I gave birth to a son and a business at the same time

Needing to sell ten jumpsuits to hit the minimum order requirements of her north London factory, she was “checking sales between contractions” until she reached the magic number. “When I hit ten, I was like, ‘Okay, I can go and have this baby now.’ ”

Seven years later, the business’s growth has kept pace with her family’s: Beyond Nine’s product range has expanded to include dresses, knitwear and outerwear, and sales have grown by 90 per cent a year for the past two years. Turnover reached £4.2 million in 2023, with a pre-tax profit of £330,000, and sales are on track to hit £7 million in 2024.

Owning a fashion brand, however, wasn’t always what Raybould’s ambition. Despite a lifelong passion for clothes, she had initially thought she would follow her parents into education — they both started their careers as teachers — until she secured some work experience in a primary school while studying at university, and “absolutely hated it”.

Instead, after completing her degree in social science at Cardiff University, she went to work in social policy research for a company that was later sold to Kantar, the research giant. This was followed by five years at the BBC, initially in market research before she moved into marketing, first with BBC3 and then Radio 2.

But her twenties were also marred by ill-health and a family tragedy. When she was 23, she had a rumbling appendix, which needed removing, and then tests for other, seemingly unrelated, symptoms revealed she had thyroid cancer. She needed two operations and a course of radioactive iodine, which helps to make thyroid hormones. The treatment also meant she had to be isolated in a hospital room to protect others from radiation.

Raybould recovered, but not long after that, her older brother, Ben, was involved in a life-changing accident while visiting his girlfriend, who was working in Haiti. The pair had hopped over the border to the Dominican Republic and were on the last night of the trip when a car hit them as they walked
along a pavement. Ben’s girlfriend was killed and he suffered significant head injuries, including a bleed on the brain stem.

Ben survived, and lives with his parents in Brighton. He ran a half-marathon a year after the accident and has since completed a master’s degree. But Raybould said the incident made her question the path she was on. “I’d had this easy, privileged life until this point, and then I remember thinking that life is short and so you have to go after what you want to do. I think it’s all those things that shaped me and gave me the courage to start my business.”

She married Miles, her brother’s best friend from university, and in 2015 they had their first child, Rufus. It was another period of “unsteadiness” for Raybould. “I went through a sort of identity crisis when I had a baby, which I think lots of women experience. I remember in the hospital, just after I had him, [the staff] started calling me ‘mum’ because they couldn’t be bothered to learn my name. And I remember thinking, ‘I am Naomi, I’m not just mum.’” With hindsight, she thinks she may have
experienced undiagnosed post-natal depression.

She went back to work after a year and then, when a request for flexible working was denied, moved to Plan International, the development charity supporting children’s rights and equality for girls. Raybould requested a job share, which was granted, and this meant that when she became pregnant for the second time and had the idea for Beyond Nine, she was able to work on her start-up idea on her two days off.

“There were sparks [of the idea] in my first pregnancy, when I suddenly realised how important clothes were to me. I remember going out shopping for maternity wear, being horrified by what was on offer and thinking, ‘Who’s even designing this stuff? Clearly not a woman who’s been pregnant.’ Everything was bodycon-type [close fitting] dresses with ruching [pleats] on the side. I didn’t wear bodycon before I was pregnant; I didn’t want to wear bodycon now I was.”

She was inspired instead by high-end, high street brands including Whistles, which was then run by Jane Shepherdson, the former brand director at Topshop. “I loved their silk shirts and I remember buying these really cool silk leopard-print trousers. And then I had to start wearing polyester dresses just because I was pregnant.”

She spoke to her mother, who gave her two jumpsuits that she had worn in the 1980s when she was pregnant with Raybould and her two brothers. “And that’s what sparked the idea.”

She took those jumpsuits, along with some “terrible” sketches she had done, to a pattern cutter in Crofton Park, southeast London, and together they created a design she was happy with. A £4,000 loan from her father — which she repaid in the next couple of years — paid for the product samples and enabled her to go off on maternity leave at 36 weeks. “In that time, I built my Shopify store, did a photo shoot and got all my samples.” Raybould launched the day before her due date.

From packing the first 80 orders with son Raffy in a baby sling, the business grew steadily for the first few years, but Covid catapulted it into bigger leagues. “We had one evening when we sold more in two hours than we’d sold in the whole previous month.”

As the business has grown, its market has also diversified away from maternity wear: 70 per cent of sales are to women who aren’t pregnant. “We’re starting to get a lot of menopausal women coming to us,” said Raybould. “I think the common thread is that we’re appealing often to women who are going through some sort of identity shift or period of self rediscovery — their bodies are changing and they need clothing that is flexible and adaptable — but they still want clothing that feels good, still feels stylish, and still feels like them.”

The north London factory that made those early batches is still a key supplier today, though Raybould has also had to also enlist factories in Turkey and Portugal to keep pace with demand. “We’ve got quite a bit of work to do expanding our supplier base. because if our growth is going to be another 90 per cent this year, that’s a huge chunk of products we’ll need to deliver.”

She has hired an operations director to help with this — one with a financial background, which Raybould said is an added bonus. “That’s going to help me because I’m very cautious. The most important thing is paying my staff and paying my suppliers. I never want to jeopardise that, so if I’ve got someone in the business who can properly manage cashflow and forecasts, it’ll allow me to take more risks.”

Cash has been the main constraint on Beyond Nine’s growth, she added. “I do sometimes feel frustrated because I am restricted by cash, whether that’s [investing] in stock or people, and I am probably at the point of considering taking investment.

“But it would absolutely have to be the right investor. I’m not interested in growth at all costs.”

High five

My hero … my husband Miles. He’s the unsung hero of the brand because it just wouldn’t exist without him convincing me to take the leap, but also because he has to pick up more of the slack at home.
My best decision … hiring positive people and then investing in their development and allowing them to work flexibly. Eighty per cent of our staff are mothers.
My worst decisions … have been when I’ve hired the wrong people — ones who are glass half-empty, “computer says no” types. You cannot have them in a business growing as fast as ours.
Funniest moment … Recently, I was in the changing room of a shop and I heard a woman say to the woman running the shop, “I’m buying this top to match these trousers.” They were Beyond Nine trousers and the shop owner said, “You’ll never guess what: the founder of Beyond Nine is in
the changing room.” I popped my head out like I was some kind of celebrity. It was mortifying and lovely at the same time.
Best business tip … Make sure you’re offering something unique or you’ll struggle to cut through.