Global Maternity celebrates 'culture of pregnancy'
by WIN Admin — published in Press Releases
Boyes left her career in HR after 13 years last June to go into business on her own, and launched Global Maternity in February this year. She hopes to expand the business into a worldwide supplier of quality clothing, and is keen to open up a shop outside of cyberspace in the future.
She said: “I’d like to see weekly sales and turnover go up, and to massively increase the range and scope of what I supply. The site should also become a source of information for pregnant mums around the world. I don’t just want to stock clothes. I want the site to be something that celebrates the culture of pregnancy around the world.
“My dream would be to open my own bricks-and-mortar base in Newcastle, because there isn’t a shop for maternity clothes in the city.”
Global Maternity stocks clothes from designers such as Noppies Maternity, Wonder Mummy and BooBoo, with items such as skinny jeans, shorts, dresses and swimsuits available for the expectant mother. Boyes initially wanted to set up an eBay shop, but went for her own website as her business would be more attractive to designers with whom she wished to work.
She said: “One of the main things the clothes do is to allow mothers to remain fashionable and not lose their identity when they feel like the back of a bus. It’s also very much about the price and quality of the clothes. The main clusters of sales have been from the south and Yorkshire, and then it’s places like Edinburgh and Glasgow.”
The Newburn-based business woman is also a mother to 13-year-old daughter Bethany, but said she has “never had a problem” in balancing work and home life. She said traits she learned in her previous job helped her to raise the maternity business, such as “organisational ability, clarity of thought and ability to give required levels of customer service”.
She said: “If someone can’t find something on the site, I will go away and research it for them. A lot of people have been quite pleasantly surprised that I don’t just try to match customer expectations, but exceed them. Before I worked in HR, I was a retail manager. I haven’t come into this blind.
“It’s going better than I expected but it’s still a long way off what I want it to be. I’ve got some sales but not enough for me to retire and have a villa in the South of France. It’s probably one of the most difficult things I’ve done, but I’m thoroughly enjoying the hard work.”
John Hill, The Journal