tasty

After Natasha Mason completed her BA in Graphic Design at Central St. Martin's in 1999, she worked in a mixture of design and agency jobs, doing mainly record design, art direction and web design. After spending some time in Australia, where she became involved in t-shirt design, she returned to the UK, vowing not to return to agency work.

Natasha decided to explore setting up her own business. Because she felt that t-shirt design was becoming quite a crowded arena, she looked at other lifestyle opportunities to work with graphic textile design and decided to concentrate initially on what she calls 'kitchen couture', her range of silk-screen printed bibs and aprons.

She had a mock-up produced from initial designs, and on the basis of this won the Gift of the Year Award from the Gift Association in 2004. Around this time, she learned about ECCA from a friend who was doing an MA. Natasha attended one of ECCA's 'Creating a living' talks in Sep 2004 and was inspired and informed by Abi Williams from Rude. 'The talk was really helpful. It inspired me, but gave me a good idea of hard it would be, too. I'm still inspired by it, to carry on and push into Japan and New York. It also led to a useful connection. Abi has helped me with learning about manufacturing.'

Natasha booked what was to be the first of several advice sessions with an ECCA business advisor in order to discuss whether or not to exhibit at a trade show. After reviewing the pros and cons, she decided to wait until she had a fuller range to offer before exhibiting. By Dec 2004, she was ready, and came back to ECCA for help with the paperwork she would need to sell her work at exhibition (standard Terms and Conditions, and so forth).

That autumn Natasha also noticed an announcement on the ECCA website about the BBC's Dragons' Den TV series, where entrepreneurs pitch for finance from a small panel of investors. She applied and was accepted onto the programme. In addition to helping her prepare for her first trade show, her ECCA business advisor also helped her prepare for her appearance on Dragon's Den. Natasha found it an unpleasant experience – she didn't convince the dragons to invest – but felt that it toughened her up.

Natasha launched her business, tasty, at the Top Drawer exhibition in Jan 2005 and immediately found an important outlet for her work when a buyer from Selfridges decided to carry her range. In developing her business, Natasha has found organising production to be the most difficult challenge. She finds seeing her ECCA business advisor helps her gain some perspective on the ups and downs, ins and outs of growing her business.

For Christmas 2005 she updated her website to not only display, but also to sell her range, and then succeeded in getting her products listed in numerous gift selections for Christmas, including Harpers & Queen, Time Out, Guardian, Telegraph and Heat. In Dec 2005 she also won the Hackney Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. By Jan 2006, she found it useful to visit ECCA's tax consultant for advice on her first self-assessment tax return.

Natasha Mason's kitchen couture range is available at tasty

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