Millie Grace Design: A 20 Year Old Student And Her Journey Of Growing A Business During Covid-19
- carablackhall7
- Feb 12, 2021
- 3 min read
Supporting small businesses has never been more important since Covid-19 came into our lives. The pandemic we find ourselves living in has resulted in many people around the world starting up their own businesses due to the fact that they have gained some inspiration to start doing something that they love. Millie Grace Adie did just that by starting up her own digital vector art print business during March of 2020 at the age of 20, Millie Grace Design.
Millie’s business is all about capturing moments in time from old photographs to new photographs and designing them into prints that people can purchase. Millie completely runs the business on her own from the likes of handling the money, going to the post office to post the prints and of course, the drawings.
It all started when Millie was put on furlough at the beginning of lockdown and started to receive 80% of her wage. Since March, her business has continued to grow and has become extremely popular despite the impacts that Covid-19 is having on people financially.
Millie said: “I study architectural technology at Robert Gordon University therefore I had all of the Adobe packages to be able to do these prints and I hadn’t seen a lot of people do anything like this before.
“I put a post on my main page and had a lot of response of people wanting to buy these prints, so I thought, why not?”
Starting a new business up during such an uncertain time would be daunting to anyone due to the fact that many people may not be able to support you due to their financial situation. You may not be able to recoup the money that you invested into developing your business because to put it simply, people may just not have the money to support you. This is something that Millie was aware of when it came to developing her business.
Millie said: “Having started my business in lockdown, I felt as though it was a fresh and new idea that a lot of people wanted to take part in.
“After this phase of excitement passed, I thought no one would want to order any more, however with birthdays and Christmas alongside anniversaries coming along, my business has actually been extremely popular.
“However, I do understand that due to Covid-19, everyone’s wages are cut like mine and I understand it’s like a domino effect amongst us all.”
Millie was recently made redundant from her job at Topshop, which has been a hard hit to take as she received no redundancy pay due to only being there for two years. This has resulted in Millie Grace Designs being her main source of income for the foreseeable future.
Millie said: “I am forever grateful for the people who know this about me and have continued to support me even when times have been tough for them too.”
Millie Grace Designs is continuing to grow, and the talented 20-year-old has many plans to take forward for her business in the future. Millie is graduating university this year and is hoping to find a graduate scheme but has no plans to stop growing her business whilst doing so.
Millie said: “I hope to take my business further by doing things like giveaways with bigger companies around Aberdeen, and having more and more people share my business across their social medias.
“My only advice for people would be; if you have something that you love doing and you know that people will love it as well, go ahead and do it and don’t be afraid of failure.”
@milliegrace.design
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