First-time mums set up business selling fruit lollies – and it now makes £1.28MILLION a year
Lucy Woodhouse and Meriel Kehoe from London set up Claudi & Fin's frozen yogurt and fruit ice lollies after meeting at a mother and baby group
MATERNITY leave is supposed to be a time when you concentrate on your newborn baby and recovering from the birth.
But these two London-based mums ended up using the time to hatch a frozen yogurt and fruit lollipop business that six years later would have an annual turnover of £1.28MILLION.
Lucy Woodhouse and Meriel Kehoe, both 43, met at a mother-and-baby group round the corner from where they both lived in London.
Back in 2012, Lucy's daughter Claudia and Meriel's son Fin were both a few months old when their mums hit it off.
Six years on, and the women are business partners - and they've sold more than six million Claudi & Fin lollies - named after the children who brought them together.
When the Sun Online caught up with them, it's clear that they get on like a house on fire.
"Our eyes met across the room when we were singing wheels on the bus with our children and that was it," Meriel told the Sun Online.
"But it wasn't until we'd been hanging out for a while and we were in a coffee shop and we thought, there's nothing really healthy here for our kids.
"So we kind of kept thinking about things we would want our kids to eat and came up with the frozen lolly idea."
After a bit of research, they found that fro-yo was a big hit in the US, but no one had stuck it on a stick for kids in the UK.
That's when they set about perfecting recipes in IKEA mugs in their kitchens at home - testing them out on their chief tasters, Claudi and Fin.
Meriel's and Lucy's top tips on setting up your business
CLAUDI & Fin is the brainchild of two mums who met at a baby group. Here's their advice in going it alone:
- Research your idea thoroughly and write a three-year business plan. It will force you to answer important questions and give you a structure to work to.
- Be clever about how you spend from the beginning. Don't spend what you haven't got.
- If you need to raise funds, know exactly what you are going to spend it on. You can look at applying for a loan from , and
- There are a lot of great business resources out there to help you get started, like and the .
- It can sometimes feel quite lonely starting and running a business, and having a mentor is a great support. There are lots of mentoring schemes available now, but also talk to other entrepreneurs. You can learn so much for free, and they understand exactly what you're going through. We regularly meet up with a handful of entrepreneurs we've met along the way.
Shortly after they got the ball rolling on their idea, they decided to enter a competition at Sainsbury's. They'd not yet sold a single lolly but they thought they'd give it a go.
"We got down to the final 10," said Lucy. "It was very Dragon's Den, but at the time we didn't really have a plan.
"When we were shortlisted we panicked. And then we got an order from Sainsbury's for 16,000 and we had six months to turn it around. We had to Google a lot."
Their next challenge was to find a food manufacturer who would take their kitchen recipe and make it on a much larger scale.
"Weirdly this was really difficult. We were basically two housewives with their recipes approaching big companies and the food manufacturers didn't want to take that risk," said Lucy.
The pair had planned to take time to sell their products at markets on the weekend and grow slowly but thanks to the supermarket deal, it didn't really happen like that.
At first Meriel went back to work as a freelance TV producer and director, but after a year and a half, it became clear that the lolly business was taking up more of her time. So she quit.
Since landing the deal, Lucy and Meriel both spent £14,000 each and invested another £7,000 each thanks to a business loan.
Next year, they reckon their sales will make a turnover of £2MILLION.
Even though they kicked off their ideas during their maternity leave, they wouldn't recommend it.
Meriel said: "Everyone's different and it happened when we were on maternity leave but you shouldn't plan to do anything then. That's not what it's for and that time is important for you.
"The last thing I would ever want is to make people feel like they're wasting their time."
Six years down the line, their lollies are stocked in major retailers like Waitrose and Saisbury's, they've got their own office and a team of people - and Claudia's now got a little brother, Henry who's 17-months-old.
More on small businesses
They've got some more products in the pipeline but you they won't spill the beans just yet.
And what's it like setting up your business with your best pal?
"Nothing beats working with a friend," said Lucy. "We’ve shared tears of laughter and tears of frustration and nothing beats the security of knowing you’ll have each other’s backs no matter what life throws our way."
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