Starting up the business & surviving lockdown

Hi, I’m Louise and I started up my business in January 2020: it was like a crazy New Year’s Resolution, a random idea out of nowhere to start up a business, something I had no experience of or training in, but I love shoes, bags & scarves and wanted something I could do to fit around my 8 year old son who’s very anxious and needs a lot of support. He can’t cope with Breakfast and After School Clubs and needs me to take him to school and pick him up.  That plus time off for Sports’ Day, Xmas Carols on the Playground, etc is hard to get in a job for Mums without your employer thinking you’re taking advantage.  So, I placed my first wholesaler order on 7th January, feeling terrified and off I went into the unknown!

Things were going well for the first few months, I had lovely TOMS boots to sell and the scarves were very popular with the school mums.  I had my website set up and introduced myself to Instagram, feeling ‘old’ at 43!  I could take my son to school, then go to my gym, look after my physical and mental health with an exercise class, then sit in the cafe with a hot chocolate and do my work on my laptop. I was loving it…….unfortunately this didn’t last long, Coronavirus suddenly took over the world and we were all put into lockdown.  People stopped buying, which was understandable with so many people losing their jobs or being furloughed, there was a lot of financial uncertainty for everyone.  I was nervous to start with and thought I would have to give up just as I started but I decided to put things on hold and use the time (around the dreaded homeschooling) to learn more about Business and build up my audience on social media.  Instagram training was really fun and I made some great business connections.  Things have been slowly improving as lockdown is releasing and with my son now back at school 3 days a week I’m able to work on the business more than I have for the last 3 months.