Helping more women into business

Aim

I want to give more women an opportunity to have their own business by supporting them to become Little Wedding Planners.

Having successfully navigated the fashion industry for 20 years, I realised my dream of becoming a small business owner by launching The Little Wedding Company; a website where you can customise your wedding products from clothing to cakes, in 2017.

Before this, I was a consultant in the European funded; Designer Manufacturer Innovation Support Centre and advised 250 of London's designer and manufacturing businesses. 

This year, I spoke at Pure London about 'the Changing Retail Landscape' and what small businesses can do to innovate in order to stay one step ahead (please watch the talk at the above link).

The Little Wedding Planners initiative is giving women the tools to have their own independent businesses, whilst we provide the products, marketing material and support.

We are hoping for this campaign to launch 10 new businesses.

The way it works is there are different sample packages to invest in from stationery, lingerie, jewellery and childrenswear. To the whole collection which includes brides, bridesmaids and groomsmen clothing and accessories. The packages range from £250 to £5000 and the idea is you start small and build it up, like you would in a normal business. 

They can use their creativity to build their collection with the customisations and colours of their choice, so this is perfect for those who have a flair for design.

Once they have their samples we give them advice on taking them to wedding fairs, or finding wedding venues to sell to. They can also sell peer to peer. We give them a marketing package including, catalogues, business cards and swatches. 

We train them in the different areas of business with our handbook and group sessions.

Effectively it is a 'Business in a Box'.

They make a commission on each sale using a unique code that identifies them, at our website checkout.

When I initially advertised this programme, I had 100 applications and some of the feedback I got was that they loved the idea, but couldn't afford to buy the samples. 

Since then, I have worked on the legal framework to make it absolutely clear how it works.

This crowdfunder is to develop the initial marketing material and training manual. Any further amounts raised will be awarded to individuals who would otherwise not be able to access the programme due to not having the initial investment. It is important to me that this is helping women who were not as lucky as I was, to have had the resources to start their own business.

We don't make a profit on the samples sold and after their commission there is minimal profit to The Little Wedding Company. The majority of the profit goes directly to the individual Little Wedding Planner's business.

With your help we can get this up and running and help more women to start businesses in 2020.

This project successfully funded on 31st December 2019