After being made redundant just before maternity leave and with her partner unable to work due to a back injury, Stacey Dennis had just £30 in the bank.
Desperate to make some cash to feed them and their daughter Layla, Stacey drew up a quick doodle at the dining room table for some Valentine’s Day greetings cards.
Now, four years on, that doodle has turned into a business called Love Layla Designs, which turns over £1.5m and even has celebrity fans.
The 33-year-old, from Pontefract, West Yorkshire, who has also created a poignant range of cards aimed at people battling cancer and mental health issues, said: ‘My first cards had cheeky slogans like ‘Happy Valentine’s Day – Fancy a threesome?’ and they clearly hit the spot, as they did brilliantly.
‘I started out by selling on sites like eBay at Etsy. I designed the cards all myself on an ancient computer in our dining room, then would print them out and walk with Layla down to the Post Office.
‘Jay, 38, is really good with numbers, so he offered to help out with that side of things. We also set about teaching ourselves all about social media, and Facebook advertising.
‘Things grew really quickly. We went from two orders a day, to 10, to 30, to 50.
‘We eventually had to get my brother to help with all the orders. He came round and saw these boxes and cards everywhere, and wondered what on earth had happened.
‘My mum had bailed us out with a £1,000 loan when Jay couldn’t work and I even managed to pay her back in just two weeks.’
Mother’s Day came soon after and Stacey designed more cards for the occasion.
‘We sold about 10,000 cards in total,’ said Stacey, proudly. ‘It was at that point that I realised we needed our own website.
‘So, I sat myself down and got up a YouTube video on how to build a website. Looking back, it was the most basic website ever, but within a year of having it, we’d turned over £1m.’
Now they run the business full-time and even employ Stacey’s best friend Vikki and a fourth person, Ross, so they can meet demand.
Back in January 2015, the family were almost penniless after Jay’s injury meant he could no longer work as a self-employed renderer.
Stacey worked as a freelance graphic designer after she was made redundant just before taking maternity leave.
She explained: ‘When I was made redundant, the company dealt with it really well, and did everything legally, making sure I had enough support.
‘But it was still really quite hard. I’d been settled in that job and was just about to become a mum for the first time.
‘Once Layla was born, I looked at trying to find a job that could fit in with childcare, but I also didn’t want to rush back to work given that I had a new baby.’
After taking time off to spend with her baby, she looked for assignments she could fit around Layla but the work was not reliable. so when Jay had to stop working, they had no solid income.
But the doodle at her dining room table changed everything.
Reflecting on her success she said: ‘We never meant to build a business. It started out as a way of making some extra cash to put food in our bellies and put the heating on.’
As well as cards, Love Layla Designs now sells banners, balloons, badges, gift wrap, notebooks, diaries, and even hen party packs.
But Stacey admits that, while plenty of people find her irreverent humour hilarious, not everybody is a fan of her crude cards – the latest Christmas range of which include slogans like, ‘Mary just needs to admit she slept with someone else’ and ‘It’s not Christmas unless you’re getting fat and sh*tfaced.’
She continued: ‘We do get some people who think they’re too rude and don’t like them. Everyone is entitled to their own voice and opinion, but sometimes people assume that because they’re offended by something, everyone must be.
‘Actually, people all have their own boundaries of what’s offensive. Obviously, there are some topics we’d never touch, as it would be wrong to poke fun at them, but something like swearing may really bother one person, and not remotely affect another.
‘Sadly, there are a lot of keyboard warriors out there, but you can’t take everything to heart. Still, sometimes I do think, “With all the awful stuff going on in the world, is someone really that angry about a card?”‘
They also have cards for cancer patients and for mental health awareness as Stacey wants the business to make a difference.
‘We all have issues going on. You could be sat on a bench in a park next to someone and have no idea of the things they are facing unless you talk to them,” she said, adding that Love Layla also regularly donate to charity.
‘That’s why we decided to do some cards for the trickier issues, like mental health and illness.
‘It’s not to poke fun, but to use our platform to raise awareness. Humour can break the ice in difficult situations, and people shouldn’t feel like they have to tread on eggshells with topics like these.
‘If we can give someone going through a really awful time a little laugh, and take their mind off things for a few minutes, then why not?
‘I am a big believer in karma and giving back, so will always try to help someone struggling if I can.’
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