Lost keys birthed a business idea that’s a shining success
PLENTY of entrepreneurs would describe having a new business, at least in the first year or so, as being akin to having a new baby. But what about having a new business and a new baby at the same time? That’s the situation that East Lothian woman Elspeth Fawcett, 36, found herself in when she launched her infant toy business Yummikeys.
Already caring for her two young children, she was heavily pregnant with her third when the business launched, and admits to doing work on Yummikeys from her hospital bed after giving birth.
“I remember working in hospital the day I gave birth to him – I was a bit obsessed! When a business is more established you can step back and put other people in place, but the first year or so you need to be really hands-on and involved in everything that goes on,” she said.
“Now, three to four years in it is amazing, I can work flexibly around the children and it’s been great. But I think that first year it was really hard to achieve a balance.
“I don’t regret it, because it gives me the flexibility now, but I would say in hindsight it’s probably not the best time to start a business when you are about to have a baby!”
It was her own children that first inspired the idea for Yummikeys, a stainless-steel teething toy that mimics a jangling set of keys. Ms Fawcett was a chartered accountant for an insurance firm in Edinburgh but had always liked the idea of creating her own business.
“My ‘lightbulb’ moment came after we had gone on holiday to Italy and mislaid our car keys while we were over there,”
she explains. “My second child, who was a baby at the time, absolutely loved playing with keys so he then somehow got hold of our spare set and lost them too – then we had no keys at all.
“We had to pay about £400 to get the car towed to a garage and have new keys calibrated. I was shocked how expensive it was.
“So I went online, thinking I would buy him some metal toy keys on Amazon, because I presumed that would be a thing that existed. But it wasn’t. I knew that babies loved car keys, but there was nothing out there to fill that void.”
Ms Fawcett quickly began sketching design ideas and then set about contacting stainless steel manufacturers to enquire about making her toys. After getting in touch with nearly 100 factories across Britain, she was “disheartened” to
discover that most of them weren’t interested, with the small size of the product equating to smaller margins. Ms Fawcett admits that it would have been easier to manufacture the keys from plastic instead, but for her it was non-negotiable that the product would be made from stainless steel.
“There’s loads of plastic toy keys around, but my children were never interested in them. The appeal of keys is the metal: the sensory experience of it, it’s cool on their gums, it’s shiny, it’s reflective, it jingles.
“They love bangles and metal jewellery for the same reason – I remember my niece even chewing on our metal garden gate when she was teething!
“Also, stainless steel is itself already made out of 70% recycled stainless steel, so it is cyclical. The quality is just as good the second time around and it is quite ‘green’ in that sense, which matters to me. It is also much better for children, plastic can leak various chemicals whereas stainless steel is totally non-toxic.”
Yummikeys’ ‘green’ credentials are crucial to Ms Fawcett. Having eventually sourced a manufacturer for the toys, and starting production, she then began looking at ways to make her business fully carbon neutral.
“I think we should all be doing our part for the planet. For each of our products we totally offset the carbon, not only from the manufacturing but from the use. We assume that everyone would wash the toys once a week in the dishwasher, so we offset the carbon from that as well.”
As well as having a positive impact on the wider environment, Ms Fawcett wants Yummikeys to have a positive impact on her local area, providing jobs for working parents. Having grown sales from a couple of thousand units in 2017 to 40,000 in 2020, she found herself in a position to take on employees.
“All of my team are mums working flexibly around children. We don’t have an office and as long as the core tasks get done, I am really flexible on days and times. My vision now is for expansion – we plan to grow in Australia and the US, so I’ll definitely be recruiting more people.
“I enjoy the feeling that the business that I started is now sustaining other people and their families, and that they are enjoying a good quality of life. That feels really worthwhile.
“I’ve now got a total of five products, and three new products launching this year. The growth of the business has really surpassed my expectations.
“In the first year I still had the sales alerts from the website on my phone, so that every time a sale went through I had a ‘ker-ching’ noise come up on my phone. The thought of having that noise on now… I can’t even imagine, I would be going insane!” www.yummikeys.com
A SCOTTISH digital services company has touched down in Tenerife as part of its continuing overseas growth strategy.
And Glasgow-based Software Advisory Service, which offers advice to businesses buying digital technology, hopes to create 150 jobs at the new Canary Islands base in the next two years. The new office at Santa Cruz follows the opening by SAS of an office in Malaga in 2019. The firm, part of the 4icg Group that also includes sales lead specialist Pursuit Marketing, also has offices in Glasgow and London, with plans to add further locations in the coming 12 months.
SAS founding director Robert Copeland said: “Software Advisory Service is a thriving company within the 4icg Group and despite the wider turbulence of the past 12 months, we have been delighted to see a real growth in our international client base during this period.
“The Government of the Canary Islands in general, together with the Cabildo de Tenerife in particular, has been terrific in facilitating the set-up of the office and helping us in acquiring the pool of talent we will need to be a success. We are committed to introducing our workplace culture, including our four-day working week, for our Tenerife colleagues and this has been warmly welcomed at a local level.
“Our office in Malaga has performed superbly since opening in 2019 and there is no reason this can’t be replicated in Tenerife. We plan for the company to keep growing domestically and internationally and there will soon be further additions in terms of senior personnel and new locations to enable that.”
The move was welcomed by the island’s governing body, Cabildo de Tenerife, and President Pedro Martin. He said: “We are very pleased that Software Advisory Service is coming to Tenerife and we look forward to helping them in any way we can. I have promised that we will assist the company attract the best talent on Tenerife and those who may wish to return to their home island.”