Thousands of Edinburgh mums commit to supporting local businesses over Christmas

In a growing Facebook community group, named The Mumpreneur Revolution, the women have come together with a plan to support local by spending at least £50 of their Christmas shopping budget each on other local businesses and therefore keep the money circulating within Edinburgh when it needs it most.

Coronavirus has hit retailers, particularly small local ones, the hardest this year with thousands now looking to shop locally to help out.

Orlaith Brogan, who founded the Facebook group has facilitated the movement by creating The Epic Gift Guide, which champions small businesses created by other Edinburgh mums by allowing them to list their business on the site so people can shop directly from them.

Committed to getting the word out there, the site is free to list on with the only condition being those who list their business on the Epic Gift Guide share the website with their own customers or following and commit to spending at least £50 of their Christmas budget on retailers listed on the site.

Orlaith said: “The Mumpreneur Revolution is a free Facebook group for mums in Edinburgh and we’ve been providing a lot of support during lockdown. One thing that kept coming up was about small, local businesses being hit because sometimes joining local groups to sell costs money, and women are the main buyers. So we came up with the Epic Gift Guide.

“There are over 150 businesses listed on it and it is split up and easy to shop with listings like ‘gifts for her’, ‘gifts for him’, ‘gifts for children’ and ‘experiences and by joining the guide these businesswomen commit to promoting it on their network and spending at least £50 on other local Edinburgh based businesses.”

Orlaith, who is a business coach herself, believes their group are the only ones doing something like this in Edinburgh.

“There are so many options,” she added, “There’s hand sourced products, cakes baked using foraged items, and we’ve used the group for child care and networking, there’s other mums giving others jobs. It’s a real community.”

Local traders have been particularly hard hit by Covid-19 restrictions, with many turning to the likes of bigger names such as Amazon for convenience.

“There’s no one championing these people right now.” Orlaith said, “For mums in business it’s very lonely and these women are incredibly passionate about their work so the group has provided a real form of support for them over the past year.

“When shopping local, the service is so much better, you’re getting bespoke products and giving confidence back to local people when supporting their business. This is people’s dream and I think the support we have for each other is amazing.”

Examples of local businesses on the site include Satisfashion, a styling business for men and women by Laura Russell, Graceful Changes, which is a kids’ clothes subscription service, Litty’s Larder which offers sweet treats with locally sourced and foraged ingredients, Maison Macron for homeware and Irish Dance Village which has gift vouchers available for dance lessons.

As well as supporting each other’s businesses, the women have also networked, gaining new friends and colleagues in the process.

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