Janie Reader, co-owner of Little Raggamuffin, explains why the business should win the home business category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition.
As two middle-aged mums facing redundancy in 2012, we decided to combine our personal and commercial experience to set up Little Ragamuffin Children’s Interiors, offering a wide and exciting range of accessories that could enhance a child’s bedroom.
As a startup with limited resources, a home-based business was a necessity not an option, allowing longer working hours and therefore being able to be more flexible to fit in with family life, keep overheads to a minimum and despatch order within 24 hours.
An outhouse was transformed into our warehouse, a front room became an office shared with a collection of children’s door knobs, and soft furnishings are carefully located throughout the house.
Our aim is to stock carefully selected products not just from the UK but from overseas to enable us to find lines that are different to what customers normally see when they shop on the high street and online. We want to ensure our products are of a high quality and at affordable prices enabling us to maintain optimum stock levels.
Having a limited budget for advertising, social media has been a huge benefit for us . It’s been a huge platform to promote our business and we have gone on to win awards through small business competitions run by entrepreneurs Theo Paphitis and Jacqueline Gold on Twitter.
Owning our own business in itself has been an amazing opportunity and we’re passionate about taking our business forward and looking to extend our product range substantially in the next year.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the top three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
