Michelle is an extremely talented and original designer with an instinctive feel for the lingerie market. Her idea to take design inspiration from Playboy's 1950's Bunny Girls proved to be a massive success with customers and ultimately resulted in Michelle designing and developing the 'Bunny Lift Bra' to recreate a similar look and cleavage of the original Bunny Girl costume.

During her time at BCI, Michelle used her out going personality and infectious enthusiasm for lingerie design to build extremely strong relationships with colleagues, Playboy management in the USA, key suppliers and factories as well as buyers and retailers. She would be a great asset for any lingerie team and we are sad to lose her from ours but hope to work with her again in the future once she is up and running with her new freelance business.

We wish her the very best of luck for the future!

Neal Futcher
Managing Director
Branded Clothing International Limited

Michelle is a lovely person and a brilliant businessperson :-)! x

LAST DAY OF VOTING BUTTERFLIES

First of all I want to say how overjoyed I am about the sunshine! Had lovely weekend with lots of fun family time!

Well today is the last day of voting and I have little butterfly feelings within my stomach!

The last few weeks since being chosen as one of the finalists have been amazing. I just want to say thankyou to the team at ifwecanyoucan and also to Chris and the editors of the Hartlepool Mail. All of whom have been great and really helpful and supportive.

I would also like to say thankyou to Stuart Drummond and Jaki Savage for their continued help and support too and for organising my meeting with the Enterprise team at Brougham Terrace Hartlepool. Mick Emmerson and Andrea have been great and helped me realise that Im not on my own in this!

Good luck everyone

looking forward to seeing you all soon

Michelle is a fab person who deserves to win the competition, I may be being a bit bias as she's my beloved older sis, but I really want her to win. She spends a lot of her time helping others and would love her to recieve the same support she gives others.

Leanne Taylor

Freelance ups and downs

DEADLINES

what a week last week was! I seemed to have two deadlines looming on me which meant no social time for me at all! I'm not complaining as the feeling I get when I've finished a good project is second to none.I feel so chuffed if not wiped out!!

 One project was lingerie for the U.S for my colleague in Hong Kong and the other was prints and creative graphics also for the states too.

Very different but both needed lots of creative energy!

I loved doing both projects and have been working on and off on them for the last few weeks.

..thankfully I  managed to get away at the weekend to the west coast of Scotland which was just what I needed..lots of beach walks, good food and a bit of dancing!

MAYOR MEETING

Had a really good day Monday too when I met with the Mayor of Hartlepool, Stuart Drummond to talk over my plans for the business and tell him all about the if we can you campaign. He was so helpful and is already on the case setting up meetings for me in order to get the most help I can from Hartlepool council. He seems to really care about the people of Hartlepool and wants to support new businesses in the area.

HARTLEPOOL MAIL BEEN AMAZING

There has also been some positive activity on the press front with the Hartlepool Mail being stars and very supportive of myself and Les too. There has even been a few lingerie boutiques contact me via the Mail to learn more about the range and my plans!!Thanks Chris for passing on details.

see links to read the articles.

All in all its been a bit of a roller coaster this week as waiting on some folks to pay invoices and trying to gently remind them without seeming like a stalker! 

I must say though the feeling that I have being in charge of my own future and my own destiny is something that Im thriving on. Been to a fabulous Marketing seminar hosted by pulse creative marketing that found inspirational too.

I'm off to the Sunderland Uni Blueprint awards tomorrow with my friend Shirley who is a finalist in the Creativity section. So will be cheering her on a well as Chooba I think! Good luck to you both!

Right I best get on... as this afternoon Im going to do some C.V and promotion packs to send out to potential customers.

thanks everyone for votes so far and lovely messages...anytime Im fretting and worrying I read them and it spurs me on!!

x

Michelle is as an inspirational entrepeneur. She is far better looking than Richard Branson but I believe she has the same entrepreneurial spirit.

Mave Wilson

Michelle is a truly amazing designer and an
inspiration to other people. Her personality radiates in every room
she enters and is a pleasure to work with.

Shirley Anne Wood