A wardrobe malfunction inspired me to design better tights... now my sales are £54m a year, reveals Snag founder

Brie Read started her online hosiery business Snag when, on a morning in the autumn of 2017, her tights fell down on George Street, Edinburgh’s smartest shopping area.

She recalls the moment of acute embarrassment: ‘I looked up and saw that at least 100 people were watching.’

Read managed to step out of her tights but not away from the difficulty revealed by the wardrobe malfunction. Using her savings, plus loans from friends and family, she pursued the goal of better-fitting tights for all figures.

Snag has become an international enterprise and recently secured a seven-figure investment from James Caan of Dragons' Den fame.

The pair met through an acquaintance, but it is not hard to see how he would have been impressed by her readiness to question the entire basis of the £15bn global tights industry.

‘Everybody has a problem with tights, whatever their height and shape. This is a particular issue if you have to wear tights as part of your job, like doctors, nurses and flight attendants,’ says Read.

Brie Read, 45, launched Snag Tights after an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction

The decision to supply a comfortable, but stylish product has not always been easy for the 45-year-old mother-of-two.

She has opted for inclusivity because, she says, it makes commercial and ethical sense. But she has had to take on the chin criticism of Snag advertisements which show women who are not a typical size 8 lingerie model.

The website features the petite, the mid-sized and the curvy, but the images are not the filtered ultra glamorous norm.

Public disapproval of larger body types may be irksome, but the decision to cater for everywoman has paid off.

Snag, based in Oxfordshire, had sales of £54 million last year, offering its tights, underwear, leggings and other clothing through six websites in the UK, the US, Australia, Canada, Germany and the EU.

One pair of Snag tights, which come in sizes 4 to 36 and retails for as little as £9.49, sells every 10 seconds. Not bad for a company that employs just 120 people, the majority working remotely.

She argues that the fault lies not with customers, but with manufacturing methods and other retailers’ willingness to tolerate what she regards as low standards.

Read found that the way in which tights were made, mostly in China, took only leg length into account, not body width.

‘I found that an extra large pair of tights usually had no more room around the hips; it just had longer legs.’

Snag tights are made by a small business in Northern Italy in a full range of widths, using an extra soft and durable proprietary yarn. And Read’s calculation that women, whatever their height or weight, were fed up and looking for a better fit proved successful almost immediately.

She says: ‘My partner Tom – who’s now our chief technology officer - built the website and we went live at 11pm on March 1 2018. We woke up the next morning to sales coming through, and soon we were taking £ 100,000 a month, showing that designing for real bodies is better for customers and better for business. Within the first year, we had sold 300,000 pairs of tights.’

She continues: ‘I quit my job and, by late 2019, our turnover was £2million-a-month. That spring we had sought more finance, with our original investors putting in more and a new investor coming on board.’

Leggings and other clothing were added to the range. But whatever the product, the focus on fit means that there are fewer returns, one of the aspects of the business that attracted Caan.

Read says: ‘Online fashion return rates average about 40pc. Our return rate is 2pc.’

Caan describes this figure as ‘commercially compelling’ adding: ‘High return rates erode profitability and create unnecessary waste. By designing for a broader customer base, the business opens up a significantly larger market opportunity. I back founders with conviction, and Brie has built something genuinely disruptive.’

The former Dragon must also have been struck by Read’s inventiveness under pressure, which came to the fore during the pandemic when people worked from home, severely reducing the demand for tights.

She says: ‘Covid had struck, our finance person had told me we were running out of money and I was in the garden crying. But I started a ‘Save Our Snag’ campaign using our social media, under which our customers could buy-one-get-one-free . Within days we had raised £1.25 million. Our customers bailed us out.’

Instrumental to this initiative was the relationship that Read had with her 50,000 followers - called ‘Snagglers’ - on Instagram and 100,000 Facebook friends.

This month the Snagglers will be celebrating Halloween in special tights - including a Jack O Lantern pair - but also preparing for winter with 80-denier opaques.

Read says that Caan’s experience will mean that Snag should move ‘further and faster.’ After all, Snag’s strategy accords with Caan’s central business dictum: ‘Observe the masses and do things differently.'

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