Behind the Scenes with Little Green Pigeon
Lisa caught up with Susan Joyce (between feeding baby chicks!) to find out how a serious accident led her to realign her career and set up a bird sanctuary – funded by a greetings card and gift company for people who can’t get enough of pigeons!
Visit Sue’s website at www.littlegreenpigeon.co.uk
You’ve had quite the journey to starting Little Green Pigeon. What was your previous business background?
The word ‘journey’ absolutely sums it up! At eight years old I became vegetarian and cruelty free (like many 70’s kids… not truly understanding that eggs and milk are still cruel) and decided that I would be a Registered Vetinary Nurse. This was my absolute goal and I stuck to it, qualifying in 1993. I worked in various practices and for a time I was a large animal nurse working on Staffordshire cattle farms. My thoughts at that time were that the farmers clearly loved their animals; all the farms I went to were pretty nice places for the cattle to live. As a vegetarian I was still so brainwashed into thinking ‘’they seem happy’’ and I saw the positives. Even when we attended the abattoir, the workers seemed kind to the animals and they genuinely appeared to want to end their lives quickly and with no distress. This was rural Staffordshire in the 1980s, before huge commercial farms and everything was genuinely free-range. Looking back now I can’t understand why I wasn’t appalled.
By 1998, I was working exclusively in small animal practice (pets) and I loved it. The final practice I worked at was a small animal veterinary hospital In Wolverhampton and I worked on the A & E Team. I learned so much here, but not about veterinary care, instead about the clients – the people themselves.
I became pregnant in 2002 and left work. I had dabbled in graphics for wedding stationery and greeting cards and had a small part-time business already selling these, so decided to fit this in around motherhood. By the time my daughter was one year old I had opened a shop in Stafford. By the time she was 3 years old we had a shop, workshop, studio, and 3 members of staff. We were selling internationally and had built up a good number of customers.
The wedding industry is a strange one – couples need to trust not only your product, but you as well; I was absolutely achieving that, and I attribute that to previously working with people in practice. If you don’t have people skills then you can’t front a people-based business. What I didn’t have at that time was business experience. We were one of only three specialist wedding stationery and gift shops in the UK at the time, so when a huge wedding superstore opening in Birmingham (40 minutes away) I knew we were doomed and I could see no way out of it. Customers who loved us got married and gave great reviews. However, the superstore had copied many of our products and sold them for under half the price that we could sell them for, so new customers and brides bought from there. The most common and devastating thing that would happen is that they would visit us on their way home to Manchester or London and say ‘’oh – I wish we had come here first, the quality of your stationery is so much nicer but now we have already bought everything from the superstore.’’ Absolutely gutting!
This was when most people still didn’t have internet. There was no social media (MySpace had only just been launched) and all our advertising was in national wedding magazines which charged a fortune. Within a year we were dead in the water. I managed to negotiate a sale of the business including all outstanding orders to a local business lady who wanted to incorporate this into her own t-shirt printing business. I worked with her for a year to smooth the transition, then left to teach at an agricultural college on a 6-month contract.
I had clearly got the business bug as I was desperate to be my own boss again! I started a dog walking business which grew and grew! I had a strong client base and very quickly realised I need another pair of hands. I got one employee, and another van, then two; in the end we opened the UK’s first indoor dog daycare centre. We had 30 regular dogs each day looked after by 6 staff who were just the nicest kindest women I have ever met. I LOVED that business.
Then disaster struck – I was out walking some dogs and I slipped and fell off a small bridge. I fractured my spine, got 3 bulging discs and broke my coccyx. I couldn’t walk properly for several years, couldn’t bend, couldn’t handle dogs. I knew I was in trouble! One morning I was leaving home in the van and I lost feeling in my left leg completely. I crashed head on into two parked cars and they were written off. Luckily no one was hurt – but I remember going home, sitting on the sofa with my then girlfriend and just weeping. I knew this was the end of the business. It was a limited company and we went into receivership within a month. It was the most harrowing 6 months of my life. I owed money I couldn’t pay. I owed wages I couldn’t pay. Most of the clients were just so kind, but I had really left them in trouble; some people had even bought dogs knowing they could come to the day-care centre! It was a real emotional low for me taking on all that anger and grief from other people as well. Some clients were vicious towards me. It was shocking.
I start at 5am with bird care. Baby birds need feeds every 45 minutes throughout the day and I stop feeding at 10pm.
I had clearly got the business bug as I was desperate to be my own boss again! I started a dog walking business which grew and grew! I had a strong client base and very quickly realised I need another pair of hands. I got one employee, and another van, then two; in the end we opened the UK’s first indoor dog daycare centre. We had 30 regular dogs each day looked after by 6 staff who were just the nicest kindest women I have ever met. I LOVED that business.
Then disaster struck – I was out walking some dogs and I slipped and fell off a small bridge. I fractured my spine, got 3 bulging discs and broke my coccyx. I couldn’t walk properly for several years, couldn’t bend, couldn’t handle dogs. I knew I was in trouble! One morning I was leaving home in the van and I lost feeling in my left leg completely. I crashed head on into two parked cars and they were written off. Luckily no one was hurt – but I remember going home, sitting on the sofa with my then girlfriend and just weeping. I knew this was the end of the business. It was a limited company and we went into receivership within a month. It was the most harrowing 6 months of my life. I owed money I couldn’t pay. I owed wages I couldn’t pay. Most of the clients were just so kind, but I had really left them in trouble; some people had even bought dogs knowing they could come to the day-care centre! It was a real emotional low for me taking on all that anger and grief from other people as well. Some clients were vicious towards me. It was shocking.
I was unemployed and couldn’t work while I healed. I was fortunate a year later to gain a position at the vets I used to work in as co-ordinator for the surgical team. I stayed there for 5 happy years. It was here that I started to care for the wild birds that came into our care. Most vets and nurses have no idea how to care for birds, so it was a steep turning curve – but I loved it and I started regularly taking on 50 to 100 birds each year. This is absolutely where my love for all birds (but especially pigeons) came from.
In 2019 I left the practice to move in with my (now) husband back in the Staffordshire countryside. I ran a part-time wedding stationery business again with my friend alongside the bird sanctuary. However, when the Covid pandemic hit, the wedding industry ground to a halt and yet again I was faced with the end of a business! This was the start of running a proper sanctuary funded by patrons full-time – Little Green Pigeon was finally born and I am grateful for all my experiences that led me to this point.
How is your time split between your sanctuary and your Little Green Pigeon business?
I work hard for our money! Haha! I start at 5am with bird care, this takes until around 10am and then I hit the office with artwork, emails, social media posts, and orders. Patrons receive free T-shirts and gifts so there is always work to do. Baby birds need feeds every 45 minutes throughout the day and I stop feeding at 10pm. The sanctuary birds take up around 6 hours of time each day in the spring and summer and around 3 hours a day in the winter months as we don’t have baby birds then of course. I absolutely love it and I’m privileged to be able to care for these gorgeous feathered souls.
We’re a not-for-profit business, and between our online shop sales, donations and Patrons we are extremely fortunate with funding. I draw a small wage which allows me to be able to focus on the sanctuary full time without having to work elsewhere, that really helps!
Some of the products you sell are greetings cards, but not a lot of people know that most cards aren’t vegan. What sorts of things in cards make them not vegan?
Yes, it’s shocking that most greeting cards for sale are coated in a lacquer that contains animal products! The glue on some envelopes and packaging tape on delivery boxes does too – it’s everywhere! All of our cards are made from recycled paper from a company who has high ethical environmental standards. The printing process is vegetable water-based inks, and we don’t use any lacquer on our cards at all. The adhesive on our envelopes is vegan and so is the tape we use to parcel up our orders. We also give out stickers with orders and these are biodegradable and vegan printed too of course!
Many of the designs on your cards, clothing and merchandise are created by fellow artists rather than in-house. How do you find artists to work with and how do they get paid?
We’ve been extremely fortunate to collaborate with British artists who also have a passion for wildlife and pigeons! Sometimes I see some artwork which I love and I approach the artist directly and ask them if they would like to create vegan greeting cards, sometimes they have approached us. Many of these artists are vegan, which is just the icing on the cake! For the greeting cards we don’t charge anything to set the artwork and we split the printing costs 50/50. It’s a true collaboration where we both sell the end product and that’s how we both get paid. So, their work is in the artwork, and my work is in the setting, printing and distribution. With the T-shirts, I produce and sell everything through my website for the other artists and send out their 50% share of the profits at the end of each month. They have no upfront costs at all, and I deal with all the customer service. Everything is printed to order so there is no waste and a lot of the garments are PETA approved.
There are two aims for the business: 1. Fund the bird sanctuary, and 2. Work with other small businesses to get more ethically produced vegan products out there into the mainstream marketplace. By collaborating, the cost per unit comes down for all of us and we get a really nice little community within the LGP brand. There are no contracts. It is all based on mutual trust. It works. Being kind and thoughtful is a lovely way to do business! I put most of the work in with the tees, but their social media and sales drives more traffic to us, so more people see and support our sanctuary. Everyone is a winner!
Lots of people would love to set up an animal sanctuary and run a business which directly funds it. What advice would you offer to somebody who is thinking about doing this?
Oh crikey – where to start! Okay, you need to really think this through. Be prepared to work 5 am until 10pm 7 days a week, not go on holiday, and cancel on friends and family all the time last minute if an animal needs help. In spring when it is baby season I can’t leave the sanctuary for anything apart from funerals! Also, every item of clothing I own has bird poop stains on it and I regularly am covered in lice, ticks, wasps, flat flies, mites and bird food. Getting funding is HARD work. I work 16-hour days most days to care for the birds and secure funding and make sales. If you are still keen after that has all been said, then it’s probably the right thing for you! Get yourself some animal care experience as a bare minimum. Really you want to be working alongside other rehabbers with your chosen animal to learn how to care for them properly for AT LEAST a year before taking care of poorly animals yourself. You will need to be 100% competent in your abilities or you will absolutely do more harm than good.
So, with the bad side out of the way, once you start on your journey as a rehabber you’ll meet the nicest, kindest people in society. Once you get your tribe of supporters they’ll help you, fund you, look after you and your life will feel complete. I am so happy and I wouldn’t change any part of my journey for the world; it made me who I am and it allows me to do what I do. I’m grateful every morning when I wake up that I get to help undo just a small amount of the badness that humans do to the world.
Learn more about Little Green Pigeon and consider buying some of their vegan greetings cards and gifts to support the sanctuary at their website: www.littlegreenpigeon.co.uk.
Lisa Fox says:
This is a real example of combining your passion with how you make a living. Sue didn’t just create her own business; she launched a mission that other people want to support. Be under no illusion, it’s not always an easy life – but you will find few business owners that get such deep gratification from the work they do.
