Snapdragon's garden

Charity

Like most small businesses we get many more charity requests than we could possibly respond to.  We decided a couple of years ago to concentrate on properly supporting 1 local and 1 national/international charity.  This year and 2012 they are Art Link Central and Shelterbox.

We do - of course - do a bit more; usually for people who have some connection to Snapdragon; as part of the team, as customers, as blog readers and tweeters.  We, not surprisingly favour them over the "Dear Sir or Madam" requests.

A couple of years ago - when we were open for the Open Studios scheme we were visited by Betty and India; charming young women from Dundee who had travelled down especially.  In October Betty contacted me to say that she was organising a Ladies Night as part of her fund raising efforts towards a trip she is making to the Himalayas next year to help build greenhouses, and could she buy some mirrors to sell.

We sent her up a box of things on sale or return and I heard earlier in the week that she had sold them ALL! 

The cheque which arrived in payment for them today will be going as part of our Christmas donation to Shelterbox.  We heard this week that the 2 boxes that Snapdragon customers provided earlier in the year went to Somalia.

Stationery

What is it that is just so exciting about new stationery? Is it that "back to school" vibe?

Sometimes I suspect that 90% of my drive to grow the business comes from the lure of being able to order boxes and boxes of packaging and pretty things.

Today our new envelopes arrived

justified on the back of a massive mail out we are doing next week

and they are just so gorgeous - I am itching to pack things (and you don't hear that very often)

Sprucing up the website

August is traditionally a quiet month for us - people are away on holiday, orders ebb a bit - so we try and schedule maintenance and planning in then.

This year we decided to re-do the website - sort out some glitches that had appeared and re-organise the sections.  We needed to take nicer photos and actually ensure that all our products are up there (I was appalled to find I hadn't even loaded lots of things onto the site - was wondering why we didn't sell many doorstops from our own site!).

Well - best laid plans and all that - this August bucked the trend and has been full on busy with orders - its been like last year's October.

So I haven't quite got it all done (ahum)

But I have got the meadow part looking a lot better - we have new coffee cosies and tea cosies, we have new mirrors and badges and all the photos are the same size!!!!! - CHECK IT OUT!

Tomorrow I start on the brightly coloured bits . . .

I would love feedback - its much easier to change things as I go along, rather than go back at the end.

And for all the people who have been finding that the website keeps morphing day after day - thanks for sticking with us!

£5 discount - today only

Its certainly been a week and a half - from the destruction of Monday's gales

to getting the artwork for my soon to be launched art prints to Kate

culminating in yesterday when I designed some new lavender bags that I am very pleased with

and a couple of big orders came in from new stockists that we have been talking to for ages.

So to celebrate the week getting better, I am offering you £5 off any orders over £20 placed today - just type in GALES at the checkout and the money will be automatically taken off.

WEBSITE

Simple

Earlier in the year we did a bit of secret shopping to see how our and other people's products were displayed in shops.  After listing all the things that we felt made a difference between the good and the bad (good,inspirational, busy shops had uncluttered, clean displays that grouped things by range) - we decided to create a point of sale display stand which could show off all our Snapdragon things together.

We began looking at cardboard and fibreboard - but in the end we felt that they just tended to look grotty very quickly and soaked up light.  Then I thought about how I display things at trade shows.

on acrylic shelves and stands so that the products shine out and get maximum light.

I looked at what was available off the shelf and nothing was quite right so we bit the bullet, approached a manufacturer and went for something bespoke.

The tiered stands arrived on a pallet yesterday

and I am absolutely delighted with the quality.  We decided not to go with branding the actual stand - any ideas we had just looked tacky - as we feel that all our products are really identifiable anyway. 

So this month we are sending the stands out to shops that order over £150 - the only deal is that they have to use the stand for our products -

I spent a lot of yesterday afternoon playing shop and trying out different combinations and was really pleased with the way that every combination of products seems to look good.

 

 

Airstream love and Vintage Vacations.

I love my airstream caravan

It symbolises moving Snapdragon out of the kitchen and into a proper premises of its own - and while we are now in a purpose built workshop, getting the airstream allowed me to think about expanding the business properly.

It sits, glowing beautifully in the middle of the cut flowers

and in the summer is transformed into a shop and studio

and it has attracted a lot of photographers

and my girls think its rather cool

What more could you want from a vehicle???

I was therefore jumping up and down when this brilliant retro campsite on the Isle of Wight asked me to make them some bespoke Visitors Books and Journals along with some mirrors etc for their shop.

It is such a good fit stockist wise - Helen and Fraser obviously put masses of effort into kitting out the caravans with all the right period fittings

This is lifted from their website - I love the knitted cat. You can follow them on Facebook and Twitter too.

Our own airstream will be undergoing its annual transformation and opening up in June and August.

 

 

 

Twitter and Facebook and Blogs

Yesterday I was at the Winnock Hotel, as part of Stirling Enterprise's roadshow, talking to some local businesses about how to use Facebook and Twitter to connect to their customers.

It was a great morning, seeing people get enthusiastic about how something could fit into their businesses, what communities they could build.

But the best bit for me was being able to tell them how Facebook, Twitter and this Blog had helped raise money this week for Shelter Box.

For we are almost sold out of the things that I put on the website, and though Valerie still has to sort through the sales figures on Monday, I am pretty sure that we raised the £1180 needed to fund two shelter boxes to go to Japan.

So thank you to everyone who bought things, who publicised the sale, who encouraged and passed it on.  I am beyond grateful.

Thinking about Mothers

Today I have been embroidering lots of beautiful messages to people's mothers and grandmothers.  The reason is that one of our mirrors is features in the latest gift catalogue from Not on the High Street.

We were also featured in a great Mothers Day e-catalogue yesterday, put together by Zoe of Inspired Celebrations and Viv of Poppy Sparkles

It brought home that actually Mothers' Day is not that far away (3rd April) and I thought that I should do something a bit special.

So, spend over £20 on your Mum on our website and we will give you a 20% discount and include wrap, tag and card in your parcel so you have one less things to think about.  The checkout code is MUM.

We will match the wrap to whatever you buy, meadowy, campervans, cakes . . .

Of course, you could buy for someone who isn't your Mum, or even yourself . . .I won't tell.

Snakeshead Fritillaries

In the midst of the frost we are now having the odd warm day and we can see the shoots beginning to nose out of the ground.

Because of last year's tulip fire we are not growing any tulips this year, so I shall have to be content with my second favourite spring flower - the snakeshead fritillary.

Thers is something so fresh and natural, yet so sophisticated about the flowers

This is a wedding bouquet that I made a couple of years ago for a spring bride.

I love embroidering snakeshead fritillaries, though they are so detailed that they take ages - really too long to do as wholesale so they tend to pop up and disappear again on the website.

On Tuesday, as I have a few orders for them, I shall be devoting the morning to sewing a batch of A5 fritillary notebooks - so until then they are available here.  After that they will probably disappear again for a bit!

We also do a matching card.

There are probably 6 weeks to wait till they bloom again here - I'm waiting with baited breath!

All the Fun of the Fair

Though it turned out to be a bit of a nightmare in the end, there is one thing that saved me spiralling into despair at the Spring Fair Trade show in Birmingham and that was the good cheer, kindness and general bubbliness of my immediate neighbours.

The stand next to me was All the Fun of the Fair - with its bright yellow and white awning, a great match for my circus things - a treasure of beautiful braids, ribbons, knitted sweets and teacosies - quirky, whacky and with a great emphasis on the handmade. That is where I spent my pennies - buying up bobbly braid for me and Japanese ribbons for Isobel.

The stand was run by Buzz Stokes - and is an outpost of her knitting, haby and handmade shop All the Fun of the Fair in Soho - 2nd Floor, 8 Kingly Ct London W1B 5PW - a shop which is going to be first on my list of must sees when I am next in London.  There is also a Big Cartel shop

As though spending a week at a Trade Show wasn't enough, Buzz was also long distance managing a bit of a shop revamp and it reopened on Saturday - with the striped awning, and lots of new handmade bits and bobs.  Buzz sent me some photos from her phone.

and it looks fabulous - alongside her eccentric handmade things she sells all kinds of sewing things I remember from childhood - card needleholders like baskets of flowers, tomato shaped pincushions . .

Just my kind of shop.

And because Buzz is Buzz, she kindly took back with her all my sample stock (and that of several other standholders - in enormous bags, on a train - this woman is my hero) - which makes her my newest London stockist.

While I was checking the details of the shop I came across this site with lots more photos - just showing what a tempting place it must be.

So thank you Buzz - meeting you made my week.