The Small Business Project: Side hustle linen business flowering into multimillion-dollar company

Sunday, 9 November 2025

The Small Business Project is a weekly series that shines the spotlight on Kiwi small businesses doing interesting and unusual things in their industries.

Marketer Prue Watson, co-founder of linen company Foxtrot, left her corporate job during the Covid lockdown to work full time on a passion project with her sister Kate Cullwick. Eight years later, Watson says the family business has grown into a multimillion-dollar operation and is now at a point where it can get creative.

What has your venture set out to achieve?

Foxtrot Home is an ecommerce store. We sell French flax linen bedding, New Zealand wool throws and natural blankets. We started our business in 2017 as a side hustle. I was working in corporate marketing, my sister was a stay-at-home mum and we decided that we wanted to have a project for both of us to work on.

We started importing French linen in 2017 and selling it on Trade Me, and it snowballed from there. We went from doing it out of my garden shed to moving into a storage unit and eventually into warehouses. Today, we have six or seven people working in the business and turnover of more than $3 million a year.

We thought that we would be really happy just to be able to afford a holiday on our turnover. We didn't expect it to pay enough and, when it did, I was able to leave my full-time job.

Do you still import the linen today?

The flax linen comes from France, and then it goes to China to be made into finished product. We can choose colours and what the product's going to look like.

Recently we did our first individual print, commissioned from a textile designer in Hamilton, our first ever floral print. We're now getting into more of our own designs, which is really exciting. We wanted to bring a bit of our background into what we're doing as well.

Our mum is a florist and we grew up with flowers all around. She's a keen gardener, so that was a really big part of our childhood, so we wanted to do a floral design that honoured her.

How much time and money have you invested?

We invested $3000 to get the business running and have been growing it organically ever since. We get about 40 orders a day, with up to five or six items in each order.

What’s the biggest challenge your business is facing?

You have to work a lot harder to get sales these days. People are being so cautious, and so we’re investing more into our marketing to try and increase our profile.

What’s the biggest issue impacting your industry?

Retail is stretched and people are holding on to their cash. There has also been a lot more interest in linen over the years, so there are a lot more competitors in the space as well. People are definitely more cautious with their spending money at the moment and that is a bit of a challenge.

What’s next for Foxtrot?

We expanded into wool products, and all of the wool we use comes off Kate's farm in Hawke's Bay. The wool is processed, spun, dyed and made into blankets in New Zealand, which is fantastic. We'd like to do more in the New Zealand-made space; more of our wool, but also more floral and exclusive prints, like our Evelyn print inspired by Mum. We've had such great feedback, and that's what we really want to do across blankets and linen.

In three years’ time …

I don't think we'll ever go down the route of physical retail stores because the online model works for us. It allows us to have the flexibility that we do with our lives, and we feel like we know the online space well. We might do pop-ups, but not an actual physical, permanent store.

In three years, you'll see a lot more of our own designs coming through, rather than block colours, and a lot more wool products. We'll also look to expand our warehouse operations sooner, over the next year, to be able to keep up with demand.

What’s one thing you wish you’d known before starting the business?

Kate is a vet by trade, and I'm a marketer, so we brought very different skills to the table, and we have just worked it all out as we go. We've had our ups and downs, but certainly it's just been finding a solution as we go. I wouldn’t change anything about what we know. It's been a really amazing journey.

Most helpful piece of advice you have ever received?

It's something that my Mum said to me. She's not a business person, but when I started doing marketing at university, she always said to me, the first thing that you sell is yourself. To me, that's important, especially in what we do, because Kate and I have really tried to inject our own personalities into the business, to be different and stand out from our competitors. We've tried to bring our own personal stamp, and we want people to know who we are, so they can trust us. People are giving us their money before receiving their goods, that’s a massive trust exercise.

If you would like your business to feature in The Small Business Project, email Aimee Shaw at aimee.shaw@stuff.co.nz