All Change!

We’ve got this!

At the time of writing this, we are one week into our second national lockdown. Many of our plans for this month have been cancelled or postponed, but that hasn’t stopped us from planning, preparing, painting, printing and promoting as much as we possibly can! 

We had hoped to be dipping our toes into the local Thursday market, but as we are a non-essential business, we have had to go “virtual.” These dates will be picked up again at a later date – hopefully in time for us to sell our Christmas-themed stock. Fingers crossed!

In our previous life, we happily attended fairs and exhibitions, chatting to passers-by and allowing the public to make a connection with us. This week we should have been exhibiting paintings in Windsor, but alas, we are going to have move out of our comfort zone and try some new sales techniques. 

We have signed up to the local school event ‘St Mary’s C of E Virtual Christmas Market’ – which receives 10% commission of our sales, and have just applied for a place in ‘Virtual Horsham’, which is going to be an e-commerce site for many Horsham businesses. 

Cherry has been busy painting her socks off recently, whilst we have been photographing her work, sending off blueprints to the card manufacturer, utilising marketing software to help produce videos and adverts… and now many of the cards have arrived, meaning that we have a lot of stuffing and making-up packs to do.

With so many steps from beginning to end, realistically we have to constantly be thinking ahead to the next big diary dates – we are already discussing  what designs we could add to our card ranges, with events such as Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mothers’ Day. We need to be able to hit the ground running when those dates approach.

Post-lockdown plans

• Leonardslee Illuminated has completely sold out, and (social-distancing permitting), should see a lot of footfall. So fingers crossed we have that to look forward to in December.
• Sakakini Jewellers– is still going to be selling our umbrellas until Christmas
• The Montague Gallery in Worthing has also offered us a spot once lockdown ends – this is very exciting, as we have been on the waiting list for a long time – and it has an exceptionally high standard of work. 
• The Christmas Market/French Market has moved the date – to Sunday 6^th December – so we are hoping to see lots of you there!
• Pier Road Coffee and Art in Littlehampton have a number of our items in their shop – which have been selling fast!