It was 2011 and Julie Deane’s burgeoning handbag label, The Cambridge Satchel Company, was in hot demand. On the arms of fashion bloggers, her neon-leather satchels had dazzled New York Fashion Week and orders were piling up faster than her five British manufacturers could hand-make them.
Fortunately, Julie — who founded the company using just £600 and a simple desire to send her children to a better school — is someone who thrives on challenges. And as the handbag orders reached a backlog of 16,000, this was certainly a big one. A fan of Googling herself out of almost any situation, she found a shoe manufacturer with a bigger operation, reached out, practically begged for help, trained their staff, and cut a deal that meant the manufacturer was getting paid more per bag than she was. What happened next? He ripped her off.
A tip-off led Julie to discover the new manufacturer was using her leather, hiding stock and going after her customers. By now, her order backlog had reached 38,000 bags. “It was a really heartbreaking moment,” she recalls. “It was a gut-wrenching return of that stressful feeling, when I thought I wasn’t going to be able to make the best of this moment.”
When the arrogant manufacturer told her she’d be back, that she was foolish and knew nothing about manufacturing, Julie recalls how stressed and angry she was. Before she knew what she was saying, she was telling his staff she was starting her own factory and they were welcome to come and work for her. “I called my mum and said, ‘We’re starting a factory,’ and — my mum is brilliant; nothing fazes her — she replies, ‘Oh, are we? Okay. I’ll be over early in the morning then’.” And so, with the support of her five loyal UK manufacturers, Julie set about establishing her own factory.
Julie never set out to be a fashion entrepreneur. As a school kid, she longed to attend Cambridge and made it her goal to get there. At 17, she was accepted and was
the first in her family to go to university. After working in the US for Deloitte, she returned to her beloved Cambridge to take up a position as registrar at Cambridge’s Gonville and Caius College.
“I was the first woman to ever hold that position, and the college is 650 years old, so I really thought, ‘I’ve peaked. That’s brilliant. I’ve done my thing now.’ I was so proud to have held that position,” says Julie.
Fast-forward 13 or so years, and Julie was relishing her role as full-time mum to her two children. Julie’s eight-year-old daughter was being bullied at school, however, so Julie set her focus to getting her two children into a private school by setting up her own business.
“I didn’t want to give up my flexibility, so I decided, I’m going to run a business from home,” she explains. “So I made a list on an Excel spreadsheet of 10 things I could do to pay the school fees. It wasn’t glamorous; there wasn’t a lightbulb moment — it was just pure need and focus.”
On the list? “Things that either I thought I could do better or things that I’d been looking for and couldn’t find. I had to somehow get £600 to translate into a reliable £24,000 a year [the amount for school fees].”
via an online course in order to get her website up and running.
With columns in her spreadsheet listing things like cashflow pace, whether she would need to employ people, if she could do it from home, it was simply that the satchels idea got the most marks and hence became the business idea to pursue. “It was very analytical. I’m a very nerdy sort of person,” says Julie. And so, step by logical step, she set up her satchel company.
The handbag orders flowed in, and her children started at their new school. Julie was one of the first to embrace the power of the social influencer, sending satchels to bloggers and emailing as many people and publications as possible.
It worked, and The Cambridge Satchel Company is a real success, stocked internationally in stores like Bloomingdales and gracing the pages of magazines and blogs.
It’s evolution, not revolution’ — so we try to hold onto what makes our bag our signature. But at the same time we must keep evolving. When we invest, we invest in people.
The fact the bags are handmade in the UK and are of such high quality is of utmost importance. Julie, working with five UK manufacturers and having established her own factory, is proud to support British manufacturing in this way. “It’s one of the key things. The craftsmanship is incredible; the bags are handmade in the UK by people who are amazing at what they do. To keep those crafts going is really important.”
Though it didn’t document some of the incredible hurdles she’d overcome, in 2013 Julie’s quaint story of ‘British mum making it big and becoming a trendsetter in the fashion world’ was made into a goosebumps-inducing Google Chrome TV advertisement. “The story was so positive and uplifting. When Mum and I first saw it, we were howling our eyes out — we were just so proud. It showed what an incredible journey it had been.”
After external investment and an attempt at having senior executives onboard, eight years on and Julie remains at the helm of her company. “I have remained firm on this — this company doesn’t need a CEO. I’m the founder, I’m still here, and I’m not giving this up to people who have run big businesses, because what makes Cambridge Satchel strong is that we don’t entirely know what we’re doing,” asserts Julie. “There is a kind of warmth, and people find some of our mistakes charming because we’re trying to do it right. Maybe we don’t always do things the accepted normal way.”
Today, her bags are on the arms of “the coolest people”, with unpaid celebrity endorsements from Taylor Swift and Alexa Chung to Lady Gaga. With such popularity, has Julie worried about being a fad? Not at all. When quality is at the fore and with the investments she’s made in the people around her, as well as her keenness to keep the brand’s heart, Julie is adamant there is nothing to worry about.“I’ve learned a lot from people who do know what they’re doing in the fashion industry,” she says.
“Commes des Garçons said, ‘It’s evolution, not revolution’ — so we try to hold onto what makes our bag our signature. But at the same time, we must keep evolving. When we invest, we invest in people: our amazing designers, our product developers, and the people who make our bags.”
With staff onboard from the likes of Vivienne Westwood, Mulberry and Karl Lagerfeld, The Cambridge Satchel Company bags have an incredible pedigree behind them. Yet they are affordable for the everyday person. “We want real people to be carrying our bags. Our community are our ambassadors and they’ll sell our story for us.”
Julie’s humble foray into establishing a company from scratch has not gone unnoticed. She was the first woman to win Entrepreneur of the Year at the European Business Awards, has received a medal from the Queen for her services to entrepreneurship, and is now Entrepreneur in Residence for the British Library.
“I’m very driven and I love a massive challenge. Once I’ve decided on something, I’m very focused to the point of being like a bloodhound. To be successful, and for Cambridge Satchel to have done the things it has done, I needed that focus, that bravery, because there have been some really difficult times along the journey.”
Today Julie thrives on inspiring others and regularly presents to students at schools and universities. She aims to inspire people to be brave and to do something incredible. “I get so many emails from people saying, ‘I heard you speak and look what I’m doing now!’ and that just makes me feel beyond proud. It’s a real honour to be a part of that.”
