Member Article

Superfast stocking sales for Durham lingerie firm

Christmas e-commerce is booming in Durham, following improvements made to the town’s broadband infrastructure.

Lingerie by Annette, a lingerie firm based in Durham, has enjoyed a twenty per cent surge in custom, after boosting its online operations in light of Digital Durham’s superfast broadband programme.

Annette Keelty, runs the firm from her home in High Shincliffe, is attracting new clients from all over the world after hooking up her e-commerce website to high speed fibre broadband.

On average, engineers from Openreach, BT’s local network business, are switching on 22 new street cabinets and making the new fibre network available to around 4,700 more premises every month in the Digital Durham programme area.

A second phase of fibre roll-out is already planned to begin in July 2016. This will see a further £9m invested in the programme area, including £2.82m from the Government’s Superfast Extension Programme and £4 million from BT, with the remaining investment split between the local authority partners.

An additional 29,000 homes and businesses will benefit as a result. By the end of the roll-out, 97 per cent of premises within the programme area will have access to fibre broadband.

Annette explained: “Since signing up to superfast broadband at the beginning of the year,I’ve been able to do a lot more promotion online – uploading videos and using social media, which I couldn’t really do before and that’s really given the business a boost.

“The more activity you do online, the more prominently you get seen on search engines like Google and the easier it is for customers to find you when they’re looking for something specific like lingerie.

“It helps little businesses like me to compete with the bigger competitors like Marks and Spencer without having to spend big bucks on advertising.”

New European customers have also been made aware of the brand, with Annette now garnering interest from as far as Russia, Germany and Dubai.

“They seem to really like the quality of the British lines,” added Annette.

“It is expensive to stock, but if you have the products in, it does sell and with superfast I can respond quickly to different trends – I can upload a new line and all the product information to my website in seconds. I added a brand called Bluebella when the film 50 Shades of Grey came out as it was featured in the movie, and it sold really well.”

Annette said that having a reliable and fast broadband connection was crucial for the month of December when she sees some of her biggest sales with a 50 per cent jump in purchases.

“Aside from Valentine’s Day, this time of the year is one of the busiest for me. When you’re working from home like me, you need to be able to see the orders as soon as they come in. Before I had fibre I would be worrying that I’d lose my connection and miss my orders.

“About 70 per cent of my business is done online and at this time of year sales are generally up by 50 per cent so a good broadband connection is vital.”