Kate Kikano on How TKD Lingerie Managed Limited Resources & Stayed Authentic when Challenging Bigger Brands

February 29, 2020

About This Episode

In The Forward Thinking People Podcast with Namita Ramani, Kate Kikano, a mother of two beautiful children and an expat from Nottingham, now living in Dubai, talks to us about how she started TKD Lingerie out of her own need during the pregnancy of her 2nd child, where she was told that they didn’t have her bra size. That’s when she decided that she would convert this pain into a business, as she knew there would be many other women like her in the same shoes. In this podcast, she shares her story on how she made this niche business thrive in the Dubai market with bare minimum marketing.

Things we discuss:

  • How the business was funded
  • The effect of the location of the business on sales
  • How they met their monthly revenue targets with limited footfall in-store
  • How they managed marketing and awareness to a very niche market audience
  • The challenges in marketing against bigger brands with bigger budgets
  • How they managed operations with limited resources & staff
  • Overcoming personal struggles of managing the business with 3 branches, and being a mother and wife
  • Challenges while trying to grow and open new outlets

Notable moments
(24:26) – We don’t have a massive budget – we’re a small team, we have 2 stores, but we still have the same responsibilities, and we still have to do the same marketing as some of our bigger competitors.

(46:36) – It was really tough and I look back now and I just want to give myself a bit of a hug, because I don’t think I realized at the time what I was getting into.

(53:00) – It has to be authentic, it has to be you. if your values are totally different to your business values, it’s not going to work.

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