A mother and daughter from Bury have launched a successful fashion business after they were both furloughed during the pandemic.

Nicola Fay, 53 and Becky Christian, 27 have run Le Mamma Boutique on Bury Market since August 2021 after Becky launched her online shop the previous year.

The boutique sells Italian ladies clothes ranging from sizes 8 to 24 and aimed at anyone aged between 18 and 75, with Nicola focusing on the online shop and Becky on the market stall.

Becky, who is mother to four-year-old Jackson, set up the online stall in order to bring in some extra income to help her take care of her son, and after she was furloughed from her job at a café, the business began to take off.

The shop name, Le Mamma Boutique reflects both the mother-daughter business partnership, and Becky’s dedication to her son.

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Nicola said: “[We chose the name] because it was mum and daughter and because [Becky] was doing it for her little boy to be able to work around nursery school.”

They aim to appeal to a wide variety of women and have therefore chosen to  to model all the new stock themselves.

Nicola added: “I’m a size 14/16 and Becky’s a size 10/12 and we’ve had really good feedback from customers eeing them on real life, real shaped, different shaped bodies.

“They can see how one item looks on a size 10 and a size 16, we both try and icture them together and upload them to the website.”

The former sales manager says that starting a new business has been challenge, but that the experience has been a ‘learning curve and an education.’

Keeping up with customer demands, rent and salaries can be tough but Nicola says that having a stall on the market has been really beneficial, particularly during the cost of living crisis.

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She said: “I think we’ve been really lucky, we do rely on the coaches that come and visit [Bury Market] and we’ve been quite lucky that they come with the intention to shop.

“We haven’t noticed a drop in the market trade, but we have noticed a slight drop on the online trade.”

In the future, the mother and daughter team would like to expand into a retail shop when the time is right.

Nicola said: “We’re hoping to expand into a retail shop base however we don’t want to do that until the economy is back to where it needs to be.”