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Mumpreneur Start up stories Thank you to the mums of mumsclub for these inspirational tales. If you have a start up story to share, take a look at the forum post for details. Mindy Emsley Mera Baby (www.merababy.co.uk) Indian-inspired baby essentials and personalised products including clothing, jigsaws, clocks and gifts. How did you get started? Although I had the idea for Mera Baby back in January 2008, I had to stick with my conference work as I really needed to bring money into the household. Consequently I only took pigeon steps towards launching the business throughout 2008.  The conference industry was badly hit by the recession and it wasn’t until losing all my work in April that I finally got the push I needed to pursue the business. What research did you do before launching? I did lots of web research, visited trade shows around the UK to meet similar businesses and made 2 supplier sourcing trips to India. How do you promote your business? What has worked best? We’re still in the early stages, so we’ve not yet pushed the business quite as hard we plan to next year. To date most of our efforts have been focused on the internet; social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter etc.  We’re also featuring in some printed publications early next year. Additionally and perhaps one of our more labour-intensive initiatives at the moment, is to target local schools and nurseries with discounts for parents, prizes for school raffles etc. It’s labour intensive, but does help raise your profile within the local community at the very least.   What advice would you give to someone else wanting to work in this area? Research the market/product/industry thoroughly. Ensure you are offering something unique or better than your competitors. Manage your risks carefully; particularly in terms of financial outlay on stock and so forth. Shop around for quotations on everything you may need to acquire to run your business (website, professional fees, equipment etc).  Even if you plan to open a bricks and mortar business, ensure you have credible and professional online presence. Don’t underestimate the amount of hours you will need to put in, its hard work!  Rome wasn’t built in a day, so don’t expect everything to be absolutely perfect for when you launch. It will never be perfect and you will be tweaking forever more! Don’t be disheartened when you have periods in which you don’t spend as much time with your family as you would like to. Remember how much your efforts will eventually benefit them as well... and your child will probably enjoy an hour of Cbeebies if it means Mum can get her emails done and then devote some quality time afterwards!   Sadie Knight Glassraven We specialise in website design & development. Informational websites, blog design, ecommerce stores and larger database driven bespoke solutions. All our websites are custom designed based on the clients needs - not from templates. How I started in Business I started the business in early 2002, a few months after the birth of my 2nd child. I had been working at a local web firm and after my sons birth I did some projects for them from home, when the realisation hit that this was something I could do for myself around the children. Starting the business was easy (a phone call to Inland Revenue!), but establishing myself in the marketplace and getting known was harder. I found fantastic support on a couple of parenting website homeworker forums, where I also found some of my first clients - I traded website design for various things (from PR to pushchairs!) to build up my portfolio. 8 years later, the business is now a partnership as my husband Justin joined me a couple of years ago. His background is in development so we have very complimentary skills which has opened up the market to the bespoke web development sector and together we have developed our own ecommerce solution which addresses the needs of our clients. We are just about to launch a website for our biggest client to date – the NHS! Ecommerce is one of our biggest growth areas in the last year, and is something which we have a lot of experience in, we hope to eventually roll out our ecommerce solution to a wider audience, perhaps via other web design firms. Since 2002 I've had some great times (I've never missed one of my childrens special moments at schools - nativities, concerts etc), I've worked with some fantastic people and worked with many startups and seen them grow which has been fantastic. But it has also been hard work, seperating work from homelife can be constant challenge, and I did need to remind myself that I was working from home so I could spend more time with my children, not so I could stay cooped on the computer all day/evening! What I would say to anyone thinking of starting up a business from home is that it IS hard work, don't expect immediate profits and success – there are very few startup companies who can turn over a good profit within the first years trading. Make sure you separate your work and home life as much as you can & take time off. The positives are always being there for your family, you are in charge of your own time so you don't miss any of their special moments! Nicky Edwards, A former primary school teacher with 2 little girls who are now 5 and 7. I recently set up Flying Start Games where I design and sell educational games. I fall into the category of ‘accidental entrepreneur’as the idea for Flying Start Games came about when my daughter’s Reception teacher gave her a pile of laminated words to learn. We used the words to make a game of pairs, snap and lotto which we played together. She and her friends enjoyed the game and learnt the words. Spurred on by the warm reception, it wasn’t long before Flying Start Games took off. I sought advice from Business Link and funding from the North East Enterprise Investment Centre, and with the help of a local designer who is also a teacher (Joni Daglish of maia cards) came up with a range of numeracy and literacy games. mumsclub continues to be an invaluable source of inspiration, ideas and encouragement . Two years on and I sell the games at school fairs in the North East and through the website, flying start games, with a proportion of sales offered to schools Parent Teacher Associations through a 10% Donation Scheme. Ultimately, I would like to expand my range of games and buy in other games and activities from wholesalers to increase the product range offered through the website. I am also keen to enter the Home Education market and to increase the number of schools through whom I sell games. Having my games endorsed by headteachers is a powerful sales method, as I’ve discovered! Nuggets of advice for anyone wanting to pursue their inner entrepreneur? You don’t have a boss breathing down your neck, telling you what to do so YOU have to make the decisions to go ahead to take things forward. Others will help, but they haven’t got their heart, soul, money and everything else invested in your business like you have, so it’s down to you! And if you never tried it, you’d never know, would you? Karen Fullerton Chloes mummy Make and sell personalised board books via my website. How I started in Business Chloe loved her first words board books and when her first cousin was born I wanted to make a personalised one with pictures of Chloe, other members of the family etc. Also found a lot of them had words and pictures that were not familiar to Chloe (either odd exotic animals or boats that didn't look like boats or potties etc) and so wanted to use my own pictures. After looking online for ages no no avail decided to make my own. It turned out so well I thought people would probably pay for them so decided to start my own business. Luckily my husband is a developer so he created our website (although neither of us is very artsy so we have struggled a bit with the look of it). Where you looked for information and where you found it Went on courses with Inland Revenue re tax and becoming VAT registered etc. Businesslink gave advice on toy safety standards. Since then Mumsclub has been my source for info. How long you've been going and at what stage you're at now Started trading almost 3 months ago doing a steady trade but not done any advertising so far apart from posts on Bounty and Netmums so need to get marketing! Where you want to be Making enough money to pay for nice little extras as finding it tough on one salary. Also want to be proud of my business. Any advice? If you have an idea definitely try it or you might regret never doing it! Alison Pinto menus4mums I lift the burden off hard-pressed parents by helping them to get organised in the kitchen. Each week, they get a weekly menu planner of weekday meals which they can print off and stick to their fridge, recipe cards, and a shopping list broken down into categories. The recipes make use of the latest supermarket bargains to keep cost down. The best deals also feature in my regular website blog. How I started in Business I loved the previous job I had but it just wasn't viable with a young family. So I decided to set up my own business to fit around the demands of school and extra-curricular activities. The idea for Menus4Mums came when I was chatting with some other mums in a coffee shop about what we could do to set up our own small businesses. I realised that I enjoyed planning out my family’s meals, to make sure they were balanced and interesting but also that they didn’t cost a fortune. I’ve always been interested in cooking at home and at school.I also thought of people like my old boss, who was lovely but just didn't have time to sort out her family's meals, so I thought it might be something people would pay for if it helped them get a better life balance. I started by doing a course in nutrition, and I also enrolled on some really good courses run by Business Link. They gave me a great framework for planning out what I needed to do. I've also been lucky enough to get £2,500 worth of start-up assistance through a scheme run by my local university (see open4businessbucks) which I'm spending on a mentor. I launched in November, a couple of months after my youngest started school. It's been going well, and I've learnt a huge amount already. I've already made a major change to the website by introducing a Members Area so I could cope if I had an increase in customers. There's still quite a way to go to be where I want to be, but I'm beginning to see what I need to do to get there! One bit of advice I would give would-be start-ups is to make full use of the resources that are out there. Some people might be a bit cynical about government agencies (!), but the advice and support I've received from Business Link and Open4business has been amazing. Anna Seager Little Crab Designs littlecrab Make and sell nursery wall art and pictures for children’s bedrooms. How I started in business: I started Little Crab Designs, creating and producing art for little people, just over three years ago. My dad had been very ill and this difficult time led me to re-evaluate my life and realise the work I was doing was not fitting in round the kids as I wanted it to. Whilst staying with friend and artist, Sarah Howell,  one weekend in the summer of 2006, the two of us decided that, with my marketing  and sales experience and her creative talent, we could work together to sell her artwork more commercially. She painted some watercolour pictures which I digitalised and got printed onto canvas. I took a stand at my children’s school Christmas fair and had a huge amount of interest in them, several orders and a sense of excitement that I had hit on something viable! The first year was a huge amount of product design, testing different sales channels and making LOTS of mistakes! I learnt many lessons such as fairs were a lot of works with very little reward even a loss sometimes! Wholesaling to retailers meant that I did all the work they made all the money!! So after evaluating that first year and wondering where to go from there I decided that to concentrate on the  website was the way to go – and would also be the best way of achieving what I  had set out to do, which was to work from home around the kids. Since then, the website has gone from strength to strength, growing month on month. Today, Sarah supplies me with some of the artwork for which she gets paid a commission on every sale and I do some of the designs myself which I really enjoy. Where you looked for information and where you found it: I used Business Link a lot, they are fantastic, and I have had two free business reviews, a free website review and lots of free training. These days I use sites like mums club which are brilliant for support and information. How long have you been going and what stage are you at now: I have just gone past the three year mark and the sales are growing month on month. I am now making a regular monthly income that allows me to pay for treats, holidays, kids activities etc,  so I feel like I am making a real contribution to the family  income. Claire Willis snugbaby baby carriers I didn’t plan to start my business. When my son was born, in October 2006, I needed a way to be able to comfort my new baby while still being able to get on with day to day tasks, and look after my toddler.  After being unable to find a suitable baby carrier, I designed my first SnugBaby baby carrier, for my own use. The business grew from local demand, when friends saw it and asked me to make them one, and soon word-of-mouth recommendations led to the development of an online store, snugbaby, which launched in February 2008. SnugBaby slings come in a range of stylish designs, but their superior comfort for parent and child is what really makes SnugBaby stand out. I have sucessfully achieved the British Standard for baby carriers, which makes SnugBaby one of the safest mei tais on the UK market. I managed to incorporate running a business into my life as a busy mum, using local and national networking to drive the business forward, as well as utilising social media as an effective form of marketing. In addition to selling through my website, I also sell SnugBaby carriers wholesale to other online stores, and offer a dropshipping service to make them accessible to businesses of all sizes. I recently launched a UK-focussed online campaign to support SnugBaby (get your hands back) which promotes the benefits of babywearing, with features, news and advice for parents. In October 2009, I beat off stiff competition to win the Best Online Business award at the Mumpreneur Conference and Awards, and have been nominated for the Women On Their Way awards, which take place in March 2010. I have been involved in every aspect of the business, from design to manufacture. This year, I am developing the business plan by spreading the word through my blog, social media marketing, and enjoying the benefits of using “word of web” in addition to word of mouth for my key marketing strategies, to  make SnugBaby an even bigger success in 2010. Keira O'Mara mamascarf I invented and now sell my product Mamascarf, a breastfeeding scarf  allowing discreet, comfortable and stylish breastfeeding whilst also providing support without the need for a cushion. I sell direct from my website and to baby and maternity stores. How & why you started I came up with the idea when breastfeeding my baby 2 1/2 years ago  as I had noticed a gap in the market. I had been made redundant and decided to put my redundancy money to good use.  First I came up with the design and name, then researched my market, tested the product out on lots of breastfeeding mums, then came finding as manufacturer and designing my website and packaging. Where you looked for information and where you found it Business Link has been fantastic for information on all aspects of setting up a new business.  Forums such as Mumsclub are great too, you can ask a question and have 10 responses within 24 hours, often from other women who have been through the same sitiuation.  I have also not been shy in asking questions of other business people.  Everyone I have come across has been extremely helpful. How long you've been going and at what stage you're at now Mamascarf launched in Nov 2008. I am now looking at building my network of retailers and if all goes to plan will be working towards getting some national chains stocking Mamascarf soon. Where you want to be I would love to see Mamascarf stocked on every high street! Any advice? It feels really scary taking a step into the unknown at first but it is absolutely the best thing I ever did.  If you are able to start up whilst you are still in employment, part or full time, I would advise doing this as you may not be able to take a salary from your new business for some time. Good luck!

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