5 months in... (Part 1)

Back in July, our daughter Ellie celebrated her 21st birthday and one of the presents she requested was a notice board to pin photos of her travels with her boyfriend, so Shelley flexed her creative muscles and came up with a lovely notice board which now has pride of place in Ellie's kitchen.

Shelley had been off long term sick from work since September 2023 and the impending conclusion of her statutory sick pay - and the resulting steep loss in household income - was fast approaching. The circumstances around her absence from work, the fact that the waiting list to receive treatment on the NHS is up to two years, meant that even if Shelley wanted to return to a conventional job, this realistically was not going to be a possibility until well into 2026, if not later. Shelley's health and wellbeing is paramount above everything else, so risking this by rushing a return to workplace was something that she, her doctors and I all agreed was completely out of the question. So we needed a plan to allow Shelley to work from home and to be effectively self-employed, therefore setting up a home business of some sort was the clear way forward. But what to do? Shelley is a phenomenal cook and baker, so much so that I have often suggested she would do well on "Masterchef" or "The Great British Bake Off", but the complexities, overheads, hygiene and insurance standards - not to mention the ample competition - of starting a food business meant that it was not the sector in which to proceed. Shelley has always been creative and has a great eye for design and interior styling. She has conceived a look for each of the rooms in our house and has decorated and painted our house to an incredible standard and her design aesthetic is one which I am sure resonates with a lot of people and wouldn't look out of place in a glossy interior design magazine or catalogue. She loves making things with her hands and whilst the identity of who made the suggestion has been lost to the sands of time (or at least I don't know at the time of writing), the proposal of "why don't you make notice boards like the one you did for Ellie's birthday" was made, and it very soon felt serendiptious and that this was the path that the universe was laying out for us before our very eyes.

What followed next was an intensive period of trial and error as Shelley experimented with different materials, from craft board and balsa wood, various methods of assembly, in pursuit of a finish that would be one which she would be proud to put her name to. When we enlisted the support of a local small business to assist with the production of the scalloped edges, primarily down to the constraint on production that doing this in-house was going to impose on our ability to manufacture completed notice boards, everything changed. The ability to produce (in volume), perfect scalloped edges from FSC certified wood, utilising tooling that we did not have the capital to invest in as we were building our fledgling business from the ground up, was a game changer. Shelley then hand paints the edges multiple times (four or five coats) and finishes each one to a high standard.

Once Shelley completed the first notice board using this new material, the product had been born. Shelley then handpaints each edge with as many as five coats of paint before they can be attached to the notice boards.

So we needed a name for this business, so we could go out (well I could go out :-)) and secure domain names and the appropriate accounts across social media. We came up - well our son, Fred more specifically - noticemyboards and we even went as far as securing this on Instagram. After mulling it around for a week or so, Shelley started to have a nagging feeling that this was not the name. Following a visit from friends of ours, the notion of "Pretty Little Board" (a play on the online fashion retailer, Pretty Little Thing) was suggested. Shelley really liked that, but a quick search online revealed that this was taken, by a business which provided premium charcuterie boards, with carefully curated deli meats and cheeses. We were on a walk with our dog Bob on the Fife Coastal Path at Culross, where I had a flash of inspiration. "Y'know the expression, pretty as picture?", I enquired to Shelley, by way of setting up the name that had popped into my head. "Yes", she replied. "Well," I began, "what if we call the business, "Pretty As A Picture Board"? Feeling rather pleased with myself at the name, which not only trips off the tongue nicely, but reflected the attractiveness of the boards that Shelley was producing as well as referencing what the product actually was, I awaited her reply. She absolutely loved it and it was clear that we had found the name of the business!

I quickly established that the domains were available (and that I could get the name on Instagram, Pinterest) and went about the mammoth task of creating a website, an Etsy shop and embarking on a steep learning curve of social media, digital marketing and e-mail campaigns in my spare time, often working late into the evening when I got home from work and spending most of the weekends doing the same. Fortunately, there are some incredible free resources out there, especially those provided by Business Gateway Scotland, who have some amazing free webinars covering everything that I needed to learn from scratch as a novice.

We were on our way and next week, I will continue the story and bring you all up to date, including my diary on how our very first market day went!!!!

Thanks for reading,

Rich

Pretty As A Picture