Being your own boss is a dream that many people have.
And Lucy Rushton made that dream a reality, just two months into the pandemic.
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The 36-year-old woman from Chester has quit her job with the police to devote herself full-time to her job luxury artificial flower company.
After leaving university, Lucy worked in various jobs in the police force for 13 years, including assignments as an intelligence analyst and another job in counter-terrorism.
Although she enjoyed the work, she said there weren’t many opportunities for career advancement and when she became a mother in 2018, she began to reevaluate her career.
“I think my life just changed when I had my son Bobby, he’s now six,” Lucy explains.
Read more about side hustles
‘It made me realize how the police [hours] were not good for family life at all.
“Although I was working full-time as hard as I could, I was still earning £28,000 a year and in a very difficult job that involved looking at some horrific things every day.
“It wasn’t really worth it, I thought there had to be a nicer way to make better money.”
She started thinking about her interests, including interior design, and in 2015 she founded the Cheshire Gift Company, which sells giftware and homewares.
“I found a very good factory in Indonesia that employed women and gave them the skills to make things out of wood.”
She added: “I imported loads of things there and around my police job I created as many market stalls as I could.
‘My poor father and mother always came to set up market stalls [with me] and sometimes I cried because I didn’t get my money back, but I just kept going.”
During her eight months of maternity leave, Lucy took out a temporary lease on a small shop in her local village over the Christmas period. She says her business “grew from there.”
“I built my own website because I didn’t have the money to commission someone to do it, and by 2020, in search of lockdown, I was doing my business online.”
It was at this time, leading up to Mother’s Day, that Stacey Soloman placed an order with her company.
“I was completely overwhelmed that she placed this order and I thought it was a mistake. I thought it was someone with the same name,” Lucy recalls.
“I sent the product, fulfilled the order and a few days later she tagged me in a post.”
From that point on, Lucy says her business “took off tremendously,” giving her the impetus to resign from work.
“I was completely exhausted from working for the police for 40 to 50 hours a week.
“I would organize my parcels in my garage until one or two in the morning and then I would take them all to the parcel drop service before dropping my son off at daycare and then going back to work.”
Side hustles in numbers
Based on new research from Finder, an estimated 22.8 million Brits use side hustle to supplement their income.
Of 18-23 year olds, 68 percent will have a part-time job in 2024.
The 24 to 42 age group is not far behind: 65 percent have an additional source of income.
Side hustles are less popular among older generations: 40 percent of 43-54 year olds have one.
While 23 percent of 55-73 year olds and only 7 percent of those over 74 earn extra money this way.
Growing her business wasn’t all sunshine and fake flowers, though.
“When you grow so quickly it’s very difficult because you don’t have the infrastructure,” Lucy explains.
“I didn’t have the stock, I didn’t have any staff, I would often drive to people’s houses to collect their excess cardboard boxes, which is what I had to rely on for packaging.
“I think I woke up a few days later [Stacey] tagged me and I had over a thousand orders.”
Lucy praises her friend Zara for helping her through this difficult time.
“She was a wedding coordinator at the time, so she got furloughed and she helped me.
“The two of us, at either end of my garden, processed all the orders due to social distancing.”
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Lucy then began searching a warehouse on a business park near her home.
“The rent was £22,000 a year, but the rates were another £18,000 on top of that, which just seemed like an astronomical amount.”
She added: “My grandpa actually paid me a wage from his own money for three months because he believed I could do it.
“I will always be grateful for that. It also made me work harder because I didn’t want to let him down.”
Lucy’s parents were also a big help between “full” shifts in the NHS at the height of the pandemic.
Her mother helped manage the website and emails after working full shifts in healthcare.
However, Covid also posed a problem for Lucy’s online interior design business.
“During Covid there were obviously so many pop-up businesses that people were doing from home.
“A lot of people had access to the same suppliers as I did, so I quickly realized we had to find our niche.”
And so the Cheshire Gift Company became Stem & Silk, a luxury artificial flower shop.
“One thing that really took off was when I started specializing in artificial flowers,” Lucy explains.
“For a lot of people, I think when they think about it, they think of some dusty old plastic roses, but they have come on by leaps and bounds.
“They’re real flowers, so they feel and look real. You can even get scents to spray them with so they even smell real.
“They were great for people to send in the post as gifts, which people did a lot during lockdown.”
Despite personal obstacles, including a spell in hospital with pneumonia and sepsis, Lucy’s business thrived.
Between 2020 and 2022, her business turned over £2.4 million.
Last year the cost of living rose significantly and she had to downsize, but now she wants to expand again.
“We just have to pick up where the cost of living crisis left us and we are now just planning ahead for the future.”
Lucy says she wouldn’t change anything about the past four years, even if it made her “about 40 years” older.
“Just to get a break from work and go to Bobby’s sports day or watch his Harvest Festival play, it’s all about him,” she says.
“Even though I’m probably working about 100 hours a week now, I’m 100% happier, so I think that’s a success in itself.”
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