Meeting of the Parliament 05 June 2014
I would say that the women to whom I am referring, who run their own beauty and hairdressing businesses, did that by choice. They felt very passionate about the industry.
Although, as the mother of a professional engineer, I totally encourage women to go into technical professions, we have to be careful about the balance. We should not underplay women’s achievements in what we might regard as female industries. We should take the female economy, and women as consumers, seriously, as that is an important part of our economy.
The entrepreneur who I want to praise today is both female and young. She is a fashion designer and manufacturer from Lockerbie called Kelly Alder. She designs and customises shoes and bags and is about to launch her own clothing collection called MISA, which stands for the made in Scotland initiative.
Kelly’s business is called Glitzaratti—as the name suggests, there is a lot of bling involved. She has an extraordinary talent for customising shoes using crystals, beads, diamante and even seashells. I do not think that it is any secret that the cabinet secretary likes her shoes—I would be delighted to invite her to meet Kelly and see some of her designs, because they really are fantastic, and she has sold a lot of them online.
Kelly left a well-paid job to start Glitzaratti, and I want to highlight a bit of her own life story. She says:
“like many other young people I thought”
that the dream of starting a fashion business
“would be nothing more than a pipe dream.”
However,
“after showing the world of facebook some pictures of past designs it all took off with an influx of orders ... within several months”.
Kelly is now running third in the international wedding industry awards, which she is very proud of. I wish her the best of luck with that. The internet means that manufacturers such as her can be based in Lockerbie in Dumfriesshire and sell all over the world.
We have talked about female-orientated industries, and Kelly is absolutely passionate about manufacturing because it is an important aspect of the fashion industry. That is why she called her clothing line the made in Scotland initiative. I understand that there has been a move back to clothing manufacturing in the UK from countries such as China and India, which I think is a good thing. Naturally, it means that the costs can be higher, but the quality is also higher, which certainly comes through in Kelly’s work.
Kelly has moved into a shop front in Dumfries. I asked her before the debate about the challenges that she faced, and she said that although there was a huge number of empty shops in Dumfries High Street, she was unable to get one because the people who own them would much rather that they sat empty than rent them at a reasonable market rate. Therefore, she has moved into a shop that is slightly off the High Street.
Kelly is in her 20s, but older women have a lifetime of experience and the ability to respond to consumer demand. I will talk about a couple of them as well. Heather Hall and Linda Whitelaw have set up a community cafe called The Usual Place in Dumfries. Those women are a fantastic example of the benefits of social enterprise, because they saw a gap in relation to the training of young people with additional support needs. The community cafe will work with the local college to help young people train and work in the hospitality industry. They hope that, as a result, many of them will move into full-time work in the hospitality industry. The two women have secured fantastic premises in the old Dumfries high school dining hall and have been awarded funding from the Big Lottery Fund.
I think that both those examples show that the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit is alive and well in Scotland. Certainly, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report shows that there has been a rise in early-stage entrepreneurship here. I think that, with the Government’s strategy and commitment, we will see that continue. I feel quite optimistic about the future and think that we have moved past that hand-wringing stage of the past.
15:42