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The Entrepreneurs
Have we lost our appetite for sustainability? New approaches in luxury retail and travel for 2026
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- [00:00]
Charlotte Sturk
Foreign.
- [00:12]
Tom Edwards
Hello, and welcome to the Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio. The show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. On today's program, we're focusing on sustainability in retail and hospitality. First, we'll meet the founder of the UK's first luxury aftercare and restoration service to assess the health of the circular fashion economy.
- [00:33]
Charlotte Sturk
Everyone was talking about sustainability, even sort of two, three years ago, and it has quietened down as economic pressures have came in. What we're trying to do at the minute is actually prove that this can be profitable and can work operationally.
- [00:46]
Tom Edwards
And later we'll hear from a hotel industry heavyweight who's continuing to rewrite the rules of luxury hospitality into 2026.
- [00:55]
Neil Jacobs
My passion is to have a real role in the community. You know, that's part of sustainable development engagement, how we contribute, not they contribute to us, how do we contribute to them?
- [01:08]
Tom Edwards
This is the Entrepreneurs with me, Tom Edwards. You're listening to the Entrepreneurs. Charlotte Sturk is the founder and CEO of the Handbag Clinic, a restoration and repair business that's given new life to more than 100,000 handbags over the past decade. Since its beginning, Charlotte's grown the brand into a leading destination for resale and sustainable luxury, with a strong online presence and a permanent concession at Selfridges in London, just around the corner from Monocle hq. A respected authority on craftsmanship and authentication, Charlotte advises major auction houses, including Sotheby's and Bonhams, and has worked with the National Crime Agency on counter fit prevention. She stopped by a Midori house to discuss circular fashion and the future of sustainable retail. Charlotte began by telling me about the start of her journey.
- [02:03]
Charlotte Sturk
So I've been obsessed with handbags and kind of desired a designer handbag as long as I could remember, and it just never felt possible for me from. I'm from a very small town in northeast England, a village, and that just didn't feel possible. And I would say save up money and I would buy a handbag. So my goal was to get to a Mulberry bayswater, so I would save up, got my first bag and then I realized that if I saved up a little bit more and then sold that bag on ebay, I could then put that together and buy the next sort of level up in my books. So I did that from being sort of 15, 16, and then I happened to, in a bar in Newcastle, meet somebody who made a leather cleaner and leather so of conditioning balm and paints and dyes for leather. So it kind of serendipitously came together. And that's how the Handbag clinic was formed. And it just felt very natural, really. There was kind of no one big moment. It just sort of. It feels like it was waiting to happen.
- [03:04]
Interviewer (possibly Emma Nelson)
Well, it's funny because you said about that moment, and we often ask, what was the eureka moment like? A light bulb goes off. But actually, so many more of the stories are exactly as you say it just people kind of find themselves doing it. But is it fair to say that you have a certain entrepreneurial vigor? I mean, that sounds. Even the fact that you were thinking in those terms as kind of a kid really speaks to me about an entrepreneurial instinct, maybe. And obviously in your earlier in your professional career, you know, you seem to have advanced quite quickly. Do you think you just see things in that with a bit of entrepreneurial clarity, maybe? Is that fair to say?
- [03:37]
Charlotte Sturk
I just am a grafter hustler, want to earn money, have always wanted to be successful, be the best that I could be if I was working in a job. And I knew that that's what I needed to do to get the next level. That's what I did to get the next level. While studying, working, running, side jobs, every minute of my being was being, you know, how do I progress in life? And that is very much still how I act today.
- [04:03]
Interviewer (possibly Emma Nelson)
Well, and we always say there's no. We seldom chat to lazy entrepreneurs in this program, but it's interesting. So this kind of. You had the interest in handbags, as you said, and you'd sort of worked up through the. I don't know what the hierarchy is, you know, however it works. But this focus in. On then on looking after them better, in renewing things. It's funny because I guess if you're starting that kind of conversation well over a decade ago now, it's kind of a conversation that more people are having. Is it one of these things where the market has sort of caught up a little bit and the discourse actually around it has caught up with actually where you were at the beginning of the business?
- [04:36]
Charlotte Sturk
It's definitely been a crazy journey starting in sustainable fashion so long ago. You know, when I first started doing it, people would look at me like I was crazy. You know, people thought I was foraging in bins for old handbags. And I just couldn't understand why people found it so easy to kind of throw these things away. To me, that old, tired Bayswater that was sat on ebay, that nobody really wanted, nobody understood the value of, to me, meant the world. And what I realized was there were so many more people out there like me who really, you know, would do anything to be part of that world. And it just is such a natural progression to take something that somebody kind of doesn't see the value anymore when there's so many people who do see the value in that and make it feel luxury. So when we first started opening retail stores, the first thing I wanted to do with that space was make it feel like luxury. We didn't give things out in sort of a brown paper bag. They were handbag, clinic branded bags that felt like luxury. And people, even then, and this is sort of 2016, 17, would still, you know, look at me like I was strange. I would walk into investment meetings and they would always pull whichever woman from the office. They could be like, handbags is your thing. And they would look at me and go, but nobody would do that. Nobody. They would just go and buy new bags and nobody got it. And then in 2020, well, end of 2019 into 2020, and definitely Covid was a real, you know, it really sort of accelerated that I just saw the shift and then all of a sudden it was cool. And I'd be like, I've been telling.
- [06:14]
Interviewer (possibly Emma Nelson)
You all this time, but that's your early adopter advantage. And to give us a bit of a sense of scale, because as you said, from these kind of modest beginnings, I think the sector caught up a little bit with where you were sort of ideologically almost. How many kind of handbags are being restored now monthly by your, your team in the clinic? Give us an idea of the scale because it is pretty. There's some amazing numbers.
- [06:35]
Charlotte Sturk
Yeah. So we'll restore around 700 bags every month, 6 to 700 bag every month. That is across sort of direct to consumer. We restore and repair and offer aftercare for a lot of the brands, direct as well. And then through our circular fashion element, you know, the buying and selling of the pre owned goods. Well, we had an amazing day actually on Black Friday and we sold sort of over in one day, 130 handbags. So the scale is definitely there now.
- [07:02]
Interviewer (possibly Emma Nelson)
And talk to me about that idea of working with some of these houses because presumably if we go back to that little town in the northeast and these aspirations you had as, again, really only as a kid, it must be extraordinary. And presumably what some of these brands have reached out to you, you've worked really hard on how to cultivate some of those relationships, but that must have been one of those kind of pinch yourself moments where it's not an aspiration anymore. It's not a dream, it's actually happening and they're talking to you and they want to use your services. That must have been just, I don't know, do you probably still get a kick out of that, right?
- [07:29]
Charlotte Sturk
I do. And what's very interesting is some of the brands have actually worked with us for sort of over a decade. But we were the secret, we were, you know, it was very hush hush. Sometimes we had the stores doing cash into our stores because they wanted to use our service over their own brands, you know, offering at that time because we could do more for them. And that has evolved into these brands working with us publicly. We recently did a big event with Burberry in Selfridges where we were providing those services live on the shop floor. And I mean, the day that Claudia Schiffer came knocking on my door was a pretty amazing day, we can all say that.
- [08:06]
Interviewer (possibly Emma Nelson)
But what an amazing. That is an astonishing kind of full circle moment. Moment from that beginning ambition to then, it's happening. You're working with the houses direct.
- [08:15]
Tom Edwards
I don't know, how do you kind.
- [08:16]
Interviewer (possibly Emma Nelson)
Of make sense of that? And I know you now, you're very involved in trying to get this message out about circularity in fashion, about roles for women running businesses in this sector as well. Where does this go next? Because, you know, I could almost understand it if you said, well, I've kind of done this now. I've, like, I've achieved that objective or. But I sense it's only really the start of the journey.
- [08:35]
Charlotte Sturk
It is very much, it's still evolving, you know, circular fashion. In press, it was really, you know, everything everyone was talking about sustainability, even sort of two, three years ago. And it has quietened down as economic pressures have came in and there's still a lot of fighting to do to make sure it's part of the mainstream. Because what we're trying to do at the minute is actually prove that this can be profitable and can work operationally because there is still questions within the brands, within general public, within the markets as to whether this can work operationally. And we have, in the last sort of 12 months we were private equity backed, we were high growth, 100% growth year on year, but loss making. And when the markets changed, we had to adapt really quickly. So we've actually reached profitability now and have turned that around in a 12 month window. And we're one of the only sustainable companies to actually do that because it is challenging in the space. So until we get to that place where everybody fully believes in it and recognizes it as a market that really works. I don't think I've done my job until that happens.
- [09:41]
Interviewer (possibly Emma Nelson)
And that is interesting, isn't it? I think during these volatile times we look at things like supply chains, genuine sustainability. It's often the first casualty when there's downward pressure from wherever it comes. Are you confident though? And now you have these relationships with the houses, you get to talk to their decision makers that that change. The appetite for sustainability is here. For the longer term, of course there'll be peaks and troughs and no one can do anything about the vicissitudes of the market. But that the broader appetite, the sea change. Are you confident that's kind of here to.
- [10:10]
Charlotte Sturk
To stay, Charlotte or recently I have seen a dip in that. But I believe that, you know, you look at France and everything that's being done there, how seriously they're taking it and I do hope that comes through into Britain and the US and everywhere to make it a real part of everyday life and every company to really consider it because it can be done. It just requires sort of the right partners and just the right attitude towards it, I suppose.
- [10:38]
Interviewer (possibly Emma Nelson)
Well, speaking of attitudes and I'm really interested in how you engage directly with your consumers because again lots of our founders that we speak to on this program talk about how it's unrivalled if they, especially in a retail setting, you get to go and talk to people, look at products, the tactility, really kind of experience them together and that's often when the best feedback comes. Do you think your consumers attitudes have changed forever? Because again, it's not something where, you know, occasionally I think they would ask brands maybe about the story or about provenance of certain things, but kind of they were there for the product. Do you get the sense now that you're committed consumers, they won't take no for an answer. And even if it means they're having to pay a premium or if they're having to wait for products, the demand for that genuine sustainability from the consumer side is a non negotiable or is that also. I don't know, is that still also still open to question on some occasions?
- [11:30]
Charlotte Sturk
That is an interesting question. But I have to say my customers from a repair perspective, we do see people who have a very different approach. A lot of our clients are very affluent people who do not need to be sustainable and they are making the active choice in doing that. And it does, you know, our clinic, if we are a capacity, I can't phone a temp agency and get artists, handbag artisans, you know, we have to, there is a wait time and people are willing to wait those 10 weeks on occasion and pay sometimes close to what they've actually maybe paid for the bag in the first place because of obviously that bag's grown in value or whatever. They're willing to do that to be sustainable because people are seeing the value in sort of investing in their wardrobe as a concept as well. So. So they're more likely to invest back rather than just buy new.
- [12:20]
Interviewer (possibly Emma Nelson)
And that's funny cause we were actually chatting before we started taping about this monocle's approach to this and this idea of buy less but buy better. And that was sometimes a harder sell. But it strikes me that's easier now and that narrative lands better with more people. And I don't know, it sounds like you're kind of optimistic about that as well.
- [12:38]
Tom Edwards
Just more broadly, just buy less stuff.
- [12:40]
Interviewer (possibly Emma Nelson)
But invest in that quality.
- [12:41]
Charlotte Sturk
We definitely see that and I think Gen Z definitely lead the way in that their approach to fashion has changed and it's really rocked the market and it's great for sustainable businesses, it's great for pre loved businesses. We just really need to keep sort of fighting the fight against fast fashion really.
- [12:59]
Interviewer (possibly Emma Nelson)
Let's get in some of the nuts and bolts about how you actually run the business because I know you sort of will turn your hand to most, any, most any part of it, whether it's kind of systems, processes or whatever. But obviously as a business grows you kind of have to loose the reins a little. You have to trust more people, maybe admit, acknowledge that someone else might have a better perspective on one facet. How easy do you find that Charlotte? Is that difficult?
- [13:21]
Charlotte Sturk
Well, I did try it, I did try it and due to various things it really made a lot of sense for me to step back into a really hands on role. You know, we were growing at this triple digit rate. We were growing really, really quickly. I did get some people into support and build the senior leadership team. But my business needs doers and I'm a doer. And what I actually did was I recently stripped that senior leadership team out and I went for more manager roles with them reporting direct to me. And the plan is for them to grow with the business. It's so unique that it's really hard to find somebody who can really slot in. I, you know, came from a place of doing absolutely everything in the business and it makes sense for other people to go through that journey with me. We feel like this group of people who have like, got a point to prove and we're all proving it together. So that's how I want to grow the business further. And I know there will come a time when I need to loosen the reins, but now is probably not the time. You know, I'm gonna leave here and I will be working on a shop floor tomorrow because I love it as well. And while I love it, why not?
- [14:29]
Interviewer (possibly Emma Nelson)
Let's go. So, you know, at the beginning you mentioned this sort of hierarchy that you had and you sort of managed to kind of go up the sort of. The handbag rungs. What about now? What's the fantasy conversation? Is it that somebody, a client, contacts you and said, look, I think I've got a. What might it be? Can you have a look at it? Could you restore it for me? Or is it a bit like all of those kind of amazing stories where people find some old relic in an attic somewhere and they say, oh, my God, I think this might be. Is there a kind of a fantasy find or the dream client or the dream product still out there that you haven't yet got to kind of work on or work with so far, well.
- [15:06]
Charlotte Sturk
We'Ve done Claudia Schiffer and we've done Kate Moss. So for me, you know, I'm pretty happy with those. I love when somebody sat. I do a lot of talking at, like, younger people events, especially in the local. In my local region, and they could write little messages to say sort of what they took away from the. The talk. And one person was like, I saved up and I bought my first bag from you. And I'm like, that's it, that's what we want. And also recently we had. We'd had somebody come in from Selfridges and they'd found the bag in a. I think like a. In the rubbish or something crazy. I think it was. They were from Ghana, I think, you know how sometimes things get all shipped over and they found it in the WT if it was real or not. We authenticated it was real and they sold it and it was kind of like maybe £350. But the person who was acting on behalf of them were like, this is going to change their entire life. Like, this money from this handbag that they have found is in the middle of nowhere is going to change their whole life forever. And those stories I love the most, like, yes, Kate Moss and Claudia are great, but, you know, that means something to people.
- [16:10]
Interviewer (possibly Emma Nelson)
What a brilliant story, Charlotte. Listen, let's say this is a game I vocationally play on this program. If we're sat here. In what time frame should we pick? Let's just pick 12 months. 12 months from now. So pre Christmas 26. What are we going to be talking about? What are you going to be preoccupied with? A tricky question, but imagine yourself forward a year.
- [16:29]
Charlotte Sturk
Yeah, I would like to have potentially done some more investment into the business. We are definitely looking at that to go back to a bit more of a growth strategy next year. So definitely be either just finalized a deal or in the process of finalizing a deal with some really great growth on the horizon. We do would love to expand. You know, we still are the only place like us globally. The scale of the clinic, the scale of what we do, and I know that I could duplicate that in other countries. We've kind of really nailed the blueprint now. So that is something that we'd like to look at.
- [17:07]
Tom Edwards
That was Charlotte Sturk, the founder and CEO of the Handbag Clinic. And you can find out more about the business by heading to handbagclinic.co.uk and in Selfridges London, the home of its permanent in store concession.
- [17:20]
Neil Jacobs
Foreign.
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Tom Edwards
You're listening to the entrepreneurs. Neil Jacobs is a strategic advisor to the Capella Hotel Group and one of the most influential brand builders in global luxury hospitality. Formerly the CEO of Six Senses, Neil has spent decades shaping hotels with sustainability, well being and a deep sense of place at their core. Today he also advises on new concepts through his venture, Wild Origins. Monacle's Emma Nelson caught up with Neil to discuss the changing expectations of luxury travelers, Capella's sister brand Patina and the importance of imagination in modern hospitality. Emma began by asking Neil how sustainability can be really stitched into a hotel's culture rather than treated as just a selling point.
- [18:13]
Neil Jacobs
Hotels are doing it better. You know, as an industry, frankly, we have a shocking reputation with sustainable practice and it's rarely part of the culture of larger organizations or any kind of group with some scale. You've got individual hotels out there that do it very well because they may be family owned and people really care about it. But the bigger corporate group groups, they're doing a bit of the data driven stuff now, but on the ground actually doing it, it's not a great reputation.
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Emma Nelson
Has anybody thought, I mean, you did it a lot with Six Senses. How did you actually approach it given the fact that it is not the biggest hotel group in the world, but it is expanding and it has been expanding its speed under your stewardship. How did you make sure that everything ran congruently?
- [19:04]
Neil Jacobs
Well, it's A very good question. I mean, firstly, six senses is coming up to 30 years old as a brand. Yeah. So I had it for half that time. But the founders even back then were doing things before anyone was talking about sustainability. So they had organic gardens, they were recycling, they weren't doing things. So we just built on that because it was something and was part of the reason we bought it because we really cared about what was happening. The key to it is you say, I mean, I'm a great believer in a lot of decisions being made in the field and having people in the field own, you know, be part of the big initiatives. Sustainability, it's got to come from the top, you know, because hotel general managers haven't grown up with, with this kind of practice or don't understand the science of it. So it has to come from the top. And on my watch at Six Senses, we introduced sustainability directors at every property and you know, we had 6 sensus has 28, 29 properties today, with another 25 on the boil. So this sustainability director was responsible across all departments. We then brought in a head of sustainability at corporate level who they all reported into. So it became a thing, the culture was born of it, it was coming from the top. People were bonused and rewarded by how well they did. There were certain things and it kind of changed the energy around the topic as a whole.
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Emma Nelson
You've left Six Senses and you're now the senior strategic advisor to Capella, which has a rather marvelous title at the moment. It is the best hotel group in the world. So where do you take it from there? Because from the top there is usually only one way down and I suspect that that's probably not what you wish to happen.
- [21:01]
Neil Jacobs
Not at all, no. I think my role here is one, I've known the owners of the brand for over 20 years from my time in Singapore and you know, there's a lot of trust and open conversation with them. I think there's a lot of great things that they've done with Capella and will continue to do. It's got some traction now. There's 10 operating hotels, there's two, three per year that are coming along. So there's a rhythm to it. We need to do more well being in there and that needs to become a stated objective of the group. And we're in the process of imagining two approaches to well being because we have two brands, right, and we don't want to them to be the same. So Capella will focus on certain things, Patina will focus on others. We're introducing a different approach to sustainability, which happens quite well at many of the hotels and less well at some of the others. So the organization that I just mentioned that we had at six senses, we'll repeat some of that to just have the human resource piece of it in place. So we're going to blow out those initiatives. We're going to focus as much on patina as capella, which hasn't been the case in the past, because we see patina as an interesting segment of the industry. You know, people generally talk about lifestyle hotels and then they talk about luxury hotels, but they're not the same. We see patina as being at that intersection of being the fun, having the vibe, having the energy, the music, the art, and whatever that you would get in a lifestyle hotel. But at a luxury level, there's no reason the two can't intersect. The customer is different today.
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Emma Nelson
What does a customer want now? From looking back to the fairly large amount of shoe leather that you've worn out doing your job, it's very polite. What are you learning about how customers are changing in what clients want and also what a hotel can offer that differentiates itself?
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Neil Jacobs
Well, therein lies the issue, right? I, I have my normal speech about the state of the luxury hotel business, which, you know, you, you, you have the traditional luxury brands, all of whom are very good, and the food's good, the service is good, the bed's comfortable and, and, and so on and so forth, but it's not enough, you know, at that level of the market, that's a given, you know, and yet people still want to talk about intuitive service. I mean, it's so boring, really. It's what the customer wants today, particularly in the last five years, seven years. They want personality, they want individuality. They need storytelling, they need narrative. Because you look at luxury today, it's kind of become homogenous. They're all the same. They're all pretty good, but they're all kind of the same. So the people that are the groups and the hotels that are going to chip away and are chipping away that market share are these smaller, more. I hate the word, but it's kind of more personalized, more bespoke in some ways that focus very much on environment and where you are and culture and context of the location of those hotels. And I have plenty of examples. I mean, we're opening.
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Emma Nelson
Go on then, give some examples.
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Neil Jacobs
We're opening in Japan. Yeah, in Japan. Kyoto will open. Well, we open, we have patina in Osaka, which opened earlier this year. And In March, we'll be opening Capella in Kyoto. It's right next to a geisha school. So we have been on the ground there for 15 months, kind of digging around. And what are the, what are the activations? What are we going to be able to offer the guests that other hotels can't offer? You cannot access that geisha community. However, given that we're the neighbor and lots of talk and lots of, of invitations and so on, we've managed to gain access to the private tea rooms where the real geishas and the trainee geishas go and have their tea. And we have been allowed to access those units and bring our guests there and talk to the geishas. And just like inter. I mean, this is a big deal for Kyoto. The location is right here, the heart of the old town. You know, geographically we're there. So it's things like that that kind of actually make the difference.
- [25:46]
Emma Nelson
And it is probably the first time that we've heard the word authenticity actually having a proper meaning behind it. Because everybody talks about authenticity and it's like one of those words we've been asking people what words are. Get rid of the lexicon and you know, the word authenticity elevated, all that kind of stuff comes through. But the idea that you have to represent a place with the hotel that you offer while at the same time being very respectful, especially in somewhere like Kyoto Geisha School, you have to make sure that you too are good neighbors.
- [26:15]
Neil Jacobs
Yeah, for sure. But you know, to me that's the richness of what we do. My passion is to have a real role in the community that's part of sustainable development, you know, engagement. How are we going to contribute? How we contribute, not they contribute to us, how do we contribute to them? And I mean, that's the joy, frankly, for me at any rate of the business, to be able to do those things and offer that kind of programming to guests. And you ask how has the guests changed? That's how they've changed. They don't want to sit on the beach anymore and do nothing. They don't. It's younger, it's a psychographic, it's not a demographic for capella, frankly. It's like minded people who care about the same kind of stuff. And you can be 30 years old, 20 years old or 70 years old. It's about bringing those people together with an offer, with a product that resonates highly emotively with the customer.
- [27:20]
Emma Nelson
Where should we all be going on holiday next year?
- [27:23]
Neil Jacobs
We certainly should be coming to Kyoto.
- [27:25]
Emma Nelson
Yes, of All I expected you to sailor.
- [27:28]
Neil Jacobs
Not long after we're going to open in Florence.
- [27:31]
Emma Nelson
Now these are interesting markets because. Markets which frequently have the O word attached to them. The over tourism.
- [27:36]
Neil Jacobs
Yeah.
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Emma Nelson
And how do you navigate that again while being a good neighbor?
- [27:40]
Neil Jacobs
Well, I have a personal connection to Flora. I mean I went to school, I went to university in Florence. And so that, that was kind of very important to me. We have a property in the old town of Florence. Well, you know, in Florence there's not been any new building for 50 years. And even on our campus that we have there, 80% of it is restoration of the old buildings. It was the military hospital. It's on a street called Via San Gallo. So it's kind of the old town there. 80% is restoration, 20% is new build. We've got a permit to do that and we're going to build some residentials and beautiful kind of apartments for people as well as hotel. But the opportunities culturally there, I mean you could just go on forever if you have the wherewithal to really try and penetrate that town, which is not simple. You know, the Florentines are very unique compared to perhaps the rest of Italy. You know, there's a great nobility exists around Florence from an art perspective. I mean it's equal or better than anywhere else. I mean you have as much as you do in Rome, but it's in a smaller area. So there's so much we can do, there's so many places we can visit and there's so much access we can get to our customers. So I think, yeah, you're right, but it's how you personalize it, how you hate the word terrain it to bring those experiences to the guests and they're priceless.
- [29:18]
Tom Edwards
That was Neil Jacobs, strategic advisor to.
- [29:20]
Interviewer (possibly Emma Nelson)
The Capella Hotel Group.
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Tom Edwards
Neil was chatting to Emma in Cannes at Monocle's pop up studio at the international luxury travel market. You can find out more about the business by heading to capellahotels.com. And that's all for this episode of the Entrepreneurs. We'll be back at the same time next week. The program's produced by Laura Kramer with audio editing by Jack Dewars. You can listen again and find out more about the show@monocle.com that's where you can subscribe to the magazine and ensure you're reading more about better businesses every month.
- [30:00]
Interviewer (possibly Emma Nelson)
You can always follow us and catch.
- [30:02]
Tom Edwards
Up with the archive wherever you get your audio.
- [30:04]
Interviewer (possibly Emma Nelson)
If you'd like to get in touch.
- [30:05]
Tom Edwards
With the team, do email Laura. She's on lrk at Monocle. Com, I'm Tom Edwards. Goodbye, and thanks for listening to the entrepreneurs.