Inspirational Women: Merry Whitaker & Rachel Day | Founders of LoveKeepCreate

LoveKeepCreate founders Merry Whitaker & Rachel Day have gone from humble beginnings of making keepsakes for friends and family, to now securing Dragon’s Den’s Deborah Meaden as an investor. Rachel and Merry have since become leaders in their field and spoke to WeAreTheCity about how to balance business with motherhood, plans for the future, and what it’s like working with Deborah Meaden.
Lovekeepcreate

Merry & Rachel take people’s precious clothing that they don’t want to part with and turn them into keepsakes such as blankets, animals and stockings. The idea was conceived when Rachel made her first keepsake blanket out of her son’s baby-grows for her Army husband to take on deployment to Afghanistan. Pretty soon, demands were high for orders and now the ladies have found a unique selling point that separates their business from anything else on the market.

Tell us about the Dragon’s Den process?

Merry: The whole structure of the show actually put us in a really good position by making us sit down and do an overview of the whole business. We spent months speaking with the accountant, going through the figures and making sure there were no holes in our business plan. So going in, we felt confident. What you don’t see on the show is that there’s a whole hour and twenty minutes of questioning. Question after question with no notes, so naturally there’s going to be something that the Dragon’s will pick up on, and quite often it’s very obscure.

You both became friends from your time training as Army Officers. Was the process scarier than the army? 

Rachel: (Laughs) The pitch was very different to the army. Just very nerve-wracking. Anybody who says the Den isn’t a nerve-wracking experience is lying or fooling themselves. When you’re in the lift it’s very, very nerve-wracking but we were confident because we’d spent so much time going through everything and making our business plan fool proof.

What has it been like for your business having Deborah Meaden on board? Did you want her as your investor from the start?

Rachel: It’s been incredibly positive. She’s been to our workshop, met our staff, which was fantastic for them to see. Deborah’s put contacts our way that we may not have sourced on our own, and has been invaluable to marketing the brand. And of course, her £50,000 investment has been brilliant- we’ve now purchased bigger machinery!

Merry: Deborah was the one we wanted! As fan’s of the show, we’d already seen that she’d invested into what was quite a small textile business, and really turned that around. She’s always consistent and we’d heard that in terms of mentorship, she’s continued to be very hands on with her investments.

What has it been like running a business and being mum’s too?

Rachel: Any mum who works has an element of constant guilt that they’re not there all the time. Realistically there’s only time for childcare or a job, and so it’s been a juggling act trying to balance the two.

Merry: It does make life more logistically complicated and it could really have tipped us over the edge. But we’re lucky in the sense that there are two of us running this business, and so one can take on responsibilities when they other can’t.

What advice would you have for our readers if they wanted to start their own business?

Rachel: I would say firstly to get a really good phone with a calendar and keep a log of absolutely everything. And robust childcare too! (Laughs)

Merry: Be sure about why you want to start a business in the first place. Do not underestimate how difficult it’s going to be- everything will cost more than you realise, the business plan will not be as perfect as it seems, and it will be so much harder than you ever thought. Be prepared for that.

Rachel: Know at the earliest possible point what is consuming your time and create a strategy to deal with it so you can focus on your business.

Have you faced any challenges as women starting your own business?

Merry: LoveKeepCreate is a business set up by women, with a whole team of just women. So actually, our challenges have been more directed at more personal areas, such as arranging childcare. It’s positive that as two female business owner’s, we’ve experienced no prejudice or challenges specific to our gender.

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