Inspirational Woman: Adela Hussain | Founder of Style Lyrical

Adela is the Founder of Style Lyrical, a fashion tech start up, that offers personal styling with clothing delivery for busy women.

style lyrical

Adela previously spent 13 years as a management consultant at Accenture, Moorhouse and Sky, focusing on company transformations, mergers and product launches. Like many professional women, she struggled to find the time to shop for beautiful clothes at the weekend or online in her lunchbreak.

Instead she would grab a few pieces, on a Monday morning, from the same store at Terminal 5 before flying out to clients. In 2016 she set out to solve the problem and launched Style Lyrical from a bamboo office in Bali. She is now back in London building the company.

What inspired you to start a business?

Style Lyrical was born out of a desire to help busy women, who feel overwhelmed in the morning whilst wondering what to wear. As a former management consultant in London, I struggled to find the time to shop for beautiful clothes at the weekend or online in my lunchbreaks. Instead I would grab a few pieces, every Monday morning, from the same store at Terminal 5 in Heathrow on my way flying out to meet clients.

The business is the first service for women in the UK marrying personal styling with clothing delivery. Our professional stylists handpick three outfits that reflect a customer’s personal style and taste from carefully selected boutique brands and deliver them straight to her door.

What were you doing before starting your business?

I was a management consultant for 13 years at Accenture, Moorhouse and Sky focusing on company transformations, mergers, acquisitions and launches. My last role was in the Strategy team at Sky where I worked on the launch of new products and a large-scale digital transformation of some key parts of the business.

I enjoyed my consulting career but I wanted to take what I learnt and launch a product.

I noticed a new trend emerging in Fashion Tech for personalised clothing delivery services across the US and Europe but no one had started it for women in the UK.

I did a proof of concept test and hired a stylist to complete a simple version of the service for a pool of customers. It was a success and that led me to quit my job.

What is the greatest challenge and the greatest reward in being your own boss?

The greatest challenge is managing one’s time as I just want to work on everything at once! However, the greatest reward is building a team around me and coaching each team member to grow and develop and take on the daily challenges of a start up.

I also enjoy the intellectual problem-solving. You are constantly forced to think, test ideas and work out solutions.

What motivational tips can you give to our members about goal setting and managing both successes and failures.

Set goals every week, both professional and personal, and send these to an accountability buddy to ensure you do them. Then each week carve out time to reflect whether you have completed these goals and what worked well and what didn’t and why. Personal goals are just as important as professional goals as they will help you achieve balance and ensure your energy levels are topped up throughout the week.

In terms of failure it’s very important to be comfortable with the notion of failure otherwise a fear of it can prevent us from seizing opportunities. Get comfortable with taking risks and constantly stretching yourself out of your comfort zone to grow and learn.

Regardless of how successful one is, I really believe in the importance of helping and supporting other women who are asking for help. Often helping someone is a selfless act, but I believe in putting good karma out there as it will always come back to you.

What is the biggest challenge you have faced as a business owner?

Managing a tight cashflow whilst trying to attract a customer base. We are small start up and have deliberately taken the organic route to growing without seeking huge sums of investment up front. I believe in constantly listening to customers and shaping the company as it grows. This strategy has meant our marketing budget is tight, but it has also taught us to be highly efficient with any expenditure and constantly seek new ways of getting out there.

How have you benefited from mentoring or coaching?

Yes, throughout my corporate career I have always had someone to speak to about my progress and personal development.

However, when starting my business, I realised my personal network in London was very corporate-filled. I needed to work alongside more entrepreneurs, but I didn’t want to work on my start up from an expensive co-working space in London. So I took the plunge, and left London and worked at an entrepreneurial centre called Hubud for three months in Bali.

There I was surrounded by entrepreneurs and people were very willing to chat and brainstorm ideas at a moment’s notice. They say that you are the sum of the five people you surround yourself by and I noticed in Bali my productivity soared.

I developed my business plan, acquired an investor, launched my website, attracted my first supplier and developed my packaging and branding. I believe this was down to the fact that every day I was surrounded by driven and supportive entrepreneurs.

What advice can you give about the benefits of networking?

Be comfortable with it. Everyone is so time-poor these days that the only way to build relationships is by meeting people in person and learning how you can help them. Go to as many events as you can in a field that you are passionate about. Ask questions and share your story when appropriate. Use these conversations to see if you can help someone and vice versa. You’re cutting across so many email chains by seeing people in the flesh so make use of that opportunity rather than fear it.

What are your tips for scaling a business and how do you plan for and manage growth?

Start off small and grow carefully to a customer base that has 1000 super fans. Ask your most loyal customers for regular feedback so that you can constantly enhance your product. Define your customer segments clearly and brainstorm as many marketing ideas as you can for each of those segments.

Test all the channels in the early days to work out which channels work best for you and only then should you invest larger funds into a channel for customer acquisition.

We are managing our growth carefully with flexible resources to enable us to manage our cashflow carefully.

What does the future hold for you?

We have just launched our best-sellers on our website to allow our customers to purchase individual pieces before trying out a Style Box so we’ll be focusing on listening to our customer and gathering feedback on all the brands and pieces we stock.

Visa - WeAreTheCity - Pioneer 20 - nominations open
WeAreTech Festival 2024 advert

Upcoming Events

march, 2024

Job Board Banner

Related Posts