This, the sixth year of the Daily Mail's Aphrodite Mumpreneur Award, is clearly unlike any other. As Covid-19 ravages the world, and with UK consumer spending shrinking by more than a third, it's the resilience and creativity of small business that may well help Britain weather the storm.
So this year's awards are little different. This year, as well as looking for brilliant women who have founded and built up businesses while raising children, we intend to celebrate those who are successfully steering their companies through the pandemic — surviving, perhaps even thriving, in these unprecedented times.
So how are some of the previous award-winners coping with the crisis? Here, four of this year's judges — all exceptionally talented, hugely inspiring women — set out their predictions for the future, explain how our shopping habits could change for the better, and describe the lessons they've learned during this nail-biting time. Hint: they're not all bad!
Previous winners of The Daily Mail's Aphrodite Mumpreneur Award revealed how their businesses are coping during lockdown. Pictured: Melissa Odabash who is judging this year's competition
My swimwear factories are now making masks
Former model and 2020 NatWest everywoman Award judge Melissa Odabash launched her eponymous swimwear brand in 1999. She lives in London with her husband and two daughters, aged 16 and 21.
Designer Melissa Odabash, whose brand was once described by Vogue as the ‘Ferrari' of swimwear, and whose bikinis are beloved by celebrities including Beyonce, Kate Moss and the Duchess of Cambridge, hasn't made any swimwear since mid-March. Instead, she's made face masks.
‘We have five factories just outside Rome and four of them have been converted to make masks,' she says. ‘In Italy, [the virus] came at people like a wave, they were petrified, and I take my hat off to those who still came in to work.'
The factories were redesigned to keep people apart, and the specialist sewing machines re-purposed for the task. ‘We were perfect for this because we have Lycra machines and we have the elastic.
RELATED ARTICLES
Previous
1
Next
Princess Margaret's 1978 divorce from Lord Snowdon 'cleared... Prince Harry will be a 'lost soul in LA', claims royal...
Share this article
Share
‘The masks we're making aren't medical-grade masks, but they are protective and reusable if you wash them in hot water.'
The Italian government is paying her 70 cents per mask, that's about 60p (the average Odabash bikini, by contrast, costs more than £200), and Melissa hopes to send shipments to the UK too, though not for use in hospitals.
When I speak to her, all physical swimwear outlets are shut. At least, then, her business is still in business, albeit of a radically different kind.
A former model from New Jersey, based in London and married to technology entrepreneur Nicolas de Santis, who's half-Spanish and half-Italian, she sells in 62 countries —and all 62 have been, or still are, in lockdown.
Melissa, 50, (pictured) who has furloughed many of her staff in the UK, is spending lockdown at her flat near Hyde Park with her husband and two daughters
She has furloughed many of her staff in the UK and, at a time of stalled travel and cancelled holidays, few are buying expensive new swimsuits. Yet she's defiantly upbeat.
‘I'm a resort product and this has happened at the beginning of my season. But I'm not anxious. The world will change and fashion especially will change,' she says.
‘What I've learned is that we can all cut back and live quite well having much less. We'd gone crazy with the amount of clothes we were buying only to throw away. Yes, we all love to shop, but we won't shop like we don't care any more.'
Of course, Melissa, 50, hopes we'll still buy her clothes, as a brand that in some ways represents the antithesis of fast fashion — though she's also having to rethink the business to take into account the inevitable hit on turnover.
‘We all need to re-strategise and look at where we were inefficient before — 50 per cent of an entrepreneur's day is spent problem-solving under normal circumstances.'
Meanwhile, she is staying in her enviably located flat near Hyde Park with her husband and two daughters, Alaia, 21, and Avalon, 16, who have been studying in bikinis on the terrace whenever the sun shines.
Melissa (pictured) said lockdown has caused all of us to slow down and is the perfect time to rethink what makes us happy
On the Queen's birthday last month, Melissa decided to take her daily walk to Buckingham Palace and saw her best friend, the designer Julien Macdonald, paying similar homage.
‘I know what is happening to some people is horrific, but for others there has been a positive side to this and we need to acknowledge that.
‘I walk through Hyde Park every day and I see things I'd never have noticed before.
Maintaining that positivity, she adds: ‘We have all slowed down — it's the perfect time to rethink what makes us happy.'
In times of crisis, people often turn to chocolate
Helen Pattinson, 49, launched luxury chocolate brand Montezuma's in 2000, and won a NatWest everywoman Award in 2013. She lives in Chichester with her husband, Simon, and three daughters, aged 17, 13 and ten.
For a maker and seller of luxury chocolate, the coronavirus emergency could hardly have come at a worse time.
‘To close our shops two weeks before Easter felt pretty disastrous,' says Helen Pattinson, co-founder of Montezuma's, which has six stores across the country and, until now, had plans to open a further three this summer.
Helen Pattinson, 49, (pictured) who lives in Chichester, said her business was lucky to have updated its website two weeks before lockdown
Helen and Simon, both former lawyers, started the company 20 years ago after a life-changing trip to see cocoa plantations in South America. Before March, 2020 was shaping up to be a great year.
‘We re-launched the whole brand in January,' says Helen. ‘It was a huge refresh, which had taken about a year to come to fruition. Every piece of our packaging is now recyclable, biodegradeable or compostable.
‘We also opened another shop in Norwich and, after careful planning, were looking forward to a really nice phase of growth.
‘And then the bomb of the virus was thrown into it all. No one could have predicted it.'
The Pattinson family are self-isolating very strictly because Simon has a lung condition that puts him at higher risk.
Helen oversaw the handling of the company's Easter crisis largely over the phone, juggling it with home-schooling.
‘In some ways we've been lucky,' she says. ‘We'd updated the website two weeks before lockdown, so it was fit and ready for the huge upsurge we then saw online. That side of the business instantly grew about tenfold.'
Helen (pictured) revealed she will be discussing new product soon, as her business has benefited from people turning to small luxuries, such as chocolate in times of crisis in the past
Production in the Montezuma's factory was halted — 102 of the 160 staff were furloughed — and stock was rescued from shops. Senior managers rolled up their sleeves to meet the boom in online orders (and even to clean the office on a rota).
‘We kept staff safe by using the empty factory as additional packing space,' says Helen. ‘Inevitably there were delays in getting orders out, but customers were really understanding. Most were just grateful to get an egg at all.'
You can still buy Montezuma's chocolate in Sainsbury's and Waitrose, and post-Easter sales have held up well. At times of crisis, it seems, hard-pressed consumers often turn to smaller luxuries, such as a chocolate bar.
‘We've definitely benefited from that rule in the past,' says Helen. ‘People didn't stop buying chocolate during the financial crisis of 2008, either. We'll be discussing new products soon. It seems to be business as usual in that respect, which is very reassuring.'
Quiet crufts was an early sign
Single mum Suzanne Brock, 49, winner of a NatWest everywoman Award in 2015, founded her posh pet food company Nutriment in 2013. She lives near Camberley, in Surrey, with her daughter, 19, and son, 18.
Crufts is a ‘huge event' for Suzanne Brock's company; the annual dog show the perfect showcase for her high-end, raw pet food. But this year it took place just as people started to question the wisdom of attending events en masse, so, for the first time since founding the business in 2013, she stayed at home.
Suzanne Brock, 49, (pictured) who lives near Camberley, revealed the race is on for her to boost the output of her posh pet food company Nutriment
‘Turnout was down 50 per cent, so plenty of people were anxious enough to think like us,' says Suzanne. The thinning crowds were a sign of things to come, and Suzanne read it well, starting to up production quite significantly.
When lockdown began, Nutriment was swamped with online orders. With 40 per cent of business conducted via its website in normal times, the company already had an efficient delivery system in place, plus a deal with Ocado. Now the race was on to boost output.
‘We've hired some freezer lorries for extra storage. Ours is a frozen product, so delivery has to be next day, which means everyone working very long hours, often in -28c, in the masks, gloves and heavy boots they always wear.'
Suzanne adds: ‘I think a lot of us have relied on small businesses to keep us going. I'm hoping they can emerge much more strongly in the marketplace.'
It's like being a start-up again - I'm working harder than ever from home
Annoushka Ducas founded her eponymous jewellery company in 2009. She has four children, aged 26, 24, 22, and 18, and lives in Bosham, West Sussex.
‘We will survive. But it's going to be really tough for everyone,' says Annoushka Ducas, whose fine jewellery — worn by celebrities such as Emma Watson and Gwyneth Paltrow — is sold in luxury department stores and in her flagship boutique near Bond Street, as well as online.
In her entire career, spanning the founding of Links of London in 1990 to its sale in 2006 and the launch of Annoushka Jewellery in 2009, she has ‘never encountered a challenge like this'.
Annoushka Ducas (pictured) from West Sussex, who has furloughed 90 per cent of her team said she's working harder than ever
Like Suzanne Brock, she predicts a trend towards local shopping in smaller stores once we're out of lockdown.
‘People are nervous of big department stores and there's a huge drive to support smaller brands and shops instead,' she says.
Still, after an agonising wait for online business to pick up, she's at last seeing signs of increased traffic to her website and better sales online (10 per cent of profits from these sales are going to the Coronavirus Appeal at St George's Hospital in Tooting, South London, to fund mental health support for NHS staff).
‘People were glued to the news at the start, terrified. They definitely weren't looking at jewellery. But we can't stay like that for ever. Life goes on and we're slowly seeing our customers adapt and start returning to the website.
‘We still have birthdays and anniversaries, after all, even if we can't go out.
‘Oddly, I'm working harder than ever. It's a bit like being a start-up again — having to make tough decisions, seeing how things have become overcomplicated and working out how to simplify them.'
She has furloughed 90 per cent of the team and worries about those isolating alone. Because for her, the unforeseen silver lining is in spending more time with her four grown-up children — two boys and two girls.
Annoushka (pictured) believes the lockdown will give us a greater appreciation for friends and family, and those who put their lives on the line for others
‘We've all had to rub along and get to know each other on different levels again. I've had to adapt probably most of all —- I'm not used to people borrowing my clothes or finding my laptop charger gone! But it's been a very special time.'
Annoushka talks of her jewellery in terms of heirlooms or emotional ‘talismans', but at a time of rapidly shifting priorities, the luxury market is vulnerable — not only to financial downturn, but to a less tangible backlash against wealth.
‘We'll come out of this with a whole different perspective on life,' she agrees. ‘We'll have a greater appreciation for friends and family, and people who put their lives on the line for others.'
Now seize your chance to shine...
If you started your venture while being a mum and want to tell us your story of coping — or even thriving — in the face of the Covid-19 crisis, then enter our Daily Mail/NatWest everywoman Aphrodite Award.
You must be based, or have your chief operation, in the UK, and have set up your own business from scratch while raising a child or children aged 12 or under.
You must be able to show you are the key company owner, and your venture must have been in business for longer than 18 months as of the nomination deadline of July 6, 2020. The business must also generate a profit.
You must agree that your story can be featured in the Daily Mail. You can be nominated by someone else or you can enter yourself.
Nominations and evidence must be received by Monday, July 6, 2020. The judges' decision will be final. No correspondence will be entered into before or after the judging takes place.
Enter online at everywoman.com/mumpreneur
If you have any concerns pertaining to where and ways to make use of Service femme de menage, you can contact us at our web-page.
So this year's awards are little different. This year, as well as looking for brilliant women who have founded and built up businesses while raising children, we intend to celebrate those who are successfully steering their companies through the pandemic — surviving, perhaps even thriving, in these unprecedented times.
So how are some of the previous award-winners coping with the crisis? Here, four of this year's judges — all exceptionally talented, hugely inspiring women — set out their predictions for the future, explain how our shopping habits could change for the better, and describe the lessons they've learned during this nail-biting time. Hint: they're not all bad!
Previous winners of The Daily Mail's Aphrodite Mumpreneur Award revealed how their businesses are coping during lockdown. Pictured: Melissa Odabash who is judging this year's competition
My swimwear factories are now making masks
Former model and 2020 NatWest everywoman Award judge Melissa Odabash launched her eponymous swimwear brand in 1999. She lives in London with her husband and two daughters, aged 16 and 21.
Designer Melissa Odabash, whose brand was once described by Vogue as the ‘Ferrari' of swimwear, and whose bikinis are beloved by celebrities including Beyonce, Kate Moss and the Duchess of Cambridge, hasn't made any swimwear since mid-March. Instead, she's made face masks.
‘We have five factories just outside Rome and four of them have been converted to make masks,' she says. ‘In Italy, [the virus] came at people like a wave, they were petrified, and I take my hat off to those who still came in to work.'
The factories were redesigned to keep people apart, and the specialist sewing machines re-purposed for the task. ‘We were perfect for this because we have Lycra machines and we have the elastic.
RELATED ARTICLES
Previous
1
Next
Princess Margaret's 1978 divorce from Lord Snowdon 'cleared... Prince Harry will be a 'lost soul in LA', claims royal...
Share this article
Share
‘The masks we're making aren't medical-grade masks, but they are protective and reusable if you wash them in hot water.'
The Italian government is paying her 70 cents per mask, that's about 60p (the average Odabash bikini, by contrast, costs more than £200), and Melissa hopes to send shipments to the UK too, though not for use in hospitals.
When I speak to her, all physical swimwear outlets are shut. At least, then, her business is still in business, albeit of a radically different kind.
A former model from New Jersey, based in London and married to technology entrepreneur Nicolas de Santis, who's half-Spanish and half-Italian, she sells in 62 countries —and all 62 have been, or still are, in lockdown.
Melissa, 50, (pictured) who has furloughed many of her staff in the UK, is spending lockdown at her flat near Hyde Park with her husband and two daughters
She has furloughed many of her staff in the UK and, at a time of stalled travel and cancelled holidays, few are buying expensive new swimsuits. Yet she's defiantly upbeat.
‘I'm a resort product and this has happened at the beginning of my season. But I'm not anxious. The world will change and fashion especially will change,' she says.
‘What I've learned is that we can all cut back and live quite well having much less. We'd gone crazy with the amount of clothes we were buying only to throw away. Yes, we all love to shop, but we won't shop like we don't care any more.'
Of course, Melissa, 50, hopes we'll still buy her clothes, as a brand that in some ways represents the antithesis of fast fashion — though she's also having to rethink the business to take into account the inevitable hit on turnover.
‘We all need to re-strategise and look at where we were inefficient before — 50 per cent of an entrepreneur's day is spent problem-solving under normal circumstances.'
Meanwhile, she is staying in her enviably located flat near Hyde Park with her husband and two daughters, Alaia, 21, and Avalon, 16, who have been studying in bikinis on the terrace whenever the sun shines.
Melissa (pictured) said lockdown has caused all of us to slow down and is the perfect time to rethink what makes us happy
On the Queen's birthday last month, Melissa decided to take her daily walk to Buckingham Palace and saw her best friend, the designer Julien Macdonald, paying similar homage.
‘I know what is happening to some people is horrific, but for others there has been a positive side to this and we need to acknowledge that.
‘I walk through Hyde Park every day and I see things I'd never have noticed before.
Maintaining that positivity, she adds: ‘We have all slowed down — it's the perfect time to rethink what makes us happy.'
In times of crisis, people often turn to chocolate
Helen Pattinson, 49, launched luxury chocolate brand Montezuma's in 2000, and won a NatWest everywoman Award in 2013. She lives in Chichester with her husband, Simon, and three daughters, aged 17, 13 and ten.
For a maker and seller of luxury chocolate, the coronavirus emergency could hardly have come at a worse time.
‘To close our shops two weeks before Easter felt pretty disastrous,' says Helen Pattinson, co-founder of Montezuma's, which has six stores across the country and, until now, had plans to open a further three this summer.
Helen Pattinson, 49, (pictured) who lives in Chichester, said her business was lucky to have updated its website two weeks before lockdown
Helen and Simon, both former lawyers, started the company 20 years ago after a life-changing trip to see cocoa plantations in South America. Before March, 2020 was shaping up to be a great year.
‘We re-launched the whole brand in January,' says Helen. ‘It was a huge refresh, which had taken about a year to come to fruition. Every piece of our packaging is now recyclable, biodegradeable or compostable.
‘We also opened another shop in Norwich and, after careful planning, were looking forward to a really nice phase of growth.
‘And then the bomb of the virus was thrown into it all. No one could have predicted it.'
The Pattinson family are self-isolating very strictly because Simon has a lung condition that puts him at higher risk.
Helen oversaw the handling of the company's Easter crisis largely over the phone, juggling it with home-schooling.
‘In some ways we've been lucky,' she says. ‘We'd updated the website two weeks before lockdown, so it was fit and ready for the huge upsurge we then saw online. That side of the business instantly grew about tenfold.'
Helen (pictured) revealed she will be discussing new product soon, as her business has benefited from people turning to small luxuries, such as chocolate in times of crisis in the past
Production in the Montezuma's factory was halted — 102 of the 160 staff were furloughed — and stock was rescued from shops. Senior managers rolled up their sleeves to meet the boom in online orders (and even to clean the office on a rota).
‘We kept staff safe by using the empty factory as additional packing space,' says Helen. ‘Inevitably there were delays in getting orders out, but customers were really understanding. Most were just grateful to get an egg at all.'
You can still buy Montezuma's chocolate in Sainsbury's and Waitrose, and post-Easter sales have held up well. At times of crisis, it seems, hard-pressed consumers often turn to smaller luxuries, such as a chocolate bar.
‘We've definitely benefited from that rule in the past,' says Helen. ‘People didn't stop buying chocolate during the financial crisis of 2008, either. We'll be discussing new products soon. It seems to be business as usual in that respect, which is very reassuring.'
Quiet crufts was an early sign
Single mum Suzanne Brock, 49, winner of a NatWest everywoman Award in 2015, founded her posh pet food company Nutriment in 2013. She lives near Camberley, in Surrey, with her daughter, 19, and son, 18.
Crufts is a ‘huge event' for Suzanne Brock's company; the annual dog show the perfect showcase for her high-end, raw pet food. But this year it took place just as people started to question the wisdom of attending events en masse, so, for the first time since founding the business in 2013, she stayed at home.
Suzanne Brock, 49, (pictured) who lives near Camberley, revealed the race is on for her to boost the output of her posh pet food company Nutriment
‘Turnout was down 50 per cent, so plenty of people were anxious enough to think like us,' says Suzanne. The thinning crowds were a sign of things to come, and Suzanne read it well, starting to up production quite significantly.
When lockdown began, Nutriment was swamped with online orders. With 40 per cent of business conducted via its website in normal times, the company already had an efficient delivery system in place, plus a deal with Ocado. Now the race was on to boost output.
‘We've hired some freezer lorries for extra storage. Ours is a frozen product, so delivery has to be next day, which means everyone working very long hours, often in -28c, in the masks, gloves and heavy boots they always wear.'
Suzanne adds: ‘I think a lot of us have relied on small businesses to keep us going. I'm hoping they can emerge much more strongly in the marketplace.'
It's like being a start-up again - I'm working harder than ever from home
Annoushka Ducas founded her eponymous jewellery company in 2009. She has four children, aged 26, 24, 22, and 18, and lives in Bosham, West Sussex.
‘We will survive. But it's going to be really tough for everyone,' says Annoushka Ducas, whose fine jewellery — worn by celebrities such as Emma Watson and Gwyneth Paltrow — is sold in luxury department stores and in her flagship boutique near Bond Street, as well as online.
In her entire career, spanning the founding of Links of London in 1990 to its sale in 2006 and the launch of Annoushka Jewellery in 2009, she has ‘never encountered a challenge like this'.
Annoushka Ducas (pictured) from West Sussex, who has furloughed 90 per cent of her team said she's working harder than ever
Like Suzanne Brock, she predicts a trend towards local shopping in smaller stores once we're out of lockdown.
‘People are nervous of big department stores and there's a huge drive to support smaller brands and shops instead,' she says.
Still, after an agonising wait for online business to pick up, she's at last seeing signs of increased traffic to her website and better sales online (10 per cent of profits from these sales are going to the Coronavirus Appeal at St George's Hospital in Tooting, South London, to fund mental health support for NHS staff).
‘People were glued to the news at the start, terrified. They definitely weren't looking at jewellery. But we can't stay like that for ever. Life goes on and we're slowly seeing our customers adapt and start returning to the website.
‘We still have birthdays and anniversaries, after all, even if we can't go out.
‘Oddly, I'm working harder than ever. It's a bit like being a start-up again — having to make tough decisions, seeing how things have become overcomplicated and working out how to simplify them.'
She has furloughed 90 per cent of the team and worries about those isolating alone. Because for her, the unforeseen silver lining is in spending more time with her four grown-up children — two boys and two girls.
Annoushka (pictured) believes the lockdown will give us a greater appreciation for friends and family, and those who put their lives on the line for others
‘We've all had to rub along and get to know each other on different levels again. I've had to adapt probably most of all —- I'm not used to people borrowing my clothes or finding my laptop charger gone! But it's been a very special time.'
Annoushka talks of her jewellery in terms of heirlooms or emotional ‘talismans', but at a time of rapidly shifting priorities, the luxury market is vulnerable — not only to financial downturn, but to a less tangible backlash against wealth.
‘We'll come out of this with a whole different perspective on life,' she agrees. ‘We'll have a greater appreciation for friends and family, and people who put their lives on the line for others.'
Now seize your chance to shine...
If you started your venture while being a mum and want to tell us your story of coping — or even thriving — in the face of the Covid-19 crisis, then enter our Daily Mail/NatWest everywoman Aphrodite Award.
You must be based, or have your chief operation, in the UK, and have set up your own business from scratch while raising a child or children aged 12 or under.
You must be able to show you are the key company owner, and your venture must have been in business for longer than 18 months as of the nomination deadline of July 6, 2020. The business must also generate a profit.
You must agree that your story can be featured in the Daily Mail. You can be nominated by someone else or you can enter yourself.
Nominations and evidence must be received by Monday, July 6, 2020. The judges' decision will be final. No correspondence will be entered into before or after the judging takes place.
Enter online at everywoman.com/mumpreneur
If you have any concerns pertaining to where and ways to make use of Service femme de menage, you can contact us at our web-page.
