Schoolgirl Sasha is sew busy with her new venture
WHILE the coronavirus crisis has left many schoolchildren at a loose end, one Mirfield teenager has never been busier.
Mirfield Free Grammar pupil Sasha Haigh, 16, should have been taking her GSCE exams in May and June.
But when schools were shut down she decided to use her free time to set up her own business making cotton face masks.
Mum Clare said her daughter’s firm, Masks by Sasha, must have supplied “half of Mirfield” and she had been relentlessly busy over the past three months, manufacturing and selling the now highly demanded face coverings.
Alongside residents of her home town she has also supplied a restaurant in Halifax and is making 100 masks for Clare’s employer, Huddersfield based C&K Careers.
Overall, she’s sold more than 1,000 masks and has a big waiting list to work through during the summer holidays.
Clare said: “If I’d told her last year that she wouldn’t be taking her GCSEs, and would instead be setting up her own business making masks, she’d probably think I’d been on the sherry, but she has, and she has had enormous success.
“The idea was to make masks for the family but word spread to my friends who wanted them and somehow it got onto Facebook and it escalated from there.
“Me and grandma have been doing a lot of the deliveries and even her sister is helping to cut and pin.
“She’s been referred to as another Richard Branson more than once and she does have more than one thing in common with him.
“He started his first business at 16 and both Richard and Sasha are dyslexic, which is something Sasha likes to champion, as a lot of people have the perception of dyslexic people as thick, whereas she was expecting very high GCSE grades and seems to have business acumen.
“Sasha is due to study A levels in geography, business and textiles at Huddersfield New College so she’s getting more career-related learning in lockdown than what she could have dreamed of.”