Repeating the pattern?

When I was growing up my Mum, like many women tried to find piece work that would fit in with being at home after school and in the holidays - she did B&B, she painted pegs to look like soldiers and highland dancers, she helped organise play schemes but most consistently she made toys for a local craft shop.

My clearest memories of Mum before she took up antique dealing are of her sitting each evening in front of the wood burner with a willow basket full of half made animals waiting to be hand finished.

Recently I have been drawn to making toys again - and I am looking back to patterns from the 60s and 70s, probably quite similar in style to the patterns copied from magazines in my youth. This cute pony is my favourite at the moment - made in soft suede effect fabric with felt mane and tail he is just the right size and squashiness for a small hand.

I wonder whether this is a form of broodiness - my girls are growing up fast and are not as attached to soft toys any more (though they pleaded for, and got, all my prototypes for the toys I am working on at the moment). I don't intend to have another baby - perhaps this sewing soft things is a displacement activity (though if you ask me professionally I will spout that I want to develop a children's section for the website)

A post about post . . .

As a couple of people responded to my comment yesterday about the cost of postage I thought that I would open out the topic a bit and ask for some feedback both from other small mail order businesses and from people who buy mail order.

What can small businesses do about the cost of posting things?

I do a mailing two or three times a year - at the start of the season, sometimes at the end of the season and before Christmas. Ideally I would like to cut this down to one mailing a year but I do feel that, from a business point of view, a clutch of pretty postcards in the hand is better than any number of e-mails. They can be stuck to a fridge, handed on to friends etc. etc. . . .I hope. Am I right? Do people relish getting a bright hand addressed envelope (Or might they be disappointed that it isn't a birthday card with a fat cheque inside?)

There is also the issue of paper. I use recycled paper for all letters and print-outs but I do not use recycled envelopes as I couldn't source them in bright colours and I could not afford the cost of recycled postcards. This is not as good as it should be. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Then there is the issue of mailing out orders. We thought long and hard about this with the website and decided on a flat fee as, when I am buying things, I like to be able to do a transaction in one go without faffing about with e-mails (spot the stressed mother). We pitched this at £4.95, sort of on a par with Cath Kidston, Plumo or the White Company which are the type of catalogues my customers tend to read.

The average actual cost of the mailings I have done so far has been £7.50 (and that is postage, not boxes or tape) so really I can't afford to bring it down any lower. None has been under the £4.95.

What is other people's experience of this - do you look at the postage and think mmmmm, maybe I'll pop into the shops in town? Are people more au fait with postage costs in our post e-bay world? Should I be conning couriers into thinking I am a big company?

That aside - I am on a high today - the first batch of letters went out yesterday, would have arrived with people today, and already I have had phonecalls from a high percentage of last year's subscription customers re-ordering for this year. If I could work out how to insert one of those smily face icons, I would.

Presents for my girls

One of the important reasons that I began my business was that I wanted to be around for my girls. Zoe was 3 and Katie newborn when it all began and the business has grown with them - finally getting more serious when Katie hopped on to the bus to school last year.

I wanted to be able to go to all the school shows and to help with the school garden. I wanted to have them wandering about aimlessly in the sunshine during holidays.

It all sounds idyllic doesn't it? The down side for them is that I may work from home, but I do work. Running a small business is all consuming and at busy times they don't get enough attention.



It got particularly bad around the Country Living Fair - I missed a parents' evening, the house was hemmed in with boxes of stock and they were farmed out to a series of friends after school - so I decided to get them something as a thank you for their tolerance.

I have long admired Manda at Treefall design's sock puppies so I decided to get a couple of them - as you can see from the photos the girls are delighted.

The pups came beautifully wrapped with the most gorgeous gift tags so thank you very much Manda, beautiful!

Ethical weddings

Suddenly I have begun to get masses of wedding enquiries - so much so that I am almost full up this year.
Partly it is the wedding planning season, partly that I have had a couple of small newspaper mentions but mainly I think it is that couples are increasingly interested in ensuring their big day doesn't have a big carbon footprint.

There are now a few websites catering for people looking for ethical suppliers - I think the best is Katie's site Ethical Weddings which has the advantage of an active forum.
As we have always sold ourselves as a completely seasonal, homegrown florist we have always attracted couples looking for eco type flowers - I think that I have done more flowers for youth hostels than fancy hotels (and co-incidentally they were the nicest buildings to decorate as well). It is lovely that it is moving more into the mainstream.
I am wanting to build up a good wedding links section on the website - not the kind of thing that duplicates what Katie is doing - just perhaps other small environmentally friendly businesses, not necessarily wedding businesses, that do things to do with weddings. e.g. the youth hostels,. Also sites that discuss the whole Green Wedding phenomenon.

Any suggestions welcome.

The fantastic paeony was from last year - we're not that balmy up north.

Country Living Roundup.

This was meant to have been done on Thursday - ah well - it is probably a bit irrelevant really but these are stalls I liked at the show and then there are a couple of rants


Caroline Zoob - always beautiful, much copied, but then they never quite get it right.

Primrose Hill Interiors. Flowers, ginghams, hearts and dots

Boxwood - the most packed stall in the hall.


And now for Rant 1.

The Country Living Magazine awards a prize for the best stall design, the prize is a free stall next year and it is meant to encourage people to put a lot of effort into their stall design and so improve the look of the whole show. we won last year and it was a good reward for a lot of hard work that went into the look of the stall over and above the things we were selling.

This is the stall that won

Hume Sweet Hume. I don't really understand it - I'm not being tricksy with the photos - that is the whole stall, there isn't something interesting just out of view. Now I like Hume Sweet Hume's products, their knitted cushions are very soft and tasteful, but this is not a designed stand. It is a shop fitting c. 1997.

This is the stall I think should have won.

Dream Acres had a great hand cart that became the stall and lots of things, including these patchwork flowers, had been made for the show.

I think it very peculiar - and judging from the amount of people who mentioned the odd choice at our stall - so did a lot of visitors.

Rant 2

There has been a lot of bad publicity for Country Living Shows within the blogging community, a feeling that there are not enough small craft producers any more, that much of the stuff on offer is bought in and that there is a lack of variety, that they are too crowded for a leisurely browse . The knee jerk reaction seems to be to blame the magazine and actually I do not think that that is justified.

Stalls are expensive - the overall expenses for a small stall for a one of the shows must come in at about £2,000 - but this is very much in line with all trade shows -many of which do not have the slickness of the CL show. I was constantly amazed by the speed and professionalism of the Melville team handling the putting up and taking down of the show. I don't get the feeling that the shows are a great money making exercise for CL magazine.

So, to cover costs you need to sell approximately £4,000 over the 4 days. Now this is not an issue for some stalls - Stephensons Rocking Horses must take double that every day, one jumper stall told me of a customer spending £2,500 in a single purchase - but it is an issue for most of the craft stalls. This is because customers do not value their products properly.

I had bought a felt corsage, made from knitted material hand felted then sewn up, a one off.

It is lovely and goes well with my red coat and cost all of £16.00. I feel that it was a more than fair price. 2 customers told me - without my having brought the subject up -that I should have saved my money and gone down to Accessorize where they have a 2 for 1 offer on corsages.

There seems to be an inability in many people to distinguish between mass produced throwaway items and hand made unique ones. It all comes down to price. Though they want the stalls there at CL Fairs so that it looks pretty, they will buy on the high street.

Then there is the customer who does appreciate the difference. The customer who has paid her £7.50 entrance and is using the Fair as a source of ideas. She quizzes about methods, she takes surreptitious photographs, she scribbles in her notebook. Friends say to each other "Oh what a good idea, you could do that".

I had 15 magnet buttons stolen from my noticeboards - presumably by people who thought "Oh what a good idea, I could do that".

So I don't think that it is the organiser to blame - yes, I wish they could get more innovative press coverage, yes I wish they would get more young people in with houses to fill, but really I think that it is the customers.

If you want the small crafty unique stalls to attend- BUY FROM THEM - don't just tell them the look nice.

As to the negative comments about the magazine itself see here I am with Nikki on deploring the laziness.

Rant over

We actually had a very good fair - but many people didn't - so I leave you with a last photo of my van. You can tell I am confined to bed today trying to recover my voice, this post has taken ages.

Country Living news . . .

It is all confirmed now so I can go into details!

I actually feel a bit mean being excited as there is presumably some really sad reason for our good fortune. The people who were going to do the garden feature at the Country Living Scottish Fair have had to pull out and it has been offered to us.

We are going to move our stall from one of the aisles to a much larger area right in front of the main doors. There is room to take the van and also to put on a bit more of a show. It won't be a proper garden feature - you can't do a proper garden feature in 4 weeks and get everything else together for a stall as well, but I hope that it will look great and be a fitting entrance feature for the show.

I am really chuffed as it will allow us to show all the different sides of the business - I was worried that we would appear to be a business that sells just crafts when I feel that that is a small part of the whole. We were working on a large pinboard to show all the other sides of what we do - now we will be able to do it on a grander scale (Though as I like the pinboard idea we may do that as well)

Pots of gold. . . .

Last night I went with friends to hear Duncan Bannatyne (of Dragons' Den fame) talk in Glasgow.

The event was hosted by Waterstones and the Glasgow Herald newspaper and was to publicise Bannatyne's book Anyone Can Do It (spookily similar title to the Coffee Republic founders' book Anyone Can Do it !)

The event was entertaining enough - Bannatyne is a good, if not particularly inspiring, speaker - but it was the audience that really made it for me.

The evening took the form a set piece interview (easy questions, cued up anecdotes) with someone from the Glasgow Herald newspaper and then it was questions from the floor. It was a lesson on why you should NEVER take questions from the floor in Glasgow. The first question was from a youth worker berating him from idolising wealth as a marker of success and it was downhill from there to the final (quickly terminated) insults about the quality of Bannatyne's plastic surgery.

The audience was full of desperate looking young men (the two I spoke to both had a "secret product" in development that they couldn't tell me about - presumably they would have had to kill me if it has been inadvertently revealed) and teachers/youth workers/ social workers torn between wanting to go home with some inspiration to pass on to their charges and the fact that they despise everything that Bannatyne seems to stand for.

Anyone can do it . . .but would they want to?

In the photo it is obviously Drymen Milk Bar that is home to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

I'm in a Country Living Kind of Mood (Board)

Well it is another boring CL post! I find it rather tragic that a 4 day show in March is taking up so much of my mind.

Last year - our first year exhibiting - we took the H-van with us and the idea was that the stall would look a bit like a Provencal market. There were pots of spring bulbs, dahlia tubers wrapped in tissue and all sorts of things made up in all types of materials. Everything was jumbled together in baskets and in the context it worked very well. (we won best stand & get to go back this year for free)

This time we are not taking the van (been there, done that) and the stand is smaller. The complete mix and match is not going to work. I love pattern, I love flowers, I love colour, I love patchwork. How do I resolve the need for some kind of order and theme on a small stall with my love of excess.

So I decided to cut wee bits of the materials I am using and stick them to a bit of card to check that they vaguely go together. And I think they do - obviously you wouldn't normally put them all in the same room but there is nothing screaming "get me out of here" either. You might put them all together in a patchwork (if they weren't all different weights).

I am now wafting around the house "moodboard" in hand choosing a colour for the paintwork - sugar bag light or cooking apple green ?

I also got around to loading up photos for the CL public relations people to another blog www.snapdragonphotos.blogspot.com

A busy fool . . . .

When I began to think about starting my own business, about 6 years ago now, I used to attend a lot of networking events run by Scottish Enterprise and the like.

One of the co-ordinators was a lovely woman who had once worked for Scottish Enterprise and had then left, wangling herself a freelance consultancy job for Scottish enterprise, working her own hours, being her own boss and earning a lot more money. She gave me a lot of very good advice the most important piece of which was to resist becoming a busy fool.

As I rush about painting mood boards for weddings and sewing up glazed cotton hearts I'm not sure that I have followed that advice.

I am also a great fan of Michael Gerber and his book The E-myth Revisited which looks at the way in which skilled workers - gardeners, shopkeepers, knitters, florists - begin their own businesses and keep on doing the type of skilled craft that they feel comfortable with - become busier and busier until it isn't sustainable and they become exhausted. They become busy fools.

Working in a craft based field, it is very difficult to avoid the trap. Initially I was so worried that no-one would buy anything that I pitched prices low - then when people did buy I felt that I had set a price level and couldn't raise it much. It has taken 5 years to get prices - both flowers and crafts - up to a sensible level. My worst habit is forgetting all the extras that go into making things - not the ribbons and so on, but the time spent buying materials, the petrol for delivery, the stall costs, the sandwiches and so on.

How does everyone else solve this? There are obviously a number of crafters who are even more foolish than I am if the e-bay prices are to be believed (* I put this bit in for Lisa whose doorstops are 100% nicer than the copies on ebay) and then there are those Chinese imports.

This year I am hoping to be just as busy but a little less foolish.

Fabulous fabrics

My parents and my brother all have antique shops so antique fairs and house sales were an important part of my childhood.

For as long as I can remember I have loved and collected fabrics, hats, buttons, buckles lace and thread - until fairly recently I had a ridiculously large collection of vintage costumes (Now I have a Citroen H-van).

What has always attracted me to vintage fabrics is the quality, the high thread count, the beautiful screen printing. When I began to make the textile range I used a lot of vintage fabrics but as the business has grown the need for continuity, the difficulty of finding mint vintage fabrics in any size and then the difficulty in actually making myself cut them up all caused problems. This led me to move mainly onto using high end furnishing fabrics - particularly linens - which have the same high printing standards without the worry about material suddenly shredding.

Today I am making up things in this beautiful Sanderson linen which has painterly parrot tulips all over it- I love bold things, figurative designs which move beyond the edge of the notebook or bag. It is beautiful to sew and is a lovely weight - good body but a bit slouchy (now this sounds like a personal ad!) so that it still looks like a fabric and not like cardboard.

Thinking about branding

One thing that I am taking time to do during these festivity clear days is to think about what I want "Snapdragon" to become. I am doing a lot of pacing about and looking at old photos.

It is clear that it is time to concentrate on evolving into a brand - to come up with something consistent, something recognisable, so that a website makes sense.

I have resisted this in the past as I associated branding with corporate banality - and feared that there would not be room for the kind of one off quirkiness that I enjoy doing.

Then I came across a blog which defined a "brand" as being a business that refuses to tell anyone else's story. Now that really feels right, it is personal not corporate. Perhaps it is just a case of working out exactly what that story is - or more importantly what it isn't.

The photo is of Petersham nursery - a place with a great brand and story.