Saturday in the studio…

More selling than making today.

I was at Leeds Metropolitan University studying Marlowe's Dr. Faustus and how to recognize a an early 18th Century Diva - specifically Francesca Cuzzoni with tour of St John's church thrown in too (buildings as primary sources) for the afternoon.

I checked in with Ruth at lunchtime, we had an important delivery to ship - samples to the Museum of London, which had been posted. By all accounts it was difficult sitting at the sewing machine for more than quarter of an hour as the studio was inundated with customers; Sophie was cracking on, head-down as usual, and there were some three trade orders almost fully embroidered and ready for assembling and shipping.

I arrived back at the studio around 4pm and it was indeed, full of customers; time enough left for planning next weeks production.

Sophie's latest creation for our cards project is the image of The Queen of Hearts:

Thursday in the studio…

Phew - Shakespeare's Globe theatre trade order is complete, a mammoth task! We've made the same mistake as we did last summer with a huge Jane Austen Centre order, namely, doing it all in one go, quite repetitive especially when there are only four quotations and four colour ways (specified by the Globe); we won't make that mistake again, we'll stagger the production between other jobs. I think the girls need a well deserved rest from making bookmarks now for a couple of days. I have to say though, it does look good as a completed order.


The festival of quilts is starting 1 March, the Quilt Museum and Gallery will be staging ‘Inspired by  the Past: Traditional Practice and Contemporary Conversations’ and ‘Breakthrough' by Contemporary Quilt. It begins on the 27th March for a few months, Ruth & I have tickets for the opening on Thursday 25th. If you're coming up to York for either of the exhibitions do consider paying us a visit here at the Sumptuosity studio, we're only 5 minutes walk away and have lots of things in our studio shop as well as our products.

Wednesday in the studio…

We are bogged down with bookmark production at the moment, 240 for Shakespeare's Globe and a large amount for Kelmscott Manor too. The girls will need a rest from making bookmarks for a couple of days, still, lots of other things need embroidering and making-up.

We took another four trade orders yesterday, three responding to a promotional offer I put out to our existing stockists a couple of days ago and one is another follow-up from Scotland's Trade Fair. It seems as though a few potentials are holding off until Spring, many are looking for delivery dates around the 25 Mar; one order had specified delivery for 25 May so I politely replied asking if the May had meant to be March, it was a good job I did!

I emailed one of our stockists images of our Alice in Wonderland cards yesterday and they asked to have some added to their order, things are looking promising so far for the card project, Sophie who has done the designs (and is creditted on the rear of the card) is quite excited. I've sourced the 300gms card, envelopes and cello sleeves, one of our card suppliers for the studio shop (Gail Kelly) was very kind in providing us with valuable information which saved much time; thanks Gail.

Tuesday in the studio...

February came over rather quiet after Valentine's, so, time for some promotion...

I contacted our stockists this morning with a promotional offer and by the close of day we had five new orders and a much healthier February order sheet; so this evening was spent preparing project folders, printing orders and invoices.

I use the Project Centre in Microsoft Entourage for Mac, it's great for pulling all the relevant emails, files and documents together for each particular order, priceless!


Oh, we had our first internet purchase from Russia today - Alice in Wonderland is popular all round the world it seems.

Saturday in the studio…

Sometimes a short day for me in the studio as I am now a student I sometimes spend Saturday mornings at York St John’s or like next week the whole day at Leeds Met.

Today was an important day for getting a particular order out to our Cambridge stockist and I failed! We had two visits yesterday, one expected from our friend Jo from Cumbria and the other an unexpected visit from Brian an ex-colleague of Ruth’s at 5:00 with an invite to the pub, which meant bumping into Vikings and inviting them to the studio (in full costume of course).



But, due to a late night, effects of alcohol, university and an invasion of some 10+ Vikings (with photograph as promised), most of the day was used up so I shall have to spend an hour or two on my day off to get the order delivered on Tuesday (still on schedule!)

After a design review of the Alice in Wonderland cards on Friday, we concluded that a couple of changes were required: we didn’t need the text under the image, the image needed to be square, the border needed to be twice as wide and we agreed the photographic quality needed to be better; this was resolved with more and different lighting. The end result is much improved, don’t you think?



Hurray for the weekend… website updates and more.

Thursday in the studio…

This morning I had to perform one of my least favourite tasks within my role in Sumptuosity – chasing payments; we may hear through the news that the recession is (supposed to be) over, but from where we sit in the small craft business I can confirm that this is not the case; more and more stockists seem to be stretching their payment terms beyond 30 days; thankfully, it’s not often we have to do this and it didn’t take too long then it was back to the more usual ‘stuff’ in the business.

We have an unusual sales opportunity coming up in the middle of March, the Alzheimer’s Society will be selling our products in a craft fair with KPMG Leeds; more ‘hi-res’ images required for the marketing material; my job for tonight; if it goes well, there will be many more sales opportunities with the society.

Six packages to post today, we’re soon going to need a pull-along shopping trolley if we keep posting so many packages together! All the Scottish Trade Fair orders (apart from those wanting delivery in March) are now dispatched.

Sophie has created six Alice in Wonderland images, we’re determined to turn these into cards, here’s my first pass at the card design:


I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of the images.

Wednesday in the studio…

We have had a number of new trade stockist orders this month, many of which are follow-ups from the Scottish Trade Fair; one order arrived on Sunday was paid for Tuesday and asked if we could dispatch that day (holidays/Cumbria &c)! We weren’t able to as we had other commitments but it has been dispatched today, how’s that for service? Quick turn-around of orders is one of the key aspects of our keeping the customer satisfied policy.

The Sumptuosity fairies are flying with the embroidery, we’re very much up-to-date with our trade orders at the moment, apart from Ruth with her Kelmscott & (huge) Shakespeare orders; Sophie and Alanna will soon be embroidering to fill the stock boxes rather than for orders. It feels strange since last month was so very busy with trade order emails pinging on the computer two & 3 times a day, the emails are a little slower this month (especially after Valentines day); it all evens out over time, though it’s very easy to start to get a little concerned when you go a day without a stockist trade order (which we have today) until this very second when the email pings with an order from our stockist on the Wirral; now the world’s a good and happy place.

Sophie has an order on the go at the moment with forty Alice in Wonderland mirrors and 50 Alice in Wonderland rectangular brooches, phew! Another stockist emailed today wanting ‘hi-res’ images of our Alice in Wonderland mirrors for a national newspaper article! Anyone would think there was an Alice in Wonderland film due out or something!

Customers have been in & out of the studio on a regular basis today, it’s the Viking Festival here in York it’s quite surreal to be looking out of the window and see a group of Vikings walking by (what is the collective noun for Vikings – comments please) and if we get any of them in the studio shop I promise I’ll take a photograph and publish it on the site!

Today’s postal mail included a notice from HMRC about the 2010 Employer Annual Returns today; every time we receive mail from HMRC we automatically perceive it’s going to be a problem… Even before we open the envelope, we really have to get out of that frame of mind as I keep hearing “Tax doesn’t have to be taxing!”

Any one who has a business telephone number will agree with me on this – we don’t half get a mass of time wasting telephone calls each day: Titan Telecom, Commercial Power (currently the biggest culprits) and RTA (asking if we’d like to sell our business)! Does any helpful soul have any suggestions how we can stop some of these calls? We must get in excess of ten per day; does anyone else suffer this problem!

All-in-all a busy and fruitful day; do read Ruth’s blog about her invite to the opening of the NTU lace archive, we had a great time yesterday evening and I’m so very proud of her and her achievements.

Thoughts on a Trade Fair...

We recently attended the Scotland's Trade Fair at the end of January; I was very excited beforehand as we already had some 30 stockists in the region and was ready to make a big improvement on this. The trade fair was to run from Sunday to Tuesday and from past experience generally Sunday is good for business with larger independents, Monday is good for municipal galleries and Tuesday is usually smaller independents.

At this trade fair, Sunday was good but Monday and Tuesday were poor for orders and my initial response was downbeat; however, the inquiries and subsequent orders since the trade fair has been fantastic. A common thread seems to be that our beautiful vibrant silks will make a welcome bright change to the usual tartan and tweed.

It just goes to show, that you should never count your chickens...