Talking shop with Charlotte Semler, founder of Myla and Charlotte & Co

In 2000, after a two-year stint working as a coporate finance analyst in the City and three years working as a strategic planner for Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising, Charlotte Semler co-founded Myla, a luxury lingerie and sex toy retailer. Considered ‘dangerous' and ‘risque' at first, Myla went onto become a huge success. In 2005 however, Charlotte left the business and London and set up home in the Cotswolds with her husband and one-year-old twins. She had planned to take some time out, but six months later, she launched Charlotte & Co, and, since then, has hardly looked back. We caught up with the serial entrepreneur to find out more.

Myla came about by… recognising that there was not only a gap in the market, but a market in the gap.

The idea of a lingerie and sex toy retailer was quite dangerous and risque at the time… They didn't think you could do sexy and yet have something that was pretty and romantic and which women liked. I think just getting people to understand that - in particular getting men to understand that - was a real challenge. But now people don't bat an eye lid.

I think there was a ripeness for change… I think that sometimes it happens culturally that you get these tipping points where a couple of different people get a similar idea. I think Myla and a couple of other brands really changed the way society views a whole category of product.

I left Myla… because we had had some new investors who we found difficult to work with. Although I was always the designer and creative director, I think it's very true to say that both Nina and I had a very clear creative vision of what the brand was and what was and wasn't right for it and we just were not able to compromise on that.

Moving to the country was… a slow and pretty common process. We had a house in the Cotswolds a few years before I left Myla and used to go there at weekends. When I did leave Myla, we suddenly looked round and asked ourselves what the hell we were doing in London five days a week.

Do I miss London..? Yes of, course I do… I'd be lying if I said I didn't. I know lots of people don't, but I just do. I do love city life - the dynamism and the energy and the creativity - and I still spend quite a lot of time in London.

In the country… I like my own company, I absolutely love the peace and quiet, I know nothing better than spending a night in on my own and it's spectacularly beautiful. I love doing both.

I'm not cut out for not working… I just don't enjoy it. I love work and I can't imagine not working.

Charlotte & Co came about because… I wanted to create something else. I wanted to do something that was more in tune with the life that I'm living now. Coming out of Myla, I'd acquired some pretty hard-won competences over the years and I just felt like I wanted to continue using them.

There's something immensely rewarding about… doing it all over again, where actually it's not scary, it's actually pretty straight forward and you know what you're good at and how you want to do things. It's been an amazingly stress free experience.

That said, the last year has been really difficult… just because the business has grown so fast and I love the idea of not working full time, but that's an absolute nonsense. It's a personal challenge over the next year to figure out how I really want to be spending my time.

I don't employ anyone full-time… I have an amazing team of freelancers and part-timers, all of whom work from home, so we are none of us ever in the same place and that works very well.

One of my favourite designs is… a cashmere dressing gown, which I live in. Then there are some sheepskin pom pom boots. Also knickers - if there's one thing I spent a long time learning how to do, it's designing knickers that actually fit and ours are just the most comfortable thing.

If I could be anywhere in the world right now, I would be… in the Maldives because I'm dreading five months of this weather.

I'm not reading anything at the moment… it's slightly desperate because I can't find anything to read. I just finished Any Human Heart, which was fabulous and I don't know what to do next.

My favourite website is… probably Amazon. I live in the middle of nowhere and I do everything on Amazon. There is literally a daily delivery here. But actually, I loathe their website. It's funny, I love the service, but I think their website is appallingly badly designed. I just can't work out where to click. Why have they never redesigned it?

Visit Charlotteandco.co.uk

Emily Jenkinson

9 December 2010