Meet the Founder of For The Creators, Lyndsay Mason: “The first intelligent, inclusive, full circle platform created by mums for mums”
1. Describe your startup in two sentences?
For The Creators is a rental subscription service designed to support every step of the wonderful journey into motherhood. For The Creators (FTC) is the first intelligent, inclusive, full circle platform created by a mum for mums that enables women to access the best independent fashion brands without worrying about the cost the environment or their bank balance.
2. What gave you the inspiration?
Having just given birth to my son Hamish at the start of the first lockdown I was so frustrated and shocked by how much clothing waste I was personally producing. Like so many women I was forced to buy clothing to dress my changing body and then to accommodate breastfeeding and my c-section scar. The way women are forced to build their maternity wardrobes didn’t make sense to me. The model of buying everything new for such a transient period felt broken. Not only that but there wasn’t a central commerce destination that aggregated bump and feeding friendly styles from across the high street making the discovery of clothing arduous and time-consuming.
Instead of having to invest in expensive maternity pieces or resorting to buying poor-quality fast-fashion items that just ‘did the job’, I wanted to create a rental service that offered cool, high-quality, beautiful outfits from well-loved, responsible brands that also encouraged conscious consumption and responsible retailing.
3. What has been your greatest success to date? And your greatest challenge?
In January, we launched our Subscription service which has supercharged growth. Our customers can rent 2 -6 items of clothing each month from £32-£120 a month, rotating in and out pieces of clothing to suit their calendar, lifestyle and changing bodies as they progress through their motherhood journey. With minimal marketing support, we are on track to deliver £23K a month in recurring revenue from subscriptions alone by December 2023. We’re managing to acquire customers at a highly competitive rate with a 6:1 LTV:CAC ratio which is being powered by word of mouth, press and partnerships.
In June 2023 we took 75% more gross revenue than we did in Q4 2022 which is mostly driven by our growing subscription business.
The speed with which we’re growing presents challenges in that we need to increase our inventory to accommodate for a higher volume of orders and stabilise our subscription technology to ensure it can handle sustainable growth.
4. What kind of impact is your business having and how do you measure it?
We measure in a number of ways, firstly how many emissions we’re eradicating, how many vans we’re taking off the roads and how much congestion we’re preventing on a daily basis.
When I became a mother the environmental crises suddenly hit home in a way it had never done so before. I wanted to create a better future for my son, for the next generation, and I was impatient to do so. For The Creators was built upon a promise to support mothers and Mother Earth.
One of the first strategies I implemented when I started the business was a 5-year impact sustainability framework in collaboration with a Sustainability Consultancy, this year we are aiming to become B-Corp Certified.
From the day we started we have used reusable packaging (which can be used up to 15 times) in partnership with RePack, we are partnered with ACS a B-Corp certified Cleaning and reverse logistics partner and we have offset our carbon footprint by planting 5 trees with every order in partnership with Ecologi. To date we have planted over 5,000 trees and prevented over 56.69 tCO2e from being emitted through 47 verified carbon avoidance projects.
1 in 3 women in the UK suffer from mental health issues either during pregnancy or once becoming a mother. Our in-house Chief Medical Office GP Dr Anna Cantlay is working with us to support our community throughout their motherhood journey, offering evidence-based content and tailored recommendations. This is coupled with our expert team of over 15 industry-leading experts including the Fashion Editor of the Sunday Times and Beauty Editor of Harpers Bazarre to create an inspiring and supportive space for women to reconnect with their own identities and feel more like themselves.
5. When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?
As a daughter of two business owners, I always wanted my own business. I started selling soap outside my house at the age of 6 and begged my mum to buy me a till!
6. If you weren’t doing this, what would be your plan B?
I’d probably be working to develop a sustainable collection of maternity and postpartum clothing and accessories using surplus fabrics and recycling old maternity clothing. The maternity and postpartum sector of the fashion industry is hugely underserviced with limited ranges and mostly populated by fast fashion brands. Women and the planet deserve more. I’d love for FTC to one day develop its own collection using surplus and recycled fabrics.
7. What would you save in a fire?
My son, my grandma’s handwritten recipes & my childhood photo albums
8. Who is your role model/ greatest influence? and why?
My parents set up their business when I was 4 years old out of our spare bedroom. Neither of them had started a business before and they both quit their jobs with two children under the age of 4 with the hope of bringing their dream to life. Witnessing what it truly takes to nurture the seed of an idea into a global success has been such a blessing and has taught me so much about the extreme sport that is entrepreneurship and the power of hard work, resilience and most importantly passion.
9. What is your happy track?
Amazing by George Michael
10. What’s your motto?
If a job is worth doing its worth doing properly. My grandpa lived by this motto and I can still very much hear his voice in my ear whenever I sit down to do anything!!
11. What are you most looking forward to in the next year?
Seeing our community of incredible women continue to grow and support one another both locally and virtually and continuing to help our customers feel the best versions of themselves at such a pivotal and powerful time in their lives.