La Baule: at 19, Louise creates panties and swimsuits

“At Christmas 2018, my grandmother gave me a sewing machine, but I really didn’t like this gift, I didn’t touch it for 15 months”.

No taboo on this “mistake” of casting for Louise Hoffmann. And then comes the Covid. And the first confinement.

A few weeks from the baccalaureate, the high school student from Grand Air La Baule (Loire-Atlantique), 18 years old at the time, decides to keep busy, “discovers” his gift and takes a passion for embroidery, in a self-taught way, via many existing online tutorials.

“She’s cheeky” thanks to mom

“The stores were closed and the weather was very nice. No way to find a new swimsuit. So I started to sew it myself with recycled old sheets, ”explains the neo-entrepreneur.

Neither one nor two, the young Bauloise continues throughout the summer, then stocking up on frou-frou and flowery fabrics. The girlfriends serve as a model and here is the brand launched on Instagram and the website created.

“I worked at McDonald’s during the day and I sewed at night,” recalls the Bauloise who, during that summer, sold around 150 swimsuits.

Her parents support her in the process, even if her mother finds her “cheeky” to do so.

Bingo! The brand name is then all found: “She’s cheeky” continues its artisanal development during the first year of studies in Bordeaux of Louise to whom, decidedly, the confinements succeed since the second in last fall gives her the opportunity to launch a new collection, of panties this time.

“I sewed all day, with the school lessons in the background”, admits the former student in digital communication and marketing outspoken. Another time, because last March, the young woman decided to give up everything to return to the family home and devote herself completely to her small business: marketing, communication, packaging, search for suppliers, administration, etc., all the support functions. spend there.

Thanks to new machines acquired through funding received as part of a project competition (5^e place of the Open Iseg competition), Louise has increased her production capacity and now designs a two-piece swimsuit in half an hour instead of an hour and a half.

A collaboration has also been started in the form of a pack with the natural solar oils Midi 12, newly created by another Bauloise Aurélie Ribierre.

80 sales per week

If the young designer, who sells “around 80 copies of swimsuits and panties per week” is “delighted” with this entrepreneurial adventure and “wants to keep control”, she also sees certain more negative aspects of reality: the routine in the manufacturing and the difficulty of finding a place.

To counter this, Louise, who would like to bring her brand into the store, plans to launch a range of boxers, from July 27, and a little girl collection, this winter, “to use scraps of fabric as with scrunchies”. Being profitable and reinventing yourself, one of the secrets to keeping up over time.