It all began with a gift. When Lizzie Spikes gave her old school friend Becky Barratt a ‘welcome home’ present upon her return to Wales it sparked the seed of a business idea that continues to grow and grow.
Little more than a decade later the pair have traded working on a sofa in front of the TV for a thriving business with almost 20 staff, three shops, and seemingly huge potential. Their business, Driftwood Designs, is based in Aberystwyth and sells homewares, cards, and gifts featuring unique art and illustrations, a lot of which celebrate Wales and all things Welsh.
The idea was dreamt up in 2012 at the kitchen table of school friends – Lizzie, aged 46, and 47-year-old Becky. During that first conversation they can scarcely have dared imagine where it might lead. They say the key to their success is their very different skillsets. While Lizzie focuses on the art Becky is responsible for all things business.
The pair met through mutual friends while they were at school in Aberystwyth but they took two very different paths that would eventually bring them back together to start their own business. Lizzie remained in Aberystwyth to study fine art and scenographic design and Becky went off to Birmingham to study before moving to London to work in TV.
She later moved to Manchester where she got the bug for business, starting her own agency for editing and camera crew. Lizzie stayed in Aberystwyth but worked as a PA, explaining it wasn’t practical to work in theatre set and costume design while staying in the town to start a family. However after having her second son she became a full-time parent and began painting on the side.
Driftwood Designs was born when the pair reunited after Becky moved back to Aberystwyth to start her family, wanting her children to grow up by the beauty of the Welsh coast. She said: “Lizzie kindly brought me one of her driftwood art works as a moving in and welcome home present.
”I was immediately like: ‘Oh, what do you do with all these? Do you sell posters?’ Lizzie said that she sort of wanted to and lots of people asked for them but she liked just focusing on the artwork.”
The pair started off selling their products at markets
(Image: Driftwood Designs)
Becky dropped the hint that she could help out in turning Lizzie’s artwork into a business and from there Driftwood Designs was born. Without a business plan in sight the pair put their skills together to organically grow the business.
Starting with cards and posters Becky and Lizzie enlisted the help of a friend at the university print department, slowly buying and selling a little bit more from their kitchens and living rooms. Part of the reason why the women were so driven to get the business to work in the beginning was so they could work around their children.
Becky had two girls, who were two and five, and Lizzie had sons aged four and eight. Their children still feature on the back of each one of the Driftwood Designs cards today.
Lizzie and Becky after winning an award at the Aberystwyth Business Awards in 2015
(Image: Driftwood Designs)
They eventually moved the business out of their homes into a shed in Becky’s back garden. Lizzie said: “We started off with a shed in Becky’s back garden so it was really exciting to get to move off the sofa. But we couldn’t watch TV at the same time we packed the cards, which was weird. Those days are gone.” For the latest Welsh news delivered to your inbox sign up to our newsletter.
They quickly outgrew the shed, which they swapped for a lock-up in Aberystwyth, but again it quickly became clear that the business was getting too big for its surroundings. Becky said: “People were coming to the lock-up and we just knew we needed a shop.”
Lizzie said the lock-up was causing a bit of an issue when customers wanted to start buying in person. “We had to move bin bags out of the way – it wasn’t very posh.”
In 2017 they opened their first shop in Eastgate in Aberystwyth, which was owned by the family who they’d rented the lock-up from. Becky said: “As soon as we got the shop, from a business perspective, my eyes just lit up really. I thought: ‘This could run now’ – we could get things moving.”
And things did get moving. Three years later they moved to a bigger space in Pier Street Aberystwyth, which is also home to the Driftwood Designs workshop where Lizzie and Becky do the wholesale and pack orders. In 2020 they signed the lease for a Cardiff store and in 2022 opened a third site, this time in Aberaeron.
Lizzie packing orders in the workshop at the end of Becky’s garden back in 2015
(Image: Driftwood Designs)
Looking back Lizzie said: “It’s just happened really.” The quantities of their card orders slowly grew bigger and bigger and they slowly started to be able to expand to other homeware items.
Becky added: “What is really nice is that all the way along Lizzie was looking at different products going: ‘Oh I’d love to be able to do lampshades, I’d love to be able to do this’ and now we’re in a position where we can do all of those things. People always ask when Lizzie is going to do more driftwood work but she’s got loads of other things she wants to do.”
While their journey and small steps they took may have seen like an “obvious path” Becky said there were still daunting moments. She said: “When we took on the Cardiff shop and are signing the lease it is a bit of an: ‘Oh my God’ moment but you’ve got to be brave.
Lizze painting the first Driftwood Designs shop in September 2017
(Image: Driftwood Designs)
“You just remember that our income relies on the business and we have 17 other people on payroll so it’s a lot of responsibility. But it doesn’t put us off – it drives us to keep going.”
The fact they have created a happy and safe work environment for others is something the women are most proud of. Becky said one thing that stands out of all the things Driftwood Designs has achieved is enabling one of their friends and employees, Sian, to buy a house. “Sian has been with us for seven years and a couple of years ago she was able to buy a house, by herself, purely on the wages she’d earned from working with us.
“That was a moment where I just thought: ‘Wow’. We’d both bought our own houses but to have created that for someone else was amazing. One of the things most important to us is creating a work environment that’s really supportive and where people can enjoy coming to work.”
The pair opened a bigger shop in Aberystywth, which is also home to their workshop
(Image: Driftwood Designs)
Lizzie added that she is also proud of the lives the pair have created for themselves. “I’m quite proud that I get to do what I want everyday. I do occasionally message Becks when I’m sat in my onesie on a Monday morning doing some painting to say: ‘Thanks for this’.”
Driftwood Designs recently had their busiest ever month and hit a figure that Becky didn’t think was possible. “It just makes you think: ‘How has all this happened? How did we fumble our way into this?’” they laughed. Becky said: “It can be quite overwhelming sometimes to think that what we sat at our kitchen table packing 10 years ago has now become something that people are really proud to own and want to support.”
Their Christmas cards are now so popular that they employ someone whose job it is just to pack them. Becky also explained that while they don’t have the biggest margins the product acts as a “big publicity drive” and makes January an unexpected busy month for Driftwood Designs with people who have received one of their cards wanting to buy more products.
Becky credits their success to Lizzie’s artwork while Lizzie suggests their different skillsets complement each other. Becky said: “I’d put it very much down to Lizzie’s work. It connects with people on different levels and so many people have such an emotional reaction to it. It gives me, looking after the business side of the things, so many areas to work on and push forward with.”
Lizzie added: “It’s all very well my work connecting with people but if I’m sat on my own in my house painting people are never going to see it are they? As an artist it’s horrible to take money from people. It makes me really uncomfortable and I think a lot of creative people are the same because it means valuing what you’ve done. I love designing the products and Becky loves the business side and the money so between us we’ve got a really good balance.”
Becky continued: “Lizzie has the final say on certain things and I’ll have the final say on others. Like I’ll jump in on the business side and say: ‘We have to charge X amount because otherwise it doesn’t make sense to do it’ but then if Lizzie is not happy with the finish of the product we won’t do it. We just play where our strengths are naturally and we do tend to agree – touch wood.”
Many of the Driftwood Designs products celebrate Wales and its beauty with daffodils, the Welsh landscape, and the Welsh language being the centre of many of the items. Lizzie and Becky are also proud to showcase their business at Welsh festivals including the Royal Welsh Show and National Eisteddfod.
On where this inspiration comes from Lizzie said: “I think being brought up here by two English parents who’d moved to Wales for university they taught me to be amazed by how beautiful it all is. I think that’s where the appreciation of the place has come from.”
Becky added: “I think it’s really difficult to explain to people who aren’t Welsh how important it is to us being Welsh and how proud we are. It’s not a particularly big club and we’re all in it together. Everyone feels similarly about Wales.”
The pair continue to enjoy their work
(Image: Driftwood Designs)
This Welsh focus is another one of the reasons why Becky thinks the business has been successful. “What is really nice and what I didn’t expect is how people who visit Wales feel that Welsh pride. There is no barrier with the language and with our products to people taking them, which I didn’t expect. I thought the Welsh collection would be niche but it’s across everything.
“For example there is a bookshop in Nottingham who buys lots of Welsh cards. It’s run by somebody who is Welsh but they love explaining to buyers what they mean. Wales is an easy sell I think because everybody who comes here loves it and keeps coming back.”
As well as the products themselves celebrating Wales Driftwood Designs are also passionate about supporting other Welsh companies and ensuring that all their products are made as close to home as possible. All their printing is done in Wales and if it is not possible to get things made in Wales they are produced in the UK.
While this may sometimes make production and printing more expensive Becky said it was important. “I think people like having that connection to the product and knowing where it’s come from.”
Another thing that has been important to Lizzie and Becky from the very start of their business is for their products to be affordable. Becky said: “Having small children and being self-employed ourselves we wanted the things we produced to be affordable to people in a similar position to us. It was always about keeping the prices as low as possible while still being able to keep things ticking over with the long-term aim of selling more to be able to increase the profit margins so that we could, as we did, get staff, get a shop and so on.”
For Lizzie, as an artist, Driftwood Designs is all about making her artwork as accessible as possible by incorporating into things people can enjoy in their everyday lives. “I hate the idea of art being something that only rich people can afford. I like the idea that people can put accessible, pretty things in their homes and use it, so if it’s on a tea towel – brilliant. People can appreciate it every day – it doesn’t have to be on a gallery wall.”
Even though Driftwood Designs has gone from strength to strength it doesn’t mean that they haven’t made mistakes along the way. “We’re definitely error-prone,” Lizzie said. Becky added: “It’s always a tense moment when anything new gets delivered just to double check that everything is spelled right.”
They both recall having to sticker thousands of products on numerous occasions when something has been spelled incorrectly. They also got all the bank holiday dates wrong in one of the first diaries they ever did. “It keeps it real doesn’t it?” said Lizzie. However Lizzie and Becky’s success means these mistakes don’t turn into a complete disaster – unlike when Lizzie tipped an entire cup of tea into a box of newly-packed cards in the early days.
One thing that is clear, though, is that the pair are still having just as much fun as when they started. In Lizzie’s words: “We’re still playing. I think we’re having more fun than we should be.”