Welcome to the Scoop: a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week. This will be a way for the Vogue Business community to synthesize and reflect on the latest headlines and get a little inside scoop every Friday.
This week’s Scoop is a cozy one, just in time for an easy weekend following the Met Gala and Europe’s May bank holidays. Kristoffer Juhl is the co-founder and managing director of Danish homeware brand Tekla, which you will know if you follow quiet luxury influencers on Instagram.
Kristoffer was in London this week for a board meeting and to launch the latest Tekla collection of twill pajamas. I know very little about homeware (a growing category, indeed), so I thought it was a good opportunity to educate myself with a chat.
Hi Kris, what’s the scoop?
I’m in London currently to celebrate the launch of our twill collection. We just had a lovely event in-store with our community, where we traced the history of in-home clothing and the role it plays in people’s closets.
Are community-driven events part of your usual rollouts?
When people feel like they have learned something, it’s been a successful event. The London store, though, has only been open since December, so we try to test out different formats when it comes to engaging with our audience here.
Why twill?
Poplin has been a hero quality of ours — it makes for sturdier sleepwear. A few years back, we launched satin too, which trades very beautifully but is also heavy. So we were looking for something lighter for the warmer months. I think twill is by far the most comfortable of the three qualities we have in the sleepwear range.
How do you know when it’s the right moment to expand your categories?
We are not a trend-driven business. Most of our offering is for within the home, so expanding on a category is not a leap where you leave everything behind and rush to get the next thing done. Usually, a product has been in development for years, or at least a very long time. The twill we launched this morning was in development for quite a while. A lot of work went into the quality and the detailing, so that when we put something out, it’s here to stay.
How often do you bring a new product or category to market?
