Image Source: BBC NEWS - CEO Secrets
Pairs Scotland is delighted to be involved in a piece with the BBC hailing entrepreneurial women launching businesses during lockdown.
As part of mobile journalist, Dougal Shaw’s CEO Secrets series Pairs Scotland was featured as the only company outside of South West Britain, championing Scottish enterprise and female-led businesses.
As a newly launched business having the spot light shone on you gives the same unexpected joy that we feel every time an order is placed by a customer!
The journey to setting up a business is always going to be interesting, exciting and stressful but doing it during a pandemic certainly takes it to a new level.
Almost 50% more businesses were created in June 2020 than in June 2019, according to the Centre for Entrepreneurs, which examined data from Companies House.
Source: BBC News Dougal Shaw 21/10/20
Read more about how we came to launching the business here: OUR STORY
Lockdown and the extra childcare that came with it put an "immense" burden on parents, according to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies released in May. The average amount of time spent each weekday on paid work dropped from 6.5 hours in 2014-15 to 3 hours during lockdown.
However, women have borne more of this burden than men. Of parents who were in paid work prior to the lockdown, mothers are one-and-a-half times more likely than fathers to have either lost their job or quit since the lockdown began and are also more likely to have been furloughed. Mothers in employment are also working fewer hours than men and their pay has dropped proportionally during lockdown.
Recent figures suggest that many people have set up their own firms during lockdown.
Source: BBC News Dougal Shaw 21/10/20
Image Source: BBC NEWS - CEO Secrets
The article very much focused on how we managed while having our children around but simply this is just what mothers have to do. We are not special or super human, we are mums and are capable of immense outputs everyday like any other. We believe that all mothers are wonderful role models for their children whether they are cooking the fish fingers or doing BBC interviews for their new business.
Anna is not surprised that many working parents were tempted to "mothball their careers" during Covid-19, but she thinks it is important for people to carry on - especially women, who still take on most of the responsibility for childcare in the majority of families.
"I would highly encourage mothers to set up enterprises. I think it's really important for them to keep something of themselves. There's a huge workforce of skilled women out there who have put aside their careers for children and during lockdown have taken a [further] step back.
"It's really important those skills are not lost."
Source: BBC News Dougal Shaw 21/10/20
Our commitment to produce sustainable products and promote slow fashion is what drives our Pairs Scotland. We hope our timeless, everyday luxuries that are traditionally and sustainably made in Britain will encourage people to consider buying less but buying better.
The company wants people to ditch their cotton socks and invest in their alpaca and mohair ones, which retail from £20 a pair. Their business taps into the trend for durable, "slow fashion".
Source: BBC News Dougal Shaw 21/10/20
We were featured alongside the ladies from Soul Purpose Jewellery and Curly Coo Sweet.
