Harriet (with glasses) and Jenny with their lovely children – from front to back in photo:
Esme (3), Edith (3), Freddy (6), Oscar (5) and Otto (1)

Your name and age: Jenny (32) and Harriet (34)

Where do you live: We live in a small market town called Market Drayton in the heart of rural Shropshire in England

Shop: Little Yellow Birds ( products which look fantastic, are great quality and ultimately brighten up yours and your children’s lives)

What did you do before you started the shop: I was an elite Triathlon coach and Harriet was an Occupational Therapist

And how did you get the idea to open an online shop: As we live rurally and both have young children we tend to use the internet a lot for shopping and inspiration. We found lots of things we loved from far and wide and decided that we should bring them all together under one umbrella. We realised there must be so many people in the same situation as us and decided we could create a “real” shopping experience for those people who no longer get the opportunity to get pleasure from “physical” shopping.

How do you choose the products and/or collections you sell: Everything we have sourced is stuff that we love ourselves. Quality is of paramount importance to us and we choose things that have a strong design element. We are constantly on the look out for new products and like to choose things which are a little bit different from the mainstream products you find out there. Our signature style is bright and quirky.

What is the most fun part of this adventure: This is a really fun thing to do. We get to shop legitamtely! We love the fact that surfing the internet and browsing the shops and trade fairs is actually part of our work. Of course it’s really hard work too!

What do you think will be the next trend: As we ourselves have discovered the internet is a massive place and offers so much scope for inspiration. We think that the Scandinavian vibe will continue to feature heavily (repeat patterns, simple lines) but also that as people start to explore a little more they will move away from your every day high street items and start to branch out into to something a bit different.
We also really love the work of artists such as Rob Ryan and James Brown and think/hope their designs and style will be influential.

Little extra story: Harriet and I were very good friends before we became business partners. We have very different personalities but very similar values so we compliment each other well. Prior to starting this venture we looked into a number of other avenues. One of these included designing and making things ourselves. We got our sewing machines out and sourced some lovely fabrics and set about making some hot water bottle covers. They were a disaster. Our stitching was wonky and when we came to turn the first prototype around we realised (I say we, I mean Harriet!) had sewn the applique design on back to front and the wrong way round. Needless to say we decided there were other people out there who were far more talented than us and we should just set about finding them!

{Thank you Jenny and Harriet!}