Mixing enterprise and education

When a family decides to home-educate it almost always means the sacrifice of one partner's salary. However, it doesn't have to work out that way. My husband and I have been home educating for four years and, at the same time, I have managed to build a home-based t-shirt printing business up from nothing to a thriving concern.

I started the business in 2003 just after my daughter, our second child, was born. Originally, I was, working at home for someone else, making bannerettes for the Round Table and Lions Club. The printing was outsourced and my job was to sew, cut and tassle them. Our son was 18 months old when I started making the bannerettes so I spent a lot of time burning the midnight candle!

When he started school I bought the business. However, within 3 months I was pregnant again.

The t-shirt printing began almost by accident – I wanted an “I'm the Big Brother” t-shirt for James when our daughter was born so decided to print it myself as we had bought a printing machine to print the bannerettes 'in-house'. People started asking me where they could buy one... and that's how www.TeesOnline.co.uk came to be!

When our daughter was 8 months old we moved to Wales and shortly afterwards discovered home education. We were worried that I wouldn't have enough time to run a business and educate the children so I decided to let the banner work go although we'd still print up the odd order or two.

The amazing thing was that I realised a couple of years into our home-ed journey that the children were learning more autonomously than when I 'taught' them. Suddenly I had a little time available and decided to put more effort into the printing business. I began to make contacts and started selling more on eBay. I built my website and mostly worked in the evenings... and still have to sometimes when I have a big order to fill. At other times, I can do a lot of work at my laptop. Both our children have laptops too and they sit either side of me working at their maths while I am drumming up orders on the internet! You do have to get good at managing interruptions and realise that often things take twice as long to get done but that's the way it is.

We have a huge collection of educational toys and games, we also make sure the kids get to meet plenty of other children and take part in various activities – this means I have to prioritise and put work aside – hence the 'night shifts'.

As they have got older, the children have become involved too. Our son, James, is very good at coming up with sales ideas – he is a natural marketer! He also helps with the packing and dispatch of orders. Parcels have to be weighed and postage calculated and that's his job.

It is a slow process and I have ploughed most of the profits back into the business and purchased more advanced equipment. Apart from buying in the t-shirts, we do everything ourselves from design to marketing; from the actual printing to photographing our t-shirts – modelled by the children, of course.

Working at home isn't always easy, especially when the children are young and need so much attention. One thing I must mention – building my business, and my website have been very important experiences for me. It made me realise what I could do and how much I could learn... and at the same time I understand that it's that same kind of enthusiasm that causes my children to learn.

We all do better when we are inspired and engaged with what we do.

My son, aged 11 yrs has learnt to build a website and my 6 yr old daughter wants her own!

If you've got the stamina, then I highly recommend it! The whole family can learn at the same time.


Pauline Adams
PPJ Banners 'N' Qualitee Shirts
http://teesonline.co.uk