BEING your own boss is a dream many Brits have.
And for Lucy Rushton, that dream became a reality just two months into the pandemic.
The 36-year-old, who is based in Chester, spoke to Fabulous about her decision to quit her job in the police force to work full-time on her luxury faux flower company.
Lucy worked various jobs within the police for 13 years after leaving university, including stints as an intelligence analyst and another in counter-terrorism.
While she enjoyed the work, the Hull native explained that there wasn’t much opportunity for career progression and when she became a mum in 2018, she began to re-evaluate her career.
“I think my life just changed when I had my little boy Bobby, he’s now six,” Lucy explains.
“It made me realise how police [hours] weren’t very good for family life at all.
“Even though I worked as hard as I possibly could full-time, I was still on £28,000 a year and for a very difficult job looking at some horrific things day-to-day.
“It wasn’t really worth it, I thought there must be a more enjoyable way of making better money.”
She began to think of her areas of interest, one of which is interior design, which she credits to her mum.
“My mum was brilliant, she used to let me decorate my room ever since I was a little girl,” she recalls.
“I used to have freedom to paint my own walls and do whatever I wanted, which I think really sparked in me that I wanted to set up an interiors company.”
And so in 2015, she set up the Cheshire Gift Company, which sold giftware and homeware.
“I found a really good factory in Indonesia that employed women, [they] gave them the skills to be able to make things out of wood, [they] made handmade candles as well,” Lucy says.
“I imported quite a lot of things from there and around my police job, I did market stalls as much as I possibly could.
“My poor mum and dad used to come and do these market stalls [with me] and sometimes I used to cry because I didn’t make my money back but I just kept going.”
Lucy explained that her family all worked in the NHS and didn’t have business backgrounds.
Side hustles in numbers
Based on new research from Finder, an estimated 22.8 million Brits are using side hustles to top up their income.
Among those aged 18-23, 68 percent have a side hustle in 2024.
Those aged 24-42 aren’t far behind, with 65 per cent having an additional source of income.
Side hustles are less popular among older generations, with 40 percent of those aged 43-54 having one.
Whereas 23 percent of people aged 55-73 and just 7 per cent of those aged 74 and over are earning extra cash this way.
“Apart from my granddad, he owned a printing and stationary factory, I was obsessed with stationary and used to go and work with him, which I just loved,” she says.
During her eight months of maternity leave, Lucy took a temporary lease on a small shop in her local village over the Christmas period and says her business “grew from there.”
“I built my own website because I had no money to pay for somebody to do it and by 2020, looking into lockdown, I was doing my online business,” she explains.
It was at this time, in the lead up to Mother’s Day, that Stacey Soloman placed an order with her company.
I think I woke up a couple of days later after [Stacey] tagged me and I had over a thousand orders.
Lucy Rushton
“I was just completely blown away that she put this order in and I thought it must be a mistake, I thought it was somebody with the same name,” Lucy recalls.
“I sent the product out, fulfilled the order, and a couple of days later she tagged me in a post.”
From there, the business owner said her company “skyrocketed,” giving her the push to hand in her notice at work.
“I was absolutely exhausted working 40 to 50 hours a week for the police,” she explains.
“I would organise my parcels in my garage till one or two o’clock in the morning and then I’d take them all to the parcel drop off before I dropped my little boy off at nursery and then I’d go back to work.”
However, her business’ overnight growth wasn’t all sunshine and faux flowers.
“When you grow so rapidly it is really difficult because you don’t have the infrastructure,” Lucy explains.
“I didn’t have the stock, I didn’t have any staff, I used to drive around people’s houses, picking up their excess cardboard boxes, I was relying on that for packaging.
“I think I woke up a couple of days later after [Stacey] tagged me and I had over a thousand orders.”
Lucy praises her friend Zara with helping her through this challenging time.
“She was a wedding coordinator at the time so she was furloughed, she helped me,” she recalls.
“Between the two of us, at either end of my garden because of social distancing, we processed all of the orders.”
Lucy then began looking into a warehouse in a business park near her home.
“The rent was £22,000 a year but then the rates were another £18,000 on top, which just seemed like an astronomical amount of money,” she explains.
Every single last penny went into the warehouse, increasing my stock, paying for staff.
Lucy Rushton
“I was trying to make ends meet going from leaving the police to setting up this business, every single last penny went into the warehouse, increasing my stock, paying for staff.
“My granddad actually paid me a wage for three months out of his own money because he believed that I could do it.
“I will always be grateful for that, it made me work harder as well because I didn’t want to let him down.”
Lucy’s parents were also a big help in between “flat out” shifts with the NHS at the height of the pandemic.
Her mum helped to manage the website and emails after working full healthcare shifts.
“I owe a lot to my mum and dad, any support they could give, they did, and they were just amazing,” Lucy says, who bought her original stock with a £400 loan from her family.
I actually don’t think I’ve ever paid [my parents] back.
Lucy Rushton
“I actually don’t think I’ve ever paid them back.”
And so what started as a side hustle to cover nursery fees soon became a thriving online business.
“The combination of the lockdown and Stacey Solomon’s unexpected endorsement skyrocketed us,” Lucy explains.
However, Covid also posed a problem for Lucy’s online interiors business.
“There were obviously so many pop-up businesses during Covid with people doing them from home,” she recalls.
“A lot of people had access to the same suppliers as me so I quickly realised that we needed to find our niche.”
And so the Cheshire Gift Company became Stem & Silk, a luxury faux flower retailer.
“One thing that really took off for me was when I started specialising in artificial flowers,” Lucy explains.
“For many people, I think when they think of them they think of some dusty old plastic roses but they’ve come on leaps and bounds.
“They’re real touch flowers so they feel real and they look real and you can even get scents to spray them with so they even smell real.
“They were fantastic for people to send through the post as gifts, which people were doing a lot during lockdown.”
Lucy took a short floristry course to hone her expertise on flowers, which she said she knew next to nothing about.
And despite personal obstacles such as her divorce, having to sell her house, and a stint in hospital with pneumonia and sepsis, Lucy’s business flourished.
[We had] a drop a massive massive drop, our takings went down to about £300,000 for that year.
Lucy Rushton
She was able to fire a staff and work on charitable projects, such as supplying school meals to children during the mid-term break.
Between 2020 and 2022, her company turned over £2.4 million however, 2023 saw a significant rise in the cost of living and she was forced to downsize.
“[We had] a drop a massive massive drop, our takings went down to about £300,000 for that year,” Lucy recalls.
However, she never considered going back to a nine to five job, explaining: ” I’m too much of my own boss now.”
“At the business at the minute, it’s just myself and my new partner Ben, we’ve been together for just over two years,” she explains.
“He was an assistant head teacher at a secondary school but he quit his job and came on board to work with me.
“He does all of the marketing, all of the emails, all of the Instagram and I do the day-to-day running of the business.
“We still wrap all of our parcels and send them out together and although the business seems a lot smaller, we are looking at growing it again.”
However, it’s not exactly back to square one for Lucy, who cites her loyal customer base and significant social media following of nearly half a million across their platforms, as the key to her success.
“I just can’t wait to be running a business in ‘normal time,’ whatever that means.
Lucy Rushton
“We just have to pick up from where the cost of living crisis has left us and we’re just planning ahead for the future now,” she says.
“There’s a real gap in the market for luxury florals that sits us somewhere between Neptune and Abigail Ahern and Next.
“I just can’t wait to be running a business in ‘normal time,’ whatever that means.”
And as for Lucy, she says she wouldn’t change a thing about the past four years, even if they did age her “about 40 years.”
“Just to be able to dip in and out of work and go to Bobby’s sports day or go and watch his Harvest Festival play, it’s all about him,” she says.
“Although I now probably work about 100 hours a week, I’m 100% happier so I think that is a success in itself.”
Lucy and her partner Ben currently run everything from the business’ day-to-day to marketing between them[/caption]
