#ring ring# Hi, Congratulations! You've Won!"

Sound familiar?

If you have kids under the age of 5 in Leeds, and you've ever been waylaid whilst you're out shopping in any of our great malls of commerce by some young hopeful with a balloon and some nice looking photos, the chances are that you've heard this line, or something similar at least once. And that you were surprised, because your friend who entered also won. And your next door neighbour, and your sister.

The unsurprising truth is that EVERYBODY wins. There's no way to lose. Just put your contact details down on the entry form, and you can pretty much bank on being called up within a week or so and told that you've been drawn as a runner up and that you've won a free shoot and a free small print, all you need to do is to make the appointment at the portrait studio in question, and Bob's your uncle.

And from there on, you can safely expect to receive reminder phone calls if you don't take up the "prize," and your details will make their way onto a database and a mailing list, firstly for the company's next promotion, and then for other products aimed at parents with kids under 10, when they sell your details on to a list broker.

We know about it, because we used to work for a company who did it.

And when Jo and I set up HSP, the very first thing we promised ourselves was that we wouldn't do that. Ever. Aside from it being soul destroying as a photographer to spend a day luke-warm calling people who don't really want what you're desperately trying to remind them they once considered, there's something demeaning about having to lie to get business in.

So, we haven't done it. We have no telesales team, and we've done no standing around in draughty shopping centres, there's no HSP balloons, no competition entry cards, and we haven't resorted to laboured and cheesy attempts at chatting up parents.

We knew it would be slow going to set up our stall in a saturated market, and to get the word out about our studio, but we wanted to do it properly, establishing a reputation and gaining new business by word of mouth, and that's the way we've done it. We've kept several families whom we first met at the old place, and it's been a great pleasure to have developed those relationships and watched the kids grow over the years, and fantastic when their friends and extended families come to us because we've been recommended.

We're proud of our work, but we're relaxed, friendly and open, and it means we don't have to go out there and bully and cheat people into booking in. If you give us your phone number at the time of the shoot, we'll only use it to call you to tell you your prints are ready. If you give us your email address, we might send you a quick few lines telling you about our offers (as and when I get round to writing them). And if you really want to find out what's going on at HSP, you can subscribe to the Facebook page or follow us on Twitter. And that's as far as it goes.

So when you next find yourself answering that phone call and wishing you'd never filled in the card, but you still want some shots taking, remember there's another way and come and see how we do it.

Sorry, you haven't won anything, and a free shoot is what all of our customers get whenever they book in. We have offers on at every school holiday, generally a free print, and everyone booking in gets the same.

You only pay for the images you love, finished the way you want them. We are open about our prices, which are all listed on our website, so you can have an idea of how much you can expect to spend, and we offer and fun and relaxed experience in a fully equipped studio, with experienced professional photographers with a personal interest in making it work for you because we are the owners of the business.

Sound better?

Hope so. We look forward to seeing you!

Caroline and Jo.

Sanders' Pregnancy Economic Recovery Model

I am no economist, and I am pretty much an accidental business-woman. When my sensible mates chose to study maths, economics and business studies at A-level, I was tackling English literature and philosophy and ethics of religion. I wanted to learn what words meant and why people used them to make things. Then I fell in love with photography and became one of the many photography students who graduate every year who never paid attention to such considerations as how to keep body and soul together while you are creating works of art which speak eloquently to the viewer. I expected the world to recognise my talent with payment as soon as I had my degree in my hand. Now sometimes I forget the details of our fees and charges, carried away by the idea of taking the pictures. I am a photographer first, qualified to take photos, and I have a post-graduate certificate in what translates as observing how things are connected in visual culture.

But.... when I was growing up, my parents had a private day nursery, situated in our lovely big house in Chapel Allerton. The ground floor was for the kids, and we lived upstairs. My mum was a nursery-nurse, and set up the basics of the business when she was on maternity leave with my big brother, and when I came along, my dad quit his job at the foundry and they took it from there. It eventually became one of the most successful and best regarded nurseries in the city. By the time of the last serious recession I was a teenager and was helping out after school when they needed an extra pair of eyes in the garden, or a spare nose-wiper and hand-washer. I remember hearing them talk about how things were going to get very difficult, because people would lose their jobs and stay at home with the kids instead of bringing them to the nursery. And then people who might've been thinking about having a baby, or a second baby, would think again. Sure enough, the numbers got thinner at the nursery, and mum and dad had to open up the nursery at the weekend for kids parties (which was my job - make sure no-one trashed the place, tidy up if they did, make party food, clean up sick, clean the toilets....). Dad also predicted that the first thing people did when there was money again would be to have those babies they'd been holding back from. Sure enough, we had a clutch of 8 3month olds start with us as the country started to climb out of the doldrums. The lesson I absorbed from that was that you can tell when the economy is starting to recover becasue people start having babies again. I think dad thought it was because of the types of jobs the parents worked in, in Leeds's business district, in the media, in the NHS, they'd see the early indicators and get cracking on with kids ahead of anyone else.

When Jo and I started the studio, we reckoned that we'd spend the recession slowly getting the word out about the quality of our portraiture work, and that by the time people started having kids again, we'd have built a really solid reputation, with lots of happy customers telling their friends about us, and that we'd be in a great position. That's still hopefully the plan, but it's occurred to me that my dad's reasoning might've been the wrong way round. I think the end of the recession is brought on roughly 9 months after the deepest point.

I know lots of couples who've either just had or are about to give birth in the next month or 2. When there was no money to do anything else back in January and February, I bet I can make an educated guess as to what people got up to. All the things you have to do when you know there's a small person on the way - the painting of rooms, the buying of cots, car-seats, new cars, maybe moving house - help to stimulate the local economy and suddenly there's more money to go around, and as more and more people go through the same pattern, the whole country moves back into action. (I was about to say the black, but that's not going to happen for a while.)

I have done no research. I may be utterly wrong, but I'm enjoying telling everyone that I have formulated this model from the point of view of 2 generations of Sanders', each with small businesses dependent on people having babies regularly.

Good luck and congratulations to everyone about to add to their family. Come and see us when you're ready for some lovely family photos.