French Sole

Neat feat

French Sole started as a hobby for Jane Winkworth but soon flourished into a global footwear company with a formidable client list
By Alex Elliott

Jane Winkworth knew she was on to something after an over-zealous holiday shopping spree as a teenager. She returned from France with a suitcase full of ballet pumps that didn’t fit, but found that friends snapped them up. Some years later, inspired by a lifelong love affair with ballet, Jane began designing her own shoes, and in 1989, French Sole was born.

“It started as a hobby,” she says. “I’m not very competitive and it hadn’t hit me that it could be such a big thing.” But her simple, stylish ballet pumps soon captured the attention of Diana, Princess of Wales, whose interest, in turn, caught the eye of Vogue. Today, French Sole’s devotees include Madonna and Kate Moss.

Following the success of the traditional ballet shoe, French Sole has expanded its product range and has become famous for being a luxury flat shoe brand. There are now four London stores, a mail order business run from the head office in Reading and a sister company, London Sole, with stores in San Francisco and Santa Monica. The shoes are trademarked around the world and sold to more than 500 outlets.

An eye for minutiae

Jane believes attention to detail has been crucial to the firm’s success: “The highlight of my day is when a letter arrives and the stamp hasn’t been franked so I can peel it off and reuse it,” she says. “I’ve taken the very minimum myself and I’m meticulous about watching money. I can spot wastage 100 yards away and I hate it; if I see that things aren’t going well or that one style is not selling, I am very quick to move it to another store.”

 
She has, however, started to step back: “I used to get up, sweep the pavement, make coffee for customers, make calls to order leathers. But I realise now that you have to delegate.”

Fortunately, she is able to rely on a very close-knit team, who share her passion. She now plans to spend a quarter of the year designing shoes from a new studio in Portugal while she leaves the day-to-day running of the business to her three other directors, including her husband John, Finance Director, and her Managing Director, Lucy Choi.

Choi joined French Sole seven years ago to look after press, PR and marketing. “She was so involved straightaway and wants to see French Sole become as big as Jimmy Choo,” says Winkworth – Choi is the niece of the legendary shoemaker. “We work brilliantly together; she is my rock. I see her as one of the family.” Choi is equally enthusiastic: “I love the whole cycle: we start with the research, Jane designs all of the product, we have a meeting where we look at some of her designs, we get the shoe made, decide whether to go into production with it, then go about getting it into the press.”

She is very proud both of the quality and workmanship in the shoes themselves and of their international reputation. Fans come to London from all around the world. “They are so excited to see the colour combinations that they don’t see in their own countries, they end up buying 10 pairs at a time. We already sell to stores in Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, Korea, Dubai and Singapore, but people see maybe 15 colour combinations per season. We want there to be freestanding stores in these places where there are 500 colour combinations.” The company is now seeking investment for expansion plans that involve building up to 10 new shops internationally over the next five years, in areas where the brand already has an established reputation.

Larger footprint

“French Sole is fantastic at what it does,” says Rob Donaldson, Head of M&A and Private Equity at Baker Tilly, who has been appointed to guide it through the next stage of its development. “The attention to detail in the product itself but also how they present and package it, even where they pitch the price – it is all very well thought through.”

Nonetheless, these are tough times for smaller, private businesses. “Banks are under pressure to lend but where they are lending is to large corporates,” he says.

“You need to be careful when tapping into equity capital because you don’t want to end up damaging the culture that made the business such a success. So, it’s our job to approach the right investors and negotiate the terms of that external funding, which will allow French Sole to accelerate the roll-out of stores.”

It is French Sole’s biggest challenge thus far but Winkworth and Choi exude quiet confidence. “We’ve seen how far people come to see our full range – the overseas PR has already been done,” says Choi. “A lot is at stake,” adds Winkworth. “But I’m quite instinctive about knowing when the time is right.” As founder of the firm responsible for making ballet pumps a fashion staple the world over, she probably has a point.