[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=B_P86S1Yd1I]
By Karrie Gillett
A SCOTS entrepreneur has taken on a mission to find the perfect gift – by ploughing through fields searching for cow manure.
Madcap mum Charlotte Waugh collects the gift-grade cow poo along with dog droppings and horse dirt before vacuum packing and sealing it in glossy boxes.
But Charlotte insists the grimy gifts are meant as a tongue in cheek way of sending an unusual present.
The 43-year-old businesswoman set up the ‘You Are A…’ company to use up the surplus animal waste on her 10-acre Selkirk farm.
And the mum-of-three said customers already using the service were mostly men in offices sending a quirky You Are A Sh*t message to colleagues.
Charlotte claims the job requires a complete lack of squeamishness as she gathers all the muck and separates it into little bags.
She said: “I come out once a week and gather up the cow pats and I’m quite choosy about the ones I pick. They’ve got to be a good consistency and I would go for slighty drier ones.
“Horse dung is a lot easier to deal with because it’s a lot rounder and less squidgy. The dog’s is pretty disgusting because it doesn’t keep its shape so I mould it myself when I put it in the packaging and that’s why we have it at a premium rate.”
The online gift company – whose boxes are designed to fit through a letter box – also has a “nice” section reading ‘You Are A Star” and offering jewellery, chocolates and luxury lingerie.
But it’s the grubby poo presents which really help those struggling to find the right gift for someone who deserves a personalised message.
Charlotte said: “The nasty section of the website is most popular with the male corporate market where people send them as an office prank.
“We’ve seen cow manure sent to guys who have had a promotion, switched jobs or missed a goal in an important football game; that sort of thing.”
The youarea.co.uk site offers more than 35 different gifts, split into three sections: “nice”, “nasty” and “extravagant”.
And it can cost up to £20 for customers choosing to send horse or dog droppings to an unlucky recipient.
Charlotte, who has a publishing degree from Napier University and a BA in business administration from Paisley College, came up with the idea after seeing a photo on the internet of a woman packaging dog droppings.
She said: “It seemed like a great idea. Sometimes people want to send an amusing present to their friends, so I thought we should offer them the option of sending a gift box filled with dung.
“The droppings get vacuum packed before they go in the box and it’s all 100 per cent natural. It’s a great, unusual present that I’m sure will be popular with a lot of people with a sense of humour.”
