I owe my success to my six children

LYNDA HARDING, 51, founded Sweetdreamers. Her Ewan the Sheep is one of Britain’s top-selling nursery toys. Lynda, who is separated, lives in Waterlooville, Hamshire.

SIX children would be enough to keep any woman occupied, but not Lynda Harding. As well as raising her brood — aged from 13 to 26 — she has set up two successful businesses.

The inspiration for Lynda’s first venture came after her eldest, Bernard, was born. A trained teacher, Lynda was keen to return to work, but she rapidly ran into a brick wall.

‘I wanted Bernard to go to a nursery where he could socialise and learn a little,’ she says. ‘ But there was nothing out there, so I decided to start my own.’

Lynda borrowed £50,000 from the bank to convert stables beside her parents’ home. Woodside Nursery School opened in October 1990. Today, the nursery cares for 90 children and Lynda employs 25 staff.

Then, in 2002, after the birth of her youngest son, Lynda found another opportunity.

‘My son, Bradley, now 13, refused to settle at night,’ says Lynda. ‘Every time I put him down, he’d jolt awake. I was at my wits’ end.’

One night, as Lynda gently rocked his cot, Bradley was still fighting sleep when, downstairs, her husband started vacuuming.

‘I thought the noise would rouse him,’ says Lynda. ‘Instead, he drifted off. I tried it the next night — and the next. I realised I’d found the secret: the combination of a rocking motion and a gentle, repetitive noise.’

Excited, Lynda found engineers to design a platform to put under a cot mattress that would gently inflate and deflate to mimic a rocking motion.

But what about that all-important gentle sound?

‘I was thinking about counting sheep and realised I had it: Ewan the Sheep,’ Lynda says. ‘You hang him on the cot by his tail, then press each leg and a different soothing noise plays.’

The sheep didn’t come cheap, though. Lynda took out a £50,000 bank loan and raised £30,000 from family members and a loan.

In 2009, her cot, the Easidream, went into production. And that’s when disaster struck.

‘High production costs meant we had to charge £249 — £100 more than I wanted. It took a year to sell 200 of them. Then sales petered out.’

Lynda was left with a warehouse stuffed with 5,800 sheep. ‘We’d had to do a bulk order of 6,000 Ewans to accompany the cots,’ she says.

At that point, many people would have cut their losses. Lynda, however, buckled down. ‘ I decided to sell Ewan as a stand-alone toy,’ she says. ‘If I was to recoup anything, I didn’t have a choice.’

Lynda’s children helped out at trade shows, all of them desperate to turn a disaster into a triumph.

‘It took 12 months to shift every sheep,’ says Lynda. ‘But we did it and my heart was in my mouth when I made the next order — for 10,000.’

Today, 250,000 mums have bought a Ewan for their babies, and he is a favourite with Lynda’s first grandchild, Sylvester — who was born in August and is the son of Bernard.

Lynda’s turnover last year was £915,000, a figure that’s expected to grow to £1.3 million this year.

‘My children haven’t just been my inspiration, they’ve kept me focused,’ Lynda says. ‘I owe them everything.’