Adam Bannister: How much work did you put in before your recent launch?
Carly Flanagan: I’ve been planning for the last 12 months to gauge if people like my designs. Is there a market out there? Will people pay £3 an invitation? I also needed to stop for a year to put all the infrastructure in place.
AB: How did you raise the cash?
CF: I went to the Manchester Business Consortium last November and they talked about various different routes of financing yourself. It seems like you need to have failed twice to start a business or be on the dole or from a deprived area — so I couldn’t find anything.
Originally I wanted to start a coffee shop, but you need thousands of pounds and they’ve got a really high failure rate — so I didn’t think it was a risk I should take
So many graduates are struggling to find a career and would look at starting a business, but I couldn’t really find a lot out there specific to graduates. There’s something called flyingstart that’s more graduate-based, but I only found that recently.
I did a New Entrepreneur Scholarship at Manchester Metropolitan University. That was a three-month course, two evenings a week, and at the end of it you get a grand and a half.
That’s another reason why it took so long, because I had to wait until last July to get the money. I don’t think I would have taken the time to write a business plan that was so in depth otherwise, though. It was really quite beneficial.
AB: How did the business come about?
CF: After graduating from university I worked at a coffee shop for a year, and then went to Spain to teach English. After that, I wanted to pursue a career in public relations and really went for that for six months.
I got what I thought would be my dream job, but I really didn’t like it. I had problems with my boss as well, which put me off working for other people.
So I went back to the public sector and started plotting how to start a business. Originally I wanted to start a coffee shop, but you need thousands of pounds and they’ve got a really high failure rate — so I didn’t think it was a risk I should take.
So I explored what business options I could do while working. I actually looked at a gay wedding planning business, but I realised I didn’t really know much about the wedding industry — and I’m not gay and don’t know anything about gay weddings!
That’s what got me thinking about weddings. I was making some cards one day when I thought about this idea. I looked on the internet and there were only a few companies with professional sites doing this.
But a lot of them, come January, have signs on the site saying they can’t accept any more orders until September. So there was obviously a demand out there, but you can only take so many orders when you’re doing something handcrafted.
I looked on the internet and noticed there was a wedding fair coming up. I told them I was a wedding stationer — which I wasn’t — and asked them if they had any spaces left.
They said they had one space left, so I said I’d take it. She asked what my business name was, so I just made something up and put the phone down. I was like: “What have I done?”
I bought £50 worth of glittery card and stuff and started making invitations. When my boyfriend Adam came home that night he said: “What are you doing?” So I said: “I’ve launched a stationery business!”
AB: Did you have a long-held ambition to run your own business?
CF: My dad’s been an entrepreneur since he was 17. He’s set up music newspapers, florists, greengrocers… about 30-odd businesses!
My friends say that when I was a teenager I’d say: “I wish my dad would just get a proper job!” But I think growing up around it, you do realise that anyone can do it. It was only when I saw what jobs had to offer that I realised that maybe I did want to work for myself.
AB: But you still work full-time as well…
CF: I’m lucky because I work for the public sector and finish at half four everyday — and it really is 35 hours a week, no overtime. I have to do that because I just bought a house and I can’t risk not being able to pay the mortgage. It means I can take more risks in one way, because if I make a big mistake it doesn’t leave me bankrupt.
I work on the business most evenings and Sundays, about 15 to 20 hours a week. I’m going part-time at work as soon as I can possibly take that risk.
