Opening the books: Stripe & Stare’s co-founder shares her numbers to boost scaling female firms. (Original interview by Lucy Tobin for the ScaleUp Standard.)

“Conversations about women in business often stop at the beginning,” says Katie Lopes, founder of £12 million underwear and pyjamas business Stripe & Stare.

“We talk about encouraging women to start businesses, celebrate the courage it takes to launch, but spend far less time talking about what actually keeps women in business – and why so many are forced to stall, scale back, or stop altogether.”

Most of us can, by now, recite the bleak headline statistic about women raising investment. Only 2p of every £1 of equity investment in the UK goes to fully female-founded businesses, and this figure has barely shifted in a decade. This funding gap is, according to the Government’s Women-led high growth enterprise taskforce, one of the biggest structural barriers facing female entrepreneurs.

But Lopes, a single mother of two who founded Stripe & Stare in 2017, says a less public – but just as uncomfortable – truth is what happens after a woman launches a business: huge obstacles to scaling.

There are only 8,300 businesses in the UK with turnover above £10 million, according to ONS figures. And just 734 of those are female-led, according to a ScaleUp Institute/EY study – fewer than 10%.

It’s depressing enough that only a fifth 20% of all UK businesses are female founded –  “but look at how that number dwindles when it comes to scale,” Lopes points out.

“Why are only a small fraction of the UK’s female-founded scaling businesses turning their businesses into long-term, profitable and durable companies? Women don’t fail for lack of ambition. They fail – or quietly step back – because of constrained funding, lower confidence in risk-taking, and a lack of access to the commercial knowledge that underpins resilient growth.”

The life juggle – where women tend to shoulder a disproportionate share of home and caring responsibilities – plays a key role too. “But more critically,” Lopes adds, “women tend to approach risk more cautiously, even when that risk is educated. That caution is often framed as a weakness, but I see it as a strength.

“Women may scale more slowly, but they are more likely to build businesses that are commercially disciplined, customer-obsessed and designed for longevity. The Rose Review estimated that if women started businesses at the same rate as men, £250 billion could be added to the UK economy.”

Stripe & Stare’s investors have “openly acknowledged that female-led forecasts can appear less ambitious on paper,” Lopes adds. “But those same forecasts are more likely to be delivered.”

So how has Stripe & Stare – which sells internationally through Nordstrom, Selfridges and Shopbop, but earns 90% of its revenue from DTC – beaten the odds? Here’s what Lopes has learnt and shares “in the hope that it will encourage and help more female-led DTC brands.”

1. Loyalty beats growth theatre

“Headline growth is exciting, but retention is more important. Our returning customers were up 43% in the last quarter of 2025 compared with a year earlier, with 43% of customers still active at 24 months. With rising acquisition costs, that’s vital. Loyalty is built by listening obsessively: through reviews, surveys, social comments and real-world interactions. Now we are testing bricks-and-mortar retail to hear directly from customers, face to face.

2. Average order value enables profitability

AOV rarely grabs headlines, but it should. Our AOV grew 13% year-on-year in 2025 to £57, not driven by discounting but by added to our category mix and ‘goes withs’. This, too, came from listening to customers.

3. The clearest signal of sustainable scale is…

When the customer’s lifetime value (LTV) materially outweights the cost of acquiring them (or CAC) you have room to invest, build your brand and weather volatility. If it’s below 3 times, then growth is fragile. Above it, opportunity opens up.

For Stripe & Stare in 2025, CAC was £25, 24-month LTV was £109, giving a four-times return on the cost of nabbing a new customer. Knowing these metrics should give you the confidence you need to take more risk or seek investment.  And they don’t need to be hard to get to: AI tools can calculate these quickly and easily.

4. Brand awareness reveals how much runway you have

In the UK, our brand awareness sits at 8%. Given that nearly every woman buys underwear, this tells us something simple: we are still early. But awareness gaps aren’t problems, but opportunity.”

Read more about Stripe and Stare via their website and read more of our scaleup stories here.

Founder of Stripe and Stare Katie Lopes