AKA Designs gift shop owners launch story

Hi, I am Abbie and here is a bit about my life and how I came to own my online gift shop called AKA Designs, and where I am in life now.

I am a mum of 3 incredibly amazing kids, they are 14,11 and 1 years old. I am 32 years old and have several disabilities. My Diagnosis’s are Ehlers Danlos Syndrome hypermobility type (EDS), Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder also known as borderline personality disorder (EUPD or BPD) and ADHD. My two older children are also neurodiverse, so adding all of this together there is never two days the same in my life.

Aka Designs started trading in early 2021, yes that is right I was crazy enough to start a business in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. As mad as it sounds this was not just a spur of the moment decision as I have a long story leading to this interesting chapter of my life.

I have always had a drive and passion for having my own business and I first acted on this in 2011 when I started my first business Abbie’s Baby cakes. The idea of this came around way before this when I was gifted a nappy cake for the birth of my first baby in 2009 when I was 17 years old. My partner at the time was originally from America where nappy cakes originated from and it was not something I heard of being sold in the UK very often, so I was intrigued. Fast forward to January 2011, I Sadly gave birth to my stillborn baby boy at 21 weeks pregnant. A few months after my loss I hated that I no longer had any baby items in my house anymore and I wanted a way to ease this pain a little bit, I then decided I wanted to do something with my life that would be worthwhile and make my first born grow to be proud of me and something to cherish my son’s memory. I longed to prove to everyone that being a teen mum was not going to define me. I put my mind to work and decided I was going to make and sell nappy cakes. At the time I was very young and had very little knowledge about business and it was more of a hobby. I ended up falling pregnant with my middle child very quickly after I had started, and I had a very painful pregnancy due to a disability I have that I was unaware of at the time. Being a young mum, struggling with my mental health due to the loss of my son and trying to cope both physically and mentally with my pregnancy was exhausting. I decided to stop doing the nappy cakes as all the above factors were not making it easy.

When my middle child was a few months old I decided to start it back up as I loved being creative and always had new ideas. I would have a stall at as many craft fairs as I could, and I tried so hard to get my name out there. I reconnected with an old school friend when we often attended the same events and my impulsive decisions (I can blame that on my ADHD) had me chatting one day about wanting to open a shop at one of these events, unbeknown to me this crazy throw away comment was about to turn into a real-life dream. My old school friend had the same idea as me and we ended up producing a plan to go together and open a shop. As we had made a good connection with many small business owners at craft fairs, we decided we would sell shelf space in the shop to others, and it would be a multi business shop. My friend had been very clever in school and had high grades and had way more business experience that me and suggested we apply for funding due to our shop being able to be classed as a social enterprise, so we applied and got our applications approved. we found a shop unit in a local marketplace, and we used our funding to kit the shop out. We opened Inspire in 2013, sadly inspire only lasted approximately 6 months due to several issues. I found trying to run a shop whilst having a baby and a toddler was almost impossible and along with many other issues, I decided that I had jumped into this whilst my kids were at the wrong age, and we agreed to close the shop and went our separate ways in selling our products individually again.

Soon after closing our gift shop, I became a single mum so I had to again stop selling nappy cakes as I did not drive, and my items were too bulky to get to and from craft fairs without a car and of course I had the kids too so it would not work. Being the ambitious person I was, I was not happy about closing my business so I started to sell Avon in my local area as I could use my pram to help me hold all my orders to deliver them ect. I would get my toddler involved in helping me pack orders and he loved going out splashing in the puddles in the evening while I went to post books and deliver orders all while the baby slept in her pram. I continued to do this on and off for a few years until it started to become too painful for me due to my medical condition Ehlers Danlos syndrome.

I was fed up and wanted to do something I could be successful in. At the time I had been working in my mum’s florist/gift shop and often done events styling at the weekends. I absolutely loved working in the wedding industry and my mum’s mobility was starting to get in the way of the event sets ups, so I decided to go to college to do my events management HND in the hopes of taking over the event styling part of my mum’s business and put my own spin on it. Over the years of studying my disability rapidly progressed and I was in denial of how much I could cope with. I started advertising Sparkling styles in 2018, I think. I made up my business plan as part of my coursework’s and was adamant this would be my time to shine in the world of business as I had such a great passion for what I done. Sparkling styles was co run by both me and my mum until I was ready to officially go solo after I graduated, we would attend wedding fairs and I would take more control of taking bookings ect then I graduated with my HND in 2019 and fully took over the business. As the wedding industry is one where people book things in advance, I had started to fill up my 2020 diary and things were starting to look great, however physically it was not good. My Ehlers Danlos Syndrome had got to a point where I would have frequent dislocations in my joints and I was in agony after every event set up I done. I was not ready to give up so kept kidding myself that I was able to do this. I had a plan to get a storage unit/ shop front for all the equipment and hire a team of staff to do the set ups for me and id run the shop front. My plan was not financially feasible at that time as the business had not had a chance to build up enough money yet, so I continued to do as I was being completely in denial of my pain and was juggling being a mum, working in retail to support my family and running sparkling styles. I had high hope for this business due to the knowledge I had gained during my studies and how well things were starting to pick up, but that was about to come to and end as we entered 2020. The covid pandemic hit and wiped out a whole summers worth of weddings I had thousands of pounds worth of orders cancelled as the wedding industry was hit very hard by the pandemic. By this time, I had slowly started to come to terms with how bad my disability was and accepted that I would not be able to do certain things anymore. During the first lockdown I realised the true pressure I had been putting on myself and started to notice a massive change in myself when I was not pushing myself so far, I also started noticing a massive difference in my kids as well. I had not realised how much my kids were struggling due to my struggles being so bad. After a few months of lockdown, I realised how difficult it was going to be to rebuild the wedding industry and thought as a start-up business I had no chance of coming back from this. I put both my disability and the pandemic together and saw way too many negatives, so I decided to close that business too.

I was devastated to give up my dream business. I felt so worthless after having so many failed businesses and continued working in my retail job when I was allowed to go back after the first lockdown ended. I was so miserable and hiding it from everyone. My older children also have a mixture of  hidden disabilities and between the stress of raising  special needs kids, trying to juggle two kids a house and a job as well as dealing with all the pain and mental impacts having a disability has my mental health was at a major low again. For months I felt numb I was just carrying on with life, but I had lost all sense of myself. December of 2020 came, and another lockdown was put in place I was so happy to be able to catch a break again and allow my body to get some much-needed rest, everyone was devastated to hear the news of a second lockdown, but I was so exited about it. My mental health was a wreck and I needed something to focus on and being the crafty creative person ive always been I started researching how to work with epoxy resin and decided I was going to start making some things to get me through lockdown. I mentioned this to my little sister who is also on the spectrum, and she said she had been looking into it too, and we should set up a small business to get us a little extra income as times were so tough due to covid. I then came into a bit of money, and we decided to go for it and went on a crazy spending spree buying things for the business and started practicing making stuff and we launched an Etsy shop. This is where AKA Designs was born, we chose our name as both me and my sister’s initial was A and we wanted to include my kids and my angel baby’s initials in the name somewhere, they were L K and D, so we played about and produced the name, we couldn’t think of anything to include the L, however I thought if the buisness blew up to become a limited company then the L would be in the Ltd at the end of what we had chosen. Very quickly my sister became overwhelmed with the pressure of business life, and I took it on as just my business. It was always planned to be just a side hustle to keep me busy through lockdown, but things picked up quickly and I was loving it. My middle child was loving getting involved in as many parts as she could  and all the little jobs that I didn’t want to do she claimed as her tasks, this was fantastic for her as the repetitiveness of it all was very soothing for her and it defiantly made lockdown way easier than the first one as you can imagine how difficult it was to keep a special needs child occupied nonstop.  It came time where I was asked to go back to work and I went from being happy to being super low again so quickly, I then took a breakdown and realised there was no way I could cope going back into a job where I was struggling so much with my physical state and put all that extra pressure back onto my children and I took a massive gamble and quit my job and went full time in my business.

Fast forward to 2021 and I felt the best id felt mentally in a long time, don’t get me wrong I still struggled a great deal but I’m sure that’s to be expected with everything else I had got going on. by 2022 AKA Designs had been trading for a year and I was so proud of the growth it has had in its first year. I feat that I had learned so much from my previous failed businesses and my studies that I was then confident enough to feel like I could make this business a remarkable success. I can honestly say that past year had changed mine and my kid’s lives for the best. I was then a stay-at-home mum running the business from my spare room, so I could be there for absolutely everything my kids need. I was in control of when and how much I work I was in a much better head space, and this made dealing with my kids much easier as well so all in all I feel like quitting my retail job and going full time had been the best move I could have ever made as a mother and for myself. By this point I had moved on from just the original items I started making and was now selling a wide range of unusual gift ideas available for all occasions.

I Then fell pregnant again around April 2022, I became a single mum again so I had planned on working right through until after the Christmas rush was over then taking a short maternity leave as I knew it wasn’t going to be easy doing it on my own, i aimed to be starting back just before Easter. However my body said otherwise as my pregnancy caused a massive flair up of my EDS and I was barley able to walk from very early on and by August I had fully closed the business, all stock also had to be packed away as I needed the room in my house back for the baby. After my daughter was born I decided not to put a time frame on when I’d open back up and took my time figuring out new mum life all over again as it had been a long time since I’d had a little one.  I got a workspace in the next street to my house and very slowly set it up ready to reopen, I waited until my middle child had settled into high school and by October I decided to go for it and jump back into business life with the baby growing to be my little helper, I will not give up on another business and want this one to grow into something much bigger, my dream for the future is to own my own shop but we will take each day as it comes and see how things go working online again as mum life is a bit hectic as you could imagine.

Many of my items are handmade gifts and they are made using top quality materials and can be personalized to suit your requirements. I also have a large stock inventory of other giftable items that are non-handmade. My gift shop now offers a wide range of gift ideas including candles, wax melts, Jewelry gifts, birthday gifts, personalized gifts, small business owner gifts, teacher gifts, gifts for friends, gifts for women, gifts for men, gifts for pets and many more. We also offer a gift delivery service, where gifts can be posted directly to the recipient

if you want to ask anything about my journey please feel free to do so in the comments.