Mum and son who launched ‘silly’ pillow business with £50 are now making £500,000 ‘changing lives and saving marriages’

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

“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.”

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.

“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.

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, visit: amazon.co.uk/Original-Pillow-Hole-Your-Friend/dp/B00NCDSINI.