Business on a beach in Ibiza

By Fiona Wickham
BBC News Online

Thea wanted to see her son more

Ditching city life for beach life is just a dream for most of us, but Thea Vandeputte has chosen to turn it into reality by setting up shop on the holiday island of Ibiza.

Last summer Thea decided to abandon the south London street where she had lived her whole life to establish a new life abroad with her boyfriend, Ian, and her young son, Felix.

After graduating in communications as a mature student, Thea was doing editorial work for film magazine Hot Dog but felt that London life wasn't suited to the way she wanted to bring up her son.

So she re-mortgaged the Crystal Palace flat she had bought with her earnings as a model in the early 1990s, and put it up for rent.

The money released from the flat was to cover their flights, six months' rent and a business that could support the family.

Not just for hippies

Initially, Thea and Ian wanted to set up a modern Indian restaurant but found that their dream had already been realised by an Indian woman whose husband was a professional chef.

With no back-up plan in mind, Thea soon became deflated.

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"Everyone was so relaxed. I hadn't come here to retire, I wanted a career," she said.

But then, through word of mouth, she heard of a shop to rent in Cala Benirras, a locals' beach in the north-west of the island.

Thea made an impulsive decision to go into retail without even a business plan and armed only with experience in a dress shop as a 16-year-old Saturday girl.

"The kids' clothes in Ibiza are mostly twee and expensive. I thought I could do funky stuff.

"People say if you want something here, it comes to you. It's not just the hippies who say that, it's a general understanding."

A disorganised and natural optimist, Thea seemed surprisingly well-suited to Ibiza's informal business culture.

The Balearic handshake

Observing tourists and locals and checking out a few shops was as far as her research into the competition went.

She decided that Zara, the Spanish chain, which sells children's clothes to younger parents, was one of her strongest competitors.

"But they're not on the beach," she reasoned. "And I've got a weekly tourist bus that drops all my customers to my door."

I knew if I didn't take the shop then, he would have given it to someone else Thea Vandeputte

Allowing herself a total budget of £9,000, Thea allocated £4,000 on stock, £4,000 on the annual shop rental and £1,000 on flights and expenses.

The shop unit she planned to purchase formed the corner of a restaurant building, which the manager was converting to lease out, and was still not built at the outset.

Agreeing to a year's rent without checking the design for the space seemed risky, but she was told Ibizan business was done on handshakes.

"They weren't going to rob me, you know everyone here. Word spreads quicker than a newspaper if anyone does anything wrong."

Spending in the rain

So Thea paid up in March and then flew to Bali to spend six weeks buying her stock.

Getting her designs back from the tailors took longer than she had thought: "They just didn't treat deadlines like I did."

She also found it was a lot easier to ask them to copy something she already had - like a pair of her son's pyjamas.

Haggling over pennies was something Thea found embarrassing when she saw how basic the living quarters were in the back of the shops.

But the expedition was inspiring and motivating.

"It was rainy season. I got lost and soaked on my own there every day and I loved it, I loved the frustration and everything."

She hopes to open her shop full-time in July, and to be able to employ an assistant by August.

She will then pack up when the holiday season finishes at the end of the summer, and head back to Bali to buy next year's stock.

Life's a beach?

So far the experience has proved positive, but she has learned lessons along the way.

Awkwardness over talking about money, a typically English trait, has complicated the situation.

The restaurant owner asked for unexpected extra payments as bills came in.

Childcare for Felix was not an issue

"I wish I'd asked for it all in writing at the start," Thea says.

"But I knew if I didn't take the shop then, he would have given it to someone else."

However, Thea has been able to spend more time with her son Felix, which was part of the reason for the move.

She also found that paying for childcare was not even a consideration.

"All the local mothers will do a rota. We'll help each other out. It goes without saying."

Being into Dr Seuss and rhyming, Felix invented the name Soggy Dogs for the shop, but Thea chose to go with Kidrockers.

Unabashed by his mother's executive decision, Felix told BBC News Online: "It's going to be a real shop with a till and everything."

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Are you an entrepreneur in the middle of setting up a business? How have you found the experience? What are the common pitfalls? What would you do differently if you had your time again? Click here or scroll to the bottom of the page to send us your stories.

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