Snapdragon's garden

Thank you Thursday

I've been reading Tara Hunt's Book The Power of Social Networking and the final chapter really chimed with how I have been feeling about the business and how I feel that there are more things we can do.

The point of Snapdragon is that we make things that make people happy - and that is particularly true of our personalised things -

We have countless emails about how giving something we have made with a personal message has made the recipient cry (in a good way) - a wonderful way to show what you really think of someone, without having to drop aesthetic standards.

Now I like to think of Snapdragon as being a generous business - every week we give away samples and extras on our Facebook page - but what Tara asks is "How can you help your customers be generous?".  And, as I say, that chimed.

So we are launching Thank you Thursdays.  The deal is that each Thursday we shall give away either a mirror or a mug - personalised with a message - for someone to say thank you.

I am going to do it on my Facebook site rather than here (and I know that will make some people groan) but it is so much faster an interaction and easier to keep track of.

I am going to be posting the status at 10 each Thursday and someone will be picked at random at 7.30.  We will then make it and dispatch on the Monday. With a thank you card.

Difficult decisions

We realised last week that we were getting low on our camper van tea towels so contacted the printers for a reprint.

The price had gone up.  Again.

And when we sat down with a calculator to do the sums it appeared that at the new price we would be actually making a loss.

So we are faced with a choice.

1. Put the price up - but would anyone really pay £12 for a tea towel, linen union or no?

2. Print on a cheaper tea towel and keep the price the same.

3. (and this is what I have had to do at the moment) take them off sale

There isn't the option of shopping about as the screens are with the existing printer and they cost a lot to set up and get the colours correct.

So - there you are - our sunniest product is discontinued on the sunniest day!

 

Quilts - the Loch Lomond Quilt show

I love quilts - I have drawers full of precious old ones and a number on show that kind people have given or made for me.  Yet it is a craft I have yet to try myself and I am in awe of people who do it.

So on Saturday I headed off to the Loch Lomond Quilt Show - it is a multi layered, multi venue show ranging from antique turkey red quilts through modern interpretations of traditional whitework techniques to abstract works on felt and beads.  Something for everyone.

Most of the venues were churches in Alexandra, Dumbarton and Renton and the quilts and quilted hangings looked amazing amid the stained glass and carved oak.

Though the dark atmosphere and lack of a tripod means that these photos are a bit less sharp than I would have liked.

What amazed me though was that - amid all the hundreds of beautifully quilted pieces there were three large quilts that set my heart alight, that had me bustling across aisles to get a better look.

and all turned out to be by the same artist - Rosie Furlong

Different venues, different colour schemes, different trechniques but the same exuberance.

Amazing work that lit up my Saturday afternoon.

How to make a table decoration - newsletter link.

This week's newsletter has a "how to" tutorial on making one of these table decorations

It is very straightforward and if you fancy having a go you can sign up here

http://snapdragongarden.co.uk/index.html

Cobbler's niece

It is a sad thing that since I began sewing for a living I have found less and less time to sew for myself, for friends and for family.

Once I head up to the house of an evening I rarely venture back down to sew for pleasure.  I am much more likely to be working on a needlepoint or some knitting.

This weekend however I decided to make a present for my youngest niece's 1st birthday which is next week.

I settled on a playmat with a road and fields - partly because I think its really useful and fun - partly because this is the first time I had quilted anything and I wanted lots going on to hide the flaws.

First I appliqued the top with a cord road and linen fields and river - with a few embroidered fish swimming about.

Then I sandwiched in some wadding and a plain red linen back and basically drew with my freehand needle to keep it all together.

 and give it some texture.  I fashioned some bias binding out of more of the red linen and edged the whole thing neatly.

ready for the wooden animals which arrived today.

So now I have 3 whole days to play with it myself before handing it over  . . .

 

Scotland magazine

This month I am delighted to find that Scotland Magazine loves us!

Their back page of things made in Scotland is devoted to Snapdragon

We are over the moon and very grateful! 

A WHOLE page . . . . my Mum will be very impressed.

Fritillary cushions

Today I have been mainly embroidering fritillary cushions

I love embroidering this design but it is time consuming not to mention hard on the eyesight with all the little checkered markings.  There are times of year when the light levels are so low that it is almost impossible to do more than one at a time . . . and therefore I had discontinued it

However . . . I decided to bring it back as a herb cushion for one week only. It is a time limited edition that I shall be selling for this week only - after that no more!

So if you want to get a cushion in this design you have to order before Monday www.snapdragongarden.co.uk

I'm intending to do 4 of these limited cushion designs a year - with the hope that people will collect the set - I think they will look great lined up together.

Newsletter out!

This week's Snapdragon newsletter went out this morning.

It had a recipe for Mint and lemon cordial

details of our "for one week only" limited edition fritillary cushions

and a special offer on holiday accommodation here

If you don't already receive it (and you think it sounds worth receiving!) you can sign up here

Mohr Tea please, the Library Tea room Balquhidder

Yesterday it was a gloriously sunny afternoon so we piled into Dougal

and set off up to Strathyre to walk along the lochside

the real point of the journey though was to head for Balquiddher and the Library Tea Room which is run by the local Mhor brand (Monachyle Mohr, Mohr bread, Mhor fish . . .)

It didn't disappoint, great coffee all served with a mishmash of china cups and saucers

delicious cakes served in generous slices

But the thing that impressed me most was that, as we were leaving and the tea room was closing, a couple of cyclists who had been caught in a freak hailstorm appeared at the door - there was no hesitation, the cakes were unwrapped, the coffee machine put back on, and the cyclists and their rather soggy labradors welcomed into the warmth.

On the way home we saw a rainbow.  Its great to see a local business getting it right.

 

Targets

At the beginning of each year I set targets for the business.  Some are to do with production, some to do with sales but the most important ones are to do with customer service.

I believe that a big part of what sets Snapdragon apart is that the team here really, really care about each order and in exceeding the expectations of each and every customer.

But its a tough one to measure - so I decided to use the feefo customer feedback statistics on the Not on the High Street site which we sell through.  Feefo asks customers to rate their experience as either excellent, good, poor, or bad.  My aim was to move from 86.2% excellent (13.4 % good 0.4% poor) to 90% excellent (10% good 0% poor) - we have been tantalisingly close for a couple of weeks and this morning we tipped over that 90%.

In some ways its a daft way of measuring anything - only a small percentage of people reply to the feedback email and you can catch them on a good day or a bad day.  But it keeps me on my toes, it keeps me tweaking how we do things, it keeps me thinking about how we can make the whole "buying from Snapdragon" thing just a little bit better each time - for we need people to come back and buy from us again and again and again . . .(all suggestions for how we can improve are always appreciated - snapdragonjane@googlemail.com)

The cat images are because it was a customer's love of our cat mirrors and her "excellent" rating & lovely comments that tipped us over the 90%