Member Article

Belle’s Getting Bigger!

Award winning Cleckheaton lingerie retailer expands

Online lingerie retailer, Belle Lingerie, has just expanded its business by taking on additional warehousing and office space at the site of its current headquarters, due to growing demand for its lingerie and swimwear. This has given the company an additional 3,700 square feet of space. Janine Dutton started the business in 2005 and now employs over 20 people. The company has an annual turnover in excess of £3.5 million.

Since 2005, Janine has gone from small business premises, to a state of the art warehouse unit 5 years ago. The new expansion at the existing site should allow the company to trade comfortably for the foreseeable future having outgrown the space they had due to the rapid expansion of the business (it continues to grow at a rate of around 30% year on year). Belle Lingerie is now one of the largest independent lingerie retailers in the UK.

Janine spoke of the company’s success: “Expanding the unit is a real turning point for us as a business. Not only does it gives us additional space for stock, it has enabled us to create better working spaces for staff and more efficient processes for fulfilling orders and dealing with returns. For someone who never really set out to set up a business, I’m really pleased with the way Belle Lingerie has grown and developed and I still have big plans for the future.“

Janine’s success has recently been recognised at the Bradford Means Business Awards where she won the Business Woman of the Year category.

Janine now employs several members of her family, including her son, and has plans to develop the ranges and explore new selling platforms.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Sarah Ainslie .