For more than 20 years, November has marked the start of a frantic couple of months for Hull businesswoman Naomi Whiteley. She tells Sue Mason why this year things will be different . . .

Naomi and Pete Whiteley at their Mr Mole shop in west Hull

Christmas should be quieter this year for Naomi Whiteley. Her husband won’t be getting up at 4am to work on orders and Naomi won’t be toiling over a sewing machine until midnight.

“We were ships in the night,” Naomi tells me. She’s still surrounded by sewing machines, but now there’s only one business to run. For in the summer she sold Nag Rags, the equestrian clothing business she founded when she was just a teenager.

“We’d been thinking about selling it for a while because with two children, two businesses and a house to run, it was so hard to do everything properly,” she explains.

“The worst time was Christmas, when Pete would start work at 4am, work all day and bring a load of boxes home, then I would start on the embroidery and work until midnight. It would take us the whole of the festive break to recover.”

The unique nature of the Nag Rags product – you choose your own selection of colours – meant it was impossible to stockpile items for Christmas, so everything had to be made to order.

Naomi and Pete continue to run Mr Mole, a company that specialises in producing personalised embroidered baby blankets, which they founded in 2001.

An epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease at the time had put a damper on sales of all equestrian products and this period coincided with the birth of the couple’s first child, Aidan.

“Using Nag Rags fabric, I made personalised blankets for everyone in my ante-natal group and then I was pushed into doing it as a business after that,” Naomi says.

“When the mums were out with their prams, people would stop them and ask them where they got the blankets.”

Naomi chose the name Mr Mole for the business because moles are cute and their coats are velvety. Slowly business grew.

When daughter Neve was born in 2004, Naomi, who had had five miscarriages, donated 50 blankets to the neonatal ward at Hull Women and Children’s Hospital and word about Mr Mole began to spread further.

Slowly, it built up into the successful business it is today.

She explains why she took the decision to sell Nag Rags after 23 years. “I went from stacking shelves in Tesco to Nag Rags, which I set up in my bedroom at home. But it was just too much.”

Three significant events in the first half of this year also had an impact. In January, a deal to supply Interflora with baby blankets (as well as flowers, they also offer a personalised gift service) resulted in a huge boost in sales.

Naomi with some of the beautiful blankets, which are available in 12 colours and four sizes

This was followed by the deaths of Pete’s dad in May and Naomi’s close friend, auctioneer Helen Baitson, in June.

“When Helen was ill, it made me question what life was all about,” she says.

And so Nag Rags was sold in July to a Manchester businessman, leaving Naomi able to concentrate on her family and the one remaining business.

The Salisbury Street, Hull, premises, which, as well as being a workshop, act as a shop for passing customers to place orders, is where the fabric is cut, made into blankets, and then bound and embroidered.

The blankets are available in 12 colours and four sizes.

A team of six, including Naomi and Pete, produces the blankets, which have even been used by the third child of Victoria and David Beckham. “She didn’t ring up herself, but we knew who it was for because of the name and where we had to send it to – it was the same week the baby was born,” says Naomi.

Her blankets have been admired by other celebrities too.

“We exhibit at the baby shows,” says Naomi, who lives in Skidby. “We go to Earl’s Court in October, the NEC in May and Glasgow and Excel in the spring. We take two sewing machines with us and just embroider blankets all day.

“Jordan was there when she was pregnant and Nick (Hewer, Sir Alan’s sidekick) from The Apprentice came to see us once. He was looking for ideas for his grandchildren.”

Mr Mole blankets are advertised in the top glossy magazines and in theatre programmes around the country. “Nancy Baitson (Helen’s mother) rang us once and said she had been at the Royal Albert Hall and seen our advert in the programme,” says Naomi.

“We get a lot of orders from titled people because of where we advertise.”

Currently Naomi is busy designing gift wrapping and tags. “It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but I just haven’t had a minute, “ she says. “My mum is an artist and she has painted me a gingham which is incorporated in the design.”

With slightly more time on her hands, Naomi is looking at expanding the product range. “I’m not rushing into it because I want to get it right,” she says. “You want to create something that’s a bit different because there’s no point in doing the same as someone else and you have to be careful not to stray too far from a key core product that’s doing very well.”

Horses were her first love, but family is now her priority and Naomi, who will have a stand in Princes Quay on selected Saturdays in the run-up to Christmas, is delighted to be in the baby business. “It’s a happy business,” she says. “And it’s constant.”