Lucy St George
Co-founder of our favourite online interiors emporium Rockett St George
Ever since it first burst onto the interiors scene 10 years ago, Rockett St George has been one of Lisa’s go to places to buy all things fun and beautiful. It just has an unrivalled collection of cool things for the home! We’re so excited to have Lucy in the series. In this interview, she tells us all about how she built Rockett St George with her co-founder, Jane Rockett (on the left in the image above), as well as giving us a peek of her (obviously!) gorgeous home.
Following on from their bestselling first book, Lucy & Jane have this time explored the topic of colour (one of our favourite topics!) with their second fab book. I’ve included a handy link to buy it if you click on the image to your left. We highly recommend this book for colour enthusiasts.
Tell us about your brand and business?
Our original purpose of starting Rockett St George was to break free from chain store offering by sourcing unique, quirky and authentic pieces bursting with individuality. We started by buying and selling one-off items from eBay and car boot sales but we would end up making one person happy and disappointing more. So, we decided to visit markets, designers and manufacturers on the hunt for lovely unique items and officially set up the Rockett St George website in 2007! Fourteen years later, our passion project has grown beyond our wildest dreams into a fully-fledged business with a fabulous team of over 30 people, 5 warehouses, 3500 products (including a growing range of our own designs), an award-winning blog and two interior design books. Our original ethos to revitalise the interiors market remains true to everything that we do and is as important now as it ever has been.
How have you designed your life to create one that you love?
I am very lucky that I am able to work with my Co-founder and friend Jane, a fabulous team of like-minded, hardworking people and such wonderful products. Top with dedicated, enthusiastic and fabulous customers and it really is the dream job! One of the things I love most about life at Rockett St George is the variety – no two days are the same and we are blessed that our business takes us in so many directions.
What have been the lows and highs of your journey?
We have had so many highs along the way, from writing books, to collaborations, opening our first store at Liberty, winning awards, hosting parties for our staff and going to work daily with our fantastic team! One of the highs for me has definitely been meeting our customers. After about 9 years of sitting behind our computers just working away on everything from designing products, working on warehousing, staffing, packaging, marketing and managing couriers etc. to keep mothership going, Jane and I decided to step outside of this world and arrange events. This allowed us to finally meet our customers and it has been amazing. Since then, we’ve met so many fabulous people with wonderful stories to tell and such enthusiasm for our brand and products. It’s been truly magical and we feel blessed to have such amazing customers – we cannot wait to meet them all again in person once it’s safe to do so!
When it comes to lows, we have not had too many – thankfully. Although, dealing with delays in orders from suppliers does come to mind as this can be massively frustrating and has a knock-on effect with everything from marketing campaigns to getting the orders out to our wonderful customers so they can style the pieces in their own homes.
Any top tips for budding entrepreneurs/creators out there?
Do not risk more that you are happy to lose. There are so many considerations when starting a business and doubt and fear can often creep in. For me, you need to be able to sleep at night and the financial risk is certainly the one thing to keep you awake as it can easily spiral out of control. So, I would recommend getting help from friends and family or doing the lion’s share of work yourself when starting out. Even if it means taking things slowly, it’s worth it to not have the financial burden of being in debt before you have even started.
Finally, can you tell us about one or two favourite spots in your home? What do you love about them?
I love my office, it’s light-filled and as someone that craves daylight and sunshine, it suits me perfectly! I have taken time to fill this space with items that I love, from artwork to plants and the vintage finds that I have collected over the years. I also have a huge disco ball in this room and at certain times of the day it’s Disco o’clock. It makes my heart sing!!
