Brightlingsea artist and greetings card publisher Olivia Reilly has collected a small business award from Dragon’s Den star Theo Paphitis – two years late.
Olivia, founder of Olivia Goddard Designs, discovered she’d won a Small Business Sunday award in March 2020 – just hours before lockdown was announced – so she had to wait until last week (February 25) to be presented with her certificate at the International Conference Centre in Birmingham.
Olivia, who runs Little Boat Gifts in New Street with husband Pete, started producing greetings cards from her artwork ten years ago with help from The Princes Trust. Since then she has been working hard to increase her greetings card ranges and add other gift products to her catalogue. Attending the conference and presentation day gave her the chance to meet other like minded,small businesses owners.
“We had such an amazing time, meeting lots of inspirational businesses,” said Olivia. “We are really proud to be amongst the 0.8% that get chosen.”
Small Business Sunday was created by Theo Paphitis in 2010. Each week, Theo rewards small businesses that tweet him @TheoPaphitis and describe their businesses in one tweet. Every Monday night he then reviews and chooses his favourite lucky six who are then re-tweeted. As he has over 450,000 followers, this provides a massive boost to the chosen businesses – benefits include more Twitter followers, positive publicity and increased sales.
