Happy Easter for mothers as card firm sales rocket

TWO mothers who set up a greetings card "cottage industry" told today how their firm has defied the downturn.

Jeanette Fuller, 40, and Sarah Dennis, 41, run Ta-daa! from their living rooms. Their website, which got 800 hits a day over Christmas, allows customers to create their own designs.

The pair, from Kingston, have seen turnover nearly triple in a year to a projected £25,000 and they are now selling a range of Easter cards.

The market is growing every year, and lucrative sources of income include young people seeking "edgy" designs, the Polish religious community and firms creating cards with cartoons of their staff. Royal Mail expects to deliver at least 12.5million cards this Easter.

Mrs Fuller and Ms Dennis are among a new wave of former corporate staff running businesses from home after taking redundancy. Start-up numbers in London rose last year from 91,700 to 93,500, according to Barclays Bank.

Mrs Fuller said: "We wanted something that gave us more family time, but we also wanted out of the corporate world to be in more control of our lives. A lot of people feel like that now."

Ms Dennis said Ta-daa! aimed to provide a fun, inexpensive product that contrasted with recessionary gloom. The cards have more than 300,000 combinations and cost from 48p each.