Eileen Willett: Combining Innovation and Design to Make You Feel More Confident and Look Beautiful

Women are
fond of following the latest fashion trends and buying designer and stylish
clothes. For women, looking attractive and beautiful makes them feel empowered
and self-proud. Wearing sleek attire brings pride in appearance and helps
create a status within the social group and connect with others. Eileen
Willett co-founded Cucumber Clothing to design
dresses that empower women with confidence and comfort together.

The brand
has taken a revolutionary business model that combines cutting-edge
long-lasting technical fabrics with multifunctional design. She says, “For
Cucumber Clothing, our vision has always been to create a brand that we can
truly be proud of on every level and that our customers love and believe
in.”  

Making
You Look Beautiful and Feel Comfortable

Cucumber
Clothing makes luxurious clothes every day. As per the company, the team
designs clothes with a vision toempower women by using the latest
ultra-modern performance fabrics that work to dissipate sweat and odour away
from the body to leave the wearer feeling cool, uncrushed, and confident to get
on with the day. The team has combined technical, high-performance fabrics to
cleverly cut-to-flatter designs that function optimally and always feel amazing
next to the skin. 

The company
believes that clothes should do more than only dress a body. It asserts, “Our
clothes breathe, they feel cool, they stretch but never crease, they move with
your body and easy to care for and have made locally, ethically, and
sustainably.” The company has created an all-in-one style that fits
seamlessly into every woman’s wardrobe for dress up, dress down, sleep,
stretch, work, train, and travel. Cucumber is an effortless dressing that keeps
you feeling fresh 24/7. 

Definition
of Success

Eileen’sidea
of success is ‘Believe in yourself and ‘The more you
do, the more you do’. She says, “These words from my father have
stood the test of time.” She asserts “self-belief is difficult
to achieve, we can all suffer from imposter syndrome, and it is so important to
take a breath and understand that you can do it. Once you’ve taken that first
step, it is then crucial to throw your whole self into whatever it is you are doing.
Every action you take triggers new ideas, acquaintances, and opportunities.
Success for me has to be just as much about self-worth as external markers.”

Learning
from Mistakes  

Starting a
business can feel overwhelming at first, and challenges make situations more
critical. According to Eileen, during the journey, the team has had to learn
some hard lessons. At starting, Cucumber Clothing decided to outsource their
fulfilment. The company believes in providing complete customer satisfaction
and aims for excellent customer service. The team personally answers every
email and actively encourages feedback. Eileen recalls a time when the company
had no control over part of its customers’ experience with it. The team was
horrified when they began receiving complaints of wrong garments received,
double orders sent, and boxes marked with ‘shoes’ (Cucumber Clothing only makes
clothing). She asserts, “It was a month-long expensive experiment with
endless firefighting, but it underlined to us the value we place on customer
service.”  

Joining
Creative Space 

Eileen
opines, “My career has remained firmly rooted in the creative
industries.” Eileen was born in Vancouver to Japanese parents. She
received her training in Paris in fashion design and started work as a fashion
illustrator in San Francisco. After that, she spent a brief but formative time
in Japan working at Billboard Magazine and finally settled in London, where she
joined the then-fledgling Nicole Farhi Menswear brand. She further adds, “I
took a career break to have my three children, and then with itchy creative
fingers, launched my eponymous womenswear accessory brand into the new luxury
designer/maker space of the 2000s that she described as fantastic fun.”

Leading
the League 

It has been
an incredible journey for Eileen,from seeing Cucumber Clothing’s
very first collection flies out the door after an amazingly complementary piece
in the Daily Telegraph to appearing on Dragon’s Den. She has shared her views
on subjects like female entrepreneurship and launching a sustainable brand. She
was selected to participate in Cambridge University’s Institute of Sustainable
Leadership’s Accelerator program and was short-listed for the Asian Women of
Achievement Awards.  

Having a
Full Plate 

Finding a
balance between work and personal life is necessary yet challenging when one is
an entrepreneur. As per Eileen, personal and private life overlap tremendously,
and she defies anyone launching a start-up and still being able to ring-fence
either area. She reasons, it is more important to make sure to have mental
health breaks. It allows for recalibration, reenergizing, and enabling creative
juices to flow. These can be anything from a cold swim to a quiet moment in the
garden with a book.

As the Co-founder
and a full-time entrepreneur, Eileen finds herself juggling what seems like a
barrel full of monkeys. Her days go with managing all aspects of work (sales,
manufacturing, customer service, social media, content creation, PR to name a
few) and other many tasks of day to day of life that including socializing and
self-care. She opines, “it is incredibly energizing to know you are
creating something brand new and seeing your vision come to life while sharing
that vision and passion with employees so they can see the same and feel
motivated.”  

Innovation
and Ideas 

Cucumber Clothing was founded by two
mid-life female founders who believed in the power of locals. It is astonishing
to know that all activities from sampling, grading, manufacturing, storing, and
sending the product to the market are done within a five-mile radius of the
company’s London base. Eileen opines, “We use minimal packaging and
have taken plastics out of our chain. Our packaging is 100% compostable and
biodegradable film using vegetable starch and is made in Lancashire, as are our
recyclable packing tape and recycled and recyclable postal sacks.”

Heading
to Becoming more Extensive  

It has been
incredibly uncertain in all retail sectors due to the pandemic, and women’s
fashion has been no exception. Cucumber Clothing has spent the
last 14 months pivoting to capitalize on the online rush for leisurewear. The
company’s roadmap comprises expanding into luxury spas around the UK. As things
begin to open up, the organization is starting to plan various pop-up events
that have worked very well for it in the past. It states, “We are also
expanding overseas and are hoping to grow in this area, also constantly
reviewing and upgrading our website to continue to offer a fantastic shopping
experience online.” 

Soon, Cucumber
Clothing hopes to get established as the premier fabric-led fashion
brand for women in the UK. It plans to have a firm foothold in countries where
it has already started to make in-roads, namely the US, Australasia, South Africa,
and the Middle East.