Tell us more about your personal background and your growing up years.
Travelling and our love of clothes gave us the inspiration to start Atticus & Gilda. We discovered when we had our own children that there was a lack of beautiful quality children’s nightwear with wonderful styling and colours and without logos .Our nighties and pyjamas are inspired by English, Oriental and Indian clothes
How did you become interested in this business niche?
Conchita trained as a fashion and millinary designer and worked for several years in a London fashion house. Through friends she realised she could use her fashion and millinary skills in the world of theatre. Lucy trained as a theatre costume designer and maker and whilst at college started making contacts and working on west end theatre productions.
Did you have formal training?
Our formal training is proving invaluable as we have a great knowledge of cut and fabrics. We love experimenting with dyes, printing and trimmings especially on our accessories range which we also run alongside our nightwear range.
What were the biggest challenges you faced initially?
Undoubtedly the biggest problem is finding a reliable factory to produce the highest quality product. We were very lucky when we started out as we had friends in India who worked for us producing specialist fabrics for Mamma Mia! They helped us to get started.
How did you raise capital for your business?
We financed the business with our savings.
How demanding is your work schedule?
We juggle working on all the worldwide productions of Mamma Mia! with working on Atticus & Gilda .Luckily as there are two of us we can make sure everything works smoothly if one of us is away for work or family commitments. We have both always had full time jobs and theatre has very unpredictable hours so adding in starting a new business didn’t seem like a problem! We spend as much time as possible on Atticus & Gilda as we can.
How do you strike the balance between work and life?
We are at an interesting stage as we are getting a lot of press coverage and we are now ready to start selling Atticus & Gilda in outlets around the country as well as our online store.
What do you hope to achieve with business?
We hope to develop Atticus & Gilda into a key lifestyle brand for globetrotting children and to be stocked in the UK and abroad.
What is your biggest achievement to date?
Seeing the first big shipment come in and realising we are really on our way!
How do you find your next inspiration?
Our inspiration comes from everywhere. As we are experimenting with changing the colours not the designs of the nightwear, it could be a photograph, fabric, fashion magazine, nature…