A Frog with a nip in your garden

6th December, 2011

After a great few years training in fashion and textiles and working abroad, Shelley Currie from Stockton returned home and started thinking about what to do next. From a little girl she had always enjoyed doing jobs around the house helping her granddad with DIY and gardening.

In early 2010 she decided that she was fairly sure that starting up a landscape design and gardening business would be perfect for her, but she needed to find some help to turn her dream into a reality - sitting at home on Job Seekers was driving her mad.

Shelley heard about Five Lamps and rang them to see what they could do to help her. Shelley was signposted onto Stockton’s Enterprise Gateway programme.

For the next few months she worked with them attending free Enterprise Gateway workshops, including one on finance and marketing. Shelley also worked with Simon Coe, Five Lamps’ Business Development Officer to help her map out the actions she needed to take to get the business off to a flying start and to access a grant from Stockton Council’s Communities Fund.

A big headache for Shelley was what to call the business. After a number of dead ends she hit on the image she wanted and ‘Spicy Frog’ was born. She started trading in September 2010 and since then the business has grown steadily.

Shelley said “Starting this business is the best thing ever, I should have done it years ago “

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Five Lamps run Communities Fund on behalf of Stockton Council to support people who are unemployed. The Enterprise Gateway is delivered by Five Lamps on behalf of Stockton Borough Council.

The Enterprise Gateway project is part-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), managed by the Department for Communities and Local Government, securing £380,643 ERDF investment. The ERDF Competitiveness Programme 2007-2013 is bringing over £300m into the North East to support innovation, enterprise and business support across the region. For more information click here.

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