Emoji here to bring a bit of fun to business and lives of others

If there is one word that sums up Sarah Aggar-Brennan’s business career that word is fun.

The self-described serial entrepreneur has had a variety of business ventures.

She has owned and run a movie memorabilia store, a skateboard business and is now selling emoji cushions.

“The thing for me about running my own business is it has to be something that I love,” the personable entrepreneur says. “It has to be fun because I am quite a fun person.

“It has to be light-hearted and I want to bring joy to people’s lives. I want to connect with people on that level.”

But while Ms Aggar-Brennan describes herself as a fun person, there is an astute businesswoman behind the energetic personality.

Throughout her business career she has always been able to spot the opportunity.

“I’ve got an eye,” she says, when trying to explain the various divergent businesses she’s run. “I’ve always had an eye ever since I set up a business when I was 20.”

It all began in the 90s with Popcorn, a movie memorabilia store in her hometown of Stockton-on-Tees.

Having travelled to London and seen the rise in movie memorabilia, driven by a wave of films being remastered, she spotted an opportunity to bring something similar to her hometown.

“We started off pretty much as a Star Wars dealer selling vintage Star Wars products,” she said.

While Star Wars may have helped Popcorn initially take-off, Ms Aggar-Brennan’s business would skate into a slightly different direction.

“We’d set up this memorabilia shop and the kids in town didn’t want the memorabilia they wanted skateboard kit,” Ms Aggar-Brennan said. “We needed to do a good old traditional pivot.”

The pivot saw the business rebranded to Popcorn Skate and, while still retaining the movie memorabilia aspect, it started selling skateboarding equipment.

The children then asked Ms Aggar-Brennan if she would help them fundraise for a skate park.

A move which would then lead to another of Ms Aggar-Brennan’s “fun” business ventures, SK8 Safe.

She said: “It’s a community skateboarding initiative. Our motto is ‘in the community for the community’. We do have staff to pay but we cherry pick the project and we try to have an impact on the local area.”

SK8 Safe is a skateboard coaching company and acts as the assessment centre for Skateboard England, the national governing body for skateboarding. Ms Aggar-Brennan’s latest business venture, Love Bomb Cushions came about as a result of her daughter’s 14th birthday. Looking for a present, she decided to get her daughter something emoji related.

“She had this obsession with sending me emojis on her phone,” Ms Aggar-Brennan explains. “So I went online to see if I could find anything emoji related. There was just nothing.”

She looked a bit further afield and saw that there were people in China selling emoji cushions directly out of factories.

Ms Aggar-Brennan said: “When it came in it was terrible. The pictures definitely lied. But I didn’t have anything else to give her so I just wrapped it up and gave her it. I’ve never seen anything like it.

“She also got a camera that year and she ignored the camera. This she went nuts for. She was on Snapchat within seconds, snapchatting her friends.

“For about a week it was all about this cushion.”

This made her realise that there was an opportunity to be exploited around this emoji craze.

Having been in toy buying with Popcorn Skate, she decided to come “out of retirement”.

She said: “I started putting the feelers out to see if anybody could help me. I wanted to find an agent out in China to cut a lot of the rubbish out for me.

“I could see there was a lot of rubbish out there. I knew how I wanted to improve it. I knew how I wanted to make it bigger and better. I knew the quality and I wanted to change the material.”

Ms Aggar-Brennan put together a spec of what she wanted and sourcing agents found her the products she was looking for.

Love Bomb secured the official licence for emoji products. Its range now consists of more than 60 products including cushions, cushioned slippers, miniature ‘shelf buddies’ and keychains.

The company’s turnover reached £500,000 in its first year and it is looking to add three more staff to a team of four.

But as with her business life to date, the objective of Love Bomb is to put a smile on people’s faces.

Her business has donated Love Bomb products to various good causes from Dog’s Trust to St Oswald’s Hospice in Newcastle.

She has also helped bring a smile to the faces of child refugees with donations of emoji cushions. “It’s bringing hope to them that somebody cares out there,” she says.

While Love Bomb currently sources from China, the business is looking at manufacturing products itself.

“We’re due to move into the Hainsworth Mill in the next couple of months, where we’ll start to look at ways in which we can start to manufacture ourselves,” says Ms Aggar-Brennan.

She says the company’s aim is to become the “number one novelty cushion manufacturer”. Ms Aggar-Brennan said: “We’re living in a very tech saturated world. The physical feeling of having that friend, that cushion, that teddy is not there in a lot of products these days. I want to put fun back into people’s lives and I also want to stimulate that essential sense of touch.”

That’s not to say that she is against the idea of tech, as she demonstrates with an augmented reality app launched to sit alongside the emoji cushions. It is clear from talking to Sarah that the fun isn’t about to stop for this entrepreneurial skateboarding mother of two.

Sarah’s factfile

Title: Director

Date of birth: July 5, 1973

Lives: Otley

Favourite holiday destination: Anywhere skiing

Last book read: Happy by Fearne Cotton

Favourite film: High Society – I know I am old!

Favourite song: True Love from High Society

Car driven: VW Transporter van

Most proud of: My family and the challenges we have overcome together with love and compassion

Education: Ian Ramsey in Fairfield, Stockton, Stockton and Billingham College and Middlesbrough University