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Welcome to Teddyred

Welcome to Teddyred

 

 

Hi I'm Georgia, and I am the brain behind Teddyred Loungewear!

Since the launch of Teddyred in November 2020, a blog coinciding with the website has been something on my mind but I wanted to do it justice once I finally got round to it. Thanks to some very amazing people in my life, I now feel like I can tell the story of how Teddyred came to be, and what it takes to run a business at 20-years-old.

I had a very clear path that I wanted my life to follow, and after securing top-grades at school I had gained a spot at a Russell group university to study Geography. My meticulously organised 5-year plan was skewed very suddenly when I was diagnosed with a rare disease in 2019, that required urgent and extensive surgery. Even my surgery didn't go to plan, and my hospital stay was extended by a month where I was hooked up to feeding tubes and required multiple more surgeries. As a planner and organiser, suddenly having no master plan was quite an unwelcoming thought, and took a lot of acceptance on my behalf. Recovering from surgery occupied a lot of months, and was my sole focus for the remainder of 2019 therefore there wasn't a lot of time to ponder what my next move would be, which in hindsight was probably a good thing! 

Teddyred started out as a passion project, fusing together my two interests- sustainability and fashion. I vividly remember driving home from a hospital appointment with my Dad one evening, and we were just pitching ideas back and fourth, until I just thought 'loungewear' we need sustainable loungewear! The name Teddyred was a concept drafted up by 11-year-old Georgia, who thought it was the quirkiest business name ever and clearly my Dad agreed as I later found out he bought the domain for it the same evening in 2011. I spent around 4 months drafting up designs over and over again until they were something that I was proud of, and proud to let other people see. The biggest hurdle I experienced at the start was finding a manufacturer that was willing to take a risk on someone as young as me, which I understood but was equally frustrated by. The right fit for manufacturers actually happened by accident, and through a mutual friend which solved a lot of the problems I was facing. They were also willing to produce small batches of hoodies until I was at the point where I could afford to order larger quantities, which is a godsend for a start-up business.

From initial sample to launch, there was a 6 month gap in which I was attempting to solve every other problem a small start-up faces, from sustainable packaging to tag producers. In hindsight I'm very glad I didn't rush the process, as everything seemed to fall into place at the right time and with the right supplier. Im going to do a separate post on sourcing manufacturers and suppliers, so I will gloss over the details in this post to save repeating myself!

When starting a sustainable brand, the upfront costs for simple things such as mailing bags (100% compostable) are eye-watering, I think at one point I worked out I could get 500 plastic mailers for the price of 50 compostable ones! However, I was clear in my values from the start, and factored in the initial costs as a long-term gain for the environment. I even joined the eco-packaging alliance, which meant that when I order my compostable mailers from my supplier, I can choose where in the world trees are planted! 

Fast-forward to March 2021, and Teddyred has been live for 5 months. The evolution of the brand in just this short space of time has been immense. We got featured in Tatler magazines 'treat yourself' campaign, which was a huge personal achievement. My 4th collection is soon to be released, including some very exciting new products that we haven't introduced to Teddyred yet (which may or may not include sweatshirts and joggers). Most importantly, I'm so proud of what Teddyred has become, and what is to come in the near future.