Hi, thank you for stopping by,
I am not a rocket scientist, nor do I understand where the ad blue goes into my car
What I can tell you is
I am 58 years young
Born and raised on the Isle of Man in the middle of the Irish Sea
I live in the countryside of Cheshire on the Shropshire border
I am a single divorced mum
I had a lifetime career with a small domestic carrier called Manx Airlines who went on to set up UK bases under a franchise agreement with British Airways who then led a bid to buy us out to form the largest European carrier of the time. My role was mid mgmt, training cabin crew and setting up bases through the UK an Europe.
In my earlier life from 19 years I travelled overseas with my husband for 5 years with P&O shipping on container and gas carriers as an officer's wife.
911 had a tremendous impact on aviation and BA took massive hits, as did the lives of the flight crews, we headed into huge difficulties with stopping recruitment, fatigue and sickness and the mid management staff took on more hours. This impacted on my life with a 2 year old baby at home in Cheshire and a husband that ran his own company and so our lives shattered apart when my son was 3.5 years old. For 6 months I took gardening leave to pull up my socks and post 911 BA then asked me to head up recruiting in Manchester which I did and we then set forward to training and future proofing the airline. For me it was a case of setting up training throughout Europe and I took the decision that I could not sacrifice the young life of my son who was feeling the separation from his daddy and starting school at just 4 years and 2 weeks old. The next steps for me was to step away from my career which I had known for 19 years and take on a new life as Mum and Son and try to carve out a future for both of us. I needed to establish local friends within our community over a career and family and looked for what I would love to do, equally I still needed an income to pay the mortgage and so I took a part time job at MaxMara in Chester, made new friendship groups, introduced my son to play groups, and searched for an interior design course as I loved doing up homes.
At 43 years old I knew that a 3 year full time degree course at Manchester Uni was impossible as time really was not on my side and how would I fund 3 years. I was introduced to KLC School of Design in Chelsea and also Inchbald School of Design in Kensington by a family friend. They both ran 1 year full time courses with a commitment of 33 hours per week both at the schools in London and at home for the rest of the week.
I signed up for KLC School of Design on their Certificate in Design and Decoration course and commuted for the next 10 months up and down the motorway from Cheshire, or I drove to Crewe and took the train and sometimes the shuttle from Manchester airport to Heathrow. At the end of it I came out with an honours distinction in Certification of Design in 2006.
Without any business knowledge apart from a 3 day introduction to business funded by Chester Chamber of Commerce and a 5 week business course at Salford University I set up a very small interior design studio working from home and worked on residential projects and my own homes for 3 years.
And then, a miracle my ex husband released the high court injunction preventing me to return to the Isle of Man and we were legally given permission to visit the Isle of Man and also live there if we wanted to. I did, I missed my network, family and friendship community of my small Island life and we moved back in 2009 and life was good, we lived opposite the sea and my son cycled to school for the very first time. We had friends to stay over every other weekend, searched for crabs amongst the rock pools and went dingy sailing on weekends and Thursday evenings. All was bliss for 2 years and then
my ex husband then had a life threatening skiing accident in Andorra which saw him in hospital for over 5 months and then his father and my son's beloved "Tractor Pa" was diagnosed with Leukaemia, (he had 7 tractors on a small holding) was my son's universe. And so the 4 hour ferry journey from Liverpool or Heysham to the Isle of Man or the flight of 25 mins was increasingly becoming very difficult for my son to say goodbye to his Cheshire family every 2 weeks and so we returned to Cheshire to our home that we rented out in 2012.
And I was back to Cheshire not knowing what to do next, and a friend who talked through all my fears of setting up an interior design consultancy and the bills that remained still unpaid from clients years before reminded me of my dreams of setting up a small boutique and brand for dogs. It was way back in 2008 that had set this thought off. In the middle of a field in the Cotswolds I was walking our chocolate Labrador called Drum with clients and their 2 pointers. I had been working on a design completion with a friend who had run out of time to finish the project and I picked up the latter parts. We just got on so very well and loved dogs, the talk that day when walking was all about our love of dogs, ours were out running around in the fields, and looking like they needed a good hose down full of mud. This took us onto how bad dog beds truly where, they were either large ugly oval plastic dog beds with a cushion thrown in the bottom. Or, they were badly made with fabrics with Kitsch designs of bunny rabbits and pink bow tie designs and typically they would fall to shreds as quick as you shook a box of Persil at them.
I asked our upholsterer to make up 2 very practical memory foam dogs beds for vital joint and muscle support for their long limbs and hey presto I designed and made the very first Hugo & Otto dog bed.
And so, I set about the business plan, created the foundation of the Company, worked on who I should approach to represent their products in our boutique and equally did I really want to build up a relationship with them as it was I that was making the investment into their products. Many companies gave you marketing bluff on how great they were but, in real terms their products very bad quality. It soon also became apparent that in this dog eat dog world, many brands would refuse to go into business with you if you considered another brand to sit next to theirs in your boutique. For many companies law suits were sent not on a casual basis but on a regular basis as they hustled for pole position within their hierarchy. And this was all before I opened the doors of our boutique, that is still going on to this day. There are highly aggressive business owners out there ready to take you down if they feel you are a threat to their business ranking either in google or your products.
We opened our doors in August 2014 offering the best in design, quality and show casing multi award winning dog beds and products with products from Germany, New York and California, I set the bench mark within the UK market and others followed with their back bedroom online stores.
We launched our first own brand Hugo & Otto designs in 2018 with our dog bed maker, one of England's longest established dog bed manufacturers producing high quality hand made products from the cutting table to the machinists to the packers. I search the British market to find the best British makers, suppliers of fabrics and mattresses to provide a circular and ethical supply chain.
I launched new brand Dog Company (DogCo for short) www.doco.uk
Through the pandemic lock downs I worked on souring fabrics direct from the small British owned suppliers in the UK to cut out the middle man and the huge investment the mid-heavy weight manufacturers have to face. This helps the margins decrease for the customer and managed to set out and launch in the last weeks of December 2020 Dog Company.
We offer the same high quality handmade dog bed with outer fabrics by the lesser known fabric companies. Dog Company also offers pops of colour ways, creative choose your own styles to match up with your own interior styling with fabulous comfort for your best pawsome pal.
Luxury dog beds with a choice.
We champion, British Design, British Suppliers, British Creatives, British Made.
Audited and accredited by Made in Britain®
Interviewed at the factory by Robert Lea, Industrial Editor of The Times Newspaper in June 2021.
I am a fellow of the RSA
I am a qualified interior designer
I am a single mom of a boy who is now 22 years young at Lincoln Uni
I am a fur mum to 2 gorgeous dogs
I follow the B. Corp principle of be a source for good.
And that's it, I am me, I am not perfect, I make huge mistakes and I will probably continue to do son but then I am only a woman from a Celtic Island doing nothing but the best she can for the love of dog.
Caroline x