StarSparkles - Pauline Clifford
Pauline Clifford: My business is StarSparkles, and I customise shoes with Swarovski crystals, mostly trainers, and my signature customisation is Converse trainers
I sell to various different target markets ranging from children to men and women of all ages, I sell through Selfridges in London, which is a high market shop, also Cube Shoe Shop which is an average High Street store, and also through my website.
I've done some shoes for Paris Hilton, Justin Timberlake, Pharrell Williams and Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas.
I used to customise my own shoes just for a hobby. About ten years ago now I stopped doing that for quite a while until I got a job in Cube Shoe Shop in two thousand and four and I met my supervisor, who was nicknamed Tina Sparkle.
I remember I had some sparkles left over so I customised a pair of converse for him. He would wear them in the shop all the time, customers would always comment on them and ask him where he got his shoes from, and the shop was good enough to let me actually start taking orders from customers and then a couple of months down the line I was still taking orders things were going strong so I decided that I could actually start my own business,
Basically I wanted to be an entrepreneur because you can be your own boss, you can be as creative as you want, fulfil what your dreams you get a real sense of achievement as well em also my Dad's got his own business, so I've always kind of wanted to have my own business and be my own boss.
An entrepreneur is someone that started a business from nothing just had an idea and believed in themselves and wasn't afraid to take risks.
Things that inspired me to set up my own business, number one would probably be my Dad because he's got his own antique shop in Los Angeles, he's had that for over forty years now, I've just always known my Dad to have his own business and be his own boss, so I always kind of imagined that I would do the same, I just didn't have a clue what it would be.
Also, Tom Hunter who's a really well known Scottish business man, entrepreneur, I think he's quite an inspiration because he's so grounded, even though all the success that he's had, also people just like em like a jewellery designer called Terrina Tarantino she's really creative and kind of funky, people like that inspire me as well.
At the beginning I didn't really have any thoughts of what I would be making because my business came about kind of accidentally so when I made my business plan obviously I thought okay, I'm going to try and achieve this, and I have achieved that and more, so yeah I'm probably making more money than I thought I would be.
The money to start up my business actually came from, em, the PSYBT who gave me the full loan amount of five thousand pounds em, I used that money to start my website, get my business cards, buy stock of crystals, that kind of thing.
Other than that, I had a lot of help from the Business Gateway also, they helped me do my business plan and through the PSYBT I've also got a mentor for two years who I meet up with on a regular basis monthly with, he helps me along and keeps me on the right track.
I've been quite lucky finding my customers, and the way that when I actually started my business I was working in Cube Shoe Shop so my customers kind of came to me before I actually started my business officially. Since then, I've got a customer base through Selfridges in London, it's Office shoe shops sell from their concession in Selfridges so I get a lot of customers through there.
Office actually sends me big bulks of shoes to customise. Also I get some customers through my website which basically they find on search engines or through publicity that I've done, and newspapers, magazines, and they would email me.
I think the Internet plays a big role in my business. Basically my website is a showcase for my work, lets people know the awards that I've won, all the celebrities I've done shoes for. At the moment customers can't actually buy straight from my website, they have to send me shoes to be customised, but still I think it's an important factor in my business because it's the only way that people can see what I've done and my prices, and things like that.
So far I've had a lot of free advertising publicity through the fact that I've done shoes for celebrities and also the fact that I started my business up the way I did, on my own, and I'm a sole trader, so a lot of newspapers like took an interest in me, giving me good write ups and things like that, so the majority of my advertising has been free, and I've been lucky that way.
I've spent quite a small amount on it, but in the next few years I'll probably have to spend a lot more money on advertising as my company grows.
In the future I think I'll be looking for a possible partnership or investors, also the possibility of a growth fund from the PSYBT, em they can give you a large loan amount if you need a lot of money to put into your business, to expand it.
I really want to expand to an international market, that's my big thing at the moment, because customers actually send me their own shoes I don't have stock of any shoes and that's a big kind of downfall because obviously it puts a lot of people off, especially if you live in America, you wouldn't really want to send shoes all the way over to Scotland and then get them sent all the way back, so I have to work on getting stock of shoes myself, I can sell straight from my website.
Or I'm also considering starting my own shoe brand, as opposed to customising like known brands already, so hopefully that's my next big thing, international customers.
I definitely think I am happier now, I feel more self fulfilled and it's kind of given me more confidence, in a strange way, just like from people's responses to my business and how much they love my business and think that I'm doing really well.
In a way I do miss working in the shop because I miss the social interaction with like my work colleagues and talking to them. At the moment it's just being in the house during the day customising shoes, so it gets kind of lonely sometimes.
I've not had a lot of major difficulties with my business, but one of them has been the fact that people copied my designs. Before I even started my business, I was concerned about people copying my idea, so the Business Gateway helped me a lot with that, they told me about design registration and er basically I got the forms myself, filled them all out and sent them away and was successful.
I have a few of my designs registered, in Europe and UK and also pending in America. The other way that you can do it is hire a patent lawyer, which is a lot more expensive so I went for the other option.
There was actually a shop that opened up above Cube where I customised shoes through and they were selling converse with crystal toes so I had to go through a lawyer to get them to stop actually selling them, which cost quite a lot of money. And I'll probably have to go through that again in the future.
I think the positive thing about having your own business would be a sense of achievement also the fact that you've got total creative control over what you do and how you run your business, and you're your own boss.
Negatives would be for myself the fact that I'm a sole trader, it's only me that's in my business at the moment, and it's quite a lot to cope with everything. Most of my time is spent customising the shoes, so I don't have a lot of time to spend on marketing and other areas of my business that I'd like to spend more time on.
I've been in local newspapers quite a lot, and I think like I'm a little bit of an inspiration to local people, especially young people, so that's good.
I've got eight standard grades and four Highers, and then after school I went to college for a year and I did TV operation and production, and then I changed my mind and I did an HND in make up artistry and I thought that make up artistry would be my career, that's what I wanted to do and then things took a different path.
I think it's really important to have an educational background because you're always going to have something to fall back on, em, like the career path I thought I was going to take I didn't take that one, but I still like make up artistry and if all else fails I would like to go back to it so I think it's important to have something else as well.
I would say to someone setting up their own business just believe in yourself, em, definitely go to the Business Gateway for help and the PSYBT, also don't be scared to take risks. A lot of the time people thought I was stupid, giving loads of shoes to celebrities for free and putting a lot of money into it, but in the end it worked out, so just don't be scared to take risks.