SME profile: Buying lingerie is difficult enough, so Kate Kikano set up her own store

Kate Kilano opened TKD Lingerie five years ago for the multitudes of women who have difficulty finding the right lingerie. Her store stocks over 100 sizes starting from D to K cup, but it's the customer service that's essential.

Kate Kikano of TKD Lingerie has grown its sales every year with 85 per cent of its customers from the first year becoming regulars. Reem Mohammed / The National

Kate Kikano found herself crying in a lingerie store in Dubai – that’s when she knew she would need to open her own business.

She was pregnant at the time and therefore does not put the tears down just to the fact that she was not able to buy a bra for her developing size and shape. With a background in retail as an optometrist – Ms Kikano comes from Nottingham, in England’s East Midlands – she knows about customer service and has an eye for a gap in the market with a sales opportunity. And, once she had taken an independent bra fitting course she had the skill as well.

“I was pregnant with my daughter,” says Ms Kikano, adding she would usually wait for trips home to buy her lingerie as buying online can be haphazard with regard to sizing. “I’d gone from a bra size of 32E to a 38H and had spent the day trawling the malls. The final sales assistant said, ‘We have nothing in your size,’ and I burst into tears. I ordered online and decided there and then that I was going to offer women more choice.

“There are over 150 bra sizes and 60 per cent of women are bigger than a D-plus, yet often the sizing stops at D, so there are multitudes of women who are chronically uncatered for. It took me about 11 months to draw up the business plan. My shop, TKD Lingerie, stocks over 100 sizes starting from a D to K cup.”

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TKD Lingerie opened five years ago in Town Centre Mall on Jumeirah Beach Road in Jumeirah 1. The mall is an older community retail facility that is well appointed with outlets for women. The footfall is such, says Ms Kikano, that it allows her to spend time with customers advising them on what products, styles and brands may be best for them. She says she does not wish to be in a busier mall as she believes that would dilute the customer service TKD offers.

The business has grown its sales every year with 85 per cent of its customers from the first year becoming regulars. A more impressive statistic is that TKD Lingerie has a 90 per cent conversion rate for women that use the fitting rooms.

“I don’t want to say that we are recession proof but we are a necessity,” says Ms Kikano. “We have medical practitioners now referring women to us who suffer from chronic back pain. We sell bikinis which are bra sized as well and we buy most of our stock and brands from the UK. Since [the] Brexit [vote] we have cut our prices by 22 per cent, with the fall in the pound, and offer real value.”

Ms Kikano was able to find a local partner, which is required to open onshore in the UAE, because her Lebanese husband had some contacts in the UAE business community. They came in useful again when she expanded last year to Bahrain, opening her second store. The business plan for the future is multi-faceted with an online element and possible franchising opportunities.

“We opened in Bahrain because of the ease of doing business there,” says Ms Kikano, adding that there is less choice there for women. “It is very well appointed for visitors from Saudi Arabia. The lack of sizes available means that it is a great destination for us. Going forward we want to move online but the fitting of a bra is very important, ensuring the right size and shape is key, and losing customer service online does not appeal to us. There is technology available that can assess sizes but it is not ideal. We are also looking at a franchise model, however, the customer service has to be excellent and any franchisee would need to be carefully chosen.”

She says women in the region are used to buying bras that “just about fit” and she used to have bras slung at the back of her underwear draw that had been ordered online and were not sent back because of the cost of return shipping. Bras can be a costly investment with many questioning the value and the expense – but the engineering involved is substantial. The mechanics of designing a bra has often been compared with that of building a bridge.

“The bridge analogy holds true,” says Ms Kikano. “There are simple wooden bridges that cross small streams, these are fairly easy to find and not difficult to build. Then there are more complex bridges that span greater distances and bear heavier loads. Likewsie, bigger bras are much more complex than smaller bras. A bra that is over a D size requires up to 25 different structural elements to create, it is a piece of engineering that can alter a woman’s life.”

With 10 staff in the two branches that fit-test all the products, Ms Kikano uses social media to create a community of support when new sizes and styles are available.

“Every bra we sell we have tested ourselves either in the shop or through our online community,” she says. “We are what our name suggests, TKD – the knicker drawers.”

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