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From a bespoke jewellery designer to the owner of posh cat hotels, meet four of the women shortlisted for our 2019 Mumpreneur of the Year award who say...
Luxury hotels for cats. Toddlerfriendly sunscreen. Personalised jewellery. And legal eagles for hire. This year’s line-up of best entrants into the Mail’s annual Aphrodite ‘Mumpreneur’ Award — celebrating women who started a business while being a mum — stand out for the sheer brilliance of their ideas and the multi-million-pound successes they’ve made of them.
In this, the fifth year of Mail sponsorship, we have noticed a very welcome change. Women investors and mentors are increasingly helping other women. Whether it’s former CEO of GoCompare Hayley Parsons investing in Kelli Aspland’s Solar Buddies, or Holly Tucker of Not On The High Street giving Alice rivers-Cripps the shop window she so needed, women are doing it for each other.
This year saw the publication of the landmark Alison rose review of Female Entrepreneurship which revealed: ‘Only 13 per cent of senior people on uK investment teams are women, and almost half of investment teams have no women at all.’
But the good news is, existing female investors say they want to make investment in other women a priority. We just need more of them. until then, let’s celebrate the amazing new businesses in our Aphrodite line-up . . .
ABI PURSER, 44 Founder Longcroft Luxury Cat Hotel Group
Abi is mum to three children Millie 25, harry, 12 and Fred, nine. she lives in Welwyn Garden City with husband Matt, 49, a digital strategist. ABI PURSER runs five-star luxury hotels for cats. Yes, you read that right. Each of the 20 hotels in her Longcroft brand caters for up to nine feline guests, who stay in ‘suites’ with wrought-iron beds, enjoy an evening turndown service and A La Cat menu — ‘handflaked’ salmon, ‘juicy king prawns’ or ‘slow-poached chicken’, served on bone china.
Bedrooms are ‘thermostatically controlled’ and since each hotel is located in a cat-loving franchisee’s back garden, the guests also get a ‘themed’ outdoor play area with soothing music and security. A spa treatment menu includes ‘relaxing paw massages using the finest organic paw balm’ and a ‘supergentle ear cleanse’.
Bonkers? Abi admits it took more than 18 months to convince planning officers to pass her initial proposal for the first hotel in her garden in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire. Yet it’s also a brilliantly shrewd business idea, capitalising on the devotion of the British to family pets (a week’s stay at a Longcroft hotel could cost up to £180) — and addressing serious animal welfare concerns.
An afternoon spent scouting catteries for her mum’s pet, Norman, sparked her initial idea.
‘I couldn’t believe how low the standards were. The normal model is to house 50 or 60 cats in the countryside, like battery hens, and I found it shocking. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.’
Like many of our mumpreneurs, Abi was also in a Catch-22 situation. Before starting a family, she worked for the British Olympic Equestrian team, fitting saddles, but after having her first baby found childcare costs made a return to work ‘unaffordable’.
‘I either had to sell my soul and get a better-paying job in London with a daily commute or stay at home. We couldn’t make it work any other way.’
But looking after children wasn’t all she wanted. With seed money from her mum’s ISA (and the promise of a lifetime of free hotel stays for Norman), the first Longcroft hotel opened in 2010.
She now has an annual turnover of £400,000. For franchisees, — often older cat-lovers or stay-athome mums, rewards are potentially exceptional for home-based work — up to £70,000 if the hotel is fully booked all year.
Abi’s advice to women hoping to launch a new business is to guard the start-up money carefully, and not to ‘pay someone to do something you can do yourself’. It’s a tip she took to an extreme after builders had been in with diggers to construct that first hotel in her garden.
Fixing the lawn weeks after giving birth to second son Fred, she burst her Caesarean stitches and ended up in hospital.
‘I thought, I’ll rake the ground and get the stones out then sow grass seed, but obviously it was a bit early to be doing that.’ Today, her most strenuous activity is cat-grooming.
‘It is the perfect job,’ says Abi, whose favourite breeds are British shorthairs and high maintenance sphinxes. ‘When you’re bored of admin, you get to go and play with the cats. I couldn’t have a better working day.’