It started with a car crash. But in the 25 years since then, JoJo Maman Bébé has been a runaway success. Miranda Jessop finds its creator, Laura Tenison, still happy and excited at the wheel
My children are well past the bonny baby and cute preschooler stage. In our house, the terrible twos have long since given way to the terrible teens. But a meeting with Laura Tenison, founder and managing director of JoJo Maman Bébé, provides me with the perfect excuse to pop into the flagship Kingston store.
Waves of nostalgia come rolling in, as I survey the rows of gorgeous little outfits and innovative products not even invented back in the day when I was a yummy mummy. Sadly, these beautiful clothes no longer fit my nearly nine-year-old baby, and a quick glance at the noticeboard with flyers for maternity yoga, baby signing and Buggyfit classes is enough to bring the sober truth home: this is a community to which I no longer belong.
And there’s more. Upstairs a chic maternity section comes complete with loo, baby changing facilities and a quiet area for feeding your little one. For the new generation of local young parents, JoJo Maman Bébé in Kingston really does have it all.
It was back in the early 1990s that a sharp twist of fate led Laura to conceive of her immaculate firm. On the way to sell her small property company in France – which she hoped would enable her to realise her dream of starting up a men’s clothing business in the UK – she suffered a head-on crash. And it was while she was recuperating in St Thomas’ Hospital, her jaw wired shut, that the idea for JoJo first came to her.
“In the bed next to me was a young mum who was reliant on mail order to buy clothes for her children,” she explains. “Each time one of these packages arrived, I could see how disappointed she was with the quality. Because I had been living in France, I was used to seeing children out on the beach in all weathers wearing nautical dungarees tucked into little rubber boots with cotton linings, and I had this sense of a possible gap in the UK market for really interesting childrenswear with a French twist.”
And so, in 1993, JoJo Maman Bébé was born: a mail order company selling children’s clothes and maternity wear.
“One of our most popular first designs was a breathable, waterproof, all-in-one suit for a toddler,” recalls Laura. “Not only could the child splash about in a puddle, but he or she could sit there and still be dry. On the maternity side, Lycra had only recently been invented, so mums-to-be just loved our range of stretchy clothes.”
In the early days, Laura kept her stock in her parents’ shed in Wales. As demand grew, she gradually took over more and more outbuildings.
“We had one part-time member of staff working in Wales three days a week, and I would drive down and pick and pack parcels on the other days. I will never forget the time that I had completely underestimated the size of an order and my poor parents had to remove all the furniture from their sitting room to make space for 10 pallets of stock.”
Within four years, and now with a website to complement the mail order catalogue, JoJo had an annual turnover of one million pounds.
Then, in 1997, Laura became a mother herself – a development that greatly influenced the direction of the company.
“It really was the best possible form of market research, as every stage I went through gave me fresh ideas. For instance, we used to put buttons on nappy changing openings, but the first time I changed my son’s nappy, I realised it was just too fiddly and that we needed to look at other solutions. We were also the first to invent fold-over scratch cuffs for a sleep suit, while the idea of a baby wetsuit came to me because my youngest son would get so cold whenever I took him to the local swimming baths.”
Almost 10 years after the launch of JoJo, Laura decided that it was time for a shop.
“We held a small sample sale in our office in Battersea and were so inundated that people could hardly fit through the door. I saw first-hand how customers enjoyed actually touching and feeling the products before buying.”
The way was clear for the first JoJo Maman Bébé shop, on Northcote Road, just round the corner from the office. As Laura had hoped, it was a huge success and the number of outlets steadily increased. There are now 88 in the UK.
Growth, however, is only a part of the equation. Right from the start, Laura’s ethos has always been to put people and the planet before profit.
“Landfill is completely abhorrent to me,” she says. “It is so unnecessary to be littering this planet and I feel that retailers have a moral duty to encourage their customers to buy wisely.”
As the youngest of five children, Laura herself was always dressed in hand-me-downs. Today it is hugely important to her to run a company in which the products sold are not for single use, but can be passed on to many other children. Whilst JoJo does offer parents essential items such as plastic pots and spoons, it works hard to offset all its plastic production with its Polarfleece range of clothing, made from recycled plastic bottles.
“It is more expensive for us, but I get far more satisfaction out of knowing that we are working towards being as environmentally responsible as possible than I do from making profit.”
A quarter of a century in and now with 950 employees, Laura is still very much at the helm.
“I feel that my job is never done,” she admits. “I don’t look back and think: ‘Wow! Look at what we have achieved.’ I look forward and think: ‘Oh my goodness, we’ve got so much to do.’”
As if to prove the point, having already expanded internationally since 2011, Laura is now on the verge of opening JoJo’s first retail stores in the States.
“I always said that when my youngest child left school, I would take on a new challenge. The trouble with my life is that, as soon as I create a little bit of space, I fill it twice over.”
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