Clare Hornby, Founder and CEO of ME+EM

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Game night rush, or any night of the week, really. Genius keeps every order moving. From online ordering, to your kitchen, to the front counter. Big league reliability for any business. That's genius. This episode sponsored by Minky Couture. Fair warning, bring a Minky Couture blanket home and it may instantly become the most wanted seat in the house. That's the magic of Minky Couture. Minky Couture created the original soft Minky blanket, trusted for premium quality and custom styles. One touch and movie nights, naps, and cold mornings suddenly revolve around who got to it first.

0:43Shop now at MinkyCouture.com. That's Minky, M-I-N-K-Y, Couture, C-O-U-T-U-R-E, dot com. Go to MinkyCouture.com and get your Minky Couture blanket now, before everyone in your house claims it is theirs. Ruthie's Table 4 is now a book Paul McCartney, Michael Caine, Kamala Harris David Beckham, Tina Fey, Elton John and many more It's full of stories, beautifully designed in a celebration of the way food connects us all It's available now wherever you buy your books I bought this black Armani suit Wow, you were on£11 ,000? Yeah, on£11 ,000 at 70 % discount in the sale. So I did it. Oh, right. Yeah.

1:31And then probably took out. And then probably went into debt as well. What did that feel like, buying an Armani suit? Yeah, that was a big moment. And that got me my next job. Which was? Was in advertising. This wonderful woman called Mia Dixon who gave me my first job in advertising. And she, I don't even need to listen to a word I said, she just loved my suit.

2:01My mother used to tell me, Ruthie, always seek out the quietest person in the room. It's advice I've carried with me as so often those who have the most interesting things to say about themselves are also the ones least inclined to tell you. This is true of my friend Claire Hornby, the founder and CEO of Me &M, one of the most successful international fashion companies in Britain. As a designer, Claire wants women to feel confident, comfortable, and at ease in the clothes they wear. Going into her stores, seeing the skirts and the sweaters, the trousers and the shoes, it's as if she anticipates what her customers might need before they even ask.

2:45Today, Claire and I are here to talk about food and fashion, food and family, the ingredients of her life, the ingredients of mine, and the recipe of her success. So of all the recipes and all the books and all the times you've eaten here, you chose... Well, I've been practicing how to say this with my Italian, one of my Italian friends at work. Zucchini fritte. Brilliant. Is that right? Buonissima. Buonissima. so um you need 500 grams of zucchini uh one liter of sunflower oil and then for the batter 150 grams of plain flour three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil three tablespoons of warm water and three egg whites you cut the zucchini into matchsticks place in a colander sprinkle with salt and leave for half an hour for the batter sieve the flour into a bowl make a well in the centre, pour in the olive oil and stir to combine.

3:46Add enough warm water to make a batter, the consistency of double cream and leave for half an hour. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold into the batter. Pat the zucchini dry, dip them in the batter then fry in batches in the hot oil until golden and crisp. Serve immediately. So beautifully read. Why did you choose this recipe of all. Do you make it? Did you eat it? It's always when we eat regularly at the River Cafe. You do? And that's what everybody wants. They're just delicious and they're so hard to do well and I don't want them from anywhere else, just here. It's a really nice recipe I think.

4:33Yeah and it's simple. It's so simple and again you can do it. You can make the batter and then put the egg whites in at the end and then you know dip the dip the zucchini you say i i really like starting a meal also i was here last night and there were four people i didn't really know that well and then everybody has a little bit you know and you take it or some people put it on there yeah are you the sort of put it on your plate and take it off your own plate we've got to be quite quick because otherwise my husband johnny he eats them all we'll eat them all so we're always quite quick yeah so we do like get them on our plate and put them there yeah did you grow up in a fat well tell Tell me, let's start at the beginning.

5:07Tell me about Oldham. Where did you grow up? Where was it? So I grew up in a place called Saddleworth, which has the highest concentration of pubs in the country. Oh. It's just above a place called Oldham, which is in the north, north of Manchester. Yeah, so I grew up on the Pennines. It rained all the time. Yeah, there you go. And what was it like? What was your family? Tell me about your parents and your siblings. very very normal um my mom was a teacher my dad ran a small joinery company they made doors and windows and cabinets they did a lot of work for the university but I remember going because they both worked in our school holidays you know I tagged I tagged along with my dad a lot so that sort of smell of wood do you think that started you with making things did it potentially Maybe.

6:02Potentially, yeah. But yeah, I spent a lot of time in a joinery shop. We're a very, very close family. They were phenomenal parents, endlessly proud, very normal, just very salt-of-the-earth family upbringing. If your mother was working, would you always sit down to dinner in the evening by someone? Yeah, it was tea. in the north in those days it was tea yeah because we ate at six i i was very sporty so i'd always i'd come home late from school um and then i was always starving you were always starving because i played so much sport yeah um so then we'd always sit down at six and have mum cooked everything fresh what did you have some of the very wholesome food shepherd's pies meat pies lots of fish and chips did you go abroad did they take you to other countries did you go to france or spain my first trip abroad was when i was seven years old um it was the summer of 1976 so it was hotter i didn't you you went in england in 1976 it was the hottest summer on record and we had a hose pipe van and we went on our first trip to abroad to formentera which makes it sound like we were really cool yeah they found a mountain actually they find a mountain and there was one apartment block just being built and we arrived just because it wasn't quite finished so it was very uh cost-effective way to go on holiday so we went to formentera which do you have memories of it what did you love about it it was the first time i'd been anywhere like that so it's very exciting because it was first time i'd ever got on a plane and uh the you know the water in formentera is mind-blowing it still blows my mind now it's so blue and clean um and um the salt marshes and lots of cycling we cycled everywhere you can cycle around the whole island It's quite small.

8:09It was the first time I'd seen live lobsters in a tank. But then I didn't like that they were killed. So I didn't like that. So I remember crying over the lobsters. Do you think that the focus, your focus and the work ethic from your parents, did that form you in your early years? I'm sure. And they made me work. Every single school holiday, they made me work for my holiday money. So from the age of 14, I worked. So I first worked on Oldham Market. My dad found me a friend who had some damaged shoes, Italian shoes. So I set up market stalls and sold shoes on Oldham Market. That was my first job.

8:54I had to queue in the morning. When you were 14? Yeah. And then I worked in, and then as I got a bit older, I worked in denim factories. So Lancashire, it was Lancashire. No, no, probably about 16 I worked in factories. And these were school holidays? School holidays. And then I worked in shops. I was a waitress. I sold double glazing. I mean, I worked and worked and worked. So I wasn't allowed to go on holiday unless I'd earned my holiday money. So there was a... Has that stayed with you, do you think, as an adult? Yeah, it was also needs must. Like, we didn't have money. Yeah. You know, it wasn't...

9:29I don't think they did it to be... Yeah, to form you. It was... They needed the money, so... and you know that carried on when I came to London I I had to work I mean I worked all through my degree at Manchester I worked I got worked in the Tyrak I worked in pizza restaurants I I worked worked worked I mean there was no there was no option I didn't I had to make ends meet yeah and so what was it like leaving home when you got to Manchester was the was that I was going to stay living at home but then I met these two great girls and we actually so we lived together for my final three years which was good for me because I needed to break the umbilical cord so I didn't go away to school it was a very cosseted upbringing

10:26but I was very bullied at school Oh, yeah. Yeah. How did that affect you? You know, it's funny. You really just deal with it. I didn't want my mum to know because I knew she'd get involved. So the first time it happened, I actually ended up in hospital. What did they do? I mean, they physically... I was running down a hill and some boys tripped me up and I skidded across the playground and smashed into the science block and knocked myself out. But I think I then protected my mum from it because I was worried that it would get worse if my mum knew. And then I had this hero friend who stopped it all.

11:07Did you have food issues at all growing up? No. Did you ever have anything that you thought about eating in a certain way? Did you eat anything you wanted and never felt anything? Yeah, love food. Yeah. Love food and if you play a lot of sports, you need a lot of food. So the balance of food and sport was great. And what about fashion in those early years? Did you know that, because you were saying that you made things, you watched the East Coast. Oh, yeah, we've forgotten the most important bit. Yeah, I have. How did your mother dress? Did you think clothes were important to her? Yeah, we shopped a lot together.

11:46We used to sneak it in so my dad didn't see. But we made clothes together and trousers. and I do remember standing in front of the mirror thinking about pocket position and length and shape. So it's amazing what you do with your children, how you can become, you know, it's the small things that matter. Yeah, it's like cooking. Yeah, it's exactly like cooking. Or preparing a car or, you know, many, many things that you, you know, and you might not have been interested at all, but that you were interested and that she could do it. Yeah. Obviously formed. do you have any of the clothes that you made with her did you yeah I remember this one pair of trousers which we got horribly wrong uh was when I got to school everyone teased me that I looked like Rupert the Bear and I have this kind of lens out now where um when the design teams present me with things I have a list of characters that you might look like if you wore those because what are they oh there's like if it's a bit overly you know there's like beau pete there's dennis the menace there's rupert the bear there's i can't remember them all night but there's those no no no we can't make that they'll look like this or i've got a very visual sort of no no no that's a bit milkmaid-y no no no but it's a great big trend and like we're leaving that trend behind yeah there's plenty of others i really want to talk to you about how because you know i said we I started a restaurant, very small.

13:18You started something that is now very big. And we went to L.A. together. Yeah. And when I was in New York, I went shopping at me and them. Are you in other cities in America? Yeah, we have started. So we're now in... What will be the next one? Stanford, Palo Alto. We're in Atlanta, Dallas. Yeah. We're close to signing in Washington. and we're looking at Chicago and Miami and yeah and it also so so again looking back this trajectory of going from making clothes at home was Manchester a fashion school when you went there yeah well I wanted to be a fashion buyer so I studied fashion marketing uh retail marketing was called at Manchester and that segued to me getting a job at Harrods so I was on the graduate training scheme at Harrods and I wanted to become a fashion buyer so you didn't necessarily want to design you weren't you're not trained I can't even draw you still you still don't really yeah it's interesting my role at me and em is really customer strategy product product strategy brand strategy yeah you know growth strategy locations but I wanted to be a fashion buyer which is why I did that degree and then why I ended up on the graduate training scheme at Harrods one of the girls that I live with a manchester her father had an apartment in london so that's how i afforded to live in london so i was very lucky because i didn't have any money at all and i you know i mean you remember those first salaries there yeah but 11 000 pounds 1992 92 the salary for working in harris was 11 thousand pounds so yeah and you know you had to decide whether you were going to go on the tube or buy a sandwich or buy a newspaper you know there were decisions around the very basics in life yeah but then what i used to do was use my staff discount in the sale to go and buy beautiful things when georgia omani died i did think back and think well you know you helped me a lot yeah um you get do you think about that when you're when you're choosing clothes for your that for women to wear to interviews yeah it really matters it really matters that first impression it shouldn't matter but it it still does what what is your experience of being on the other side of the table when you're interviewing what do you look for someone who comes for a job interview do do obviously the way they dress do they mostly wear me and em when they come for an interview with you no other does that matter would you like no that doesn't matter it matters that they've been into a store and bothered to really understand it yeah it depends what job they're going for.

15:59Normally you're looking for, you're really wanting to see whether they really are passionate about what you're doing because passion counts for absolutely everything.

16:17As a restaurant genius, I know the experience starts long before the food hits the table. genius by global payments makes it easy digital menus and price updates in real time no reprints no surprises the kitchen and floor stayed perfectly in sync so every dish arrives exactly as it should from game day crowds to memorable meals big league reliability for any business that's genius when you interview people you're just talking about interviews do you ever go with them to a restaurant because a lot of people that I've talked to say that they would always at some point want to take somebody they were working closely with to a restaurant because you well it's like a date isn't it you know if you go on a date you discover are they kind to the waiter do they get impatient if the food is late do they share you know you learn you learn about someone do you do you feel that yeah I've done that a couple of times and what did you learn yeah you learn a lot you really do I do a lot of customer research in restaurants well tell me about that so when I chose Madison Avenue in New York I ate in all the you know I went and had breakfast in the right places and supper in the right places and lunch and you're seeing the customers and what they're wearing and when you in terms of your business about how many You say that about 500 people work for you, between 400 and 500.

17:45How have you grown? I know how I've grown. We've grown slowly. We've grown from, well, originally two chefs. It was myself and Rose, the two people. One of us would make sandwiches, one of us would make a pasta, and we had nine tables. But in a way, for me, those restrictions were so helpful. If I had just come into this space and said, we're going to open a restaurant, it would have been a disaster. But you also started growing. I didn't know what I was doing either. You didn't know it, yeah. No. I mean, I didn't. I literally, I was clueless. I mean, I didn't. You must have known because you succeeded.

18:18Very much like you, though, started incredibly small. Definitely started a business that taught me a lot, which was the wrong business, same pajama room. So we went, I know there's a gap in there because I'd worked in advertising for 12 years. It's like, oh, you have to look for a gap in the market. So I looked for the gap in the market and there was, there were, the loungewear sort of revolution hadn't really started then. So everything was a bit, nothing, there was nothing beautiful to wear at home. So we made really beautiful loungewear as you know and you bought it for Rose when she was poorly.

18:55But it was too niche an idea. It wasn't going to grow. So we changed very quickly to me and Em and that was a combination of me and my business partner Emma. uh and then emma left the business quite early on we're still very good friends we're still in book club together we're going um to book club tonight but that was the start of the growth because we we could we there was no shortage of ideas um and but because we started online we suddenly realized that we were a direct to consumer business which meant that we weren't selling through wholesale which meant we were only looking after one margin which meant that we could make beautiful clothes for less and then I remembered all my love of luxury through my days at Harrods so a combination of my love of trousers my from making clothes with my mum my sort of consumer insight from advertising my love of luxury from Harrods I think if you melt it all together you get me an em and because of our because we stuck to one route to market we were able to make the clothes for less so we suddenly have this and then we grew into this modern luxury positioning and then we added british because we realized people didn't know we were british so we we now position ourselves as british modern luxury um and that was very important going into america to have that positioning so um and and you know when we became famous for trousers and there are very few businesses trousers are the most difficult thing i think why why because the fit of them is very technical um and they fit on you know women are very different around the bottom area uh so you've you've got to be very patient and uh we built up lots of dna uh around our fit which i actually did myself in the early days with this incredible fit technician from she was she's german she's called ursula and uh we created lots of different trouser shapes and i'd say i don't like it like that i think it should fit like this and she was very patient she'd go okay well let's adapt it like this and and she was like a scientist um and then we started to get talked about in the press as the trouser whisperers and the trouser geeks and and that was when the thing started to to get going um so it's those foundation pieces i was thinking about my favorite dish with you outside of um zucchini which is the how you do mozzarella because for some reason it's just the right gooeyness about how you can re-spin mozzarella endlessly yeah so i always have it so good like no one can make it like you and how you design all the ingredients that go with it but they're always different it's same with a pair of trousers you have to start with a beautiful base fabric and then you can put lots of different ingredients with it and you can wear that trouser every single day looking completely different i think there is a parallel between what you do you know i've been thinking a lot about ingredients lately whether i'm interviewing a writer and his ingredients or her ingredients are words or you you know interview a business person and their ingredients are financial equations but you know and yours are fabric and yours are design and yours is technical but if we don't have the right ingredients and they don't have to be the most expensive ingredient but the the quality of the ingredient is where you start from whether it is a word or it is a tomato or it is a cotton and then the technique that that then that's you create doesn't it makes it you know very if you have that basis then you can move forward.

22:48Sounds really simple. Yeah. Yeah. Actually incredibly difficult to deliver. Yeah. And the less you put on, of course, you can't hide. Yeah. And you can't, you can't decide. Yeah. You can't hide behind a bad fabric. You can't hide behind it. If you're going to do perfect simplicity ingredients, each one has to be perfect. For women who are working and doing what we do, and also have a family that we care about, and I remember coming to see you with Johnny, coming to see you with your children having incredible lunches so what what how is that with your children and your dogs and your horses life with children is a marathon not a sprint and i think if you can remember that and actually listening to anya highmarch once on a podcast um was very important because she's similar to me she's got five children to juggle i think she's got two of her own I mean she's she's a working juggling juggernaut of a mother I remember her saying that it's the really important things that matter you don't remember the bits in between so just always making sure that you're at the right things you can't be at everything but you can be at you can be at the you know all of the things that they'll remember the holidays the weekends the cooking the the shows the sports matches um and i mean i have been known to have meetings on the sidelines i've heard i've heard uh but yeah but it doesn't last forever it's just it's 20 year sprint right but it's uh you've got to make sure you hit all the key moments the other day i was coming back in the taxi uh to home and um i said to the driver um could you just go a bit faster because my son's at home and I really want to see him and he said sure I'll try but you know why didn't you get somebody else to pick him up from school and I wanted to say he's 51

25:01so I would say to all of you parents it not only is it a it's a marathon but it never you know i think they you know you kind of rush home to see your your child but no matter what age they are and you're divided because you also were supposed to be somewhere else and you change directions so i but i i think that yeah i think that's so true and you remember back to all of the moments where you were really super stressed because you were late for a round as match or something you realize it really you know some things just have to give but it all aggregates to a happy childhood, I think. But yeah, I love that.

25:38Still racing home to see your 51-year-old.

26:01That's genius. I started the River Cafe in 1987 with Rose Gray, and she died in 2010. And so there was a change and a loss and a direction that we had to sort of go in. And when you went to, you just said that you changed from being me and em almost to me, you know. And it wasn't through a loss of a... Me, me, me and me. it wasn't through the loss of final loss of death and in fact you're saying that you um are going to a book club tonight but it must have been a big change for you to go from having somebody that you started work with to going to being on your own can you tell me what that was like we've both got some resilience built in there i think ruthie because losing your business partner is scary and obviously yours was a tragedy and but um I think it was the making of me to be honest because I had to learn the numbers and I'd let Emma do the numbers and I was doing the products and the brand and the customer stuff and I think I'd become lazy around the numbers and actually the numbers really matter and I study the numbers like you do daily in fact sometimes hourly yeah and if you don't understand the numbers you can't make the right things because the numbers are telling you one thing and then you need a large dollop of intuition to go with it every day I wake up in the morning and I get a text saying this is how many covers you had this was the average spend and this is the total and then I look at I have what you know at the end of the month I know what we did.

27:54Oh, no, then I see what we did at the same time this week, if this is May, what was in April, and then a year ago. You know, we all just look at where we are. I get results very fast. Richard, who is an architect, or friends of ours who make movies, take a lot longer to understand where they are in the world. I see it every day. And it's crucial for me, you know, whether I need it every single day. But I do, and I think if we had, fewer covers but we made more money or we made more money but we had let you know more covers or or who was in and what what they what the average spend is I can tell much how same metrics how much yeah the same how much wine is being drunk you know because that always lifts things up so all that knowledge is crucial I think is it Charles Dunstan who you know well who's one of our early investors one said to me you can run your business off seven numbers and every day know those seven numbers and you'll be able to run a business and it was the one of the best bits of business advice I ever had so stay being data obsessed and customer obsessed gets you a long way yeah but do you know the seven yeah yeah what are they well average order value pardon me average order value yes so that's the one you mentioned absolutely critical if you don't if that doesn't stay stable then you've got to get more customers.

29:20So how many customers are you acquiring? How many customers are you losing? So acquisition, retention, the cost of acquisition, the lifetime value and your three margins, really. So I've probably done more than seven there. But are you hitting your, I worry less about intake margin now, but your exit margin, which is your margin after discounting and then obviously profit, profit critical. So sometimes you can be missing your revenue but hitting your profit. So it's just so interesting. I just love it because it keeps you on your toes. People go, you're bored. Never bored. Always learning. Yeah.

30:07When you said you had a global bestseller, what would be your global bestsellers? It varies all through the year. So, you know, right now, I would say if you looked at our top 20 bestsellers, 18 of them will be dresses. And you'll have jackets and trousers. But in September, it will all shift to jackets and trousers and knitwear. So it varies through the year. And that's why, because you base your business on ingredients. And seasonality. No, I was like, I'm pointing to you because you're the founder of the River Cafe. but you're you work on seasonality of ingredients yeah we do and actually we do a similar thing which is we work on the seasonality of how people feel yeah and how they want to wear so we'll see a big shift to trousers and suiting in september and october and then they'll move to coats and if you bring we find if you bring your coats in in august no one really wants them and then they're bored by October so actually yeah your ingredients will have gone off yeah yeah no I also say it's you know we love so many similarities yeah there are there's so many similarities and so many but I was wondering back to your going full circle to your parents and your family I know you had a tragedy in that both your parents died within a half an hour of each other but did Did they see your success?

31:37So I always say that me and Em starts with my mum. Yeah. And of course my dad was a large part of it. It was him that made me queue on Older Market at 6am in the morning. But it was the love of clothes that I did with my mum. You know, made clothes with my mum. And yes, my father had been very ill for two years. And my mum had been clearing the house out. and she had put memory boxes together for my brother and I because when my dad died, my mum and I were going to do the house up and we had all these plans. And anyway, the tragedy struck. My mum was on the phone to me and she had a brain hemorrhage and she died.

32:24And they died within, as you say, within half an hour of each other. She was going to tell you that your father had died. she was she was i was supposed to be coming back my anyway so my father i was supposed to be getting to my father so we were making plans for me to get to my father to say my final goodbye um and weirdly she died actually a couple of minutes before him um and i had to go on a plane um so it was i'll never forget the british airway staff they were so kind they were unbelievable But I then had to go back to their house. And of course, I'd always planned to go back to that house with my mum.

33:09And remember, they'd never moved. So the house that I was born in was where they died. And I went to look for her passport. and I found all our old patterns and needlework cases and the sewing machine and it was all there. And she'd put it in this place as the memory of what we did. And at that moment, the doorbell rang and it was a me and em package. No. Well, that is a full... So, all down to mum. Full, simple down to your mum. Yeah. And I did it without crying. Good. Well, you can cry. We can all cry. I would cry. Brought tears to my eyes. And if you think that the tragedies you've been through, the joys you've been through, the children you've raised, the life you've led, and all you've done with the control, with the rigor, with the ingredients, with the demands, there's also times when you need comfort.

34:14And so we go to food for joy. We go for sharing. Your mother taught you. You teach your children. It's a way of being together. We appreciate the zucchini fritti. And there is a sense of the way food is in our lives. So it can be for sharing and excitement and also for comfort. And so before I say goodbye to you on this rainy day, if you do reach for food for comfort, is there a food that you would reach for? Yeah. My mum's shepherd's pie made her style with peas and ketchup. Hmm. Okay. Not very risky, babe. Describe it. Tell me about it. She put lots of hidden vegetables in, so lots and lots of vegetables with the mints and red wine and lots of tomatoes.

35:08But it was the mash then layered up with lots of cheese and sliced tomatoes. So you would just eat it with ketchup? Ketchup and bees. She didn't put it in the recipe? No, she didn't put it in the recipe. Oh, okay. I had ketchup on the side. and peas and shepherd's why not Heinz ketchup Heinz ketchup thank you Claire beautiful thank you Ruthie's Table 4 was produced by Alex Bell, Robbie Hamilton and Zad Rogers with Andrew Sang and Bella Salini. This has been an Atomize production for iHeartMedia

35:45As a restaurant genius I know the experience starts long before the food hits the table. Genius by Global Payments makes it easy. Digital menus and price updates in real time. No reprints, no surprises. The kitchen and floor stayed perfectly in sync, so every dish arrives exactly as it should. From game day crowds to memorable meals. Big League reliability for any business. That's genius. This episode sponsored by Minky Couture. Fair warning, bring a Minky Couture blanket home and it may instantly become the most wanted seat in the house. That's the magic of Minky Couture. Minky Couture created the original soft Minky blanket, trusted for premium quality and custom styles.

36:34One touch and movie nights, naps, and cold mornings suddenly revolve around who got to it first. Shop now at MinkyCouture.com. That's Minky, M-I-N-K-Y, Couture, C-O-U-T-U-R-E, dot com. Go to minkeecouture.com and get your Minke Couture blanket now before everyone in your house claims it is theirs. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.