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ENTREPRENEUR bqlive.co.uk
From pillow talk to trendy success Alina Masood won ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ in Birmingham after she and her sister launched a children’s lifestyle brand based on a comfort blanket first made by her mum. Ros Dodd reports
When Alina and Ammara Masood’s mother brought home a ‘quillow’ – a pillow that opens out into a quilt-like blanket – she’d made at her textile class, little did she think it would one day form the centrepiece of a business her daughters plan to turn into a global brand. “We hadn’t seen one on the high street before Mum made hers and we haven’t seen one since,” explains 26-year-old Alina, co-founder of Cofi Coo, a children’s soft furnishings and lifestyle company. “When she came home with it – more than ten years ago now – we loved it. We would sit on the sofa watching TV and if we were cold we’d open the cushion out into a blanket and sit with it round our shoulders. We thought it was a brilliant idea and always
wanted to do something with it.” However, the two sisters from Moseley in Birmingham, initially seemed destined for more traditional careers: Ammara, now 33, went to work in the university sector and Alina wanted to become a banker like her father, grandfather and great-grandfather before her. Yet the idea of bringing the ‘quillow’ to market didn’t go away and in 2012 the sisters decided to take the plunge and set up their own company. This was despite the fact Ammara was working full-time and Alina had just been offered two banking jobs. Four years on, their company – Cofi Coo – is about to start trading. The sisters are in the process of placing their first bulk order with an overseas manufacturer and are in talks with large retailers. Alina