In 2005 I started making jewellery. To start with I used beads to make earrings but then tried using some small pieces of crochet instead. I decided to try selling this jewellery but I did not want to use my own name.
I still wanted something that had some kind of link to my own name. I had always been Susan and was going to stay Susan. Susan means Lily so I started thinking about names that included the word Lily.
The first one that came to mind was Lily the Pink. Maybe this was because of the pop song that I remembered from my childhood. Maybe it was because I felt as though I should make some changes in my wardrobe and start wearing more pink clothes. I wore so many grey or blue-grey things that at one person had called me the grey woman.
Now what were the lyrics of that pop song?
Maybe there was something there that would help me decide if this was a good name to use. One line called Lily the Pink – the saviour of the human race.
Crumbs that sounds a bit excessive. Wait a moment though didn\’t the first ever prophecy that I received called me \”my saviour for many people and churches”. This had caused me to think about what the bible meant by saviour.
I only knew of one i.e. Jesus the Saviour but then I realised that Moses was also seen as a saviour. All the term saviour meant was someone who led people from a bad situation to a good one.
There was no problem in someone like her being described as a saviour, apart from the fact that it seems more than a bit presumptuous. Not only that it even called her “my lily”. No problems there then.
Where did the pop song come from?
It was based on an American drinking song from the 1920s, the era of prohibition. One of the legal sources of alcohol in the US at that time was Lily the Pink’s vegetable compound. It was a patent medicine that was used to help those suffering from “women’s problems”.
The creator of this vegetable compound was a lady called Lydia Pinkham. When I looked at the story of Lydia Pinkham I realised that she would make a good role model.
She found herself in debt as her husband’s business was struggling in a time of recession. Therefore she turned her hand to what she could do and started making and selling a herbal medicine. She developed some original ideas for marketing this patent medicine.
These techniques were ones that were particularly suitable for the type of customer that she was targeting. Some of these marketing techniques gave customers information that improved the lives of the customers at the same time as encouraging them to buy the product.
This led to sales growing so much that she became a millionaire within a few years. One of the ingredients in it is still recommended as a herbal treatment for menopausal symptoms so it could actually be helpful, unlike some of the patent medicines of this era.
That settled it
I would use the name Lily the Pink. The first business idea was Lily the Pink Crochet but later when she wanted to use names that were related to other things other variations were considered. This have included Lily the Pink Learning and Lily the Pink Ministries. Well if having a number of businesses that start with a similar name is good enough for Richard Branson what with Virgin this and Virgin that then why not for me.
Lily the Pink Ministries became a Community Interest Company and gained a new life of its own. However, the name has now been changed to Lily the Pink Education Community Interest Company.