Business-startup Karen

Karen is boosting her creative skills with business courses to ready her for relaunching her business, Little Huggins.

My business is called Little Huggins and it’s a baby and toddler brand. It’s about putting a lot more fun into children's clothing, with the bright colours and just the weird and wonderful shapes. The range includes lots of onesies shaped in different characters like ladybirds or penguins, bumblebees, even strawberries. I also create suits of jackets and trousers as well. All my pieces are gender neutral as well because I want children to be children, just to wear what they want to wear, really.

I started my business a long time ago when I was doing the Prince’s Trust. And I had a break whilst I started teaching – I became a teacher and was still doing my business alongside, but you know, the balance wasn’t really there. Later on, when I came here to the Thames-Side Studios, I tried to start afresh and I did get some way but both personal issues and the pandemic stilted that start. So I decided to relaunch myself again last year, in 2024, and take all the courses that I needed to do in order to prepare myself for running a better business.

I have taken a number of courses with GCDA through the Greenwich Learns funding, but really the business courses have been the most critical towards my business relaunch. The ‘Taking Your Product to Market’ course, led by Mary Jane Baxter, was really helpful to rewrite our profiles and be concise about what our business offer was. Mary Jane really put herself into the course, as she has been in the industry for a fair amount of time so she could talk from experience and advise us well. We were all nervous at the beginning, but it encouraged us to tell our individual stories, from our humble beginnings to where we are now and where we want to go. Some of the exercises included doing an elevator pitch and presenting in front of others, which has really boosted my confidence and ability to talk about myself and my products. It was also really insightful to be amongst others who are also trying to launch their businesses, and being the audience to each other means you can be guinea pigs for each other. I have even, since the course, successfully pitched my products to a local shop.

With the ‘Business Start-Up Training’, the teacher, Claire Pritchard, is a fountain of knowledge and really supportive to answer any questions we have. Starting a business can be minefield, and so the course is really useful to advise you on things such as the legal structure, finance forecasting, and business planning. The course was intense, but it was a good journey and absolutely something that anyone thinking of starting up a business, should do. Since the course I am rewriting my business plan.

The business courses gave me a lot of structure and helped me focus. As a creative I can get really excited about an idea in my head. Sometimes I go on an obsessive run, as I just need to see the product made in 3D. But when it comes to business, I have to look at it more impartially and identify whether it will work financially. With a creative side, I can be out there, but for the business it’s absolutely necessary be more focused.

I would recommend both the courses to anyone thinking of starting a business or needing to develop their business. Where my studio is, at Thames-Side Studios, there are over 500 artists and makers, so that just shows the scale of what is in the borough. Greenwich has a large proportion of entrepreneurs and so these courses are needed for all those people. And since the Covid pandemic, I think people are changing their direction and wanting to work for themselves, and just need some kind of help to do that. These courses are perfect for that.

My next steps are to complete the ‘Prepare Your Accounts’ course with GCDA and that’s going to help me to understand a little bit more about running a business and doing accounts for business. I’ve worked in accounts for a long time, but it’s not the same thing, so I just wanted a little bit of more insight and a little bit more knowledge about this side of the business. It will help me appreciate better how to forecast and how to price my products more accurately.

I design and make everything myself and I think I want to continue that as well. I would need help later on down the line with sewing and other aspects of the business but I want to keep it quite niche and limited in a sense. I think people are now beginning to realise that there’s a lot more value they can get in something that’s handmade. With my garments, I also have a nice little passport that goes with them. And this encourages people to pass it on, instead of throwing it away. They can pass it on to the next child and the next child and so on. So I think, with that, I’ve given it the longevity. So I think people are quite happy to pay a little more for something handmade and unique.

My ambition for Little Huggins is that every child has a smile on its face after wearing my clothes and every adult has a smile seeing a child wearing one of my clothes.

I just really love what I do.

Karen's products can be bought at Made in Greenwich, at 31 Royal Hill, Greenwich, London  SE10 8RR, madeingreenwich.shop

Karen Huggins - Little Huggins
Business Start-Up Training, Taking Your Product to Market
GCDA