Decisions That Made Me: Sophie Mirman
The Bottom Line
BBC
4.6 • 615 Ratings
🗓️ 27 November 2025
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sophie Mirman was thrown in at the deep end when – at the age of 13 – she was in a car accident with her parents. They were both badly injured and, a few years later, Sophie felt she had to find a way to help the family finances.
She started as a very junior secretary in M&S, applied for jobs she says she wasn’t qualified for, and went on to hold the top jobs at Tie Rack, SockShop and Trotters.
She discusses the all-consuming nature of expanding outside the UK and how her more cautious approach these days is, ultimately, more enjoyable.
Producer: Sally Abrahams Editor: Matt Willis Sound: Jackie Margerum Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison
(Image: Sophie Mirman. Credit: Pylewell)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Hello, I'm Emma Barnett. For most of my career, I've been on live radio, and I love it. |
| 0:13.3 | But I've always wondered, what if we'd had more time? How much deeper does the story go? |
| 0:19.2 | I remember having this very sharp thought that what you do right now, this is it. |
| 0:24.3 | This defines your life. |
| 0:26.0 | I'm ready to talk and ready to listen. |
| 0:28.3 | I'm insulted by how little the medical community is ever bothered with this. |
| 0:33.9 | Ready to talk with me, Emma Barnard, is my new podcast. |
| 0:37.0 | Listen on BBC Sounds. Finding a gap in |
| 0:39.7 | the market and stumbling upon just the right idea to fill it is pretty much every entrepreneur's |
| 0:44.9 | ambition. But what's remarkable, I think, is just how often the inspiration for these new business |
| 0:50.0 | ideas comes from a very personal frustration or irritation. From the invention of flat-packed furniture, |
| 0:57.3 | when an IKEA employee couldn't fit a table into his car, to the creation of Netflix, born out |
| 1:03.3 | of frustration at having to pay late fees on returning VHS tapes. Stories of aha moment are often |
| 1:10.2 | satisfyingly every day. I'm Evan Davis, and in this |
| 1:14.5 | episode of the decisions that made me, our series of business interviews brought to you by the |
| 1:19.6 | team behind the bottom line program, we're going to hear from Sophie Merman, who made her fortune |
| 1:26.0 | when she got annoyed at not being able to buy a pair of tights |
| 1:29.1 | just when she needed them. Sophie set up sock shop in the 1980s. She lived through boom and bust, |
| 1:37.2 | and later founded the children's wear company Trotters. And Sophie's been telling me how it all |
| 1:42.2 | began. When I was 13, my parents who are both very French, my parents eloped to come to the UK just before the war. |
| 1:52.0 | I was an only child and very close to both my parents. |
... |
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