Sarah Ashcroft never imagined she’d one-day be a multi-millionaire businesswoman with her own fashion label when she quit her retail job in 2014.
The entrepreneur’s social media profile, ‘That Pommie Girl’, had started to pick up and she wanted to go full-time with it – hoping it could eventually materialise into an income.
After six months of posting her daily outfits and fashion picks on her blog and Instagram, Londonder Sarah said her hard work started to pay off and her following had rocketed.
Within months, she was collaborating with high profile brands including Asos and L’Oreal.
But it wasn’t until she was asked to create her own collection for fashion brand In The Style that Sarah, now 27, saw an opportunity to start her own company altogether.
Fast-forward seven years and Sarah is now the owner of loungewear brand SLA The Label.
It launched in 2019, and after a huge push on her social media page, its first collection sold out within 24 hours, netting sales of £60,000 and £1million by the end of the year.
Last year, it recorded a turnover of £2.1million.
“I started SLA The Label back in June 2019 from my parent’s front room when I was 25,” Sarah told The Mirror.
“Having a fashion brand has always been a dream of mine and after being a fashion influencer for almost six years, I felt like I had learnt a lot about what consumers (my followers) wanted to wear.
“SLA initially started out as just loungewear as I had become known over the years for my airport outfits so it felt like a natural place to start. I also felt there was a gap in the market for the perfect oversized joggers and sweatshirts in colours that you couldn’t get anywhere else. Then it just snowballed from there.”
Sarah started SLA with £50,000 that she invested from money she’d made as an Influencer.
“I was very lucky to have that to fund SLA at the start to get it going without any outside investment,” she said.
“It started with three sweat set colours and five slogan t-shirts. We sold out so quickly on the first launch that we had to double our stock order for the restock which when it came in six weeks later.
“I then slowly started to expand the collection by launching more sweat set colours and even tested the water with a swim collection which launched in August 2019.”
This was a mistake, she admits, addressing how a decision to take money out of the business to test out a swimwear line was premature.
“In October 2019 I branched out further and launched a wider casual streetwear collection,” Sarah said.
“We saw success after success with each collection always selling out.
“Our most successful launch came in January 2020 when I launched the Angel Number collection which consisted of two hoodies and matching joggers.
“Craig David was even spotted wearing one of the Angel Number hoodies. This is definitely something I have realised over the years of running SLA - the more original a product is the better it sells.”
Despite her savings, Sarah admits it has been a financial challenge – and the business is still learning from its mistakes.
“Being self-funded in the early stages meant that as much as I knew we could sell 2,000 joggers, I couldn’t afford to buy that much stock so it was a real circle for a while of constantly selling out which made the user experience not great.
“Warehouse space has also been an issue for us as we have outgrown three warehouses in almost three years due to not being able to predict the growth of the brand.”
Sarah now has a team of five, including three freelance designers and one intern.
“We have already seen our highest sales in a January since launching, currently at £230,000 in 2022 to date so it's a positive start to the year," she said.
Now, Sarah wants to go global.
“I am extremely excited for the future of SLA. I still have so much to learn in the business world and often feel like I am just winging it so I feel proud to have reached where we are today.
"Next up, I would love to get logistical infrastructure in countries where we have a lot of sales so that SLA becomes more accessible for everyone."
