Marcus Richards
We design and produce hilarious Greeting Cards & Gifts, full of humour and controversial captions. We dare to say what other Greeting Card companies don’t say…
Tell us about yourself?
Trained as Graphic Designer, I was made redundant as I left for Maternity Leave to have Layla. Love Layla was set up as freelance Graphic Design business, but I designed some Valentine’s Day Cards with a twist and the rest, as they say, is history!
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
If I could go back to the very start, I would say, Keep going, it gets easier! A few years ago, I would tell myself to just hold on and embrace any changes. Work with all that gets thrown at you, it’s supposed to be that way.
What problem does your business solve?
We don’t necessarily solve a solution – we probably create more dramas with the controversial captions… haha! But we do solve a gap in the market for hilarious gifts and Greeting Cards, things that people really do want to say rather than the slush that’s available via the high street.
No one needs smush like that, even with the extra bling and glitter!
What is the inspiration behind your business?
As the business was started as a freelance Graphic Design business, it wasn’t intentional. I was plodding along with a few cards a day, pushing our one year old to the post office in her pushchair, when Jay (my Husband and the other half to Love Layla), hurt his back working as a renderer.
Meaning Jay was unable to go back on tools, he started pushing the socials for Love Layla and quickly fathomed how easy advertisements were, how things have changed now!
From the sofa armed with painkillers, he managed to generate audiences and sales. He then stepped into the business permanently 3 months later. It was our ride or die moment.
What is your magic sauce?
Well, I mean, there’s obviously us, we’re a team of 3 nowadays. Myself, Jay and our Vikki, we have the most wicked senses of humour between us and from them, our captions are born. You can’t buy that shit!
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
We will continue to expanding our automation systems, we will however expand our ranges that we have too.
We aim to continue to design and produce in-house, but using the same standard of wit and humour, alongside some family friendly opportunities.
Our Personalised ranges will continue to expand, generating new designs that can be personalised to the recipient. And take over the world… mwahaha!
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
Without sounding like a broken record, Covid changed for us, while we were based online, the mail system went into overload and sadly, we suffered delays.
We chose to close to avoid delays letting our customers down and to keep our staff safer. While this was a new challenge for us, how to keep the customer base in touch with us without having anything to offer for sale.
We branched into ecards quickly so people could still keep in touch with friends and families but in a contactless version. Hurdles are always good time to reflect on your business, but sometimes they just never end. Running a business isn’t always pretty!
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
There’s not a particular vision we have, everything we are moving towards is already in place and settled upon in-house with local supply chains in place. We are always up for spreading the word about our business, that goes without saying.
Aside from Love Layla, there is always a spot that I would be interested in fulfilling, is helping other small businesses.
Because we always find that there’s plenty of webinars, events and info for new business start ups, but there’s never anything I can locate that supports businesses that are established, but to keep going and updating the knowledge.
There’s a gap there in the market for existing businesses…. I’d love to be involved with something like that. Speaking to like minded people that own businesses that have tried and tested various ways and have that knowledge of owning a business. And growing on that knowledge.
