Tragic loss prompts mum to start memorial business

A MUM who tragically lost her young daughter to a brain tumour has set up a memorial gifts business in her memory.
Michelle De La Motte-Rice has set-up a colourful memorial gifts business         S43854H13Michelle De La Motte-Rice has set-up a colourful memorial gifts business         S43854H13
Michelle De La Motte-Rice has set-up a colourful memorial gifts business S43854H13

Michelle De La Motte-Rice, of Mill Hill, Shoreham, was unable to find colourful grave memorials when her daughter, Lola, died in 2006 aged two-and-a-half.

Spotting a gap in the market, she has spent the last few years developing a product and finding a manufacturer in her parents’ native Sri-Lanka.

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She is now up-and-running with a range of products on her website, and is donating ten per cent of her profits to Brain Tumour Research.

She said: “I am not under any illusions that I am going to be the next Richard Branson.

“I sell about five pieces a day on average, but would like to get to 20 a day.

“The response has been brilliant, considering I do not have an advertising budget.”

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Mrs De La Motte-Rice’s business, called Gifts for Angels, sells handmade stone grave vases, coloured plaques and cherubs in ‘funky’ poses.

She said the offerings at the time of her daughter’s death were ‘dark and depressing’, and that despite it being years later, very little was still on the market.

She said: “It used to make me dispirited that I could not go and buy something colourful.

“I did not want a black grave vase on Lola’s grave, I really wanted a bright pink one.

“But there was nothing I could find.”

For the full story, see the Herald and Gazette, out Thursday, October 24.