Turnover Magazine

Frances was part of Alan Sugar’s
search for the UK’s next star entrepreneur
in 2016 and went on a
challenging journey.
“People accuse me of using my husband’s
money to do what I’ve done,” she
says. “Now, I’m going to pay for his retirement
- so the tables have turned!”
In a famous interview with Claude,
which went viral, he raged: “I don’t know
what you’re doing here?!”
But, Frances’ success hasn’t come
without hard work and she believes her
experience on The Apprentice defined
that; although, she did apply as “a bit of
a joke.”
The experience led to her taking a
year off social media, and allowed her
to start to look for problems within her
company.
“I came back and I found all the
things that were wrong with my business.
I’d been brutally cut down on TV. They
said ‘this is crap, this is crap, and this is
crap. Your business is terrible!’”
After careful consideration of the advice
given to her, she now cites Claude as
her “bezzie!”
“I’ve got him on WhatsApp,” she said.
Despite not winning The Apprentice,
Frances’ high street children’s clothes
store chain, has achieved rapid results in
a quick timeframe.
“My bank manager said that not winning
was the best thing that ever happened,”
she said.
As she sipped her cappuccino, she
described the magical moment she discovered
what her business idea would be,
after picking up her son from school in
her husband’s brand new Mercedes Benz.
“I was in Lidl car park, opened the
boot of my car and it was quite new, quite
an expensive car. I had my little boy in the
back seat, screaming as they do, he was
only six months old at the time.
“Paint was everywhere. And I mean
full on emulsion paint. I was stood there,
I had a trolly full of shopping, kids crying,
and I wasn’t bothered about the car
- screw the car!”
A £90 Hugo Boss jacket laid in the
middle of the paint - which she was
forced to replace for her son, with a five
pound alternative from Asda.
This sparked the idea for her new business
venture. Frances runs an affordable
children’s high street retailers known as
‘The Pud Store’.
“Why is there not a chain of shops
in kids wear, that’s fun, inclusive, doesn’t
care if you’ve got £5 in your pocket or
5000?”
Her growing success is unique, as The
Pud Store currently has no transactional
website and uses Facebook as a platform
to promote her brand to her clients.
Emphasising her commitment to the
community, she chooses to keep the page
closed so her clients feel a part of her
journey.
“This is why I feel like I can share my
life story on there. It used to be 600 members,
it’s now nearly got 20,000 people on
there,” she said.
The former Apprentice star currently
has three stores in Newark, Mansfield,
and Doncaster, with Barclays funding the
opening of two new stores in March 2019.
Just this year, her stores have made over
£1million in turnover.
Despite Frances’ clumsiness, eccentricity
and scattiness, The Pud Store has
gone onto matchstrong results in every
store she opens. “Landlords are now starting
to approach me saying ‘you’re the pinnacle
of high-street retail.
Even though you’re little, you’re doing
what the big guys can’t’” she said.
Frances explained how she tries to
capitalise on the experience of everyone,
including some of her older customers,
who may shop for their children or
grandchildren.
“I do have a tendency to adopt OAP’s.
It’s great! We can learn so much off them
to be fair. The grandma’s come in and I’m
fascinated to know how businesses were
run 40 or 50 years ago. I tell you what -
they were running a hell of a lot better
than they are now!”
Frances also believes that opportunities
to work should be given to everyone,
adding that “businesses owe society
something.”
She said: “We should be trying to help
people back into employment, we should
be inspiring them to do more and I think
a lot of businesses think ‘well if she’s not
qualified, then she can’t have the job.”
Previously, Frances has said how she
believes the key to her business success
is to ‘kill them with kindness.’ Currently
working on developing two new stores
with the firepower of Barclays behind
them, her dream is now to become “the
Mary Portas of the high-street.”
“People accuse
me of using my
husband’s money to
do what I’ve
done... now I’m
going to pay
for his retirement!”
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5AM Magazine.indd 22 11/03/2019 13:59:15