Biba, Bardot and ballet pumps... a combination that inspired Jane Winkworth to launch French Sole from her dining room table with £300. Now the worldwide brand attracts a loyal list of celebrity clients and is seeking an investor to fund further growth

Jane Winkworth, founder and designer of footwear brand French Sole, is on a fleeting visit to London. She's been launching a collection of flat shoes and boots at London Fashion Week. But she's squeezed in time for an interview. "You're not superstitious are you?" she asks as we sit down at a table laden with footwear. Winkworth has just been discussing designs with her PR people. She is launching her first children's range exclusively in Harrods and a one-off collection of heels to celebrate the company's 21st birthday this year. It's quite a departure from the ballet-style flat footwear on which she has built her business.

She picks up a child's ballet pump to show me the intricate work that goes into making her handmade shoes. "It takes 25 pairs of hands to complete the process," she explains. "It's craftsmanship on a tiny scale, but I do it because I'm known for quality at a fair price. My competitors will knock that out in China and charge the same price as me, maybe even more."

It's this blend of quality and value for money that keeps punters coming back for more. Winkworth has built a loyal customer base that includes celebrities such as Madonna, Kate Moss and Victoria Beckham—"I'm thrilled... she's such a high-heeled diva"—and royals including the Duchess of York and princesses Beatrice and Eugenie. Kate Middleton is also a fan—so was Princess Diana.

"Our customers are people who know style, quality and luxury, and don't want to pay through the nose," says Winkworth. "That's why we've been so successful. We've never overpriced, we've never been greedy, we've never taken advantage anywhere along the line. So despite the fact that the euro and the pound are now almost equal and profit margins are down, we have weathered the storm."

French Sole has not just negotiated a rough patch, it has opened three London stores during the recession in prime locations—Marylebone Lane, King's Road and Brook Street-all on cashflow. But Winkworth is more proud of the fact that she has not made any redundancies or even cut the hours of part-time staff.

"I could have bought myself a nice new Bentley and a house in the south of France but I decided not to take the money. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing but I'm old-fashioned and if you can't afford it, you don't have it," she says. Has she been too cautious? "With hindsight, if I had borrowed 15 or 20 years ago, if I had been more professional, more competitive, I would probably be beautifully retired now on a lot of money."

Winkworth started French Sole from a dining room table with £300 of her own money. What began as "a bit of a hobby" selling end-of-line ballet style footwear at charity fairs in the late 1980s, has turned into a worldwide brand. Today the company sells around 80,000 pairs of shoes in the UK alone and has a turnover of £5m. There are four London stores, a mail-order business run from a Reading head office and a sister company, London Sole, with stores in San Francisco and Santa Monica in California. In addition, the company supplies more than 500 retailers worldwide (more than 60 per cent of wholesale revenue is outside the UK).

Winkworth spotted a gap in the market. She fell in love with ballet flats as a fashion-conscious teenager during the era of Biba, Brigitte Bardot and Audrey Hepburn when ballet pumps were "de rigueur". But they still proved almost impossible to find.

On a holiday in Spain with her first husband during the 1980s, they passed a small shoe shop with a closing down sale. "It had some ballet flats. My husband was urging me to hurry and I ended up buying the lot," says Winkworth. "I brought them home to England and, of course, they didn't bloody well fit because I hadn't had time to try them on." She called a few girlfriends, who soon whisked them right out of her hands. "That's when I knew I might be on to something."

Winkworth started buying end-of-line shoes and sold them at charity fairs. "I had usually sold all my shoes and packed up and gone before they had even come round to take my lunchtime sandwich order." The turning point came when she was selling her shoes at the Harbour Club in Chelsea. "It had this big room it let out to people like me who were 'playing at business'," she explains. "One day Princess Diana looked in on her way to play tennis. And the next day her dresser called and ordered 12 pairs," she says, adding that the royal subsequently bought many more.  

It was only then that Winkworth realised she should take the venture seriously. "I got myself a mail-order catalogue, I got proper suppliers, and I started going out to all the factories. I focused and worked like a maniac." The mail-order side of the business grew quickly and in 1991 Winkworth opened her first shop in Fulham. When she arrived to open on the first day there were already around 50 women waiting outside and a traffic jam of taxis, limousines and chauffeur-driven cars. "I hadn't even done any advertising, it was bizarre," she says. "We sold out on a weekly basis, it was just crazy."

Due to high demand, other shops followed. "From that moment on up until a year or so ago, there was never a Saturday morning without a queue. Then we got so heavily copied that some people filtered off and bought the copies, I guess."

One of the biggest lessons she has learnt is to have a good trademark lawyer. Copying is a bugbear for Winkworth, who says many High Street stores rip her off. She started designing shoes in 1992, a year after the Fulham shop opened. Bored with the selection from a French supplier, she asked it to expand the range. But the supplier would only do so if Winkworth found all the raw materials. She sourced different leathers, skins and textiles and worked with the factory to put together a range of shoes using materials it had never dealt with before.

Today French Sole sells footwear in more than 500 colour and style combinations of which around 70 per cent are made in the company's factory in Spain. Securing French Sole's own factory, with the best shoemakers and with as little wastage as possible, was a major challenge. But it is a key strength. "We can always produce shoes, we are not dependent on a third party."

Another challenge for Winkworth was learning everything as she went along. "I felt I had to know every single process in order to head a company that was going to grow and be successful," she says. She learnt all about leathers. Sourcing her own material meant she was not at the mercy of leather agents, which placed big mark-ups.

Despite her artistic background—Winkworth was a china and porcelain restorer before she started French Sole—she also discovered that she was "quite good" at business. "I can read a balance sheet, I can see the bottom line, I know about margins and I can see wastage," she says. "I pay an accountant so I want to know their job. Every penny has been ploughed back into the business. We've opened all our shops on cashflow, we've never been in the red, we've never borrowed a farthing and we've never had an investor."

But Winkworth admits that when sister company London Sole opened in the US the company made "dreadful" mistakes. "We trusted people we shouldn't have trusted and employed people we should never have employed. We were copied, we had our designers stolen from us, we hadn't properly trademarked our name, we took people to court, people took us to court," she says.

Bureaucracy and import duties were nightmarish. "I did a beautiful collection of cobra-skin shoes, they were divine. But they were held up at customs for months because we didn't have the right paperwork... for a bloody snake. You have to have paperwork that says this bloody stupid snake had a happy, loving life with some family in outer Mongolia."

Winkworth says Americans adore the company and it has built up a loyal celebrity customer base in Santa Monica. But the US recession hasn't been kind. "All the Brits that went out at the same time as us have been having a terrible time. They closed up quickly and ran. But we stayed on. We're not making a profit yet, but if we can stick it out I think it will come right."

Winkworth says it was risky setting up a "concept" company selling only ballet flats. "Everybody said to me, 'ballet pumps, what do you want to do them for'? But I saw a gap in the market. I'm instinctive, I'm good at timing. I knew it would work."

And this is why Winkworth is moving away from her favoured footwear. "The ballet pump is done as a fashion thing. If we don't branch out and broaden the spectrum, things won't be as good for us." French Sole will now specialise in luxury flat footwear. "We want to be to flat footwear what Manolo and Jimmy Choo are to high heels," she says. Her first collection of flat boots this season sold out. "I know my customers well because I have grown up with them. I know that we've got a market for my look."

Winkworth is hoping to retire in two to three years so the next project is to find a designer in whom she has enough confidence to hand over the baton. "This is a big issue," she says. "I'm burying my head in the sand at the moment, but it will be crucial to our expansion plans to get a new designer."

She and her other directors, including husband John, finance
director; son Matt Scott, IT director; and Lucy Choi, managing director, feel now is the time to expand globally—in Japan, Singapore and Taiwan. For the first time French Sole is seeking investment, hoping to raise £3m to £6m. "We're not experienced enough and we're not well funded enough as we are to do an expansion plan on this scale," says Winkworth. But having carefully built the business, she says it won't choose anyone who's not in tune with the board.

Choi explains that much of the legwork is done. "We already have a wholesale business in these countries. We've done the PR, these countries know the brand. Now people want a shop that can offer all the different colour and style combinations rather than having to come over to the UK and buy 20 pairs at a time," she says.

Rob Donaldson, head of M&A and private equity at Baker Tilly, which is enlisting an investor, says it's not just about finding the right price. "It's important the investor understands the sector and, most importantly, is someone they'll get on with," he says.

"French Sole has been built with a sharp eye for detail. Some retail roll-outs become too formulaic and lose something as they grow. Jane and Lucy have been conscious that they don't want to do that. While raising money will give them the ability to go faster, this is not going to be a mad, extravagant rush out into the market," he adds.

Winkworth admits the move is a gamble. "Will we find the right
investor who will see the potential rather than someone who just wants a return on their money? We've had a lot of interest, but whether anyone is going to put the right offer on the table is anyone's guess. I could be sitting here in six months saying to you, 'do you know what, nobody was interested, people just don't get it'."

Who knows? But if Winkworth's instincts serve her correctly once again, perhaps she'll acquire that Bentley and house in the south of France, after all.