A Huddersfield-based firm has received a business boost from TV Dragons’ Den star Theo Paphitis.

During “Small Business Sunday” Aspinall Ink co-owner Angie Aspinall tweeted Theo about the business she runs with husband Richard.

Theo chose Angie’s message as a winning tweet and he retweeted it to his 444,000 followers the following day. As a result, Aspinal Ink has logged a 58% rise in visits to its website in a single week and is now being profiled on Theo’s website – www.theopaphitissbs.com – which is exclusive to Small Business Sunday winners.

Angie, who overcame deafness to run her own business, said: “This couldn’t have come at a better time for me as Monday was my first day of being 100% self-employed. What an amazing boost.”

Angie said, “I’m really excited to finally be fully self-employed. I was so busy on my first day that I didn’t find out we’d won #SBS until the following day. My Twitter timeline was so full of people congratulating us that it took over 10 minutes to locate Theo’s retweet confirming it was true. I couldn’t quite believe it.”

Since her first day, Angie has been busy delivering one-to-one social media training to local business people, writing articles for Dog Friendly magazine and setting up Access Solutions – which specialises in supporting the hospitality industry to become ‘hearing loss friendly’ via audits, training and specialist equipment.

Angie, who has overcome deafness to set up her businesses, said: “It is great to have support from Theo because it’s been tough trying to raise our profile and Theo has recognised our hard work and helped spread the word about what we do.”

Angie and Richard, both used to work for Kirklees Council, but now work from their home in Almondbury.

Richard is a professional photographer. One of his recent commissions was as event photographer for the Huddersfield Food and Drink Festival. His next commission is for underwater photography in Grenada for Diver magazine.

Richard also teaches college students about underwater photography, does product photograpby and takes underwater baby photos for his own business, Triggerfish Photography.

Angie and Richard combine their talents of writing and photography – both are published travel writers – with a professional room-styling and photography service to the hospitality industry, including The National Trust. They travel all over the world, but also have a passion for supporting Yorkshire businesses.

“We provide a range of services for local businesses – everything from photos of Yorkshire to brighten up walls and business websites to product photography, copywriting and social media training,” said Angie.

Angie is perhaps best-known locally as the co-founder of the Twitter phenomenon #Yorkshirehour – a weekly business networking event on Twitter which she started with businesswoman Helen Massey in March, 2012. Angie is undertakes public speaking and a recent talk at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park focused on how deafness changed her life and influenced her move from into self-employment.