FREE UK DELIVERY ALL BANK HOLIDAY WEEKEND! Ends 1st April 23:59. No discount code required.

FREE UK SHIPPING ON ORDERS OVER £75

Between The Sheets

Blog Things We Love

Tielle's 5th Birthday: Five years in Five Minutes

“Hello, I recently stayed at The Savoy and loved the bedding that I slept in. Can I buy the same bedding from Tradelinens for my home?”

 

 

Our founders, Joe and Robert, started to get these sorts of calls on an almost daily basis, and it didn’t take long for these two sharp minds to jump on a new business idea.

That was 2014.

Five years on, Tielle Love Luxury is now one of the UK’s leading premium linen brands, helping people to enjoy a great night’s sleep at home.

It’s been a blast, with highs, lows and laughs. Here are a few bookmarks in our story… so far.

 

It’s all in a name…

 

At HQ, the creative minds kicked in to come up with a name for our fledgling business. From weird and wonderful to sublime and ridiculous, ‘Tielle Love Luxury’ was born. FYI - ‘Tielle’ is how we refer to Tradelinens in the office.

Fast forward several months and plenty of flip charts, Post-It notes and discussion, we launched on 21 September 2014. Since then, we’ve welcomed a whopping 7,500 customers (and counting) to Tielle.

 

If you’ve got it, flaunt it…

 

As flattering as it was to receive calls from people enjoying our products in five-star hotels, we needed some marketing clout to build our new little business.

And, getting the Tielle name out into the press has been oh so important ever since.

In 2015, we got our first BIG piece of press coverage, in The Independent.

Since then, we’ve appeared in all the broadsheets (The Times, Daily Telegraph, FT, etc), red tops (The Sun, Daily Mirror, etc), glossy (Homes & Gardens, Harpers Bazaar, etc) and a few less glossy (!) magazines as well as online titles, that we could wish for!

 

 

 

Fancy ‘Breakfast in Bed’?

 

We love our journo friends 😉. We think they like us too. Probably because we’ve hosted them across the years with sumptuous ‘breakfast in bed’ and afternoon tea events at some of our favourite client hotels like The Ned, The Ham Yard and Charlotte St Hotel.

 

 

 

The last five years has also seen the rise and rise of the "influencer". Never ones to stand still, we embraced this new wave. We love working with our ever-expanding family of Tielle fans, from lifestyle gurus to home reno peeps, who each help to tell our story.

 

 

 

The sight of our not-so-young founder Robert talking about pillow fillings to a room full of beautiful twenty-something influencers dressed in our robes will live long in the memory!

 

 

 

Meet our makers...

A nod to our wonderful family of suppliers, who match us for pride, passion and attention to detail. We're  a close-knit group, helped by the fact that we love to visit (yes, really!) our mills, such as in India in 2016.

 

 

 

Did you know we also teach?!

 

Seriously. In 2018, the British Institute of Interior Design (BIID) accredited Robert and Joe (who know a thing or two about linen) to teach its members all about linen as part of their programme of professional development courses for interior designers.

 

It's good to talk...

 

We like to speak to our customers to ensure we provide both the expert advice and products they want. It's one of our USP's and it always raises a smile when we receive wonderful customer reviews telling us so.

 

 

 

Knowing what our customers want also helps us to create new products they'll love.

In 2016, we introduced our ever-popular faux fur throws. In 2017, we introduced some colour variations to our bedding and towels too. This year, our new napkins have gone down a storm.

We don't always get it right though and no one in the NPD (new product development) team has claimed to be the brains behind this throw that we launched (and banished) in 2017... ouch.

 

 

 

Making a difference...

 

Giving people a great night's sleep is important to us but, so is the world in which we live. So in 2017, we put our heads together to think about how we could make a meaningful difference. Cue the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI).

Our parent company, Tradelinens, became the first UK trade linen business to become a member of the BCI. It means we're part of a growing community of global businesses working together to improve cotton farming globally. And with it, is our commitment to ensure we increase the amount of better cotton we use in our products every year.

 

 

Have we learnt anything along the way? Plenty, but perhaps the main thing is that when it comes to bedding, it's always a very personal choice. You'd think everyone would favour the most 'luxurious'.

Not true:

Catherine Morris, Managing Director - 300tc sheets

Robert Lancaster Gaye, Co-founder - 600tc sheets

Katie Hawes, Retail and Marketing Manager - 400tc sheets

Rebecca Dukes, Head of Boutique - 300tc Satin Stripe

 

And that's a wrap. We're off to continue doing what we love, bringing five-star luxury to people's homes.

 

Here's to the next 5 years!

 

The Tielle Team x

P.S. Here's a picture of our founders, Joe and Robert, in bed together (from one of our brand video shoots, we should probably add)!

 

Liquid error (layout/theme line 152): Could not find asset snippets/cookie-bar.liquid