STARING at the ceiling in a bedsit above the hairdresser she worked in, Tillie Peel knew she was destined for more.
The 31-year-old is a risk taker. She left home aged 14 and spent two years staying with various family members and friends, before moving into the studio flat aged 16.
Tillie Peel, 31, left home aged 14 and became a hairdresser[/caption]
Now, she is the proud owner of The Pop-up Club[/caption]
She had been sweeping the floors and washing hair at the salon for two years, and jumped at the chance to have her a place of her own to call home when the room upstairs became available.
Tillie is no longer a hairdresser.
Now, she is a successful business owner whose company is turning over a whopping £700,000 a year.
Tillie runs The Pop-up Club, which finds unused public spaces and organises a consortium of local small businesses to sell the products or services out of.
Think of it like an indoor market – and Tillie is the proprietor.
In its first year, the business made a shy £12,000.
But Tillie kept plugging away, leading The Pop-up Club to pocket £75,000 in its third year – that’s a mammoth 525% increase on Year One.
“I was living in my overdraft when the business started,” she tells Fabulous for our exclusive series, Bossing It.
“Coming from nothing, I remember thinking, ‘this has to work’. I didn’t have any other choice, I knew that making my business work was what I had to do.
“It took sheer determination and not being too scared of taking risks.
“Women in business have to jump through so many hoops and be knocked back so many times to be taken seriously, but I’ve built my confidence dealing with that now.”
Tillie, from Chelmsford, Essex, describes living above the hair salon as an “amazing” time in her life – albeit difficult – and leaned on the help of her colleagues to show her the ropes of adult life.
She moved to Spain aged 18 to continue being a hairdresser and then, when back in England aged 21, moved into a one-bedroom flat.
She rented out the only bed in the property on Air BnB while sleeping on the sofa to make ends meet.
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As much as Tillie enjoyed being a hairdresser, she says she “never connected with it” and always had big dreams of owning her own business.
“I’ve always known I wanted to work for myself,” she says. “You really have to do what it takes if you feel like that.”
Her entrepreneurial journey started with a vintage clothing business in 2016. But when she realised that it would be “financially impossible” to set up her own shop, she came up with the idea of sharing premises’ with other vendors.
“I liked the idea of lots of people coming together and collaborating, so I started running a market as I needed a space to promote my own business,” Tillie says.
The first official Pop-up Club was hosted in Chelmsford in 2017[/caption]
Now, it has outlets all over the UK that help Tillie rake in £700,000 a year[/caption]
The entrepreneur hosted her first collaboration in December 2016 after a friend working as one of Santa’s elves in their local shopping centre identified a prime area for a range of stalls near the grotto.
Tillie took a punt on the idea and managed to get some more local brands to set up shop in the premises, alongside her vintage fashion brand.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though.
In the early days, Tillie would pretend to be someone else’s PA to convince sceptical landlords and councils to let the spaces to her on a temporary basis.
After getting a solid foot in the door in Chelmsford, she soon realised how successful her idea was, leading her to ditch her fashion business to pursue The Pop-up Club full time.
Tillie has been setting up temporary pop-up shops across the UK since 2017, including London, Manchester and Brighton.
LEASE OF LIFE
Take a walk down just about any British shopping street and you’ll see empty shops or signs advertising closing down sales. It has long been touted that online shopping is – slowly but surely – killing the great British high street.
Some of Britain’s most well-known brands (think Ted Baker, The Body Shop and Debenhams) have been impacted by the tidal wave of shifting consumer habits.
This is something Tillie wanted The Pop-up Club to directly counteract.
She doesn’t want small businesses to fall victim to the relentless pull of the internet, so gives them a physical space through The Pop-up Club that would’ve otherwise been financially unattainable.
Women in business have to jump through so many hoops and be knocked back so many times to be taken seriously, but I’ve built my confidence dealing with that now
Tillie Peel
“We go into a space that’s going to be empty, we work with the landlord and then we activate that space instead of it being empty,” Tillie says.
“We can go in there and do something that will boost local artists, local communities and local businesses.
“And we make it really affordable for everyone involved.”
A number of the small businesses who cut their teeth at The Pop-up Club have gone on to secure lucrative contracts with the likes of John Lewis.
‘FACILITATING GROWTH’
The Pop-up Club shops can be open anywhere from six weeks to six months, with the current project in Chelmsford being the longest running in any area.
A blurb on the business reads: “The Pop-up Club is a community.
“We take empty spaces and make them beautiful – not just aesthetically, but through the values we champion: sustainability, diversity, uniqueness and affordability.
“Our mission is simple: To provide designers, makers, artists and small businesses that have sustainability at their core an affordable platform to access the high street and grow.
“The Pop-up Club identifies and transforms unused public spaces with the intention of adding cultural and commercial value to the local area.
“We flexibly use empty, dilapidated or difficult spaces in an imaginative way on a temporary basis, and transform those spaces into attractive, vibrant, and unique community assets.
“Our aim is to nurture and facilitate the growth of our traders, reducing financial risk whilst providing the opportunity to grow and engage with new audiences.”
