ABOUT US
No added sugar was born through a simple desire to create witty baby T’shirts.
The year was 2001, my first child Gabriel was just one years old, we were living in a enviable loft in edgy Old Street, London, with Shoreditch and Hoxton just a stones throw away, and I was itching to to do something creative and a little challenging.
Having created and ran the Pushca brand of clubs and parties with my husband Ric for almost ten years, we had lived a colourful and mainly nocturnal past life. The parties were flamboyant; attracting a fascinating glamorous mix of London’s glitterati in lavish environments, with strict door policies and dancing until breakfast time, that with Gabriel as our new baby, we had woken up to a different world.
The business idea was simple but I needed money. A meeting with my local bank manager, with Gabriel in tow, understandably didn’t bring it in so we borrowed a few thousand from family and friends and began.
A very small range of baby T’shirts samples were produced and I called up my wish list of shops and stores for appointments. The response was phenomenal, not one customer did not place an order, we were on a high!
The hard work of supply was to begin. Our loft development housed some great neighbours, one being Philip Start of Start boutiques in Shoreditch (if you haven’t been, go!). An utterly charming chap with years of fashion knowledge and experience, and incredibly generous with advice. Philip gave us contacts that would likely have taken us years to find. We salute you Philip!
By October we were supplying those lovely London shops, re-orders came thick and fast and many a night attaching swing tickets until the early hours at my kitchen table pursued.
We offered a postal service to customers so at the end of each day I would lug a big sack of parcels down to Old Street post office. ‘The sack’ became two, then three and then unmanageable. Our little business was growing and spreading out from the corner of our loft and eating into our space in all senses.
Our little baby boy was growing, now two years old and we needed to think about schools. Muswell Hill in North London was put on our radar and much to the amazement of our friends, and later ourselves, a very tatty house was bought near the right school.
We needed to get the business out of the house; our front bedroom, the largest in the house, became our new office and cardboard boxes of stock took over every room. One of our best friends and Gabriel’s godfather, Angel, opted out of the corporate world for a year or so and joined us in our chaotic but incredibly exciting growing world. A treat to have someone of his ability on board and great for me to gang up with on Ric.
It was 2003, we had viewed countless offices and were about to sign a lease when at the eleventh hour our favourite office in Islington got back in touch and said our deal was on. We loved our new office/ warehouse and the three of us ploughed on.
By 2004 Angel had moved back to the order and relative calm of the corporates, I was pregnant with our second child Lucien, and we needed help. Jill arrived, literally picked up everything, and stayed for the next five years.
From those early days we have passionately grown our business. From 2007 we presented our very first full collection and these have continued to grow in volume and distribution. We stock some wonderful stores globally and enjoy full representation of the brand in France, Germany, Holland and the US.
Our ethos to produce high quality modern kids wear has been appreciated and it is that appreciation and support that drives us on.
In 2009 we took a very deep breath and relocated our business to Hampshire. We had personally moved to this wonderful undulating countryside two years previous and after two painful years of five hours commute a day we needed to reassess our lifestyle.
It was very sad and difficult to say goodbye to many of our loyal London team, Jill, Emma and Jason amongst others, but we certainly take their input with us and we hope they take something of nas with them.
We are now housed in beautiful soulful barns, with blissful under floor heating and a courtyard garden with the beauty of the south downs national park enveloping us, how could we not have come?
Our London team sit on the 8am from Waterloo and our new local team have worked incredibly hard and enthusiastically to pick up where we left off in London, let us tell you from experience, it has been no easy feat.
The dust has settled, we are beginning to bed down and we are all blossoming with the new dynamic. We opened our first shop-within-a-store in Bentalls in Kingston at the end of 2009 and are excited about rolling this out nationwide. We have a fantastically loyal wholesale customer base with many of our stockists still with us all these years on; Harvey Nichols, Igloo and Minsky are just a few. We thank you.
We have just shown our AW10 collection to our buyers and taken breathtaking record orders. We feel incredibly positive about where no added sugar sits right now and LOVE the daily challenge; we are growing our brand with exceptional quality, design and customer care at the forefront, and hope you’ll come on board and make your (or someone else’s) child’s wardrobe just that little bit more special.
Deborah Medhurst
Founder
