FEATURE
Creating a Sustainable Brand, from Flock to Frock
T
he UK’s first vertically integrated, independent clothing brand starts and ends with Nadia Alexander in beautiful Perthshire. Nadia Alexander launched her first retail outlet in Multrees Walk in Edinburgh in 2017. Since then, her dream of creating a truly sustainable, luxury fashion brand has been realised with BearCo, which sells online, and from her Auchterarder-based boutique, Oliami. BearCo’s core product line is a range of modern tailoring made with Scottish woven wools and her own exclusive Mause fabric. The ‘flock to frock’ project is the brainchild of Nadia, and husband Murray Alexander, and is the first fully integrated product of its kind in the UK. Using wool from the family farm, Mains of Mause, in Blairgowrie, Perthshire, the processing begins in Yorkshire with Woolkeepers Ltd and Laxtons scouring and scrubbing to ensure a top-quality base product. It is then returned to Macnaughton’s mill in Pitlochry, Perthshire before being sent to Keith to be spun, and onto Alexander Manufacturing in Cumbernauld – a facility that Nadia has owned and managed since 2022. It is here that Nadia and the team design and produce the BearCo collection, and this winter will see the first collection drop in their Auchterarder store, Oliami, which has recently undergone a six-figure refurbishment in anticipation of the launch. Nadia commented, “We opened in Multrees Walk in Edinburgh in 2017, with a franchise brand, and by 2020 we were in lockdown. Like all independent retailers, it was a frightening time for us; we were relatively new, we had huge overheads, and we had to find a way to quickly grow our presence online to keep the sales moving.” Using a personal brand strategy including live recordings from her garage stockroom,
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she targeted a captive, housebound audience. “It grew so quickly! By the time lockdown was over our customer base had more than doubled, and when we reopened the shop it was a destination outlet that people travelled miles to visit – only 1% of our customers came from Edinburgh. I realised we had something special, and I could see the potential for growth but we were tied to the franchise. “We opened Oliami in Auchterarder in 2020 allowing us to stock the range of brands our customers were looking for. It worked, and by the time we were facing the energy crisis, and the eye-watering rent
increases, we knew we had something that could survive outwith the prime real estate location of Edinburgh.” The success ignited a desire to go one step further and she began to investigate the possibility of her own collection. Nadia wanted to bring a country-meets-city vibe to the classic blazer and jeans look and commissioned Clare Campbell of Prickly Thistle to create the Modern Blair tartan. This vibrant blue and pink tartan with splashes of green, orange and yellow, was brought to life by Lovat Mill in Hawick, and passed to Hancock’s factory in Cumbernauld ready to be transformed into BearCo’s first collection.
