Merryn was launched in April 2016 to champion independent businesses, creators, artists, makers, retailers, charities, community groups and writers from the UK and Ireland who are following their dreams, making peoples’ lives better and bringing joy!
How did Merryn start?
In August 2009, my wife Michelle was in a car accident caused by someone else, and sustained a permanent brain injury. This left her with many issues, but one of them was that she couldn’t deal with crowds of people, so this caused us to stay indoors to enable her to recuperate.
In August 2015, Michelle was still too ill for us to go outside and enjoy time together as a couple so we couldn’t do things such as going to restaurants, visit new cities or enjoy being tourists in our own city of Liverpool. We had effectively been in what we all now call “lockdown” for 6 years by that point. Throughout this time, we had been living in Michelle’s mum’s spare room as we only had my salary coming in, and so we couldn’t afford to live on our own.
Around this time, I was inspired by the below picture of chocolate vegetables made by Choc On Choc that I saw being shared on Twitter. You can still buy them now 🙂
After 6 years of lockdown, I was really missing being a part of the world (my family were back in Leeds and I had no friends outside of work in Liverpool). I noticed other independent retailers sharing their products online and, inspired by Choc On Choc’s image, I thought how great it would be to create a way to promote them. This is how Merryn was born! In 2017, Michelle was well enough to go back into full-time work and in January 2018, we were able to move into our own rented flat, and have lived on our own together ever since 🙂
Who do I feature?
I publish new interviews every week with independent music artists, charities, and self-published writers.
Every Saturday I update the “Top 20 songs of the week” Spotify playlist featuring music by UK and Irish artists. You can find out which new music releases are coming out soon. I have created themed Spotify playlists, including “Heartbreaking love”, “Acoustic tunes” and dance tracks on “Your weekend starts right here!”. You can find out more about them here.
If you’d like to get in touch, you can do so via one of the submission forms, I’d love to hear from you!
The Merryn Directory
Within the Merryn Directory, you will be able to find small and independent businesses via different categories or you can view them all in one place. Each business will tell you more about who they are and how they started, and will feature products selected by the business themselves. There is an A-Z list of who has been featured. I will be adding new businesses all year round and will update social media once they have been added.
By location
I have tagged posts where possible with the location of the people being featured, so that you can support the independent businesses, music artists, charities and self-published authors and writers in your local area. If you’d like to know which landmarks have been featured in the images, you can find out more here.
Christmas
Since 2017 I have published an annual Christmas Gift Guide on the website featuring amazing products from small and independent businesses from around the UK and Ireland, mainly nominated by the businesses themselves although I do sometimes select items to be included.
The 2025 guide went live on Wednesday 13th November and features over 1,400 products from over 100 businesses across 36 categories, such as Beauty, Bath & Body, Christmas Cards & Wrapping Paper, Babies & Children, Sweet Treats and Home & Garden.
A-Z lists of interviews
To make it easier to find their interviews, there are A-Z lists of which charities and good causes, music artists and writers have been featured.
Charges and affiliate links
Even though I feature product links on the Merryn website, they are not affiliate links, meaning that I do not make any money from any subsequent sales that come from people clicking on links on the site. Also, I do not charge anyone to be featured on the website or via the social media accounts.
Over the years I have been offered gifts from people as a “thank you” for being featured, but I also don’t accept free gifts or samples. Merryn exists solely to champion others, and is run as a fun hobby.
Your life can change in an instant, but sometimes good things can come from bad events 🙂
Jenny x
HOME 