. “I then took a business plan to all the banks but no one would back me,”

Her clothes were highly influenced by her time in Brittany, where she had her car accident and where mothers-to-be and babies had a better choice of stylish clothing.

However, from the inception of her mail order business, to the 27-store chain it is today, Tenison endeavoured to produce practical and comfortable clothing for children. “I am not into things like frou frou skirts, which scratch and are impractical,” she says.

From its mail order origins JoJo Maman Bébé has developed into a firmly multichannel business, which Tenison believes is key for all retailers now.

“We are truly multichannel and I cannot encourage my team enough to always be thinking about all the channels through which we sell,” she says.

Shop staff get bonuses for pushing sales through the catalogue for items not possible to be stocked in the boutique-style stores, but she also believes shops are vital for customer service.

“I am very in favour of regeneration of high streets and not big malls,” she says. “The only way independents can survive is to offer that level of service that you cannot get online or in supermarkets. We know all our customers names, we know their children’s names.”

Tenison continues to push steady growth in the business that, because there are no outside investors, she can speed up or slow down at any time that suits her.

By the end of this year JoJo Maman Bébé will have opened eight new stores to reach 30 and expects turnover in the current financial year to the end of June to hit £21.5m. Last year it made a £664,000 profit on sales of £17.8m. She is targeting growth of between 15% and 20% next year.

Last week her work in retail and for charities won her the accolade of Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year. She is a trustee for the Nema Foundation, a Mozambique-based charity for infant mortality, and through her retail business offers work placements for people with Down’s Syndrome.

Headhunter Moira Benigson, who was on the judging panel for the awards says what Tenison has achieved, and the ethics that are core to the business, are outstanding.

“She is driven, focused and very ambitious,” says Benigson. “There is no reason why the business should not go on to become much bigger or I could see a bigger brand buying it.”

For others who want to follow in her footsteps Tenison says that hard work and a belief in your product is key.

“A big challenge is also finding good people for your team and keeping them,” she admits. “Now and in any tough times cash is always king - profit is just the icing on the cake.”

She has also managed the rather daunting task of juggling her business, which now employs 280 staff, with raising two children. Her boys, now 11 and 14, have grown up in the office, often there doing their homework - they have their own computers - and when they were younger modelling for the brand.

Her oldest son will have his first summer job this year, sweeping the floors in the warehouse.

Tenison is warm and open and her success does not seem to have inflated her ego. She is more excited about next year’s Veuve Clicquot ceremony than this year’s because then she will actually be able to drink some champagne. This year the night was so hectic she did not have time to drink any.

Career history

Age 43
Family Married, with two sons

Business Founded JoJo Maman Bébé in 1993
Other roles Voluntary Welsh Assembly role model; trustee of Nema, a charity to reduce infant mortality in Mozambique
Honours MBE for services to business in the Queen’s 2004 New Year’s Honours List