Students’ model business plan

Nov 11 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

THREE Newcastle University Business School students have stripped down to their bare essentials to launch their lingerie business.

Beautiful Bottoms is the brainchild of marketing and management students Lauren Skerritt, Poppy Sexton-Wainwright and Izzie Bradshaw, who decided to model their own products.

The trio, all 21 and third-year students at the business school, came up with the idea during the business enterprise module of their course.

Lauren, from Norfolk, said: “We realised we were all into fashion and business and became firm friends. We wanted to show we believed in our own lingerie range and felt the most effective way to do this was to model it ourselves.” The girls posed in the silk underwear at a ruined castle in Norfolk to provide the promotional pictures for their website.

Poppy said: “It was really embarrassing, it was awful! Luckily there was no one else watching. There was just the odd rambler walking past.

“Next time I don’t think we’ll do it, we might get a professional to do it.”

The fledgling business has already received celebrity endorsement from Britain’s Got Talent judge and actress Amanda Holden, who is a friend of Lauren’s family, and former Treasure Hunt presenter Anneka Rice, who also attended the official launch at the Skerrit family’s Hoste Arms hotel and restaurant in Norfolk. The business has also secured boutique orders from Anna’s, which has five shops in London and East Anglia, plus Moo-Moos in Norfolk and Katulia in Shropshire. The Beautiful Bottoms range is also on sale online.

Poppy said: “We are in talks with Fenwick about taking the range on a sale-or-return basis. If they put in a big order, we would have the capital to extend the range. Originally, we wanted to do boxer shorts because there are a lack of nice boxer shorts for boys. If it goes well, we can do Beautiful Bikinis and Beautiful Boxers.”

The girls managed to borrow £9,000 to launch the business and had repaid three-quarters of that within weeks of starting trading. They are now juggling their enterprise with the final year of their degree courses.