RENAE JAMES - PAPINELLE
A CRAZY DISPLAY OF GRIT, AND HOW IT TOOK 12 LONG YEARS OF BEING IN BUSINESS TO EARN GOOD MONEY.
Imagine you’ve been in business for over a decade and you’re still on the edge of success. Would you give up?
This is what Renae James, founder of Papinelle Sleepwear, experienced in her first 12 years in business, but she’s still here to tell the tale. Renae started Papinelle in 2003 selling her PJ designs from the stalls of Paddington Markets in Sydney. When her collections started selling out each week, she took a leap of faith and got a $9K bank loan to move from the stalls to something bigger.
Fast forward to now and Papinelle is on every street corner in the US and she’s considering establishing a team there. Papinelle is a story of slow growth over a long period of time. This is a story for anyone that isn’t sure if they’re going to make it or that’s feeling stuck.
You’ll learn:
How she started the brand with a $9000 bank loan, and why she’s never taken on external money since then
How it took Renae 12 years to make good money in her business, and how she found the courage to never give up
How Renae manages the design and production of 12 collections each year
How Renae met her now-business-partner Nicole back in 2004, and why she brought her into the business 15 years later to help take the brand to the next level
The big mistake Renae made saying yes to a huge order that she wasn’t set up to fulfil, and what she learned about saying no to opportunities before you’re ready
We hope you enjoyed this conversation – for more podcast action follow us on Instagram @lady.brains, or sign up to our monthly newsletter at www.ladybrains.com
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“I went and got a bank loan for $9,000 and bought all this fabric. Then I remember having a heart attack that night because I’d spent $9,000, and I had no idea how I was going to pay it back. ”
“I remember getting an email from Marshall Field’ s, who was a huge department store in the US. They asked if they could wholesale our product. It was a huge David and Goliath moment. They had a way of sending purchase orders, and I had no idea what it was. We didn’t even have barcodes on any of our product. It was one of those moments where every step of the way was learning something new about mass production. And it really helped set us up to scale. ”
“Two minds are always better than one.”
“We always knew that in the US, Nordstrom was our customer. So we went in to pitch to them, and they did a test order with 25 doors. Then, the second order went to 75 doors. Then it went to all doors. After that, we went to middle America, which is a different customer altogether. We weren’t sure whether she would respond the same way. But we did really well. ”
“One of the big mic drop moments was when Forbes wrote about us and said that we were one of the 32 female led businesses to watch out for. It was just out of the blue and it was so exciting. ”
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