Emma Parker is the founder of Playful Promises, designing must have lingerie through creative experimentation, everyday necessity and sexual desire. Emma works with her lingerie addicted team, producing saucy and naughty social media content, exceptionally playful images to tantilise fans and spreading the Playful panty love through independent boutiques, prestigious department stores and ecommerce sites.
Emma also juggles a multitude of manufacturing projects for big name brands and in the infrequent spare moment Emma has, she enjoys a night on the town (often seen rolling around Shoreditch singing on a Friday night).
G: Tell us about your business:
Playful Promises is a London designed lingerie brand, founded in 2004. The brand mixes quirky, directional design with all things playful, flirty and even a little bit dirty. Playful Promises offers two lingerie collections a year, a line of swimwear and a line of gifting lingerie including customised briefs in a hand illustrated tin- the perfect gift. We have also launched our first womenswear range, clothing to dress-up the Playful girls so they can be undressed and reveal their Promising lingerie and more!
Playful Promises has two boutiques across London, a Pop-up boutique off Carnaby Street and a Boutique in the newly launched Boxpark Pop-up Mall. The boutiques are a boudoir filled with luxurious items from lingerie to accessories, swimwear, gifting items, dress, shoes, jewellery and much much more. The Playful Promises Boutique ladies are here to help, get you fitted into the perfect bra and dress you up, ready to be undressed!
G: Why do you do it ?
Because if you’ve got to get out of bed and do it every day you got to love it… but the brand ethos is:
Playful Promises are here for sassy, stylish ladies, lingerie addicts and lingerie virgins. Ladies who love to shout ‘I did it my way’ along to Sinatra, followed by the Sex Pistols. We do it for the Playful Promise girl, who is crammed with confidence, will never take herself too seriously and lives life to the full.
G: Why are you unique?
Playful Promises is unique in it’s product, the design and quality of the lingerie we produce as well as the competitive price point, but we are also unique in the customer service we strive to provide every day in the boutiques and at our head office managing our lingerie addicted customers and retailers.
G: Why did you choose Shoreditch for your new store?
The East-End stylish young lady has always been a loyal customer. Our first boutique was at the top of Brick Lane and we attracted a multitude of sassy young women, with an interest in vintage and a keen sense of style. Shoreditch was always going to be the ideal spot for Playful Promises to have a boutique and when the Boxpark initiative was launched we felt this would be a fantastic area to relocate, 300 metres down the road. But mainly we chose to take part in Boxpark’s retail revolution, the world’s first pop-up mall and a one-stop-shop for a host of brands and stylish products. Playful Promises had to be a part of it.
G: What do you think will be the main challenges developing your business in Shoreditch and how are you planning to overcome them?
Our first challenge will be attracting loyal customers to our new location. It’s always hard to successfully tell all fans that you have moved, but we hope through our social media and newsletters and website our customers will have changed our address in their address book
The second challenge will be enticing male customers into the boutique. Currently Boxpark has several brands targeting a male clientele, so we’d like to attract this customer into our stores and ease men into buying lingerie for their female companions. It can be quite intimidating for men to purchase lingerie for partners. We have set-up a hopefully outstanding exchange programme and gift voucher service which will enable male shoppers to confidently buy something from Playful Promises for a loved one. If not, our team of gorgeous boutique goddesses will gladly point gentleman in the right direction and good times can be enjoyed by all!
G: What would you say have been your most memorable experiences while developing your company/brand so far?
Walking into to Barney’s in NY, USA and seeing my lingerie on the main mannequins accessorized by Givenchy handbags (I was also was having a particularly scruffy day and as I pressed my nose up against the glass cabinet to get closer got approached by a security guard asking me if I needed any help… I thought perhaps this wasn’t the time to explain I was the designer as I was clearly looking quite mad enough…)
G: What were the main drivers of success in your company?
Passion for what we do and a great team who are all very involved in the brand
G: What does the future have in store for your company?
Playful Promises is launching in China, this is an incredibly exciting project for us. We believe there is a huge niche in the market in China and surrounding countries for affordable well designed lingerie. We are keen to get our website in China up and running in the New Year.
Closer to home, our second collection of curvaceous, sexy, figure defining womenswear will be available soon. Our first limited edition collection has been received well with many pieces selling out in under four weeks! So we hope this second collection will be as successful.
And as we branch out further a field, we hope to attract a larger fan base, and get more women in well-designed playful and flirty lingerie.
G: Who/what are your favorite CEOs/Businesses in Shoreditch?
Lounge Lover for its amazing cocktails and the too numerous to mention vintage shops on Brick Lane.
Twitter: @PlayfulPromises
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PlayfulPromises
Website/Blog: http://blog.playfulpromises.com/
