AN Ayrshire pensioner who began making woollen neckwarmers as a hobby after retiring is now selling her creations throughout the UK and as far afield as the US, Canada, Austria and the Falkland Islands.
Rowena Paton, who worked for Marks & Spencer for more than 40 years, initially sold the garments at trade fairs. Promotion on Facebook led demand to grow, before ultimately Ms Paton launched her company, Sew Nice Neckwarmers, with advice from Business Gateway.
The garments differ from traditional scarves and can be used as fashion accessories, while providing warmth in winter. Ms Paton is currently testing out a limited range for summer, and also hopes to add clutch bags to her collection later this year.
The designer, whose wares are sold in shops in Orkney, Moray, Aberdeenshire, Fife, Ayrshire, Northampton and Surrey, said: “The response to my neckwarmers has been overwhelming and I still can’t quite believe how many orders we are getting in. My idea is simple but I spent a lot of time testing materials including faux fur and wool until I had the perfect suppliers which has played a huge part in the quality."
She added: “I feel ten years younger since setting up the business and at my age it feels wonderful to be learning new things and doing something different.”
Caroline Duff, adviser at Business Gateway, added: “Instantly I felt Rowena’s product range had a lot of potential as they were so beautifully designed and prepared."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here