The White Company

Is your world black or white?

Chrissie Rucker has perfected the art of wafting fragrantly and doing business at the same time. The founder of The White Company has arranged to meet me at her store just off Sloane Square, but won't let me interview her until I've felt a few duvet covers.

"Now try that one," she instructs, directing me towards a sheet that looks exactly like the last one and pinching it between finger and thumb.

"This is what we're all about. You don't get this quality on the high street."

It's the first time she's been in the Chelsea store since its refurbishment and she has eyes for everything, from the unfinished shelf tops ("not good enough") to the lack of stock on the shelves.

She's much happier in the Little White Company over the road, where the children's clothes and accessories are in perfect order.

The shop teems with £100-cashmere cot blankets and linen bags with fairies on them, and Rucker is practically cooing with satisfaction over a selection of gingham pyjamas.

Like The White Company itself, the children's store is full of people who want Rucker's life. Her company has done for towels and sheets what Nigella Lawson did for baking tins, and suddenly it's fashionable to give linen spray (in a White Company box, of course) as a gift to your hostess.

The high priestess of the linen closet, who is now 36 and looks younger, is dressed to match her stores in white, wide-legged trousers, a beige top and a pashmina, and is evangelical about the whole lifestyle. Everything is either "lovely" or "flying out of the store", and many things are both.

"The great thing about it is it is really easy to do," she enthuses, pointing to a page in her catalogue featuring a selection of bright white sheets festooned with beautiful cashmere blankets and satin cushions.

She insists that, although her company is founded on the premise that the best things in life are white ("even now, between 55pc and 70pc of what we sell is white") her home is not a temple to stark minimalism.

"I've got four children [Tom, the oldest, is 9, and the baby, Bea, is one]. I want my house to look gorgeous, but everything has to go into the machine. I've got three black dogs as well."

"People are always surprised by my home, because they think it is going to be white from top to bottom. It isn't. I want to live in a place where people feel they can put their feet up on the sofa. But having everything white isn't that difficult. Everyone always says how do you keep it all clean, but it is just like washing a blue shirt, it goes in the machine.

"For me, there is nothing better in the world than wrapping yourself in a white fluffy towel after your bath or wrapping yourself in white linen when you go to bed. Somehow if the linen is blue it just isn't the same."

It is this love of white that prompted Rucker to found the business when she was only 22.

"My husband, who was then my boyfriend, and his sister were talking about housey things, and about how we loved white towels and bedlinen, but that it was actually quite hard to find really nice white bedlinen.

We decided wouldn't it be nice if there was a company which sold just white things."

At the time, she was a journalist with Harpers & Queen, having worked her way up from a receptionist at Conde Nast.

"I wasn't a very good journalist," she says carefully, opening her blue eyes wide. "I was very enthusiastic about making coffee and things, but I wasn't really very good at the actual writing.

"I'd always wanted to do something myself, but I'd never found anything I believed in before, but I just kept mulling it over. It was a bit mad really, I had no formal business training, but I started writing to hundreds of linen suppliers and met some of them. By Christmas I had 75pc of my first suppliers together and I resigned from my job. I started the company in March."

She financed the business with £20,000 gained from selling shares that had been left by her grandmother and some money borrowed from her aunt.

"I spent it all on stock, and on shooting the brochure," she recalls. "There was nothing left over for advertising. I just wrote to everyone I knew."

The White Company concept was picked up in the Financial Times and the rest, she says, is history.

"I was very, very lucky. I'd never written a business plan in my life. I was so naive, but I approached it with the attitude that I would give it a year and if it didn't work I would go back and get another job.

"Even when I was a journalist I had always had jobs in the pub and things to make ends meet, so I had always managed to get by.

"I was so enthusiastic and passionate that I never stopped and thought 'what am I doing?' My father thought I was absolutely bonkers but in the end my family were incredibly supportive."

The White Company was started in the attic bedroom of the home owned by Rucker's husband Nick. He owns his own mail order business - Charles Tyrwhitt shirts - and she says she would "never have been brave enough" to do it without him. "Nick's a great husband. Yes, he does the gin and tonic, but he also does business advice."

From a business which was "just a girl going to the post office with a couple of parcels every day," The White Company now has a turnover of £50m a year and hopes to increase it to £100m within the next three years. As well as the mail order and internet business there are 11 White Company stores in the UK, one in Dubai and she is hoping to do business in the US soon.

Rucker, who owns 99pc of the business (her husband owns the other 1pc), says she has no intention of floating or selling it. "It's grown very much with me personally, the products were things I was looking for," she says. "So no, no plans at the moment".

"I don't really see myself as a businesswoman," she continues, despite having reached the finals of the Veuve Cliquot Business-woman of the Year.

"I'm a creative type, I just know to surround myself with the best people. I'm really quite chaotic when it comes to my office - but I'm not like that at home."

We're back to domestic bliss again. Rucker explains how she keeps all the children's shoes in one place - "that way you never lose them" - "loves ironing" and believes everyone could have a laundry room. Even in London? "Even if you only have a cupboard with a washing machine in you can keep it nice," she says firmly.

She has tea with the children every day when she's at home in Shropshire and only works in London two days a week. "When I have my wobbles about being a working mum, I turn to my friend whose mum worked when she was a kid and she always says 'I'm proud of my mum'.

I hope my kids feel like that one day."

Before I leave the ordered world of The White Company, Rucker hands me a bag of goodies including a scented candle and some coveted linen spray.

Her enthusiasm for all things domestic is beginning to rub off on me and that evening I clean the house, change the beds and - of course - spray the linen.

But when my husband comes home he complains that the sheets "smell a bit girly". Which just goes to show, Rucker's world is wonderful, but we can't all live in a White Company wonderland.

The White Company

Good Gift Guide Recommedation : 4/5