Lucy Menghini began hand-making bridal tutus and wedding accessories from her spare room. Now, her hobby has turned into one of the fastest growing businesses in the north-west
Lucy Menghini, founder of Six Stories (Image: MEN)
When Lucy Menghini began hand-making accessories in preparation for her own wedding in 2019, she had not considered where her hobby could take her over the next six years.
Since then, a hobby which began in her spare room at home has seen Lucy embark on an internationally renowned bridal business, with the 35-year-old having now curated one of the UK’s fastest growing company’s.
“It was our wedding and my three little flower girls that started it all off,” Lucy explains.
“For my wedding I really wanted these hair vines and I really wanted these tutus, but I couldn’t find them in the colours and the styles that I wanted.
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“My engagement ring is a little pear and so I really wanted my flower girls to have little pears in their hair vines, but I just couldn’t find these anywhere.
“So, I went on YouTube and watched some videos on how to twist the metals and had a go at doing it myself.”
Without any fashion qualifications herself, Lucy took to YouTube to begin crafting the items that she wanted to see within her wedding.
But mid wedding preparation, Lucy, a former Social Chain Marketing Director, began to wonder whether there would be a gap in the market for her hand-made wedding tutus and accessories. From her spare room she began placing her hand-made items on Esty and was met with an almost instant reception from fellow brides-to-be who were interested in her unique wedding pieces.
Now, six years on, Lucy’s small Etsy business has turned into the internationally recognised bridal brand, Six Stories.
Despite the business’s humble beginnings, Lucy has now earned a place on The Sunday Times 100, Britain’s fastest-growing private businesses list.
She ranks as having the eighth fastest growing business in the Northwest, with the company’s most recent sales figures hitting the £10m mark. The milestone comes a year after Six Stories made The Times 100 list in 2024.
Lucy Menghini’s Altrincham based company has now been named on The Sunday Times 100 as one of the top ten fastest growing businesses in the Northwest(Image: MEN )
But despite gaining this success, Lucy, who lives in Manchester, says she has always continued to look back on her own experience of being a bride to help guide her journey.
“The business has always been for the girl that has just been so romantic,” she says. “It was such a special time in my life and I hoped to replicate that for others. It has always been about the bride first rather than about what my ambition is.
“I think that is why we’ve got to where we’ve got to so quickly.”
But the beginning of the business was not without its challenges, she admits, largely due to the start-up of Six Stories coinciding with the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, while this period presented challenges, as weddings began to be cancelled due to lockdowns, Lucy explains that the moment acted as a pendulum for the business and has shaped the path Six Stories has taken since.
“A lot of the industry locked itself down,” she recalls. “But instead we leaned into it and we said to brides, we’re with you and it’s going to be okay. It was all about understanding where the customer was at in that moment.”
But while the pandemic posed a scary time for a bridal start-up, Lucy explains that the moment in fact presented a turning point in the business’s growth.
“The pandemic was a really big change in the business because from then we went for two years focusing not on the wedding day itself because they’d all been cancelled,” she explains. “So when we came out of the pandemic we were just a completely different looking beast.”
Lucy making her first bridal tutus (Image: Lucy Menghini)
Following on from the pandemic, the original hand-made tutus which had been the starting point for Six Stories did not pick up as many sales, while the brand’s new wedding merch was quickly growing.
“It was difficult to have these two different products on site,” she explains. “It didn’t make sense from a customer point of view to have these nice shiny casual wear products and then these hand-made to order flower girl tutus, which should really live on Etsy
For Lucy, this moment after the pandemic was a major turning point in Six Stories’ journey which has since set the business on the path customers see today.
“The system of hand-making tutus had tired and it wasn’t productive for any of us,” she says. “So we decided to call it a day on the tutus, which was really hard but it was the right thing to do – the pandemic took us in a better direction.”
Since the pandemic Lucy says she has become focused on leaning into whatever situation rises – a characteristic of the business which she believes is a major factor in Six Stories success.
Responding to market demand, Six Stories now focuses largely on bridesmaid dresses alongside also delivering wedding merch and occasionwear.
The business currently stocks bridal wear from its office in Altrincham, which can be ordered through the Six Stories website.
Over the past year, the brand has also gone on to launch three pop-up shops across Manchester and London to bring their bridal dresses to shoppers.
Six Stories’ Sample Sale (Image: Lucy Menghini/Six Stories )
“We ended up having this five and a half hour long queue wrapped around Manchester”, she recalls. “It was absolutely terrifying, I had no idea that was going to happen. But seeing that queue my hair stood up and that was definitely a moment – it felt for me that the Six Stories brand had then earned it stripes.”
Since then the brand’s dresses have also been stocked by major retailers including ASOS and Selfridges.
“Seeing us in the pop-up we had in Selfridges in the last years, that was also very much an oh wow this is it moment,” she says.
The company has celebrated its sixth anniversary this year and Lucy alongside her husband Ross Menghini, the co-owner of Six Stories, now hopes to expand the business internationally to America, Australia, Europe and the U.A.E.
She adds: “We hope to replicate what we’ve done in the UK in those markets.”
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