One Year of Teddy Eva Scents LTD

Year Review

Hello there people of the internet! Believe it or not, there are now over 7000 of you who’ve opted to have these emails in your inbox. If you’re new and you’re expecting this to be a legit professional business newsletter then…

Anyway… It’s now officially the end of our first financial year for Teddy Eva Scents - as a limited company - so I thought I’d sit down and write some bollocks about the past year.

First things first, why did we even go limited?

Umm… I think the main reason was because my accountant suggested that we did. On Feb 2nd we basically hit the threshold to get VAT registered in terms of me being self employed, but if we then went as a limited company we would have a fresh threshold and wouldn’t need to register.

Not that it mattered that much as 6 months later we had to do it anyway 😂

But I’m glad we went limited as I MUCH prefer having Teddy Eva Scents being a separate legal entity to myself. Certainly makes accounts a lot easier, although I’m guessing it’s more expensive as we’re now paying around £136 or so a month for our accounts 😂 but that does include payroll, VAT returns etc.

Anyway… that’s a shit short story on why we went as a limited company. Moving on…

What’s changed over the past year?

Jeeeeeez! Absolutely loads. For a start, we had Teddy. Having three kids certainly made running a business a LOT harder. I think we feel like we’re basically on the go non-stop every day and wonder how the hell the days go by so quickly. The house feels like it’s on the verge of being a shit hole every 2 seconds and trying to sort out payroll while shit is kicking off isn’t always the easiest 😂

BUT… at least I don’t go up the unit at stupid times in the morning. I think Isabelle would kill me now. In fairness, Rachel wouldn’t be too keen either.

This time last year I was still going up at 4/5/6am and Rachel would then do the school run with Isabelle and then often come up the unit with Archie. We might swap for the 11:30 pickup and one of us would come home anywhere from 2-4ish. But that was simply because it was just me and Rachel, so we had to get all the work done ourselves.

But doing it like that was just unsustainable. We had a terrible work/life balance - especially as Rachel was still working two 12 hour shifts a week on the NHS - so we reallllllly needed to sort something out.

And then along came Jenny

I actually first text Jenny on the 30th of September 2020. Not that I asked if she wanted to work for us, I offered her £60 to work to cover me in Royal Mail 😂

Then she ordered from us in Oct, and then November, and I’m guessing I half offered her a job in her thank you card as she messaged me asking what we were offering. The worst part is, and I have evidence of this via text, she did say “I only want paying with wax melts”.

But nope. Apparently you have to pay people in actual money 🙄

It then took us a little while later - Feb 19th - to actually take it a bit more serious and see if Jenny wanted to do the odd shift with us as well as work for Royal Mail. I believe she was the first person to know that Rachel was pregnant because I said “we might need more help in 9 months time” 😂

Luckily she came and helped us out. And fair play to Jenny she worked the two jobs for a few months before she officially quit Royal Mail and signed with us on June 23rd.

Honestly, without Jenny this business just wouldn’t be where it is. I have no idea who else we would’ve asked to help us out and ultimately work for us because I REALLY wouldn’t have wanted to just put the job out there, and I didn’t have a clue who else we could’ve asked.

Like we had to go with someone we knew because I had no idea how to “be a boss” in terms of contracts, pensions, annual leave and all the other stuff. But we learned as we went. I think as long as you’re transparent and don’t try to tuck people up, then you’ll be alright.

Literally 99% of this business we’ve had to learn on the fly. From actually MAKING wax melts, to CLPs, the website, contacting suppliers, clamshell designs, packaging, running a unit, workplace pensions… no one really tells you any of this stuff. It just comes up, you have to learn about it and then you go with it.

Fast forward to today and we have 3 people on the payroll: Jenny, Caroline and Kathryn. I can sit here now and say “absolutely no chance do we want to grow any more over the next year and take more people on” but I think I’ve learned that that’s not up to me. None of it ever has been.

Did we want to be where we are now?

NO CHANCE.

If I’m honest, we just wanted to do this as a little side thing out of the house that would hopefully mean I could drop a day or two with Royal Mail and spend more time at home with the kids. That was it.

Spending more time with the family has ALWAYS been the goal.

And sometimes I do have to remind myself of that. Hence why I’m unbelievably grateful for Jenny, Caroline and Kathryn for helping us be able to better find the balance. And that’s why when the business is doing ok, I’m more than happy to pay it forward to them too.

But that was it. We never had big ambitions of growing Teddy Eva Scents. Not even a single plan of what to do. We basically ran Teddy Eva Scents week-to-week - sometimes it felt more like day-to-day - winging shit as we went.

Everything that has happened with the business has been entirely organic and without really feeling like it was our choice. It’s more like we’re just steering a boat down a rapids. We’re not really deciding on the pace or that much of the direction, we’re just on board making sure everything’s ok.

To be honest, I just try and have fun with it, try not to take myself too seriously, and just hope for the best.

Although I think you’re all well aware that we don’t take ourselves too seriously as who the hell else is going to do a Butt Buddy Box 😂 and then literally design a butt plug character 😂 I mean look how cute he is…

Anyway… What’s in store for the next year?

Like fuck do I know.

Rachel will probably quit with the NHS in December, so she’ll officially be employed by Teddy Eva Scents. Don’t get me wrong, she’s currently counted as a “director” but an unpaid one. So all that work Rachel has done over the past two years has all been unpaid. Soz mate. Although we share our money completely so it's not like it matters.

But it’s been a mad year, and hopefully we can keep the happiness going - both for you lot, ourselves and everyone involved in the business - and hopefully we can just have some fun along the way.

I’m not going to sit here and go “oh we wanna hit X number of orders this year” or any of that wanky bollocks as I don’t really think about it. I just wanna do some cool shit, make sure everyone working for us is paid and happy, spend more time with the kids when they’re young and still think I’m cool, and make sure me and Rachel still love each other.

At the end of the day, when all is said and done, it’ll be me and Rachel in the nursing home aimlessly looking at each other thinking “damn where did that 50 years go” so it would nice to still enjoy each others company too and love each other. Which at the moment I can safely say that we still do.

What’s that? Oh yeah… Like not all the time. I still have my mental cycles and Rachel can’t work out which “Ross” she prefers. And sometimes she wants to stab me. Or kick me. But you know… with love 🤔 but yeah… we’re all good 😂

And thank you for reading all of this. No idea what you got from this - as always - but thank you for just being here. Whether you’re new, or you’re sat there like “Ross I know all this shit I saw it all happen” or this is your first email. I’ve been Ross and this is Teddy Eva Scents.

Much love,

Ross & Rachel x