Five minutes with… Claire Goodliff and Deb De Luen

In the first of a new series, Colin Young speaks to Amazing Jane co-founders Claire Goodliff and Deb De Luen, to learn more about their Sunderland-based activewear business Amazing Jane. Charting its growth from chance service station meeting to popular market brand, it highlights the company’s recent rollout of TrackHer leggings, which aims to ensure women’s safety and independence while exercising outdoors.

 

Claire and Deb, you’ve invented leggings with a hidden pocket for GPS trackers aimed at helping protect women when they are exercising and walking. Before we get on to your new product, though, can you tell us how you first met…

Deb: “Randomly, we met in a petrol station, buying lunch in Bristol.

“We were both on a training day for a dance fitness brand.

“We started talking, and then both ended up working for that company.

“The rest, as they say, is history.”

4What were you both doing prior to setting up the business? And how has it developed?

Deb: “I owned a ladies-only gym in Sunderland, and Claire taught community-based fitness classes across Northumberland.

“We set up Amazing Jane in 2013, testing different products and selling leggings, but faced lots of manufacturing barriers, such as high minimum quantity orders.

“We both went away from it for a while, continuing with our other businesses until 2020, but found that towards the end of the year, we both still had the passion to do what we originally set out to do.

Claire: “We knew our vision; we knew the exact type of products we wanted to create.

“It took a while to find the right team, and now we have a fantastic supply chain and design team, which help take our ideas and turn them into reality.

“Every day is still a rollercoaster, but we’re seeing good progress with the brand.

“We’ve got some fantastic opportunities for 2023, including a launch in the US and Middle East and working with some amazing charities, and our customer base is growing every day.”

4So tell us about TrackHer leggings. What have you invented, and what is the technology behind it?

Claire: “The new innovation embodies our ethos, to empower women to lead healthy, active lifestyles through the power of clothing.

“Every item we create is designed to build confidence in women.

“We mainly design our clothes to make women feel great about themselves, but we also address other barriers to women being more active. 

“One of the topics we talk about daily is women’s safety, which is even more poignant given recent headlines.

Deb: “We developed a small hidden pouch within the leggings, just the size to hide a personal tracker, with the intention of women being able to keep their loved ones updated of their location.

“And in any event they are in trouble, it means their location can be determined much faster.

“We believe most attackers would only really think to dispose of a phone or a keyring, etc, and not look for a concealed pocket.

“The TrackHer pocket is unknown, until you receive your leggings, with a card explaining the location.

Claire: “This isn’t even just from a violence against women perspective, there are lots of women who exercise alone, and in the event they injured themselves, they would also be more easily located.”

4What was the motivation behind Amazing Jane? Was it brought on by personal experiences or the recent events in the news and a determination to make our streets safer for women?

Claire: “The Amazing Jane brand has been around for eight years, but our passion to build confidence in women has been around for decades.

“Dressing in a certain way has been scientifically proven to have a positive impact on emotional wellbeing.

“We work with the science of enclothed cognition, focusing on empowering and supporting women through clothing and its deeper psychology of making women feel good and confident about their bodies.

Deb: “We use the science and our combined years of experience of working with women to create each individual design from scratch, to ensure a great fit for all our body types and our ever-changing bodies as women.

“The recent discussions, and acts of violence against women out alone, made us want to try and help make women feel safe.

4Isn’t it a sad reflection on society that it is necessary for these types of products? What would you like to be done to make outdoor exercise even safer for women?

Claire: “We really wish we didn’t need products like this, or even have ideas on topics such as violence against women.

“The reality is, though, that our safety is at risk in too many situations.

Deb: “Runners World states 46 per cent of female runners in the UK say they have been harassed while running, and data from End Violence Against Women found that one in two felt unsafe walking alone after dark in a quiet street near their home, compared to one in seven men.

Claire: “And End Violence Against Women also highlighted that two out of three women aged 16 to 34 experienced one form of harassment in the previous 12 months; with 44 per cent of women aged 16 to 34 having experienced catcalls, whistles, unwanted sexual comments or jokes, and 29 per cent having felt like they were being followed.

“The recent news coverage of attacks against women has sparked the conversation again about outdoor exercise and their safety.

“We are passionate about using the power of clothing to encourage women to get into the right mindset for being active.

“The reality is many feel afraid when exercising alone and have a restricted sense of freedom, which is escalated with the changing seasons and the darker nights and mornings.

Deb: “As autumn hits, it’s a fact that many women have changed their outdoor training patterns to accommodate the dark mornings and nights.

“The changing seasons really do bring a heightened level of vulnerability to women.

“To make outdoor exercise safer for women, we feel others need to understand what role they play.

“From better lighting in dark spaces to men understanding the barriers we face due to their actions, it really is a wider discussion that needs to take place.”

 

www.amazingjane.com