Small Business: Cool spaces - Bex Riley, Tosca & Salome

Bex Riley, founder of Tosca & Salome.

This week, Small Business editor Caitlin Sykes talks to business owners about work space.

Bex Riley is the founder of the Tosca & Salome fashion retail brand, which sells its products through the mobile Wanderlust Boutique as well as an online store and a summer shop in Takapuna.

How did the idea for your boutique in a bus come about?

Just over three years ago I left my job in media to move to the Balearic Islands in Spain, where my husband's job as a boat skipper had taken him. I've always been really interested in textiles and fashion, and I got a lot of inspiration from the aesthetic there - light, beachy, white interiors, flowing fabrics.

Also while I was travelling I also saw that mobile boutiques had really taken off overseas, especially in the US and France. It was a response to the recession, because they didn't have the big overhead of rent and if business wasn't good in a location, they could just move on to another spot. I'd never seen anything like it before, and I just saw it as an exciting new idea that could give me the flexibility with a business that I wanted.

How did you go about creating the space?

I moved back to New Zealand a couple of years ago, but I actually started the project six months before I came back. I sourced the bus via Trade Me - with the help of some friends doing inspections for me - and was lucky enough to connect with a builder who'd just worked on a food truck. I did up mood boards and he really got my vision, all communicated via Skype and emails until I got home to do the finishing touches.

Actually finding the bus was probably the hardest part, but things like creating a space where customers could easily stand up and walk through the bus, and coming up with a design for the racks that could be easily dismantled for travelling were also a challenge. It all involved a bit of trial and error.

What do you love about working in the space?

I'm coming into my third summer in the bus now, travelling from December to March to music festivals and beaches, and it really does stand out to customers. I get so many emails from people saying they've seen the bus, or heard about it on social media. I've even had business owners from overseas contact me for advice on setting up their own mobile boutiques. But the thing I love most is it doesn't feel like work at all when you're outside under the awning parked up close to a beach.

Tosca & Salome’s mobile Wanderlust Boutique.

The bus really has been at the centre of Tosca & Salome so far in terms of both development and profitability. I certainly think without having this unique business space Tosca & Salome wouldn't have attracted the attention or following I've had so far. We were always so flat out at the festivals we operated at, and people would say 'when are you opening a store? or 'I follow you on Instagram and finally I can come and try everything on'. The online store has grown really in the last year out of a desire from people to be able to buy our products year round. Instagram has been a huge marketing channel for us and we have a lot of people from around the world follow us, so that's also a way of growing an international customer base.

My customer base still love the experience of trying things on, and swimwear especially is hard to buy online and being able to try this on is really important. So that was another motivation for setting up our new store in Takapuna. That was just planned to be open in the summer months, but we're now looking at setting up a permanent store. You hear so much about the death of bricks and mortar retail, but my experience has kind of been the opposite.