Member of the Month: Beatrice Larkin

Congratulations to our Member of the Month for July, textile designer, Beatrice Larkin.

Bea is the creative director of the woven textiles brand, Beatrice Larkin.

Her hand-drawn sketches run through all her woven designs. Although production-made, her fabrics have a handmade feel due to the way they are manufactured. She explains:

“The marks from my sketches are still noticeable in the finished fabric. The Jacquard loom allows for intricate patterns, picking up inky lines and blotches, broken geometrics and blurred edges.”

What inspired your business journey?

I was fortunate to grow up surrounded by beautiful fabrics with my dad running a little interior design shop in Canterbury and my mum also being a textile designer (embroiderer and quilter). I grew up doing markets with my mum. We'd pack the car up and go to a market to sell her products and my dad too sold fabric and wallpaper in his store.

Our house had piles of beautiful fabric coming in and out everywhere. I guess, it was in my blood.

It was naïve perhaps, but this was what I knew life to be; planning your own time and all the things that come with having your own business and the stresses that come with it as well. That's what my upbringing was. I know it can be quite daunting for some people to start their own business, but it was natural for me to just go into it when I finished studying.

I went to school in Canterbury and we had a great textile department, as well as on the side of making textiles at home. I moved to London at 19 to do my BA in textile design at Chelsea College of Art and then finished my Masters at the Royal College of Art in 2013.

I did look for jobs designing for other people but as a textile designer, I wanted to have that creativity under my own name. So, I slowly started the business then (after graduating) while I worked part-time in hospitality and at a music venue.

I am grafter. Because my business is under my name and it's my passion – textile design and weaving – it's about whatever you can do to make that a reality.

When did you know it was a viable business?

It was a slow progression. I graduated in 2013 and had a lot of interest in my Masters's final collection from shops, but at that point, I wasn't ready to manufacture. When you're studying, you don't have all the costs to run a business. All you have are these beautiful textiles, but no idea how to get them into the retail world.

It took me a couple of years to get manufacturing in place. I looked at different mills in the UK and found one that I've been working with for a while now. I also got support from Daylesford Organic that paid for my first run of production and got the ball rolling. I also started selling to Heal's wholesale. It was slow and I was working another job then too.

It was a case of stopping and working full-time on the business, then needing to step back and do some other work. It's always been lots of things on the go.

What advice do you have for others breaking into the design industry?

1. Seek as much advice as possible from people who've been there

Especially in the weaving world, British woven fabrics are niche. I sought to gain mentorship through those people who were maybe 10 years in the industry to ask for their advice.

2. Sign up to programmes

This is where Enterprise Nation is great for business advice as it is just me on my own.

So, when I finished my Masters, I went on to the Craft Council Hothouse scheme, where I got start-up business advice, as well as advice on setting up a business from a craft and a studio in London. I also got funding from the Queen Elizabeth's Scholarship Trust.

As you grow all of that advice changes. It is so relevant, but in different ways and that is why I love Enterprise Nation because you can tap into those resources anytime and use them in new ways, every time your business grows or when you are looking at a different challenge.

3. Research and stick to your values

What do you want to represent? For me, I wanted it to be British woven and about the craft, ultimately.

Have those values in place so you know what you're able to stick to and what way you can fit those parameters into. Have a clear vision of where you want to get to, have goals in place and a structure.

What inspires your designs?

During my BA, you could do a little test of all the different parts of textile design and I found weaving the most fascinating because you are literally starting from a piece of yarn and creating a finished fabric. Aside from the magic of it, I also equally wanted to study something that was teaching me a proper skill that I could take forward and understand how cloth is made.

It's the texture and depth you can create in a weave. Although I also love print, when you’re thinking of a weave, you can add a bit more texture.

My designs are predominantly geometric. My signature style has this organic, hand-drawn element to it. Because of the way it is manufactured, it means I can keep that initial sketchy organic, hand-drawn element and bring it through to the finished fabric. The idea is that they are production-made, but have a handmade feel.

What’s next for the business?

I would like to push the sustainability angle with my business and am doing a lot of sampling and trialling. I don't know what it's going to turn out to be, but I would like to do British wool or recycled wool and keep 100% of my product manufactured and originated in the UK as currently, my yarn is Italian spun.

I would also like to develop product-wise. I'd like to move more into wool for upholstery as well. At the moment, most of my fabrics are monochrome, so I would like to bring more colours and do a limited run of colours, a pop of colour here and there, that would be quite exciting.

Before COVID, I was pushing selling internationally. Then COVID hit and everything went back a bit, back home. Now I'm looking again at starting to export and do more international trade fairs. I've been told that the Japanese market would be quite interested in my designs and my product. Equally the US, there are a couple of fairs there too I want to do.

When did you first become aware of the Enterprise Nation platform?

It was during lockdown and I use it every week. I get the emails of what's coming up at the weekend and I sign up to Lunch and Learns and if I can’t make it, I will watch the recordings. I find them so useful.

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