
FANGS A LOT: Rebecca models her Yummy Gummy Snakeskin latex catsuit (photo: Keith Barker)
“At first I had no idea what was wrong with me but I was very upset. I pretty much thought there was a ghost in my spare room! Stuff was funky, let’s just say.
“Something was bothering me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Until I suddenly realised that in my spare room was where I had my bits and pieces for making latex, where I stored my scraps for doing fashion shows.
“And I realised there wasn’t a ghost in there: it was the thing I’d fallen out of love with, which was my business. And that was horrid to realise.
“Then the pandemic hit and all of that. I just went through the motions of still existing. I didn’t know anything else — didn’t know how to be or do anything other than be ‘Rebecca from Yummy Gummy’.
“During covid I was just dealing with my own depression/drama/shit really. It went really quiet but I was grateful for that — it meant I had time to think, and breathing space for the first time in a very long time. Because I had been running myself ragged.
“It gave me the space to ‘just do me’ for a bit without being stressed about going and doing something I really didn’t want to do any more. Which is probably why I kept it around for so much longer — because I got that break from it.
“I didn’t promote as much — I rested my Instagram for a while because I couldn’t bring myself to be doing that. I was so close to just shutting it then, because I was so down and so over and so depressed by all of it.
“I said to Beth, ‘You need to take the clothing side over if you want because I can’t keep doing it’.
“So Beth took it over and we designed a bunch of dresses that I still wanted to put out, and we still have other dresses that we haven’t finished yet, which is so frustrating.
“I wanted a ‘completion ending’, which was going to be stopping making sheet latex for other people and just doing my clothing — because that way I wouldn’t have to make as many sheets for orders coming in.
“I thought I could almost stock Beth up with some sheets and then if anybody wanted any custom items, that wouldn’t be too much to do.”
This would have given her more time to study for the Hypnotherapy and Counselling diploma she wanted to secure in order to follow the career she’d originally envisaged after graduating with her Psychology degree.
The next part of her plan was to finish off the last of her sample pieces, and maybe make some other samples from pieces Beth had accrued over the years “just to make bikinis or something like that, to use everything up”.
And, she adds, she might still do that now. “But I don’t know how to go forward fully with it. I want to secure a sale of the whole business ASAP — get someone to ‘reserve me’ while we go through the motions of doing it.”
That way, she reasons, she can tell everybody who’s been asking for her knowledge to “sit on their fingers”.
“Because if I were to sell my knowledge, I would not have gained myself any time and it would be two steps forward and one step back. I would just have transformed Yummy Gummy into a latex teaching business, which is not what I wanted to do.”
There are, however, some complications still to overcome if the entire business is to be successfully disposed of in one go. For example, whether or not a potential buyer wants the clothing business as well, Beth has a stake in that business which will have to be taken into account — and Rebecca is determined to do the right thing by her.
Another potential hurdle, especially if she doesn’t find a UK buyer, is her desire to include her latex production tables (£400 each with their special safety glass work-surfaces) and other manufacturing equipment in any deal.
“I’ve had a lot of international interest but selling all my tables and equipment internationally would be a right royal pain in the butt,” she fears.
“People don’t want my stuff, they just want my knowledge. I’ve been approached by a well-known Chinese brand but I know I’d be doing wrong by my customers if I spoke to them.
“That company thought I could be on the same level as Radical Rubber and 4D if I
just made my prices cheaper. They didn’t realise I made my sheet latex myself.
“I was just about to put my sheet latex prices up by 30 percent because in the ten years I have been making latex, the price of liquid latex has gone up by 30 percent.
“So I was going to match that because I’ve been absorbing price increases for too long. And I get this company coming along and saying, ‘Oh you should just make it cheaper’.
“And that’s just the price of liquid latex, that’s not the price of energy and everything else that comes with it! I’ve not given myself any raises or anything. How much I’ve earned has all been from how much I’ve worked!
“Because I’m the only one who’s made those sheets. Except for when my dad worked for me for a while when I was going so hard that I really needed the help because I was spending hours without a break in the workshop.
Even so, she points out, “Every Yummy Gummy sheet in existence has been made by my hands — and that’s a lot, that’s a fucking lot of latex. It’s a testament to the amount of hard work I put in, that people think I had that on a machine and had other people making it!
“No, it was all me. So I won’t be selling to China — let’s put it that way!”
However, in the absence (so far) of a customer for the whole sheet manufacturing and clothing business, Allsop arrived at the conclusion that she might just have to wind it down herself.
“And then when my liquid latex stock was completely annihilated, the decision was made for me. There was going to be no petering out. No completionism, no full-circle moment.
“I wanted to do it by April 2023 because that’s the anniversary of when I opened my books officially. But maybe by April 2023 I’ll have a buyer and I can make an announcement that Yummy Gummy is not dead but just transformed.
“And I would be consulting and teaching the next people for six months or maybe a year at most. So it can be as similar as they can make it but also different because it won’t be my hands making the latex any more.”
What then should we take from Rebecca’s warts-and-all account of the problems that brought her to the decision to move on from Yummy Gummy?
Like a lot of people I know running artisan fetish businesses, the business is first and foremost a labour of love — an expression of personal creativity from which, with luck, its founder will be able to make a living.
But such businesses can only get so far as sole traders before issues of scalability kick in. And that is just what appears to have happened with Yummy Gummy.
As Rebecca says above, whenever her costs increased, she just worked harder rather than putting her prices up — a situation with the obvious potential to lead to burn-out at some point.
Could she have avoided ending up where she finds herself today? Possibly — if she’d recognised the need to abandon her reliance on creating every piece personally before it was too late. But this, as many creative people in business will attest, is often easier said than done.
As things stand, how does Ms Allsop see her future? If she can successfully dispose of the whole business, her proposed ‘handover’ consultancy — training a new owner in her techniques of production — will, she says, be her only remaining overlap with the fetish world.
“I’m going to be going into a therapist’s role,” she emphasises. “I’d love to be able to have a crossover with the following and all that, but it needs to stay completely separate.
“There are also other things I’m moving into and onto which are totally separate from anything fetish, anything latex, anything fashion. It’s all just service to others in a holistic, more down-to-earth way.”
Plus, she points out, it’s about looking after herself too — “like going mushroom picking in autumn, going on walks and generally enjoying life”.
And doing those things without feeling guilty about sometimes prioritising such ‘luxuries’ over the constant demands of running a successful business.
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Atsuko Kudo (UK)SOME OF THE DESIGNERS SUPPLIED BY YUMMY GUMMY
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Black Sheep (USA)
Bondinage (UK)
Dawnamatrix (USA)
House of Harlot (UK)
Lady Lucie (UK)
Latex by Tiina Rikala (Finalnd)
Latex 101 (UK)
Lottie Latex/Latex Repair (Belgium)
Louise Cantwell (UK)
Lupae (Germany)
Pandora Deluxe (UK)
Shhh Couture (UK)
Sublime Berlin (Germany)
Vex Clothing (USA)
Zorenko London (UK)
Pandora Deluxe Anneke dress, model: Psycatt
Tags: Business Matters, Clothing, Latex, latex manufacture