Serial entrepreneur and television celebrity Theo Paphitis has launched an exciting new brand, one in which experience is all. RLI caught up with him recently in London to discuss the inspiration behind the lingerie sensation, Boux Avenue, and his plans to
take it forward.
There cannot be many people who have not heard the name Theo Paphitis, the ‘Dragon’ who has revived the fortunes of such notable brands as La Senza, Contessa Lingerie, Ryman, Partners the Stationers and Stationary Box. And now he has inspired a new brand.
Launched in spring 2011, Boux Avenue is an exciting shopping experience for lingerie lovers, both online and in-store. The brand presently focuses on sizing options that range from 30A to 40H – and later all the way to K – thus ensuring that women will be able to buy beautiful styles that fit perfectly.
Boux Avenue is all about you, it’s about the customer, the person who buys the product. It’s not about me or the staff, it’s not about the look,” says Paphitis. “There has to be a reason for people to want to come and spend money at Boux Avenue, so we have designed the stores, the service and the product; we have designed an experience.”
The brand currently has eight stores, the most recent of which was its Guildford opening, and there are new openings scheduled for Westfield London W12 and the Bullring, Birmingham. Some 15 stores are expected to be open by summer 2012.
“We are hoping to have opened 20 stores in the UK by the end of the year,” adds Paphitis.
Bluewater is Boux Avenue’s largest store at the moment and probably one of the largest single-storey lingerie stores in the UK, and plans for Westfield indicate another spectacular experience.
Essentially though, Boux Avenue is an e-commerce business, with stores. Its infrastructure is completely embedded in a multi-platform environment, with the back end at head office. So, a customer can go into a store, buy something and have it delivered. Or they can order it online and pick it up in a store.
So these are exciting times for Paphitis?
“I don’t get excited by new ventures like this,” he enthuses, “I get orgasmic. I can’t wait in the morning to get stuck in, to me it’s revitalising. A new venture is like a new baby – you want to play with it, get to know it, progress it; you want to develop, you want to change things, you want to experiment.”
For the full article, please see the March 2012 issue.
|
