From Boutique Retailer to Manufacturer
For six years, Little Lies operated as a boutique - curating other brands' products, building an aesthetic, earning margin on wholesale. Standard retail model. It worked until it didn't.
Then COVID forced the physical store to close, and it’s founder, Jade Robertson, made a call that fundamentally changed the business: stop being a retailer, start being a manufacturer.
They're now designing and producing their own pieces. Better margins, full control, actual defensibility in the market. The business that exists today bears almost no resemblance to the one that existed three years ago.
Why Retail Stopped Making Sense
The boutique model has a ceiling. You're buying wholesale, marking it up, selling it. Your margins are defined by suppliers. Your inventory risk is tied to other people's production schedules. Your differentiation is curation, which works until your customers can find the same brands elsewhere.
For Little Lies, the economics were getting tighter. Margin pressure from wholesale pricing, competition from other stockists carrying the same lines, inventory that didn't move creating cash flow issues.
More fundamentally, they'd built something retailers don't usually have: brand equity. Customers weren't shopping Little Lies for the products they stocked. They were shopping for what Little Lies represented - a certain aesthetic, a quality promise, a set of values.
That brand equity was worth more than the retail model could capture.
What Manufacturing Actually Means
Moving to manufacturing isn't flipping a switch. You're not just changing suppliers - you're changing your entire operational model.
Instead of ordering inventory, you're managing production. Instead of forecasting based on supplier availability, you're making bets on your own designs. Instead of competing on curation, you're competing on execution.
The skills required are different. The capital requirements are higher. The risk profile shifts.
But if you can pull it off, you own the full value chain. Better margins. Control over quality, timelines, and exclusivity. The ability to respond to customer data without being constrained by what's available wholesale.
For Little Lies, it helped that they'd spent six years collecting customer data. They knew exactly what sold, what colour palettes resonated, what sizing worked, what price points converted. When they started designing their own pieces, they weren't guessing - they were building from evidence.
"It felt like a new business, but with six years of incredible data capture," Jade explains. "We understood who was buying, what they were buying, the colour palettes. Right, start again."
The Execution Gap
Jade's honest about the learning curve. Understanding MOQs, managing production schedules, quality assurance, supply chain coordination. All new territory.
The technology infrastructure they'd already built made it feasible. Shopify for inventory management. Klaviyo for customer data that informed production decisions. Analytics to identify what designs would actually move.
Without that foundation, the manufacturing pivot would have been significantly riskier.
As it was, it still required upfront investment, production bets that might not pay off, and accepting that mistakes would happen along the way.
When This Model Makes Sense
Not every ecommerce brand should manufacture. But if you're seeing these patterns, it's worth considering:
You've got genuine brand loyalty - customers are buying you, not just the products you carry. Your margins are getting squeezed by wholesale economics. You have clear design POV and understand exactly what your customers want. You've got the operational capacity to manage production complexity. You can forecast demand with reasonable accuracy.
If those don't apply, stick with retail or dropship. Manufacturing adds complexity that only pays off if the economics and brand positioning support it.
Two Years In
Little Lies now runs with 5 people, manufactures their own designs, and operates with better margins than they ever had as a boutique.
The business is more defensible - harder to replicate, harder to compete with on price alone. It's also more complex to operate, which is why the tech stack and lean team structure matters so much.
"We're not just selling products anymore," Jade says. "We're building a brand that can weather changes in the market because we control more of the value chain."
That control came at the cost of increased operational complexity. But complexity you choose is different from complexity that's imposed on you. One you can manage, the other manages you.
Curious how Jade navigated the complete transformation from boutique to manufacturer while managing a team reduction and recovering from burnout?
This article is part of our Open Tabs series, where we talk to founders about the realities of running an ecommerce business day to day.
Watch the full episode with Jade from Little Lies here.
