The Big Interview: Sarah Jones from 100% People (100PercentPeople.com)

With a growing readership, 100% People is already the No. 1 Plus size resource website in the UK. Sarah Jones, member of the 100% People team (100percentpeople.com) has kindly agreed to answer a few questions. Find out about what this site can give you and how it became succesful. Sarah also tells us about the “Real Bodies Unite” campaign, which aims at promoting real body representation in fashion.

1/ Sarah, tell us a bit about yourself. How did you become part of 100% People?

It’s an odd story really but I love telling it. Like many, the recession caused me to loose my job just over a year ago now and it was on the day that I was leaving the office for the last time that I was introduced to Kathryn, the owner of 100% People who needed a new website manager. It was fate and I have never looked back.

2/ 100% People is now the No. 1 plus size resource website in the UK. How did it get started?

The website was created in 2005 by Kathryn who had a vision that women, men and teens would need a place online to find the retailers catering especially for them and a place to come to share their stories and find support. The website has grown in size to include the latest news, fashion advice and health and beauty insights. It is still getting bigger.

3/ Your website brings information, forums, shopping tips, and expert advice to your readers. Could you expand on each topic?

Yes, sure. The website has 5 main categories;

• The Latest news (http://100percentpeople.com/news/) entails a huge range of subjects including entertainment news, fashion news which is my favourite kind of news to report on! Health news and an Offers blog. The Offers blog is a great place to pick up any exclusive discount codes or sale information on specific retailers. (http://100percentpeople.com/category/news/offers-blog/)

• Directory is a place we are constantly updating to provide retailer information from across the world to our readers. The women’s directory alone contains 340 shops. We have made it user friendly and accessibly – it is totally free to view and retailers can even add themselves to it. We are hoping to grow the national health list in order to provide a comprehensive service. So if anyone would like to help with that one please get in touch!

• Health and Beauty delivers 100% Style bringing together the latest fashion trends; we also love to feature plus size retailers so they can share their latest collection. We have a lot of content in this area from the obscure and unexpected (http://100percentpeople.com/health-beauty/kermit-the-frog-once-said/) to the features surrounding a plus size lifestyle (http://100percentpeople.com/health-beauty/tall-persons-club-of-london/)

• The Help and Advice area is strictly a place for professional insight, we are here to assist in the hurdles that life throws at us in some cases and support is necessary. (http://100percentpeople.com/help-advice/)

• The Community was re-launched when I joined 100% People to include more features like creating your own blog and sharing media. It is totally free to join and connect with like minded individuals. (http://affiliate.kickapps.com/service/displayHomePageExperience.kickAction?page=Homepage&as=58318)

There’s a lot more going on, like our Monthly feature area showcasing the topic of the month. This month is Valentines, Simply Yours has written ‘Buying Lingerie for your loved one’ and Fat Girls Like Nice Clothes Too blogger has just added her fashion advice for first dates! (http://100percentpeople.com/this-months-features/)

Wow! That’s a long list, sorry about that!

4/ I am surprised that there was no successful online community for larger people in the UK, before 100% People. Why do you think that you succeeded?

The website concept was started well before society had realised that plus size and tall individuals were not being catered for – I believe this gave 100% People a head start and an insight into what women and men needed from a resource. But there are lots of fantastic websites and blogs out there now to offer readership diversity.

5/ How do you grow a community like yours? How did you convince the first users to register and start talking?

I must admit – it has been a struggle, especially when we had to re-launch it from a fresh. People can be closed books, so it is about tapping into their needs and getting them to express themselves. Fortunately we have a separate facility that we can communicate to our readers through – our newsletter, which many had signed up to already, to get the latest news from the site. I was able to publish an article about our free to use community so our dedicated readers joined and people would follow.

6/ Tell us about your competitions and about your “Real Bodies Unite” Campaign.

We love running competitions for our readers. We have a year round competition called The Face of 100% People where we give away £100 of high street vouchers every quarter to one man and one woman who demonstrate why they should be The Face of along with their photo of course! We also run monthly giveaways in association with appropriate retailers; our current one is £125 of Simply Yours vouchers (http://100percentpeople.com/competitions/win-125-to-spend-at-simply-yours/)

Real Bodies Unite is a campaign we have launched to get body diversity into the fashion industry! We need real women to sign our petition so we can present at least 10,000 signatures to the fashion houses to prove women want to see real body representation in fashion; the magazines, photos, catwalk, EVERYWHERE! So, this is me pleading for the support of women all over the world to help us achieve our goal! The petition is on the website – easy to sign and we don’t pass information around to third parties (http://100percentpeople.com/specials/real-bodies-unite-campaign/)

7/ British retailers seem to be very active on the plus size market, from Evans to ASOS. Does it mean that UK business people have woken up to this opportunity?

I think it does, it seems only to have happened in the past few years or so, but they are finally catching on to the fact that plus size people want fashion not just clothes. ASOS demonstrates that perfectly in their new Curve Collection.

8/ What fashion trends do you see coming for this Spring?

For me Spring will be about bright colouring, clever layering of floral with print and a hint of nautical. There is a lot of colour around at the moment, which is great when the weather is so dull.

9/ One last word?

Diversity is beauty and thank you for a great interview!

Thank you Sarah for your time. Be sure to check out: 100percentpeople.com