Siblings who began business in dining room with £50 make first £1m 2023

After starting their arts and crafts company with pennies, a brother-sister dream duo will make their first million.

In late 2015, Katie Williams, 28, and Evan Townsend, 34, founded Arrow Gift Co., a Netherley greeting card and gift company, with £50. They make six figures selling hundreds of thousands of cards, mugs, coasters, and novelty wine labels online.

“We could only afford the most basic equipment, which made production extremely slow,” said Evan from Childwall. We worked from Katie’s one-bedroom flat’s dining table with our greeting card printer in the center of her living room.

“As we grew, the workload became too much to handle—at Christmas time we’d start making orders at 7am and wouldn’t stop until around 3am the next morning, then we’d wake up and start again.”

Katie was an office worker and Evan an optical lab technician before starting their firm.

“I hand-draw all our designs and artwork,” Katie stated. My workday is never dull because to our quirky and colorful designs. I’m driven and enthusiastic when I love my profession.

We struggled to pay rent and utilities in the first several years of company. We worked 24/7 to keep the lights on.

We had no personal bank accounts and withdrew £20 every week from our Etsy site to shop.

“After the covid lockout, we were selling our personal items and furnishings from our house to keep the business viable.

“Over the last year or two we have worked hard to reorganize the firm and we’re now making six figures and even seeking to grow into larger facilities and hire additional workers.

“It took a long time to get here. For years, we struggled daily despite seasonal surges. We’ve grown the firm to where we have a stable income year-round in the past year. Etsy sold approximately 260,000 things.”

She said that their mother Jackie Dyer’s unwavering support made the enterprise successful.

“Our main inspiration is our mum, her strong work ethics and relentless “never give up” attitude has kept us going through a lot of the struggles and lows of running our business,” she added.

“The three of us run the company and we could never have been in this position without her.”