WITH A little help from Princess Charlene of Monaco, Irish glove designer Paula Rowan has opened her first London store in the Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush with plans to move to the even bigger Westfield in Stratford next year.

As one of the few independents accepted by Westfield, Rowan says the presentations she made to the Australian retail centre operator during the negotiating phase were helped when a customer of her boutique in Dublin’s Westbury Mall was invited to July’s royal wedding in Monaco and bought a pair of her Italian leather gloves as a gift for the bride.

“It’s a risk going into the UK, but it’s also an opportunity,” says Rowan. Tough consumer conditions in Ireland have persuaded her that having a crack at the cosmopolitan, tourist-friendly London market is the best way of trying to grow her business and have a stab at making it a global brand. Her partner in the venture is Laura Mulcahy, a friend since her college days at UCD.

A pop-up construction known as the “Glove Pod” is currently residing in Westfield Shepherd’s Bush, and after four months the plan is to move eastwards across London to the new Westfield in Stratford, which Underground users will have to pass through in order to get to the entrance of the London 2012 Olympic Park.

The seasonal nature of the gloves trade has prompted Rowan to stock her Westbury Mall store with other accessories such as belts, bags and shoes, a diversification that also meant she could offer a greater range of price points to suit the recessionary market. Glove prices range from €50 to a top-end €350.

“I’ve really had to assess my business,” says Rowan, citing a substantial drop-off in sales of leather briefcases in recent years – where once they accounted for about 30 per cent of her sales, they’re now about “4 per cent, if we’re lucky”.