Find out how two mums started their business …and read to the end of the article to find a fab discount offer for you.

The Little Blue Dog concept was born in 2004 when my friend, Melanie and I were nursing 3 and 8 month olds babies. Fundamentally it came from a bottle of wine, and a belief that we really could create a company that gave us the opportunity to make a living and allow time to raise our families. Having children really does give you the opportunity to reassess your lot, and we quickly realized that we did not want to return to our stressful, and often unrewarding careers in management consultancy and nursing.

Melanie had always had a keen interest in clothes and design and with babies ourselves we soon became experts!  We set to work on creating a unique range of baby clothes for the under twos. We really wanted to create something fresh and innocent, that was big on style, tasteful and had some educational messages too. Our aim was to create clothes that appealed to design savvy parents whilst preserving the innocence of childhood.

Very early on we assembled a group of around 20 new parents and asked them to thoroughly test our clothes and feedback on our designs. Their comments and feedback stopped us making a number of costly mistakes! That was an invaluable exercise for us and has shaped the way we work now.

In the early days we sold our wares at craft fayres and the like, really to test how our clothes were being received. The fantastic response gave us the confidence to push on and really invest time and of course money in the business. We set about creating a web presence, sought out stockists for Little Blue Dog, and created a limited company.

Four years on, Little Blue Dog is thriving……we are still in business, which in these times is something to shout about!  We enjoy strong sales on our website and have an increasing number of stockists, both in shops and online. Our clothes now go all over the world too, which is such a strange thought for us when they have been created on our kitchen tables!

Our highlights have included, growing sales year on year; appearing on BBC’2 Working Lunch programme as Mumprenurs; and some great coverage in the press. Most importantly, we get some lovely feedback and we have lots of returning customers, which means so much to us. We also have a number of high profile clients. It is surreal to see orders come through from celebrities and ponder on who may see our clothes!

However there is a health warning attached to starting your own business. For our part we have worked harder than we have ever done, had more arguments with our husbands and at times gone months without wages.

But we wouldn’t change a thing. The satisfaction you get when something really goes to plan is amazing and we have learned so much. Most importantly we have been able to spend lots more time with our families. (The only drawback is I have been up till midnight doing the books!)

Discount code for readers: Get a fabulous 15% off at Little Blue Dog. Simply enter LBD7 when prompted at the checkout to get the discount. The code is valid until 31/12/09.