I still feel like I need to pinch myself that this all actually happened! What an incredibly fun experience it was. As many of you may already know, My Busy Bots was recently on a show called ‘The Customer is always Right’ – the ultimate consumer test! The show features British entrepreneurs, who all send their products to a panel of customers who then un-box and test them and then deliver their honest, amusing (sometimes brutal!) reviews. Pretty nerve wrecking being under the test on National TV!! Yikes! If you have not seen it already – read no further and watch the show on BBC iplayer to avoid spoilers below.
So, this journey began with the lovely Sarah, who is our PR guru. Sarah is the one who got us on the show and made the connections (check our her new book on connections here!) and we are so grateful for her.
Things moved pretty quickly and efficiently from filling in forms, to booking in days to film, flights to Scotland etc. The filming was done in 2 parts; the back-story was at my house and then Leanne flew to Glasgow for the on set bit. The crew arrived at my house early one Tuesday morning in November 2019. The filming was only around 3 hours, but we jam packed so much in during that time if felt like a whole day – plus we had two (slightly grumpy) 3 year olds to contend with! I felt a bundle of nerves the entire time and when I get nervous I tend to go straight up potty mouth or talk way to fast (sometimes both!) so I had to keep reminding myself to goooooo sloooooow. But the crew who filmed us were amazing, they really did make us feel comfortable, like we were all just chatting and we had a really good laugh with them (there were a good few bloopers I can assure you!). They were pretty much filming ninjas and were so well prepared!
Then the filming in Glasgow, only one of us could go – I was away at the time, so Leanne did that bit! But she kept me posted with lots of on scene selfies and photos and I got lots of stories about the whole experience. It was amazing meeting the other two business owners and the gorgeous Lucy Alexander (who is even more charming and beautiful in real life!) As much as we believe in our products you just never know who or what you are up against and what people will think, so it was in their hands.
It was pretty amazing seeing first hand kids (other than ours) unveil their busy bags – the squeals of excitement pretty much did it for us – we were over the big old moon and already felt like winners at that point! They are what we are all about, the kids – learning through play and having fun. We have created our brand to be playful, colourful and exciting and to see how they reacted to the bags right off the bat; well I pretty much exploded into a puff of rainbow glitter! We were super pleased with all the feedback we received and took anything we could improve into account and working on it - we love to hear all matter of honest feedback!
Then wow the big drum roll moment… WE WON! That was truly a big moment for us - we were totally overjoyed! I was in shock when Leanne called; I was busy making dinner with my family at the time. As much confidence and belief you can have in your products, hearing such amazing feedback and winning on a show like this is a maaaaassive confidence boost! As busy Mums with a millions things to get done each day plus run a small business - some days we need that little reminder, that little boost, now we can watch it! Thank you to the BBC and Firecrackers Films for having us!