Women and Business - Clootie McToot
Tradition dictates
“They used to fill-up socks, tea-towels, even bloomers,” Michelle Maddox told Kilgraston’s surprised senior pupils, “then they boiled them for hours on the fire!”
The inspirational owner of Clootie McToot was describing the history of Clootie Dumplings (rich, traditional Scottish fruit puddings) and her own entrepreneurial journey, as part of the School’s Women and Business lecture series: “It’s been a rollercoaster,” said the busy mum and businesswoman, “from making everything in the family’s utility room, we now employ fourteen staff in a professional kitchen.”
Small beginnings
Starting just five years’ ago – inspiration came after her son’s appeal for edible donations for a Christmas school fete - Michelle’s traditional Clootie Dumplings sell like hot-cakes, exports reaching North America and Germany: “I was brought-up making them,” explained Michelle, “it was a family tradition and now we use my granny’s very own recipe, it’s the company’s unique selling point.”
Thankfully, these days, the ‘cloot’ (Scottish for cloth) is tailor-made for the job in borders town, Kelso, with no-one, Michelle assured, losing their underwear in the process.
Initially involved with the London food industry, immediately before starting Clootie McToot, Michelle was employed in the community grant application field, however, sales success at her son’s stall soon had her thinking: “I handed in my notice the next day!”
Expansion planning
Based in Perthshire’s Abernethy village, the business consists of a busy café, training kitchen, subscriber demonstrations and tasting sessions, together with a thriving shop and online retailer. Expansion plans are in the pipeline: “Spring 2022 will see a much bigger café and kitchen, allowing 24/7 production,” Michelle explained.
The need to be flexible and nimble in business, coping with unexpected obstacles and continually looking to diversify, was a recurring theme: “You’re always learning,” she explained, “For instance, fresh dumplings have a shelf-life of 21 days, which can be difficult for stockists, so we came up with the idea of a clootie kit, where you get all the dry ingredients, muslin cloth and string, just adding butter, milk, egg and an apple at home.”
This new product increased lifespan to a year, making stocking far more attractive to retailers: high-street giants John Lewis soon adopting the dumplings. Additionally, lockdown saw a huge spike in home-cooking interest, offering clootie kits the perfect chance to shine: “We went from making 200 to 1,500 a week.”
Michelle described how she’d learnt the importance and power of great social media, constantly adding to the brand’s story, discussing new ingredients and developments and always responding to comments: “We’d established a very active digital shop and loyal customer base, proving an absolute lifeline when Covid arrived.”
Highs and lows
Pupils were fascinated to learn about Clootie’s branding, the whole family initially having had input. But the need to redesign became obvious when one outlet stated that they loved the product, but not the logo: “I was a bit hurt by that one,” said Michelle. However, taking it on the chin, a branding expert was enlisted - a new subtle colour palette decided – with the family’s original design always making a small guest appearance “to remind us what we’re about.”
Concluding her talk, the entrepreneur reiterated how much of a juggling act running your own business is: “Every day is about balancing responsibilities,” she told girls, “it is immensely rewarding, but you do have to be prepared to accept risk, the fear of failure is always there.”
Women and Business
The Women and Business programme, together with the dynamic Unifrog careers platform, are just part of Kilgraston’s dedicated curriculum, ensuring every pupil has the very best industry insight and future opportunity. The School is passionate about encouraging business enterprise among pupils, with a group of girls recently winning a Young Enterprise Awards.
Kilgraston would like to extend its thanks to Michelle for taking the time to speak with the girls.
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Business Women Scotland Awards nominee - Fiona Frew
The final nominee to be featured in our series about the Kilgraston School sponsored Business Women Scotland Awards, is Fiona Frew.
With a wealth of experience in Financial Services, Fiona joined Murphy Wealth last year as an Operations Manager. Murphy Wealth is a Glasgow-based wealth management advisory firm, that provides independent financial advice and creates wealth for businesses. Fiona was promoted within her first 3 months following the prominent impact she made to the firm and is now Murphy Wealth’s first female board director. Fiona has also been integral to the relationship her company has built with Business Women Scotland since partnering with the network. Her efforts were significantly reflected when she was asked to join the committee this year.
Fiona, like many of Kilgraston School’s students, loves all types of sport, especially football, and enjoys supporting charities through fundraising and volunteering. She has also recently joined the ‘Killie Striders’ Kilmarnock running club which keeps her active every week!
Kilgraston School - Business Women Scotland Awards nominee - Suzie McCafferty
Our next featured Business Women Scotland Awards finalist is Suzie McCafferty. Suzie is the CEO of Platinum Wave Franchising – a business consultancy firm that specializes in franchising. It helps entrepreneurs franchise their businesses all over the world and provides a full recruitment service to ensure they find the best staff and franchisees. Suzie has worked in franchising for very nearly 20 years now. Right after university, she opened a refillable ink cartridge shop in Edinburgh. Customers came in and asked if it was a franchise so often that Suzie decided to find out what a franchise was. Fast forward a few years of seriously hard work, taking advice, ignoring advice and Suzie had 70 franchisees in 6 countries from the Middle East to the Caribbean. Suzie offers her advice to Kilgraston School students:
1. What do you enjoy about your work?
Every day I work with very like-minded people with drive and ambition and an entrepreneurial spirit. This pretty much guarantees an element of excitement to each day because things happen at pace, people have great new ideas, or somebody comes to us for advice on a project that no-one has ever tried before. The great thing about franchising is that it involves every business sector you can think of and it can take you all over the world.
2. What are the biggest challenges that they face with their work?
I travel a lot, but I have a thirteen-month old daughter at home who doesn’t care one bit if Mummy has to get up at 4am for the first flight down to London – so handling a full day of meetings on 2 hours sleep is probably my biggest challenge right now! But, because I have such a great team, I’ve been able to reward myself with a four-day working week. It doesn’t always work out, but I’m determined to make sure I get the balance right between business and home life.
3. What advice would they give to high-school aged girls wanted to follow in their footsteps?
My advice to you is to be brave and believe in yourself - if you don’t believe you can do something there’s a good chance you’re right. You will make mistakes, but they are only a problem if you don’t learn something from them, so don’t be afraid to make them! Don’t let your age hold you back either – there are self-made billionaires out there still in their twenties. However, the most important thing is to find something you love doing, that excites you to want to get up every day and do. Why not take a look at franchising – it can be a wonderful way to have your own business and be your own boss? Of course, I would say that!
The award winner will be announced on Friday 8th November 2019.
Business Women Scotland Awards - meet Susan Harkins
Our series on the Business Women Scotland finalists continues with Susan Harkins. She heads up Business Gateway Edinburgh, and over the last 15 years she has led her team to support over 25,000 small businesses to start-up and grow. Susan has a passion for working with SMEs, and has a keen interest in Women Led Businesses, Digital and Social Enterprise.
Susan chairs the Business Gateway National Operational network, is founder of Women in Business Edinburgh network, a member of the Scottish Government Women in Business Action Group, regularly contributes to the Scottish Government Cross party groups on Women in Business and Social Enterprise and is an active member of Scottish Local Authority Economic Development (SLAED) Business Group. She studied her MBA at Edinburgh University and has a Business Counselling diploma.
1. Can you give us a brief description of your business?
Public Sector Business support and advice service. It’s a public service, and the inspiration came from the market failure, start-ups failing within first year of trading.
2. What do you enjoy about your work?
The people, I meet people from all different backgrounds aiming to start and grow their business it is inspiring and no one day is the same
3. What are the biggest work challenges you face?
Not enough time in the day!!
4. What advice would you give to high-school aged girls wanted to follow in their footsteps?
Be confident and strong, and most importantly be yourself.
The winners of this year’s Business Women Scotland will be announced on Friday 8th November.
Business Women Scotland- introducing our second finalist
The Business Women Scotland Awards is taking place this week and Kilgraston is delighted to be sponsoring the new Inspirational Woman category. In the run-up to the event, we’re looking at the nominees for this award and now we’re talking to Celia Hodson. She is a multi award-winning entrepreneur and 2018’s Entrepreneurial Scotland’s ‘Social Entrepreneur of the Year’ and was one of Saltire’s ‘Outstanding Women of Scotland 2019’. The mum-of-three set up Hey Girls in January 2018.
1. Tell us about Hey Girls:
I founded Hey Girls with the aim of eliminating period poverty in the UK. The social enterprise launched in January 2018 with a Buy One Give One business model, and has since donated over 6 million period products to people in need. Hey Girls has been listed in three major supermarkets, secured public sector contracts across Scotland, and run several high-profile campaigns to raise awareness of period poverty. Everything is driven by generating donations to alleviate poverty, but Hey Girls also operates to the highest environmental standards. Our products are plastic-free, sustainably-sourced, and biodegradable.
2. What impact does the organisation have?
Hey Girls actively supports other social enterprises and value-led businesses. We offer paid internships to women of colour, and are currently hiring mums returning to work. Our branding and packaging features real people who are part of the Hey Girls family – partners, employees, volunteers, and friends. Our education is trans-inclusive, and we work closely with our network of over 200 donation partners, partners to support marginalised women, refugee communities, and women of colour, to ensure that everyone has dignified access to high-quality products. No one should have to compromise their health and wellbeing.
3. What was your career path to setting up Hey Girls
I worked in social enterprise for over 15 years with roles including CEO of SSE Australia, Chief Executive of Journeys for Change, Chief Executive of the Suffolk Development Agency, Founder of the Eastern Enterprise Hub and Deputy Chief Executive of Social Enterprise UK.
Inspirational Woman Award Finalists
Kilgraston School is proud to be sponsoring the Inspirational Woman category at this year’s Business Women Scotland Awards.
This week, we are introducing you to the finalists and asking them some questions about their business and the challenges they face. So first up is Rosemary Eribé – founder and CEO of ERIBÉ Knitwear Ltd. Edinburgh born, Rosemary went to Hamburg for an apprenticeship in retail management and it was there, while selling natural fibre clothing, that she became interested in knowing how they were made. She returned to Scotland to obtain a first-class degree at the Scottish College of Textiles. After four years of intense training in print, weave and knitting and with the help of Graduate Enterprise, she started her business without funding, building it up slowly.
After 33 years, Rosemary still travels extensively, visiting customers in Japan, Australia, and around Europe, as well as looking after customers via Skype to reduce their carbon footprint. Eribé aims to be a plastic free business next year.
1. What was your first experience of the industry and how did you get to where you are?
After studying textile design in the Scottish Borders – I always knew I wanted to set up my own business. So, with that in mind I did a crash course in business for 6 months. As part of that I knitted my own new collection and used it to do market research. This was my very first experience of selling. I travelled to London on the overnight bus and tramped the streets of London to find my first customers. I managed to sell to a few retailers. It was a very hard learning curve. Customers don’t always want to pay. I learnt very quickly that the UK was a difficult market with a lot of competition. Most retailers could only place small orders. After doing more market research, I discovered that I could sell to larger customers overseas (first in the USA, then japan). It meant less paperwork and as a one man band, meant I could focus on design and delivery more easily.
2. What would you say is your greatest achievement so far?
One of the most memorable achievements for ERIBÉ was when we won the UKft Award and met Princess Anne. For us, as a small company, it felt as if we were recognised as a serious business. It put us on the map in the UK as a brand with a future. It helped my team and helped our customers too. We are forever grateful for those Awards.
3. What has been the greatest hurdle you have faced in your career and how did you overcome it?
A German distributor placed a large order with us and did not pay despite bank checks etc… Luckily, I only shipped out half the order as a precaution. The day after shipping I received a phone call from another supplier saying they had not been paid and were suspicious of this distributor. I borrowed money from a German friend to keep us afloat. The local newspaper did an article on our mishap and advertised the sale we did to sell everything off quickly.We lost a business year and had to work very hard to recover; all hardships and difficulties have only made us stronger.
4. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
When a serious problem arises: Look for an opportunity – whatever it is. Turn the problem into something positive.
5. What would be your advice to anyone looking to achieve a similar career to you?
Learn by doing and asking questions. Always do market research before starting or trying something out. Never give up, textiles is like being in a boat riding high on a wave and then slowly down again….and then up high once more…. Just like slow moving waves with a few storms inbetween. So you need perseverance and a determination to learn and to succeed. Life is never boring and always very interesting….and you meet so many wonderful people.