The whites and wrongs of going it alone

The White Company's growth rate is down to research, hard work and luck, says EMMA TOBIAS

Christian Rucker, 33, is founder and creative director of The White Company, a specialist mail-order company that sells mainly white lifestyle products for the home. With no prior training, she abandoned her career in journalism to start her own business, and found that life wasn't always a bed of roses.

The White Company was launched in March 1994. After hearing people complain about how they couldn't buy white household products in one place, Rucker and her husband Nick Wheeler, managing director of Charles Tyrwhitt Shirts, saw a gap in the market and decided to pursue a business that combined selling white products with the mail order service. At the time, Rucker was an assistant health and beauty editor at Harpers & Queen.

Rucker's career had always been in the fashion and beauty world. She studied at the Lucie Clayton Couture fashion school in South Kensington, London, when she was 17 and then took her first job as an assistant to Anneliese Sharpe, the wedding dress designer. She then moved into the world of media and started working for Condé Nast Publications as a receptionist but then moved on to be an assistant in the beauty and fashion departments at GQ, Vogue and Brides. This led her to work in the PR department at Clarins for eight months, after which she was employed by Harpers & Queen to be an assistant health and beauty editor.

"When I started The White Company, I was only 24. I was incredibly young, naive and had no formal business training or background in any shape or form," Rucker says. "I had the attitude that I had a great idea and I would just give it a go. I would set myself a deadline and do it for a year, and if it works, fantastic and if it doesn't, I would just get myself a job somewhere. Nine years later, I would never start a business like that because I think it is idiotic, but I was very lucky." Rucker also points out that many people take the sensible path of planning and research, but end up backing out because they get cold feet. "Looking back, I wouldn't change the way I did it at that stage in my life, but if I were to start something now, I would take a much more technical approach."

Rucker, who had yearned secretly for years to start her own company, learnt everything she knows on the job. "I've made a lot of mistakes along the way and each time you make a mistake you try not to make it again. In the year that the company started, there were various hiccups. One of the factories where we got our stock from had its roof ripped off and was flooded, so they couldn't deliver any of the products. Also a supplier delivered all the wrong stuff for our first consignment. Our duvets and pillows are designed to have white casings and at the time everyone was using the old equerry-coloured casings. So when our order arrived, we opened the packages to find old equerry instead of white. There's not much you can do to protect yourself against instances like that, and if there is a cock-up in the factory, you just have to send it back and get it remade as quickly as possible."

As a result of such problems, the company has given suppliers a manual which outlines all the terms and conditions including penalty clauses, should a delivery be unsatisfactory. "We're trying to overcome these hurdles and are also working to improve supplier relationships and quality control."

The company has grown at 50 per cent a year over the last nine years and is now expecting an annual turnover of £21m. It employs 150 staff and has four UK stores.

To help maintain its growth, Rucker wants to concentrate on the retail arm of the company. "The main bulk of the business is still mail order and we also launched an internet site 18 months ago, which has proved to be fantastic. This year we focused on opening more shops, and have just opened a shop in Bath and a second in London. We're not going to go crazy, but we're going to take stock for a while and see what is and isn't working and then next year aim to open more across the country, possibly in Guildford and Manchester."

The White Company is still a private company and Rucker has no immediate plans to change this. "I suppose one day when I am old and grey someone may want to buy it and I'll let them take it off my hands."

Starting and running a business with no prior experience has taught Rucker a lot and she is now in a position where she can advise fellow entrepreneurs with dos and don'ts of starting a company. "If someone was to ask my advice on how to start a company, I would go back to the same old thing and say, 'Believe in it 100 per cent and do some sort of market research'. Because I was a journalist before I started the company, I was able to call some contacts at a well-known department store and ask them what percentage of white bed linen they sold. They told me it was consistently over 50 per cent, so I knew that a strong part of the bed linen market was white and that was a great starting point for me. I would advise new starters to do solid limited market research, set themselves a deadline that they will stick to, so if it's not working they can either tackle it or move on."

All the running around at work gives Rucker little time to enjoy the pleasures in life. She has three young children and when she is not designing new white creations and listening to customer requests, she is running around after them keeping them organised and happy. "We have a house in Shropshire and tend to spend most of our free time there doing country things, like mucking out stables. Not very glamorous."

Her personal life may not be glamorous, but her business is a success.