How does the partnership work? How do you split your roles?
S: We play good cop and bad cop – Al’s really assertive. I’m really easy going, flexible and just get on with it.
A: We split the roles from day one as we’ve got very different characters. Sophie does more of the PR, managing and most of the financials and I concentrate mostly on the wholesale. Sophie’s totally organised and pays attention to all the detail.
S: No, I’m not. When I’m in the office I’m always wondering where I put everything.
A: Actually I think I’m getting better – maybe our roles are changing.

You’ve gained a cult following among a long list of celebrity clients including Elizabeth Jagger, Jennifer Love- Hewitt, Meg Matthews, Jamie Oliver and Minnie Driver. What is it about your brand that makes it an alluring signature brand?
A: Our colours are very much part of our brand – everyone loves the chocolate and turquoise – when people see the colours they immediately know it’s Coco Ribbon. Then there’s also the signature golds, the pinks, the femininity and the opulence. With the fashion collection we wanted people to look at it and know it’s Coco Ribbon without even looking at the label and we’ve definitely achieved that. All our prints are bespoke, no one else has those prints.
S: Right from the beginning we knew we wanted to create a unique brand but the speed in which it happened took us by surprise.

You’ve won numerous awards including Time Out Best Independent Retailer 2004, Time Out Top 100 shops 2005 and Coolbrands 2006/07. How has the media attention impacted on your business?
S: As well as those, we also gained a lot of media interest from the Shell Live Wire awards, which really helped. One of the things that helped us leap frog was winning the Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Greater London in 2003 – that took us into the business media and people suddenly took us more seriously. Our contacts with the media through our previous roles in PR helped our cause too.
A: Going through the competition helped us consolidate our thoughts and strategy. When you ask a lot of questions you answer them yourself when you didn’t know them before.
S: It was a real grilling experience.

What’s your plan for the year ahead?
S: We are collaborating with our designer, adding the finishing touches to our Autumn/Winter samples. Our first fashion collection drops into all our stores in March and we’ll also be selling it in Paris at Tranoi, which is a huge exhibition. We’ve just taken an agent on board, who’s going to represent us and forward our fashion collection to Japan, the Middle East and Russia. Our bath and body collection is just about to go into world duty-free, it’s already in Selfridges.
A: We’re going to concentrate on all five of the lines and really consolidate everything we have, and then put all the systems in lace. Then we can go crazy, get the right customers and work really hard to get it singing and dancing. We have up to two thousand visitors a day clicking on Coco Ribbon dot com. Sometimes I still can’t believe it’s happening.
S: The year ahead is going to be nail bitingly exciting with all these new projects happening. The head buyer at Harvey
Nichols has just named one of our pieces as a ‘must-have’ for this season in Grazia magazine, the butterfly kaftan, which has been a phenomenally big success. My main focus right now is to see Coco Ribbon ride to its highest point.