Sussex fashion entrepreneur sizes up the possibilities

Nicky Allen knew she had to leave Italy when the Mafia stuck a limpet mine on to her shop’s shutters and machine gunned her window display.

Even in the face of such provocation, it was a painful decision to leave.

Nicky had been in love with the country since she was 16, when she visited on holiday with her best friend and her family.

It was not only the land that stole her heart but a man named Peppe Genovesi. They met on that first holiday and kept in touch during the two years Nicky studied an OND in business at Brighton Technical College.

As soon as her education was over, the couple got marred and moved to a village near Naples.

Nicky, now 53, said: “I couldn’t wait to get away.

And my parents were quite happy to see me go.”

The couple opened a boutique called Box 2, which sounded exotically English, and it was one of the first Italian clothes shops to sell jeans.

Nicky said: “Italians have always been stylish but never trendy. They wore the same clothes their parents wore but that was beginning to change when we opened.

“I loved Italy. I was much happier there than I ever was here because I felt I fitted in better.”

Not fitting in has actually become the secret of Nicky’s success.

A leggy 5ft 10in, she grew up struggling to find anything stylish in the right size, a problem that remains common on the high street even today.

Her fashion label, still called Box 2, plugs the gap in the market by catering specifically for women above a size 14. Its success has been tremendous.

From one shop in Brighton, Box 2 has grown to more than half a dozen franchised outlets in locations from Kendal to Cardiff as well as a catalogue, which is sent to more than 80,000 addresses.

But if the Mafia hadn’t have interjected, it could all have been very different.

Nicky said: “The big change in the late-1970s was that it went from the Mafia to the Camorra. The old Mafia left us alone and were only interested in things like cigarette smuggling, numbers and girls.

But the new guys brought in the drugs.”

With the drugs came crime and with the crime came demands for protection money.

Nicky said: “It got to the point where you couldn’t drive a nice car or wear good jewellery. I was driving my car when someone snatched the chain from round my neck.

“Then they would come into the shop, saying they had a friend in prison who needed money. We said no.

“As a result, we would receive phone calls from people, saying they knew what we were driving and what I was wearing.”

Nicky could withstand the intimidation but when explosives were attached to the shop and bullets started flying it became too much and she decided to leave.

Using contacts from her father, who owned the Felix greengrocer in Brighton’s Western Road, Nicky organised two lorryloads of Italian fruit, vegetables and flowers to be shipped over and sold in Covent Garden, London.

She used the £2,000 profit to open her first shop in Prince Albert Street, Brighton.

Peppe had refused to leave Italy but she kept him in mind by keeping the name Box 2 and the same cherry logo, which she still uses today.

Nicky said: “Our slogan was Italian fashion at Italian prices.”

After a while, Peppe came over to Brighton and the couple got back together. He opened a clothes shop in Western Road and, while walking there one day, Nicky spotted the building her business would call home for almost 20 years.

She said: “I saw a ‘to let’ sign go above a place in Duke Street and I was straight on the phone to the estate agent.

“I didn’t have much money but Mike Holmes, my bank manager at what was then the Midland bank, came to my rescue.”

The Duke Street shop was to remain open until 2005. In the intervening years, Peppe, who found it difficult to become accustomed to life in England, returned to Italy and Nicky got married again to a man called Colin Hamilton, with whom she had two children, Georgia, 24, and Matthew, 21.

Nicky said: “They were basically born in the shop. I fed them in the fitting rooms because I lived and breathed Box 2.

“I love what I do and don’t consider it to be work because I find it so much fun.”

For many years, Box 2 catered for all sizes, though, because of her own experiences, Nicky made sure that larger women had the same choice of styles as everyone else.

She said: “During the 1990s, we switched suppliers from Italy to Germany because what they were producing was wearable and very fashionable.

“It wasn’t cheap but it also wasn’t top end so it was a nice middle market for us.

“They also did larger sizes as a matter of course.

“In Italy, you get nothing larger than a size ten and in France it is even smaller.”

Box 2 took advantage of the fact that hardly any British shops sold large ranges of high-quality fashion in larger sizes. Nicky said: “I phoned Selfridge’s once and asked about a concession but they said they would never consider it.

“It is snobbery but it’s also because the bigger girls – and I count myself in that category – just don’t shop because they are used to never finding anything suitable. People look down on them.

“I remember when a woman came into our shop one day, with £500, and said she would spend it all with me because she had been treated so badly in another store.”

And it wasn’t just ordinary shoppers who found what they were looking for at Box 2.

Former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies was a regular customer at the Duke Street store, while Judy Finnigan, Pauline Quirke and Fern Britton have all worn the label’s clothes on television.

The company survived the recessions of the early-1980s and 1990s and is performing well in the current downturn, with turnover from its mail order business doubling in recent years.

Nicky puts this down to “the ability to think on our feet” and not be rushed into major decisions.

The company didn’t begin specialising in larger sizes until a few years ago and took its time to establish a network of franchised stores.

Nicky said: “In 2003, we had a customer who became a friend and she asked if she could open a Box 2 in Wimbledon.

“She was our first franchisee and is probably still the most successful.”

On the advice of a friend’s husband, who worked in marketing, Nicky, who admits to being a technophobe who “didn’t send my first email until 2006”, bought the box2.co.uk domain name.

In 2005, she sold the lease of the Duke Street shop to concentrate solely on the website and catalogue.

Now married to Steve Allen, a former civil engineer, who left his job to help run the IT side of Box 2, Nicky spends most her time packing and sending off clothes in a large modern barn in the grounds of her home.

When she does find time to relax, she plays golf and bridge. A keen walker, last year she completed a sponsored hike in Macchu Pichu, Peru, and is taking part in the 20-mile Ribbon walk in aid of Breast Cancer Care later in the year.

She admits to being disappointed that neither of her children seem interested in taking on the family business.

Georgia, who is studying to be an English Literature teacher at the University of Brighton, eventually wants to work in a referral unit, while Matthew has finished an economics degree at Durham and is about to start a Masters.

Nicky said: “I would love them to come to work for me because Box 2 is going to go on and on. I’ve got the energy at the moment but that won’t last forever.”

For people who are interested in following in her footsteps, Nicky’s advice is to keep a close eye on the bottom line and pay for a proper website.

She said: “If you can make stuff yourself then the internet is amazing. But your website must be very good and contain all the right words you need for search engines.

“You must be prepared to spend money on advertising but you must also have enough spare cash to get through the first couple of years. Don’t think your business will pay your mortgage at the start because it won’t.”

As for her own future plans, Nicky remains ambitious.

She said: “What’s next?

The world is next. I want to go global. That’s why I want the children to come in so they can do that while I go and play golf.”