Jessica Hanley: Founder & CEO of Piglet In Bed

Episode 567

On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, Jessica Hanley, Founder and CEO of Piglet in Bed, shares the story of her journey and the brand she has built. Starting Piglet in Bed in 2017 from her mother's garden shed in West Sussex with a small range of linen bedding, Jessica has expanded the brand to include beautiful, low-maintenance bedding, sleepwear, and homewares, with operations in both the US and UK. We dive into the challenges she faced, her dedication, and the key lessons she's learned along the way. Jessica discusses the fascinating background on linen, the story behind the Piglet in Bed name, and how they developed their signature calming colorways. She also talks about the role of social media in their growth, the differences between the US and UK markets, and their exciting plans for future expansion. Tune in now for one incredibly engaging conversation. Now on The Kara Goldin Show.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be I want to be you just want to make sure you will get knocked down but just make sure you don’t get knocked down knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control control control. Hi, everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. I’m super super excited to have our next guest here we have Jessica Hanley, who was the founder and CEO of Piglet in Bed, and if you have not heard from Piglet and bed, if you haven’t slept in Piglet and bed sheets, you need to get on it right away. This company has such an amazing backstory and is just such quality products quality company started in 2017 from Jessica’s mother’s garden shed in West Sussex. So cool, a small range of linen bedding ban and so much more I and I guess a couple of cheeky piglets as the first models that went into some of the pictures that started the success. So now the brand has expanded, it is not just in the UK at all. Jessica actually married an Americans so is now living in the US. So she is she is in both countries very, very much. So and I’m excited to hear about justice journey, the challenges she faced and her journey getting there. So let’s get started. Welcome, Jessica.

Jessica Hanley 1:53
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Kara Goldin 1:55
Absolutely. Tell us a bit about you. What were you doing before starting your incredible company piglets in bed and what drew you to this industry?

Jessica Hanley 2:04
Yeah, say I’m My background is in PR and marketing, I worked with a whole bunch of different kind of luxury goods brands. I spent about five years working in Dubai, before setting up the business, which was this kind of incredible opportunity to really progress quite fast and learn loads and work with loads of different brands. So that kind of expatriate life can be quite a great starting point. I always knew I wanted to start a business of my own and was kind of looking around for what the right opportunity would be. I was seeing in particular, I think, you know, a real shift in the way that brands were communicating with their customers, and especially female consumers. And I really just wanted to be part of that I was kind of sitting on the sidelines, but looking at the likes of other voices and glossier and, you know, just knowing that that’s the kind of thing I wanted to do but but had to find the right product at the right time. And always been really interested in home wares and just loved it from a personal perspective. And so kind of bedding felt like this really exciting opportunity to start, I think kind of big things that were really influencing me in those early days was seeing this real shift towards more sustainably sourced materials in other sectors, particularly in fashion. And feeling like maybe that wasn’t happening quite so much in home yet. But then also, you have this sort of much more authentic, realistic way that brands were presenting themselves or brands that I thought was really, really cool. Were presenting themselves. And I just wasn’t seeing that in home, you know, everything was still so perfect and polished and not really reflective of how I was living. So yeah, I felt like linen sheets as a starting point was this kind of dream fabric from both of those perspectives. That’s

Kara Goldin 3:53
awesome. So when you saw this opportunity, and you decided I’m going to go and do this, like what was kind of the initial vision for the brand, like did you think okay, I’m gonna start with sheets? What did you end up starting with ultimately, and sort of tell me about those early days as you were just getting started? Yeah, I

Jessica Hanley 4:16
mean, I, you know, I was, I knew I wanted to start with linen. You know, I figured kind of duvet covers and pillowcases was a good place to start. We didn’t raise any money for a really long time. So it was all self funded and so had to be kept as small as possible to really kind of see whether it was going to work. So I moved home with my mom in Sussex, like you mentioned at the beginning, and you have what the absolute smallest amount of stock I thought would make a brand you know, you kind of wanted to keep it tiny, but I needed enough to be able to, to look credible, not look like a totally amateur operation. So at the beginning we just had a couple of sizes. We had duvet covers and pillowcases and three colors. And it was enough it was enough to get the ball rolling? How

Kara Goldin 5:02
did you start? Like, I’m guessing? Did you go online and open your own store? And how did you get? How did you get the word out about it? Yeah,

Jessica Hanley 5:10
I mean, Shopify was such a game changer for loads of us, I think, you know, just totally reduced the barrier to entry. And you could just start, and I think my background, may coming from marketing and PR meant that I could get started with some small Facebook campaigns, I could start on the organic side of Instagram, you know, yeah, start tiny, and just just start building it up. I mean, in those early days, it really was, every order that came in, you’d hit up paying on Shopify and me and my mom would be sort of, you know, running around excited trying to get the order packed and out the door. And, you know, think back so fondly to these days, it was such a great time that it, it really was very small. Just kind of grew steadily from there. And we added on product categories, as we went along, kind of built up, I think that will authority in in linen and in this material that we were working with. So that I think, you know, we bought into that trend at the right time, and we’re part of building it up. But it just kind of steadily increased and increased our audience and increased our range over the course of a few years.

Kara Goldin 6:19
So you’ve mentioned linen a couple of times. So how did you decide on linen? And what did you learn about linen? What problem did you see out there that you felt like people weren’t focusing on that you could really call attention to?

Jessica Hanley 6:32
Yeah, I mean, there’s so much to love about linen, I think from the really effortless look of it, I think it’s so easy to style and make look really beautiful, it takes color and pattern really beautifully. So aesthetically, you know, I was thrilled. But more importantly, the way that it’s sourced is super sustainable. It’s a crop that is almost entirely farmed in France, and Belgium, it requires a pretty much only rainwater. So it almost no artificial irrigation, and almost no pesticides at all. So all of that is just kind of innate to the crop itself, which is fantastic. And I wish I learned about kind of, in the early years of the business, I was lucky to get some kind of coaching so that I knew more and more about that. But it was it was fantastic. From that sustainability perspective. I think as the business has grown, and we’ve been able to hire in more product expertise, we’ve been able to make the leap into cotton and into wool and other areas with the confidence to know that we’re doing in a really sustainable way. What was so great about linen to start with is that we almost didn’t need that confidence or that knowledge. It was just, you know, built into the crop itself was all this is this fantastic sustainability credentials. So we kind of could get started with confidence, knowing that we were doing something good.

Kara Goldin 7:51
I’ve heard you talk about developing the colorways. And why and how you describe them as calming. So is that really, when you were thinking about the different skews that you were creating not only the types of things that you were going to sell, but also the actual colors of those things? How did you think about those patterns? Were those things that you were really attracted to? Did you run all kinds of studies and research around it and said, This is what’s gonna sell? Or were you just like, I’m gonna go and test and see what happens. But I think that this is definitely what, you know, obviously, you your gut, you were trusting it. Yeah, it worked.

Jessica Hanley 8:35
I’d love to tell you it was it was super scientific and really organized. I think, in the early years, it was very much just what did I like, and what did I want in my home? And what did I feel was missing? What’s interesting is that kind of calming palette color palette that we started with, it was lots of that kind of millennial pink, but she did well at the start, you know, doves graze kind of quite neutral. Part of that, I think was me wanting to be experimental with color. But not knowing how far I could push it, you know, it was fairly conservative really, now that I look at where the brand is today and where we started. Nowadays, you know, we’ve got an amazing designer Adam that we work with, you know, he’s able to come in and say actually, no, we’re gonna do this crazy strike combination, and it’s really fresh and no one’s doing anything like it and you know, we’re able to be so much more daring. So we don’t need to kind of rely on calming, I think it’s quite such a crutch anymore. We can, we can be a bit more daring and we can have a bit more character in the range. And then you know, nowadays we’re always thinking about it. Obviously, there’s a commercial implication, we, for instance, sell like a lot of green and a lot of blue and so we always want to make sure we’re keeping that offering going. But then also looking at like, what are the gaps? You know what within our color palette, what are we not serving?

Kara Goldin 9:57
Do you think the trends towards Color Changing since you launched? I mean, do you feel like it? There’s like some sort of, you know, color different? I don’t know, like, between. I’ve also heard you talk about the UK colors versus the US colors, which I think is fascinating. Can you talk a little bit about those? Yeah, option? Yeah, I

Jessica Hanley 10:17
definitely, definitely think that that’s there’s always trends and things kind of evolved. When I started the business people were really into grays, and now you know, they’ve just gone through a real kind of shift away from gray of the conversation we’re having is that is gray coming back. We’re always looking at what the trends are. In terms of the difference between the UK and the US market, we to be honest wish that the UK would behave a little bit more like the US, the US is really kind of getting really excited about the colors and the patterns that we’re really excited about, you know, they’re our best sellers are so often our games and our stripes in some of the bolder, more exciting colorways. In the UK, whilst those styles do well, we are also selling quite a lot of white and oatmeal. And, you know, sage, green and some more kind of neutral colors. I think it’s a little bit to do with the purchasing power in those two markets. I think that you know, where we’re at in the UK at the moment, people need to needing to be a bit more cautious with their spending. And so, you know, people are buying things that they know, they’re going to like for years and years and years. In the US, I think people have, oftentimes slightly bigger homes, a little bit more spending power, and they can buy something that they love. They know they love this season and you know, that will last for years, but that they can, they can be more playful, and they can swap things out. And they can, you know, have have different patterns they use and different seasons and things like that.

Kara Goldin 11:50
Are there certain items that you guys sell much more of besides color in the UK versus the US like, people don’t buy X? I remember when I was starting the company that I started hint, we could not sell this. We weren’t selling outside the US. But we could not sell the cucumber water on the east coast. But we could sell it on the West Coast. Yeah. And I was like, fascinated by this. And I think that’s levelled out as people started to cross coast a lot more. But I’m so curious if there’s certain things that people just don’t buy. Yeah,

Jessica Hanley 12:27
I mean, there’s things that people do buy, I think in the US that we don’t buy so much in Europe, one of the ones so we’ve had to kind of learn, like, how do you guys style your beds? And what are we missing? And you know, what’s the different kind of behavior. One thing is flat sheets use a lot more flat sheets than than we do that kind of like we’re very, very much rooted and duvet covers, and pillowcases and fitted sheets. And that’s what most people have. And that’s all most people have. Whereas here, you’ll have a lot more kind of quilts and Shams and decorative things and then a flat sheets underneath. It’s really different. I’m always so interested, we’ll go and stay in Airbnb and I’m like, you know, was looking around at people got it, how are they styling it so that we can make sure that we keep up and we’re offering what people want. That’s

Kara Goldin 13:15
so funny. We had the CEO of the founder and CEO of Boland branch I was mentioning that to you on and he said like his biggest mistake, one of his biggest mistakes, was buying bed skirts. Like he thought everybody he always had bad skirts in his house. He was like it ends up like people don’t go out and purchase a new bedskirt very off. Like so they they got stuck with a lot of bedskirt

Jessica Hanley 13:43
Well, actually, that’s we’re about to launch the bedskirt. So we’ve learned that lesson ourselves. We’re doing very small quantities, and we’re doing them in a really fun and playful way. So we’re doing ginghams and florals and things like that. So it’s it’s going to be a small small market, but kind of thumbs for Instagram and Tiktok

Kara Goldin 14:02
that’s so fun. And so, when you think about social media, you mentioned Tik Tok and Instagram, how has social media really helped you to grow and promote the brand? I always hear about Facebook still and it seems to really be helping a lot of brands do you find that there’s one channel that kind of is definitely still strong for you?

Jessica Hanley 14:25
Yeah, I mean Instagram was our was our bread and butter right from the get go. And is still I think very aligned with who our customer is. So that’s, I think, you know, always going to be an important channel for us. Tick tock is newer, but has really done very, very well for us and I think has been a really big part of our growth in the US. You know, a couple of years ago even we were just getting started and our head of brown brand Rhiannon was was doing it herself at that time and really built it from nothing to where it is now which you know, is It’s oftentimes a lot bigger than the than some quite big brands. I think that’s what’s so fun about Tik Tok is that you almost it doesn’t really matter if you’re a massive established brand has been around for decades. You know, you don’t have a leg up really, it’s really all about the content that you put out there. And how good is it? And how fun is it and and people engaging? That it’s cool. It’s kind of you know, it’s a, it’s an exciting opportunity for young brands like ours. And it’s worked really well.

Kara Goldin 15:28
What’s been the most surprising lesson you’ve learned and building Piglet and bed? I mean, what what has been sort of shocking to you along the way?

Jessica Hanley 15:39
It’s tricky. I would say. I mean, what has really surprised me and I was chatting about this with my co founder, Axl, the other day is that I knew that I was passionate about building brands. And I knew that the early days, were going to be so cool and so exciting. And they weren’t, they were amazing. I thought that by this point, you know, I’d be ready to hand over the reins and to be doing something else. And I surprised myself by how much I love the day to day, I love building the teams I love kind of nurturing that talent within the teams and seeing all this great work and kind of operating at a much larger scale. So that’s really surprised me. And yeah, it’s a kind of thrill every day.

Kara Goldin 16:20
That’s awesome. So you partnered with Morris and CO and also Lisa says, God, what was the inspiration behind partnering with both of those brands,

Jessica Hanley 16:31
different inspiration behind them? I think, Morrison Co. For us, like when we set up the brand, we had these dreams of being, you know, what we call British heritage brand of the future, you know, there’s British design is really, you know, we’ve got these amazing icons of design, who have crafted what that British design look is. And when we started, we said, Okay, we want to be part of that we’re young, and we’re DTC. But we want to kind of, you know, leave our mark on that on that British design culture. And build a brand that’s going to be here for for years and years. Morrison, CO the epitome of that, you know, the incredible design archive, by William Morris from the 1800s these patterns, which are just so quintessentially British and recognized worldwide, that was always a dream, you know, if we could work with them that and be recognized by them as being part of that kind of British design culture, we’d be so thrilled. And so this was I mean, it was a real dream country when when they wanted to work with us, and to be able to reinterpret their patterns onto some of our products. Death is just is really fantastic. It really, I think, establishes us in that position of a kind of British heritage brand of the future. Lisa says God, on the other hand, is the absolute opposite of that kind of approach. You know, Lisa says God for us is, you know, it’s about it’s about, you know, we talked about tick tock earlier, it’s about the audiences that we’re reaching on tick tock, it’s about like a young and fun approach to design, it’s about kind of being really playful, and not taking yourself too seriously, which is all kind of really important to our brand identity as well. So it’s funny, you know, we’ve kind of launched them quite close together, Lisa says Golf Club and the Morrison poker lab, and they really represent the kind of the two very different pillars of our brand identity. That yeah, have been fantastic to see them take shape.

Kara Goldin 18:29
So you launched your brand in the UK, as well, starting in the UK, and then as well as the US, I think a lot of people think, Oh, I can’t go to another country. You know, you obviously have figured it out. I think in particularly the industry that I know a lot about beverage that it’s always you know, the sort of established people who have built brands and food and beverage would say that the marketing is sort of the key thing that you have to just be really careful about because you’ve got to be able to market yet. For a DTC brand like yourself, you probably have a lot of your audiences not just in one country or another. I mean, you probably so do you think for DTC brands, based on what you’ve seen? Do you have to? Does it not matter? I mean, are you would, would you go as far as to say that you’re global? I mean, and that’s who you market to or do you?

Jessica Hanley 19:30
But yeah, I mean, I mean, for us, it was really about going where the demand is, and so much of what we did was was organic on social and orders were coming in from the US and the audience, the brand was really resonating with was in the US and so if you have the opportunity to go into such a powerful, a huge market, you’d be mad, not to kind of really go for it. That was that was how we started, obviously then we started sort of putting some attributes Ajit behind our marketing campaigns in the US. I think for us, we have tried not to modify our strategy too much or modify our identity too much. Because we know that it’s our uniquely British perspective that is landing so well here. And so it’s this kind of delicate, ephemeral thing that we don’t want to lose. You know, we spoke earlier about like, what do we need to change? What are the products that the US market want that maybe we don’t know about yet, and we want to know about that we want to stay on the ball. But we also are very protective of keeping our identity and our personality and our our language and our tone of voice and all of that. Because it’s because it’s working. And so rather than trying to, you know, become the next, whoever, you know, the next version of a brand is already performing really well in the US, we’re very important to us that we keep keep our identity.

Kara Goldin 20:54
Definitely. So when you think about challenges along the way, we’ve had so many, the podcast is really focused on founders and CEOs and their journeys. I think, you know, so many people who are thinking about starting companies think that you’ve got to have the capital, you can’t even start anything, they don’t even know where to start along the way. You’ve obviously done it. And when you think about challenges that you’ve faced and sort of scaling Piglet in Bed, I’d love to hear what were some of the big ones, like once you actually got out of the gate and became, you know, the fearless self that you are and just decided what the heck, I’m gonna go try it. What? What were some challenges that you ran up against, that you really felt like? were, you know, hard?

Jessica Hanley 21:46
Yeah, I would say there’s a really significant psychological challenge in the in the early years before, you know, before you’ve got volume, before you’ve got the scale to know it’s working. You know, it’s it’s years of persuading yourself to carry on and persuading yourself, it’s gonna take off and it’s worth doing and you believe in it. And, you know, I was chatting with some new founders another brand, the other day, and they were saying, in the very early days, there’s not much to do, you know, you don’t have that much money to be kind of doing loads of photo shoots or loads of events, or whatever it is. And so you’re having to be in a very cautious with that spend. And that means that sometimes you’re waiting, you’re waiting for sales to come in so that you can do the next initiative. And I think maybe that’s not spoken about that often. That sort of psychological fortitude that you need at the beginning to keep going and not to give up. I’d say that was really challenging. Fundraising was was stressful. And that was challenging. We did that just at the the end of COVID. Really, we kind of grew the business massively during COVID, we tripled in 2020. And came out of that and said, Okay, you know, there’s, there’s a big opportunity here, this brand is resonating with people, it’s time for us to really go for it. But that was a whole if you’ve if you’ve been strapped your way through those early years. You know, it’s a real challenge to kind of go through all of that due diligence and be ready for it and level up enough to take that on. So that was really challenging. I would say that since then, it’s been a whole different ballgame. It’s all been about growth and about hiring and about. Yeah, building the team. Nurturing that team, trying to build a really fantastic culture and keep that really fantastic culture whilst we work kind of in a hybrid remote model, which is hard, and we’re all establishing entirely new ways of working for the first time, you know, there’s not there’s not a rulebook to follow. So that’s been the I would say, probably the most challenging and fulfilling side of it.

Kara Goldin 23:57
Yeah, definitely. What are you most proud of? When you think about Piglet and bed when you? You know, I think it is so hard for founders to kind of look back and say, gosh, like I was, in my mom’s garden shed building, I had no idea what I was, you know, they always sort of chuckle about it. But there are definitely doubts that come up along the way. And I always encourage founders to think about, you know, no matter where they are in the cycle, like what they’ve been able to accomplish, because even if they don’t feel like they’ve accomplished what they set out to do, they’ve learned a lot. You know, they’ve they’ve really, you know, engaged those brain cells that they weren’t necessarily engaging prior to actually starting this company. But what do you what, what are you most proud of when you think about the Piglet in Bed brand?

Jessica Hanley 24:53
I actually had a bit of a funny sort of perspective on this recently because so I had a baby recently and I’ve been kind of stuck in the US going through that journey and having the baby and learning how to look after him. And so just a couple of just last week, for the first time in about a year, I was back in the UK. And so really, it was a weird thing. You know, we’re growing the business so much, we’re opening shops in the UK for the first time. And I was obviously really, really involved. But from afar, like I hadn’t seen any of it, I hadn’t met so many of our new team members in person. So that was a really sort of wild emotional week for me, I got to see two of our three shops for the first time, I’ll see that they the other one in September. I just look around and think this is beautiful, the product is beautiful, the shop is beautiful. Felt like the teams were really happy to be working there. I got to meet lots of new team members who I hadn’t met in person and who just seemed really excited to be joining. And, you know, they got the brand, they were excited about it. They had ideas for how to how to grow it in the future. You know, I get to sit back and I get to listen to them now. And I get to hear these ideas rather than it always being me kind of staring things. Yeah. And I had a real moment of like, this is this is amazing. I feel so proud.

Kara Goldin 26:05
Yeah, that’s awesome. I love to hear that. So expansion plans for the business. You mentioned, you’re opening some stores in the in the UK? And what would you say to like what’s coming for the next three to five years? Yeah, retail

Jessica Hanley 26:24
is the new frontier. For us. It’s, like I said, we’ve got three stores in the UK. Now we’ve got a few department store concessions as well. Looking at how we grow that and and what our retail strategy is for the US as well, is kind of real top of mind at the moment. The stores are performing really well in the UK. So they’re kind of they’ve done their job of proving the concept to us or proving that our product does well in the store context. So yeah, it’s kind of thinking about it, what are the vacations that we want to do? What’s the size we want to do? How many do we want to do, how kind of aggressive we want to be with this? All of those are kind of questions that are open, but that I think will really define what the next few years looks like.

Kara Goldin 27:09
So best advice, this is the last question. So best advice you can offer anyone wanting to start a business, anything come to mind,

Jessica Hanley 27:21
I would say try and sort of not get too distracted by the noise. I think one thing I often say and I don’t know if it’s good advice or not. But it definitely works for me is to not at least in the early years get too distracted by your competition. I think, you know, a brand like ours, like we we’re not alone in the bedding space. There’s there’s plenty of people doing really fantastic work. I think if I spent too long, you know, on their websites and on their social accounts, like I could freak myself out for sure. I think, you know, not always just operators if they didn’t exist, which helps you to keep unique, your unique perspective, but also helps you just have the courage to go big and believe in essence and keep moving forward. I think you know, in this landscape, there’s a lot of brands doing a lot of things, and it can be overwhelming. So yeah, you want to tune that out.

Kara Goldin 28:13
So true. So Jessica Hanley founder and CEO of Piglet and bed. Thank you so much. Well, I’ve everything in the show notes, but really appreciate you coming on. And thanks, everyone for listening. Definitely go to Piglet and bed stores. And if you’re in the UK or online, as well, and check out the tiktoks that she’s doing too. And Instagram is super, super good. Your socials. Awesome. So thank you again. Just appreciate it. Thank you so

Jessica Hanley 28:44
much. This was fun.

Kara Goldin 28:45
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would, please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit and of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. I would love to hear from you too, so feel free to DM me. And if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book undaunted, where I share more about my journey including founding and building hint. We are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening and good bye for now.

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