Sunglasses!

Good morning!

Have to start with thank you to each and everyone who reads this each day and the continued support for what we do. This is something we will never take for granted. 

We had a good day getting things sorted from the weekend, drying everything out and getting them put away. It was certainly an experience on Sunday when the storm hit, I have been doing shows for 12 years and thought I had seen it all, snow, sleet freezing temperatures, boiling hot and the worst which is gale force winds, but I have never experienced such torrential rain in such a short space of time when stood on my stand. 

When it comes to shows, wind is definitely the biggest issue, you can cope with the other weathers but when it comes to wind, not a chance. I have seen large marques having to be evacuated because they are lifting, even with massive spikes in the ground that have taken machines to put them in. We have had plenty of shows cancelled before they even open due to high winds . It must be a difficult decision for the show organisers to make but its far better to cancel when it's like that than it is to risk someone getting hurt. Someone would get hurt, I have seen gazebo’s blown over and damage peoples cars so god knows what it would do if it hit a child etc. 

It's one of the reasons you cannot rely on shows for the only income to your business, when we first started it was, until we built up a large following and I don’t like business jargon, but brand awareness. Once we had done this we opened up to wholesale accounts and then ultimately our own shops. This makes us less reliant on shows, they are still an integral part of our business but the risk is spread over multiple avenues.

I had a good chat with someone who came to the show about corporate gifts for their customers at Christmas. This is something we can offer you, if you work for a company that sends their clients a gift at Christmas or you own a company and would like to send them something of ours, we can sort this out for you. We are very flexible, we print our own labels and can get in bespoke packaging for you, depending on numbers etc

If you saw the live yesterday, bloody Gema and the spray thing, I was soaked by the end of it, she certainly has found a new game which I am sure will happen again…and again, at some point I will get my own back, I often threaten to chuck her in one of the large bins! If I do, don’t worry I will get it on camera! You would of also seen the fun about banning my Mum, she took it in good spirits and had a laugh with it, even messaging after saying she wants some sunglasses, don’t worry Mum, some are on the way!

Sunglasses have gone on the website and people have started ordering them, so if you would like a pair pop over to our online shop and grab some, they are very smart, wooden frames and as we found super dark tint, so much so we thought we had an issue with our phones and needed to turn the brightness up…until we realised we had sunglasses on, we laughed hard at ourselves at that one! It's good to laugh though, especially those proper belly laughs, when you end up saying stop I can’t breathe!! 

The advent calendars will go on presale tomorrow, there will be 50 units this year and they will contain 24 x 50ml of mixed spirits all made by us, Vodka, Gin, Rum and some liqueurs. We have been asked for Whisky but the next barrel won’t be ready to be emptied until next year.

The baubles will be with us in a couple of weeks, we will fill them with Toffee Vodka, Caramel Rum, Christmas Gin and a couple of other items. More info to follow..

Got lots to do today, orders to sort out etc and general admin stuff

Right off to a meeting

Catch you later

Ant x