Why I'm glad I didn't know about the 'entrepreneur preventers' on the way when I set a business up a decade ago
Ten years since launching my first retail website and reflecting on: ‘If I knew then what I know now’, I’m not sure I can confidently state I’d do anything different.
I do know one thing, I would never have believed the world I find myself in now.
Not On The High Street recently claimed 62 per cent of small businesses fold in the first fuive years, and so to celebrate our 10th anniversary in 2025 feels like even more of an achievement.
What began with me, a laptop and a load of big ideas has become a gift company with its three own label products, six retails websites, two wholesale trade sites and an inhouse capability to create our own personalised gifts. We also have a team of 18 and a turnover of £2m.
Whilst those stats and milestones would have bowled me over in 2015, the journey to today has been one of many small steps, tentative moves, risks, hunches and a lot of man hours.
The thought of working hard and having a go would never have put me off but it’s the myriad challenges that small businesses face today that probably would have caused me to fall back into a corporate 9-5.
The B-word ‘Brexit’, the T-word ‘Tariffs’ and those two little but mighty words ‘minimum wage’ are just three entrepreneur preventers I can think of off the top of my head.
The countless other business challenges such as cash flow, debtors, HR to name a few, are enough to put you off starting a business at best. Why do any of us do it? It’s certainly not a work-life balance I can tell you.
On reflection, 2025 was an extraordinarily difficult one with perhaps the most memorable word being ‘uncertainty’. Who knows what 2026, the next ten years and beyond hold, could we even imagine?
But given the last 10 years, sure as eggs is eggs, I’ll bet we’re better off not knowing, opening our laptops and just cracking on!
The Lovely Keepsake Company launched on 5 June 2015 after two years of research inspired by the birth of premature twins in May 2013. We raised £52,772 to thank Hull Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit where the twins spent 10 weeks and where the idea for the company was also born.
Two separate specialist websites Lovely NICU Gifts and Lovely Memorial gifts were launched during lockdown in Summer 2020, when the team started making their own products and the firm was renamed The Lovely Gift Group Ltd.
The Lovely Gift Group now operates from 6,500 sq ft at Jetpark in Newport, Brough with a team of 20.
The company’s own label brands include Oh So Precious pet keepsakes; Angels, Wings & Feathers thoughtful memorial and The Lovely Keepsake Company family keepsakes. In 2025 the company acquired personalised gift website Always Personal.
The company now sells both the branded products and personalised keepsakes at a number of well known businesses including: Pets at Home, Just For Pets, Co-operative, The Range, B&Q, Bents Garden Centres, Klondyke Garden Centres, Blue Diamond Garden Centres, Blue Cross to name a few. The firm’s products sell in a number of online and bricks and mortar stores in the UK.
Helen Davies is founder and director of The Lovely Gift Group