Audrey & Coco

Who we are

I’m Emma – wife to Mr B, mum to a 4-year-old, baby boy/girl twins and 2 fur babies (more on them later)…

I’ve always loved making things, from when my Nan taught me how to knit and let me peek inside her buttons housed in an M&S shortbread biscuit tin. I’ve been brought up shopping small and local – my Grandad would take me to a tiny newsagent sometimes after school and let me pick out a magic painting book.

Fast forward a few years and I studied Retail Marketing in Manchester, shopping in small indie shops and spending hours looking around Afflecks Palace, filled with quirky designers.

After uni, I started my own business making colourful, kitsch jewellery. My work was stocked internationally and sold through my own website. Eventually, I fell out of love with what I was doing and gave in to the lure of having a regular income, spending the next 10 years working as a manager for fashion retailers and department stores.

In 2016, whilst on maternity leave, I came home from a random Hobbycraft trip with a pack of typewriter letter stamps, some ink pads and blank cards. I stamped those first cards on my living room floor. After brainstorming names with my friends, Audrey (a glossy black cat) and Coco (a shy calico kitty) were the inspiration for my business name.

Eventually, I couldn’t keep up with the demand of hand stamping every card, around a toddler and working my 9-5 (or more realistically 8-6), so I changed methods to start printing digitally.

My favourite part of running Audrey & Coco is that every time she hears the “kerching” of one of your orders coming through, Martha shouts “NEW ORDER!!”. I can’t wait for the twins to do the same when they get older.

Running Audrey & Coco means I work most nights when the kids all go to bed, and I probably spend too much time checking my emails. But it also means I can be there for nursery pickups, big walks at the beach and hopefully, I can finally spend a Christmas at home with my family rather than working in retail.

Your orders genuinely mean the world to me, so thank you.