THE STORY OF HELPING HANDS
Read on to discover more about our products, history, and our unique relationship with CLIC Sargent, the UK's leading Children's Cancer Charity!
What are Helping Hands Imprints?
Helping Hands imprints are childrens hand and feet impressions in ceramic clay. Unlike other products that offer plaster of paris, oven baked or air dried clay impressions, Helping Hands offer uniquely detailed, glazed, fired and framed impressions that last a lifetime!
Who are Helping Hands?
My name is Michelle Williams, the founder of Helping Hands, better known as 'Mum' to my two young children! Around 10 years ago, after the birth of our first child, Harvey, my desire to stay at home began to intensify. Although initially I returned to my successful career in IT marketing, I always struggled to maintain a healthy work-life balance. This became even more difficult when our second child, Elliott was born. Juggling the demands of a career with two young boys wasn't always easy!
When Elliott was still very small, I decided it was time for a change! I set about looking for a new career that would allow me more time with my family, less stress, plus the all important flexibility of fitting around the school runs! I wanted to be the one to collect my children from school and never again did I want the complication of trying to organise child-care around the holidays.
After months of searching it became obvious that decent part-time opportunities did not exist. Any job's which did catch my eye offered very low pay with limited flexibility. It seemed that Mum's, like myself, wishing to return to work part-time, really did get a hard-deal!
After much soul-searching I decided that the only option would be to start up my own business. I started to research various business opportunites and franchises. Rarely though did these offer what I was looking for. Although on the surface some appeared to offer the flexibility that I desired, they all required such huge financial investment, I knew that the strain of this would not be compatible with family life.
A Potters life for me!
About this time, I started to re-kindle an earlier interest I'd had in pottery and began experimenting taking imprints of my children. If I could produce a marketable product, I thought this might provide me with solution I was looking for. Initially I thought, "how difficult could this be?" Quite quickly I realised that there was much more to it than met the eye! I signed up for numerous pottery and ceramic classes in the hope that I might discover the 'know how' to produce a quality finished product. In fact, what I discovered was that there was no specialist help available. Nobody could tell me what I needed to know!
I travelled miles to speak to various respected potters but was always given contradictory advice. Nobody seemed to be able to tell me how I could achieve the finish that I needed. Exactly how could I reveal all of the fine lines on a baby's hand? And how could I avoid all of the numerous problems that can occur during the firing process? There was no help at hand!
I tested literally hundreds of types of clay, glazes, and firing temperatures to see what the effect would be! Finally after more than 18 months of experimentation I had found the formula for a quality finished product! I was now ready to market my business!
CLIC Sargent
At around the time that I was preparing to launch my business, a friend of mine told me that their two year old son had been diagnosed with leukaemia. My feelings of sympathy and concern for their little boy and his family were imense. Our own son, Elliott, was the same age, and I couldn't even begin to imagine the fear and devastation that such news would bring. I quickly decided that I wanted to do something to help other children and families in similar positions, so I got in touch with CLIC Sargent, the UK's leading Children's Cancer Charity, and explained to them my plan; I was launching a range of children's clay imprints, and it was my wish that 5% of every sale be donated to the charity. Helping Hands was born!
The launch of Helping Hands
With a background of more than 15 years in Marketing, I had lot's of ideas about how I should market Helping Hands. This experience has truly paid off! Since launching, I have taken literally hundereds of imprints with repeat business and referals coming in all the time. At last I have found a wonderfully profitable business with a perfect work-life balance! But the real icing on the cake? It's just so much fun!
Join us?
With the many imprints I have taken, customer's have often commented how lucky I am - "what a lovely way to make a living", they say! Of course, I can't deny it - it's true!
It was often suggested that I should franchise Helping Hands. This is something that I considered, but decided against. I didn't want to grow an empire, but I was interested in helping women in a similar position to myself. I started to think about what would have been an attractive proposition to me, when I was looking for business ideas. Back then, I didn't want the risk of paying out a huge franchise fee, with a limited guarantee of success. I didn't want to have to work within the parameters of a franchise and be forced to pay out a large percentage of my income on royalties. What I wanted was something that offered the benefits of a franchise, but with none of the restrictions.
This is excactly what our Training, Marketing and Membership package can offer you! With a little Helping Hand from us, you could be running your own successful clay imprint business in next to no time!