BENNA Harry is the founder of retail website benna.co.uk, which sells a range of accessories.
Benna, 38, is a stylist, who studied jewellery design at Central St Martins, London, and lives in Liverpool. This is her working day.
8am:I am not an early riser – never have been, never will be. Nocturnal is where it is at with me. Even getting up at 8am requires an alarm.
8.30am:I’m quickly into my stride and am keen to see what’s new on my emails.
9am:I strategise my action plan for London and Liverpool over the next four weeks. I make regular trips to the capital and need to be extremely organised.
10am:My web design team have just updated benna.com and we’re just in the throes of doing some content management, putting new stock on the site that I personally sourced from a recent trip to Berlin. Being an online business, getting e-commerce right means I want control over the website, despite having a great team around me.
12pm:Just getting ready for a business lunch to show a client the new samples we received from Jennifer Behr and Anna Vogel. We try not to follow current trends and purchase only what we love. I meet my sister briefly prior to the lunch, she is a great second pair of eyes for my company and what we buy.
1.30pm:I arrive back at my home office to an abundance of emails from both customers and suppliers. I’m religious at responding to email within around two hours of receiving them. We process orders that have come in and post out straightaway.
2.30pm:I have a quick telephone meeting with our PR agency and Chrissie Abbott, who is illustrating a spring/summer poster for the brand.
3pm:I search online for blogs and e-boutiques that can benefit our site through links and compile a list of updates for my blog and Facebook. Can’t decide if I want to Twitter yet.
4.30pm:I am planning a jewellery collection in the near future and am currently working up some initial ideas every day around this time. I use any spare time the business allows me for design-led work away from running the business.
6pm:Catch up on the day’s papers and consumer magazines that I enjoy reading, as I’ve just not had a chance earlier today.
7pm:I head out to a selling appointment with a private client who wants to look at a collection of bags and some vintage Chanel jewellery.
8pm:I go to HoSt, in Hope Street, to meet my boyfriend for a light dinner. We chat about the day’s events and have a great meal.
9.30pm:I arrive back at the apartment to do some further work on the look book that we’re producing for the latest collection.
11pm:Time to relax. I watch some escapism television and tuck into a relaxing book for a short while before nodding off in readiness for a London trip to Portobello Road tomorrow.
