Business: The Bear and Miss Rabbit
Based: Street
Website: www.thebearandmissrabbit.co.uk
Running a business from home with young children takes some juggling, especially when you sell traditional toys that they love. The Bear and Miss Rabbit was established in July 2012, and still solely operates from home.
My office doubles as the utility room, keeping the laptop and paperwork out of the way of little hands. This also means I can shut the door on it all for a work and family balance.
Just-In-Time ordering from carefully selected suppliers enables stock holdings to be kept to a minimum but demand to be fulfilled. We reuse our suppliers’ packaging for our deliveries, thereby reducing waste, keeping delivery costs down and saving on space.
This year we changed our delivery provider. Our deliveries are also now collected from home and delivered to our customers the following day. For us, this is a great time and space saver. Stock collected daily, quickly and efficiently. And for our customers, a much improved service.
Our garage is used for storage - it is easily accessible. We can pick stock quickly, ship it quickly, and customers in our local area can collect the same day. In the busiest months where we need to increase stock, we take over the dining room too!
This year, we have continued to promote the business via social media, and through this we have just been awarded a Small Business Sunday award from Theo Paphitis. This is a real boost to us, and great for a small business to be recognised.
Tracy Martin is the owner of The Bear and Miss Rabbit.
