Suki Waterhouse & Poppy Jamie share top tips to running a business

 Suki Waterhouse
Presenter Poppy Jamie and model Suki Waterhouse have opened up about running a successful business and the lessons they’ve learnt in their first year. 

Speaking to Harpers Bazaar at work, the Pop & Suki founders shared their tips on creating and maintaining a brand.

The best friends created their own custom range of accessories including jewelry and bags and made it onto Forbes’ 30 under 30 for the collaboration.

Harpers Bazaar asked the duo to list five lessons they have learnt in their first year of running the business.

Jamie and Waterhouse both listed Instagram as the number one tool for a brand’s growth, explaining that for e-commerce, Instagram is the shop window.

“We treat the Pop & Suki Instagram as our customer’s window into our world, and we feel that it’s imperative to have a consistent aesthetic across our entire feed, so that the untrained eye can get a feel for what your brand stands for within a few seconds of glancing at it,” they said.

Secondly, the duo discussed how collaboration can be beneficial to a company’s success, as you share the benefits of pooling together both businesses’ resources.

“There’s room in the market for an infinite number of brands, and partnering with another likeminded (ideally not directly competitive) company can bring tons of mutual benefits.”

The third lesson the girls listed was teamwork, and making sure that every single member of the team has an input and is listened to.

They explained that by asking everyone, including the financial team for their opinion, then the business gains perspective from all consumers.

“Sometimes the least likely team members have offered up the most revolutionary ideas!”

Next, Waterhouse and Jamie told Bazaar that being best friends and business partners can be advantageous, depending on how you communicate.

“Yes, it can be calamitous if you don’t see eye-to-eye creatively, if you have differing expectations of what you want to achieve together, or you straight up don’t get along if you spend too much time together, but if you have an open and honest line of communication, patience, and real compassion for one another, then there is nothing more beautiful than working side by side with your chosen family.”

Finally, they encouraged a good work-life balance with an emphasis on mental health as one of the reasons for their success.

They said: “In the start-up world there seems to be a stigma around having a work/life balance and getting the sleep you need to function as a healthy human being.

We refuse to abide by that standard.”

The girls said they were ‘proud’ to be a start-up with a strict 9-5 routine.

Pop & Suki’s pop-up shop is now open in the London Selfridges accessories hall.

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