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Almost 20 years ago I set up a curtain and soft furnishing business based at Moor Lane Business Centre in Widnes. For a couple of years this was a fairly successful venture, considering I was a full time mum and homemaker and really only fitted it around my commitments. However circumstances change - life has a habit of throwing you a curve ball now and again and I had to return to my previous profession of computer programmer with a guaranteed monthly salary to pay for our household bills etc...

I had a successful career in a large national bank and progressed through the ranks to a management role with responsibility for a team of around 15 people. And whilst I loved most elements of the role I didn't enjoy the red tape and corporate ways of doing things like performance management and formal appraisals etc. So all the time I had hankering to work for myself again, preferably in a fairly creative role and as I love people and am definitely considered a 'people person' looked for something that would fulfil these needs. I'm very passionate about shopping local wherever possible and loved the idea of helping small businesses , so decided that a local magazine would be fantastic. As my previous business had been in Widnes it seemed logical to set up my new business there. So back in November 2009, knowing nothing about sales or magazine publishing decided to give it a go.

I was really nervous approaching my first 'prospect' Diane from Ladyzone, but she could see I was passionate about it and booked a full page in the first magazine. That was it... fired with enthusiasm and a desire to have a really busy mag some 5 weeks later, in the first week of December,our first publication was delivered to 2.5 thousand homes around Widnes. It was very cold and wet weekend, I'd roped in as many family and friends who were mad enough to coming trudging through the streets and over the weekend we did it!

Luckily for me but maybe unfortunately for him - my son Phil then joined me, and the business became a family business! He'd not long since graduated from Leeds University with an architecture degree, secured a job with a practise in Manchester, but like many in the building and associated trades was a victim of the recession and was made redundant. With all the design experience he'd had coupled with his natural eye for design it made sense for him to work along side me.

Not long after that we added Runcorn Local and increased distribution to around 4000 for each mag. We then decided to increase distribution still further and now go directly to 10,000 homes in both Runcorn and Widnes - a massive 20,000 in total!

So, we've gone from strength-to-strength over the last couple of years when the country has been in recession and other print media companies have been in decline. We can attribute this to the fast that even though businesses are cutting back... they still need to advertise and we are much more cost effective option for them.