Husband and wife Ross and Lucy Menghini had to think quickly when the wedding industry ground to a standstill in 2020.
The couple had launched British bridal fashion brand Six Stories in 2019 and bought hundreds of T-shirts to hand out at a wedding event – but nobody turned up.
Speaking on the first episode of season two of The Naked Founder podcast, Ross recalled: “The wedding industry in particular was decimated. No weddings were happening. We decided to come up with a campaign and it was all customer-led. ‘Why don’t we give away a free T-shirt to anyone who had their wedding cancelled?’
“Any bride that was affected by Covid could come to our website and get a T-shirt for free.
“As soon as we put it live on Shopify it was like ‘ping, ping, ping’. We ended up giving away so many of these T-shirts.
“In these two lockdowns we ended up giving away 15,000 T-shirts for free. Customers paid for shipping. They’ve still got that connection with us. ‘You were there when times were really hard’.”
The giveaway quickly went viral, with Six Stories’ Instagram following surging from 5,000 to 25,000 in just two days.
Paid dividends
The campaign paid dividends, with nearly all the women who received free T-shirts eventually returning to Six Stories when the wedding industry reopened after the pandemic.
Today, Six Stories is a global bridal fashion brand with 465,000 followers on Instagram, 64,000 on TikTok and a turnover of £15m.
At the heart of the company’s success is the relationship between Ross and Lucy Menghini.
The couple first met at nursery and started dating when they were 16. They’re now 36 and the proud parents of two young boys.
Instead of going to university, they joined a management trainee scheme at Sainsbury’s.
After leaving the supermarket giant, they went to work for two of Manchester’s highest-profile businesses.
Lucy joined Social Chain in 2015 as marketing director, working alongside co-founders Steven Bartlett and Dominic McGregor.
Ross, meanwhile, went to work for Manchester-based digital consultancy Apadmi, which was co-founded by Garry Partington and is today on course to reach £40m in turnover.
The unlikely seed for Six Stories was planted at their own wedding, when Lucy made a handmade tutu for their flower girl.
After getting married, the couple honeymooned in Asia, including Bali, and decided to explore the world while they ‘figured it out’.
Give up our jobs
Ross said: “We stayed in Bali on our honeymoon. That was a moment for us because we had never seen that side of the world. We’d never exposed ourselves to that culture.
“It was the catalyst that inspired us to say ‘we need to quit our jobs. Now is the time. We need to do and something’.”
In 2019, they launched Six Stories with a customer-first approach that remains central to the business today.
“We offer clothing for the most important moment in our customer’s life,” Ross told The Naked Founder podcast. “At its very heart we listen to our customers.”
Explaining what it’s like to work with his wife, Ross said: “With Lucy and I, it’s quite obvious, we just have our own lanes but there is a crossover as well.
“By nature, she’s super creative. She loves social, she loves any communication with the customer. Her title now is founder and creative director. I’m a logical brain, wanting to put the building blocks of a scalable business. I’m growth orientated.”
The couple were included in BusinessCloud’s Founder 250 and Northern Leaders 2026 lists.
They have bootstrapped Six Stories to £15m in turnover and, despite receiving no shortage of investment offers, have no intention of selling.
However, Ross warned founders against blindly following every piece of advice they receive, however well-intentioned.
He recalled one piece of advice in particular: ‘What got you here won’t get you there.’
“You go on this whole journey of trying to change the business and professionalise the business,” he told The Naked Founder podcast.
“We’ve kind of gone full circle. I come back to that central point. Actually, what got us here, is going to get us there. You don’t need to do anything different. You know your business more than anyone else. You have to trust your gut.”
You can listen to the latest episode of The Naked Founder podcast here
The Naked Founder is a BusinessCloud podcast produced by Dan Brown at Renowned.
- Interested in sponsoring season two of The Naked Founder? Contact Chris.Maguire@BusinessCloud.co.uk