Mum and son who launched 'pillow with hole' with £50 make £500k a year

A mother and son who launched a “silly” pillow business with just £50 are now turning over £500,000 a year and “changing people’s lives” with the unique product which stemmed from a desire to reduce ear pain. Tim Leigh, 39, and his mother Judy Leigh, 63, launched The Original Pillow with a Hole – a unique pillow designed to eliminate ear pain by reducing friction and pressure – approximately a decade ago.

The idea came from Judy who had suffered from chronic ear pain since the age of nine and used makeshift solutions to sleep comfortably, such as resting with her ears between a teddy bear’s legs. One night, in sheer frustration, she “tore a hole straight through a pillow” and “plonked” her ear into it – and after sleeping through the night, this is how The Original Pillow with a Hole was born.

READ MORE: Schoolgirl took dog for a walk by canal and then this man appeared

READ MORE: M62 closed due to serious crash involving two lorries and a car - live updates

Using just £50 from Tim’s savings, the mother and son duo officially launched the business in around 2014 – and now, the pair are changing lives and even “saving marriages” with their unique pillows. Tim, the managing director, who lives in Liverpool, told PA Real Life: “When she (Judy) first started, to me, it was absolutely mind-blowing that the pillows were selling.

“They weren’t sophisticated, she had just gone to Argos and bought three pillows for a tenner, she didn’t even have a sewing machine, she wasn’t a seamstress. She sewed by hand a hole in this pillow, took some dreadful photographs, put it on eBay, and people bought it – and that just screamed there’s a massive need for this.

“It was just a hobby at first, a side hustle, and then I said to her, ‘Can I join you in this and run the business?’ And there we are – that was 10 years ago.” Judy, the director of the business, who also lives in Liverpool, added: “Of course, working alongside Tim is life-changing.

“A dream come true really, because I’d previously owned a business on my own for a long time, but I now get to work with my son. It’s wonderful, and we make a great team. It really is a win-win situation. We help others, and at the same time, we maintain a close family bond.”

Judy first became aware of her ear pain, believed to be caused by allodynia – a type of neuropathic pain – around the age of nine, describing the sensation as “an intense ache” in both ears. This meant she struggled to sleep for years, often waking up in the night, and had to find her own solutions to alleviate her symptoms.

“It’s an intense ache and burning pain that begins when anything brushes or touches either ear for even a couple of seconds. Even a breeze or a bob hat will do it,” she explained. “So, a pillow against my ears was just a nightmare every single night.

“I’m a side sleeper, and even if I tried sleeping on my back, the pillow would touch both my ears at the same time, so it was double the pain.”

At home, Judy slept on a teddy bear’s legs for years and said “it really worked” – but while in the Sahara around a decade ago, she had to find an alternative mitigation strategy. “On holiday in the Sahara, we only had a sandbag to rest our head on to sleep,” she said.

“It was impossible with this condition to put my ear against it, so I pressed a wide and deep indentation in the sand and cloth bag, and it worked a treat. “However, sometime later, I was so frustrated and in a lot of pain that one night I just tore a hole straight through a pillow, plonked my ear into the gaping hole, and didn’t wake until the next morning.

“I had no pain and was still lying on the same side. That’s how the pillow was born.”

Judy immediately started creating prototypes by hand, buying pillows from Argos – three for £10 at the time – and sewing everything herself. Tim, who was working in Taiwan and Korea at the time, teaching and writing books on critical thinking, supported from there – but initially, he thought the idea was “ridiculous”.

“I wanted nothing to do with it – I was busy, I was running my own life, I was living abroad,” he said. “But on one of my visits back home, I set her up with a basic e-commerce website and she already had an eBay account, and I just thought nothing of it.”

With the pillows selling on eBay and Tim re-evaluating his next steps, he joined his mother, and the duo officially launched the business with just £50 from his savings. Tim taught himself everything from scratch, including marketing and search engine optimisation (SEO), and they have since started designing and manufacturing the pillows in Liverpool.

“The £50 bought us a domain name, an e-commerce platform subscription, and some pillows. We didn’t even have a sewing machine,” Tim said. “Now, we’re a global business turning over around half a million pounds a year.”

Tim said the pillows have helped those with ear pain and “troublesome” piercings, and one woman even wrote to him, saying the product “saved (her) marriage” because it helped to reduce her husband’s snoring. The duo have worked “incredibly hard” to grow and improve the business, and in 2018, they started selling The Original Pillow with a Hole products on Amazon, which has helped them expand their reach abroad.

Tim also said Fulfilment by Amazon (FBA), which takes care of storing, packing and shipping products, helps to alleviate the pressure of the day-to-day sales. They now sell hundreds of pillows every month and, looking back, he said he “can’t believe” the “silly pillows” have been a success.

Tim said he has learned that you have to be “adaptable” and said “it’s OK to fail” – but ultimately, he said the business has given him a sense of purpose and he “cherishes” the relationship he has with Judy. He said: “I love what I do, I love doing this. I get loads of emails through, and everyone says, ‘Thank you so much, this has really changed my life’.

“When you’ve got something that nobody else in the world is doing, and it helps people, and you can earn money from it, and you’ve not really got anything to lose, it’s great fun. You can just be really creative and do whatever you want, and I love it.”

To find out more, click here.

Don't miss the biggest and breaking stories by signing up to the Echo Daily newsletter here