Samantha Lingerie - nuts4chic Sex

Samantha Gallagher set up her own sexy lingerie business with her husband Andy last year, following a sudden stroke that forced her to reassess and reprioritize her life. Since then her web-based underwear store has proved to be a huge success.

Ribbon Trimmed Mesh Camigarter

I asked her what motivated her and found out a little bit about www.samathalingerie.com, a website bursting at the seams with beautifully feminine corsets, bustiers, matching sets, camisoles and costumes to suit every taste

nut4chic: How difficult was it for you and your husband to set up business your own?

Samantha Gallagher: Andy and I worked together previously, that’s how we met. Andy’s job meant that he was away often and working long hours, we missed each other and he hardly saw our little girl. I was also missing my career at the time and then unexpectedly found myself in hospital for two weeks after my stroke. Fortunately there was no profound long-term damage apart from the slight loss of sight in one eye, but it was nevertheless quite a shock. Andy and I went shopping for some sexy lingerie (to help with my recovery!) and found it really difficult to find any real choice or variety and the quality was mostly quite poor. We both agreed that we would love to work together for ourselves, and as I’ve always loved lingerie, in particular lingerie that makes me feel sexy, that’s what we decided we wanted to do. Was it difficult? Imagine how difficult you think it would be and then multiply it by 1000!

n4c: Are most of your customers UK-based? Any famous customers? (I won’t tell…)!

SG: Most of our customers are UK based, and we regularly help our customers with special occasions. A number of times we have arranged for a surprise parcel to be waiting in a hotel room in a romantic location. Another regular is for us to enclose a sealed letter from a customer to a distant love. It’s wonderful for us that we can help create magic moments and this is easily the most enjoyable part of what we do. Yes, we’ve a number of famous customers. Obviously it’s important to them that they trust us to be discreet, but that’s the same for all our customers….

SG: That’s the fabulous Ribbon Trimmed Mesh Camigarter, it’s daringly sexy and oh so provocative. It simply never fails!

n4c: More than half of your customers are women – why do you think this is? Do you think men are reluctant to purchase underwear for their partners – maybe because they always seem to get it wrong?!

SG: What woman doesn’t want to feel sexy? Lingerie can completely change how you feel about yourself. Sexy isn’t something you ‘do’, sexy is all about how you feel about yourself, it’s a state of mind that only you can get yourself and lingerie is absolutely the answer. Don’t you just love the whole experience of wearing sexy lingerie underneath your clothes? It has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else thinks as they don’t know, it’s all about you. I think you’re being far too hard on our men! My experience is that they do fantastically well at choosing lingerie, and we should all do everything to encourage it. Andy and I choose together, it’s all part of the experience for us, and if you haven’t ever sat down with your partner and done this, you are really missing out on something special.

n4c: Have you considered ‘branching out’ and including adult toys in your collection?

SG: There are many adult toy retailers that also happen to sell lingerie (in its loosest term). We are all about feeling sexy, and to us adult toys are not part of that state of mind. We are a specialist sexy lingerie retailer that will make you feel great about yourself, that’s what we love and that’s what we do.

n4c: How do you decide what is marketable? Have you ever made an error of judgement? What is the most ridiculous/outrageous design you have ever seen?

SG: That’s easy, the decisions are based on would I want to wear that and how would it make me feel. The hard part is then estimating how many we would sell, and yes we’ve massively underestimated some items in the past but this is quite rare now. Some of the designs are simply ridiculous, uncomfortable, shocking quality and clearly designed for sex as opposed to making you feel sexy. They never make it on to our website.

n4c: What would you say to anyone thinking of setting up their own internet-based business?

SG: Be prepared to give up almost all your time and money for very little return for a long time. You’ve got to really want to do it and really be interested in what you are doing. If you are doing it just to make money, forget it. You’ll never reach that point as you’ll lose interest before it happens.

n4c: What do you think sets your products apart from those of popular high-street chain Anne Summers?

SG: It’s our specialty, we are not distracted by toys and novelties, our range is on a completely different scale and the quality of our lingerie is fantastic.

n4c: Your ‘plus-size’ items are actually modeled by real-life plus-size women – hurrah! How popular are these sizes?

SG: These sizes are extremely popular and we are continually looking for quality additions to our range. Every woman wants and deserves to feel sexy.