Snapdragon's garden

Finished at last!

This week I have finally finished the camper van needlepoint cushion from Pearl and Earl that I started about 3 years ago.

In my defense I did lose it for 18 months of that period having "tidied" it away when we had a party and promptly forgot where I put it.

It is pretty typical of me though - I have a terrible habit of starting projects and then not finishing them.

Which is why I was delighted when Jacqui Pearce told me that she was bringing out a book of supersize needlepoint patterns -

projects in other words designs that are big on style but which shouldn't take years to make (unless you lose them)

I love this rainbow tea cosy and think I may convert it into a cushion

There are also lots of projects which could be easily made by children but which aren't at all twee.

I am thinking of asking my youngest to make me this eggy picture for the kitchen.

Rework

I love reading business books - a big part of the buzz of having Snapdragon is working out exactly how to make a small crafty business actually work.  Devising ways to bootstrap Snapdragon from kitchen table to profitable company excites me just as much as the actual creation of my products.

My favourite kind of business book is the type that challenges the type of big swaggery business norms and asks "Why?"  To be honest it also helps if the book is made up of tiny chapters which can be read between all the other things that clutter my day.  I like books that spark me into thinking rather than droning on about how to do things a particular way.

This is why I am a great fan of Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson's Rework.

The book is written by the duo who started the 37 signals software company and advocates keeping things small, agile, not worrying about status, fancy offices, not trying to be everything to everyone.

Much of it is common sense, but often we don't hear enough common sense in the world.  For example, as I head down to a trade fair I am re-reading the section on competitors, with its riffs titled "Dont Copy", "Decommoditize your product", "Pick a fight", "Underdo the Competition" and "Who cares what they are doing?".  All of them common sense, most of them counter-swagger, all of them helping me to clarify  & have confidence of where I am in MY business before I face all those other stands . . .

Snapdragon's motto comes from this book - from a chapter in the "Evolution" section called Be at-home good. It is a page and a half discussing products which are good "in-store", tempting, slick, great looking but ultimately disappointing when you get home and unpack them.  It is a page and a half calling for people to care more about products that deliver after being unpacked. 

So that is what we aim for. We try to make things that are even better when you unpack them.  We are going all out for the e-mails that say that our products are even better than they looked like on the website, for the letters that say how much people enjoyed sketching in our notebooks or how they get compliments when wearing our badges.

Its common sense, but then sometimes reading common sense helps you clarify where you want to be.

Looking forward to . . .

One of the great joys of the internet is that I have met people that I would never have run into in "real life" - met and made real friends with.

One of those people for me has been Micah Solomon, the President (Oh how I love American job titles!) of Oasis Disc Publishing with offices in Manhattan, Washington and a manufacturing plant in New Jersey - he is in other words a proper businessman.

I "met" Micah on the Triiibes social media group that was set up by Seth Godin a year or so back and he immediately shone out as someone who would give of his time and expertise without worrying about "what was in it for him" and he gave me some exceptionally good advice - more valuable because he isn't in the craft scene at all.  My grasping the courage to expand my business is, in many ways, due to his encouragement.

Micah is an obsessive about customer service and how to integrate it into the whole business rather than just seeing it as a way of dealing with complaints and queries.  Along with Leonardo Inghilleri, he has written an e-book called Humanize it which you can get HERE and in a couple of months their first book, Exceptional service, Exceptional Profit  will be published.

I was lucky enough to read the proofs last year and it is a really good book - dealing with anticipating and not just responding to customers.  Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I don't just puff things - especially friends' things - I have to really believe in whatever it is I am mentioning.  There are a lot of books out there which deal in customer service in a very obvious ways. There are a lot of books which recommend computer tracking customers and anticipating their needs in a rather stalkery way (If I went to the hotel in Michael Gerber's book where they know how you take your coffee and what temperature your bath should be - well I would be running out the door)  Micah and Leonardo's book is different and if you want to integrate customer service throughout your business I would suggest giving it a read.

Before Christmas we were incredibly busy - much busier than I'd anticipated and along with the 16 hour work days came an abbreviated attitude to customer service.  I don't mean that we gave bad service, I don't believe that we did, but a lot of the extra stuff that we normally do got missed out in the rush to get parcels to the post office.  It made me realise that what we do to delight customers wasn't properly woven in, that I hadn't thought about how to make customers realise how much I appreciate them.  I shall be putting in a pre-order.

Birds

In my experience people are either bird people of they most definitely are not.
I am - as a child I was a birdwatcher and, together with my friend Rebecca, filled notebooks with wildly exaggerated descriptions on the birds we had seen in the park behind her house. Now, I have sadly forgotten how to tell the difference between all the birds that visit the garden, but still avidly watch for my favourites.  I don't like to miss the morning sweep of the heron as it flies through the wood and in the summer the blinds stay up so that I can watch the barn owl swoop silently past our bedroom window.

The chickens are one of the joys of my life - pecking about, chuntering on, wildly enthusiastic when they find a worm.
So it is not surprising that I was drawn to the book Corvus by Esther Woolfson which details her life with birds, - mainly a rook, a magpie and a crow - it has been my bedtime reading for the past couple of weeks and I finished it last night, reading on the shed veranda under the oil lights, feeling like I was on holiday.
Euan is definitely not a bird person, particularly if the birds can fly.  He is fine with the chickens as they are pretty much earthbound but birds flying round the house is his idea of a nightmare. In fact he described Ms Woolfson's adoption of wild birds (all abandoned fledglings I have to add) as "bolt through the neck mad".  This may have been to discourage me from even thinking about it.

This is what actually prevents me from thinking about it

So anyway, Euan will not be reading the book so if anyone local wants to borrow it let me know.