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Secret Diary of a Mumpreneur: What’s In A Name? The Story of how Yolly became Claudi & Fin

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Apparently two thirds of women suffer from imposter syndrome at work but after we won the contract to supply Sainsbury’s with our lollies the word ‘imposter’ didn’t even come close.  I felt like a penguin who’d been invited to attend a sunbathing seminar in the Sahara.

I remember our first meeting with the buyer like it was yesterday.  I arrived sweating from my day job in TV, clutching a prototype box of lollies and nothing else.  No whizzy power point presentations, just two Mums from South London hoping nobody would ask us too many

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questions we didn’t know the answers to.

For a few weeks everything went smoothly.  It was all so exciting – living the dream, a contract with a major retailer and a product we were genuinely passionate about. We were riding high.

It didn’t last. A few weeks later, I got a call from a lawyer friend, telling me she’d done me a favour and checked our brand name on the trade-mark register.  The news wasn’t good. Another (large) company had registered the name before us and we couldn’t use it. In the absence of a better plan, we plucked

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up the courage and wrote a David & Goliath-style letter that went something like this:

Dear Mahoosive company,

We’ve pitched to Sainsbury’s with the awfully nice name “Yolly’ and we’ve spent loads of money (which we don’t have) on a packaging designer. Can we keep the name?

Love the Lolly Ladies

The mahoosive company said no and we realised we’d have to admit the mistake to Sainsbury’s and start the process of rebranding and renaming the company.  With no sales coming in, it was horribly expensive and it delayed our

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launch by months as we struggled to come up with a new name. In the end, the answer was right under our noses – we named the company after our chief taste testers and kids, Claudi & Fin.

www.claudiandfin.co.uk

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claudi and fin, ice lollies, mumpreneur, meriel kehoe, building a brand, tell your story

- 5 Oct 18

Apparently two thirds of women suffer from imposter syndrome at work but after we won the contract to supply Sainsbury’s with our lollies the word ‘imposter’ didn’t even come close.  I felt like a penguin who’d been invited to attend a sunbathing seminar in the Sahara.

I remember our first meeting with the buyer like it was yesterday.  I arrived sweating from my day job in TV, clutching a prototype box of lollies and nothing else.  No whizzy power point presentations, just two Mums from South London hoping nobody would ask us too many questions we didn’t know the answers to.

For a few weeks everything went smoothly.  It was all so exciting – living the dream, a contract with a major retailer and a product we were genuinely passionate about. We were riding high.

It didn’t last. A few weeks later, I got a call from a lawyer friend, telling me she’d done me a favour and checked our brand name on the trade-mark register.  The news wasn’t good. Another (large) company had registered the name before us and we couldn’t use it. In the absence of a better plan, we plucked up the courage and wrote a David & Goliath-style letter that went something like this:

Dear Mahoosive company,

We’ve pitched to Sainsbury’s with the awfully nice name “Yolly’ and we’ve spent loads of money (which we don’t have) on a packaging designer. Can we keep the name?

Love the Lolly Ladies

The mahoosive company said no and we realised we’d have to admit the mistake to Sainsbury’s and start the process of rebranding and renaming the company.  With no sales coming in, it was horribly expensive and it delayed our launch by months as we struggled to come up with a new name. In the end, the answer was right under our noses – we named the company after our chief taste testers and kids, Claudi & Fin.

www.claudiandfin.co.uk

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I’m a mumpreneur and Mum to seven year old Finlay, trying (but not always succeeding) to do both those jobs well. I’m a ninja of the juggle, nailing loads of washing on conference calls and silencing my son by conjuring a well-timed snack whilst simultaneously bashing a keyboard. My brand has grown from the kitchen table to supermarket shelf and my boy has grown from 50cm to well over a metre. I can’t take all the credit for those two things but I can try and enjoy the ride even if I sometimes drop the ball. When I’m not out and about being mumpreneurial, I can mostly be found in my spare room in ‘activewear’. Very occasionally I am actually active in it too.

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