Taylor Yates – Fashion From The Heart Of Bushmills

EyeonFashion Business

Taylor Yates –Fashion From The Heart Of Bushmills

When Mancunian Karen Yates touched down in Northern Ireland for the first time back in 1988, little did she know that she’d still be here more than 30 years later, or that she’d be running a family-owned luxury brand fashion business based on the scenic Causeway Coast.

“I came over here to work for Desmonds in Derry on their graduate scheme,” she says. “and moved over permanently in the early 90’s. Back then, Desmonds was a huge business, producing a range of menswear, children’s clothes and ladies’ fashion for big retailer Marks & Spencer.”

During her career with Desmonds, Karen helped to grow the ladies wear side of the business to a £37 million turnover.

“But I’d managed to acquire a husband and three kids a few years later,” she smiles. “So I decided on a change of career and went to work alongside my husband, Russell, in his print and design business based in Coleraine.”

Seven years ago, with daughter Ellen in her final years at school and preparing to head for university in Karen’s native Manchester, the pair looked at ways of setting up their own handbag business, a fashion business with nearshore manufacturing, sustainability and ethics built into its model.

“We started with £10k of working capital, not a lot for a fashion business,” says Karen. “So we couldn’t move into clothing ranges, much as we’d like to have done that.”

From its outset, Taylor Yates has targeted the lucrative higher end of the handbag marketplace, fashion items that its buyers and owners aspire to buy and want to be seen with. All well and good, but it’s a market sector traditionally dominated by some very big fashion names indeed.

“The look and feel of our bags was important right from the start,” says Ellen Yates, now out the other end of a fashion management degree in Manchester and working alongside her mother. “But so was the manufacturing process. A lot of high-end handbags are made in North Africa or the Far East. We looked at China, quickly decided against it, then considered Italy.”

A chance encounter at a business dinner with former Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Owen Paterson, provided a lightbulb moment. “Owen knew a lot about the leather industry in England and put us in touch with the UK Leather Consortium,” adds Karen. “To cut a long story short, we talked to a number of leather manufacturers over in England and found an ideal partner with a factory in Somerset.

“We launched our first collection of handbags made in Somerset in November, 2016, and within 18 months of our launch, we had a waiting list of customers wanting to buy one of our bags.”

In those days, Taylor Yates was an online business, selling to customers all over the UK primarily but also further afield.

Then, in 2018, having returned from a trip to London Fashion Week, Karen & Ellen Yates decided on a bold move into bricks and mortar retailing. But, true to form for a mother and daughter who like to think outside the box, they didn’t venture into London, Dublin or even the affluent suburbs of Belfast.

Having worked on a new workspace hub development in Bushmills alongside economic development agency Enterprise Causeway, the pair agreed to take a retail unit and set up shop for the first time.

“We honestly didn’t know what to expect,” says Ellen “but we opened for the first time in early August of 2018 and sold eight handbags in one day. We really didn’t expect that.”

It’s worth remembering, with that in mind, that these are handbags ranging in price from £145 up to £595, with an average price around the £400 mark.

“So, I think it’s fair to say that we knew then that we had products that customers wanted,” smiles Karen Yates.

The team at Taylor Yates has worked hard through the years to build added value around its bags, to add a sense of ownership and to create a strong brand personality. Each of the Taylor Yates bags has a woman’s name – Agnes, Tilly, Elsie, Mavis, etc.

“We haven’t just come up with the names at random,” she adds. “These are the names of women I’ve known over the years right back to when I was growing up in the North West of England.”

Six years on, Karen & Ellen have built a luxury leather fashion brand and managed to retain the strong sustainability and ethical themes. The company plants a tree for every bag sold and works alongside a number of local charities. At the manufacturing level, each bag is created using surplus leather sourced as a by-product of food production.

Just this year, the pair achieved their dream of expanding into clothing for the first time, launching a knitwear line with the same circularity and responsible sourcing at its heart.

“We design and create products that we feel people need, not just want. Taylor Yates bags and knitwear transcend the seasons, they are designed to be worn all year round and our customers love this about the brand,” says Ellen.

Taylor Yates’s core values are ‘people, planet, purpose’ and the company has been awarded the Butterfly Mark, a third-party accreditation that identifies the luxury brands that meet the highest standards of transparency and environmental performance. The team recently completed The Carbon Literacy training and as a result they now have targets to achieve in their drive to be a net zero business.

What’s next for the business? In her academic dissertation, Ellen outlined plans for three services – re:serve, re:fresh and re:deem. In short, they’re a handbag rental service, a handbag refurbishment service and a buyback programme.

“We think that these are innovative ways of extending the reach of our brand and our products, and they’re also the kind of additional services that our customers will welcome.”

In addition, the company has secured additional growth funding through Whiterock Capital to help fund its development plans.

MEET THE BRAND

Taylor Yates is holding an exclusive, one night only event focused around beauty, fashion and homeware, giving people the chance to see many of their favourite brands in person, all under the one roof. Tickets are on sale for the event happening at Banana Block on Belfast’s Newtownards Road on Thursday 13th October, with proceeds going to Glow NI, a local charity focusing on empowering women and girls with life skills to increase confidence and self-esteem.

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