One Liverpool mum created a successful but unusual business after being "fascinated" by a Channel 4 documentary.
Lisa Trapasso-Emina, 44, from Liverpool, still runs a successful business out of St John's and Greatie markets 15 year after she first watched a Channel 4 documentary that would change her life. My Fake Baby aired in 2008, and Lisa was gripped by its unusual subject - people who collected lifelike dolls of babies known as 'reborn dolls' or 'reborns.'
Reborn dolls look everything like the real thing, their owners (usually little girls) dress them real babies' clothes, carry them in real babies' prams and in general, treat them like the real thing. After the documentary ended Lisa took to Ebay to see the dolls for herself.
READ MORE: Why buying a fake baby gave this woman her life back
She told the ECHO: "I was just fascinated by that documentary. I was just fascinated at how these dolls could look like real babies.
"I went on Ebay and bought one. I bought one for something like £220 and it came and it was a little tiny thing, very pale - a little girl doll with ginger hair and I was just looking at her and thinking what could be better, what could I do better."
Lisa would end up selling the doll, unchanged, on auction for the same price - but it was the beginning of a burgeoning hobby that would eventually turn into the unique, though successful and "lovely" business she runs today. She said: "I used to buy them, I think off Ebay, then I’d put them back on and sell them for £10 more or something. It was just so I could see what they were like.
"I then got chatting to a lady I knew and she just said to me one day, why don’t you just do them for yourself? I was like there’s just no way I’d be able to do that, but she talked me through it over the phone and since then I’ve just never looked back.
"So what I did then was I started making them, for friends and family at the start. I was having my kids at that point. I wasn’t putting any profit on them on them, it was a hobby, I was just making them.
"I didn’t want all these dolls in my house, especially when I’ve got three boys."
Lisa's husband, who she called more of a "glass half-full type person" than herself, suggested they open a market stall and soon she was selling the dolls at Greatie Market one day a week. She later opened another store at St John's Market, and still operates out of both today.
She added: "Sometimes I make them in the shop so customers can come in and see you making them. Little girls love it, so sometimes I let them have a little go at helping me make them.
"My main customers are adults for their children, for their little girls to put in their prams. Every little girl wants a baby don’t they. You can get dolls anywhere, but they want a real baby.
"When a little kid comes in and they’re overwhelmed with joy, and you can just see it in their face as their eyes light up - some of them burst out crying with emotions - it’s lovely, especially when you know they’re getting one and have to pretend you don’t.
"Their parents have to do the whole Father Christmas thing - ‘if you’re good, then father christmas will bring it to you’ - and all that.
"Every mum who comes in is like this is every girls dream, to walk into a shop like this and pick what baby you want, and pick what eyes hair, what outfit you want, what pram and what accessories - everything. It’s like a big Build-a-Bear but better.
"We make sure we get the right one for the kids as well. There’s times when kids will come in and they’ll pick one and the mum’s like ‘oh I don’t like that one,’ or they’re like ‘oh no, no that’s scary,’ and I just look at them - I’m like you’re not playing with it.
"Why go and get a really expensive one that you like when your kid has just fallen in love with this other one?
"Give them what they want. It’s what the kids want. But once you say that to them I think it registers then."
Lisa's Reborn Baby Dolls are based at Greatie Market on Great Homer Street and at St John's Market in the City Centre.
You can the store online here.
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