Start-up of the week: Hackney woman launches denture repair business to ‘cut out the middleman’

The Gazette hunts high and low each week to bring you news of the most interesting and unusual new businesses in Hackney. This week we speak to a woman who’s “cutting out the middleman” in the denture repair business.

A woman who won the “Ladies Den” business competition in September which is run by the charity You Make It, which supports young women looking to start a business.

She has used the £1,000 grant to launch her own bespoke online denture repair business.

Mariam Shokeye, 26, promises to fix broken dentures within 48 hours at My Denture Repair’s studio in Petiver Close, off Well Street.

She said: “The idea was cutting the middle man out. Usually when denture wearers break their dentures they would go to a dentist who contacts a laboratory to get them fixed. My idea was to bring it straight to me.”

Customers fill in an online form and a courier will pick up the dentures, which she sometimes manages to return the same day.

Mariam trained in dental technology at Manchester Metropolitan University. “I was always into dentistry and art – a lot of it is about artistically making dentures, and manipulating materials.”