Mercury Best Small Business award goes to…Katie Cardew Illustrations!

WHAT a September. August was 400 degrees and full of tag teaming in the studio (summer holidays are not a small business’s best friend) but September, my word, we were back in the game!! It kicked off with Burghley Horse Trials where we were awarded runner up in the best stand competition and ended with winning the Best Small Business award at the Mercury Business awards! Delighted doesn’t even cover it.

In September 2017 I took two tea towel designs to Burghley. They sold like hot cakes and it was that weekend that I got thinking that a gift and homeware range might have legs.. Once the idea was in my head, it was simply (simply HA)  a case of putting it into action. We decided to launch the homewares range at Spring Fair at the beginning of February. By the time we started the process, it was November, giving us ELEVEN weeks, including Christmas when everything handily shuts down for a fortnight. It was not fun and I will not be repeating the experience (ever ever ever) BUT we worked our socks off until there was no socks left in the cupboard and somehow managed to pull it off. From a dog life and Stamford tea towel design to a range of teatowels, aprons, greeting cards, prints, cosmetic bags and tableware, the Katie Carew Illustrations homeware range was officially launched!

The retail atmosphere at the moment is not easy and we have had to overcome a huge number of challenges to get our products into the market. When you look  at a product in a shop, what isn’t immediately apparent is the amount of work it takes just to get it on the shelf. I certainly had no idea before we started. Take, say our cosmetic bags. They began with a brainstorm about what products we would want to buy and then another brainstorm about designs. Once we had found a UK manufacturer,  Lucy had to make sure all the pricings worked out and then Katie illustrated the designs and fitted them to the product template. The cosmetic bags require a zip, a KC Illustrations label and a leather zip pull. Manufacturers for these components also had to be sourced and quantities negotiated. The labels were a pig – the design for them was relatively straight forward but finding a manufacturer was a challenge – we found one eventually but it held up  the process by weeks! Once we had the samples made, we tweaked the designs and pressed the button on manufacturing. The cosmetic bags then needed packaging – again, a manufacturer had to be sourced, pricings checked and the templates and designs had to be created. Once printed and once the bags arrived, we tagged, leathered and viola – our final product!! Just the small case of getting them professionally photographed, onto the website, into a custom designed brochure and then into shops…but that’s all a whole different story!! Repeat for each of our new products (and there is about 45) and you can see why we were all walking around like the living dead for 3 months. Throw in a couple of dozen commission deadlines I had to meet plus the large number orders that were coming through on the website and the merry fact that the team pulled through without someone running to the hills frantically searching for a nice normal job in a bank was a near miracle (thanks guys).

Fast forward 3 months and we are now out of the frantic manufacturer sourcing/designing mad/labelling and bar coding bog of doom and back sitting on the crest, riding the wave of fun and excitement (ok that was corny but it’s too late at night to delete i’m afraid). Since the dark days of early 2018, we have come on leaps and bounds. I can barely believe that it has only been a matter of months – the amount of knowledge and experience gained has been enormous (as well as the amount of tea drunk and biscuits consumed…). We have added some beautiful new products to the range – AGA tops, mugs, notebooks, invitations, a new map and the best selling kitchen boards and gained 50 new stockists along the way. We have gone from a  team of 2 to a team of 4 and moved into a custom built studio to boot. It’s good with a capital G. The products are lovely, our manufacturers are fabulous, the orders are coming in thick and fast and the team are working like clock work. Of course there are and will be stresses but for now (ok, today) we are a slick operation. The Mercury award was a lovely lovely reminder that hard work always pays off (and that 5 glasses of prosecco before making a speech will never be a great idea). It is in pride of place in our studio and in a whirlwind 2018, will always remind me of a time of sheer lunacy followed by sheer joy!