January Blues..and Red's, Greens and Ochres

Our first ever January sale is over, and now it's onwards and upwards with 2011. There is a lot of forward planning this month; we have our Wholesale show in two weeks time at the NEC, where we will be showing our new colourways in the British Collection. Followed a few weeks later by the Country Living Spring Fair; a lovely show where it is hard not to spend all your takings!
I always get excited about new additions to the range, and I can't wait to see the first reaction to the Isabella Red and Madelaine Ochre. The Country Living Fair will be the first time I get a face to face real punter reaction, as the trade show buyers tend to be planning ahead, for the Autumn season.
We have been putting the finishing touches to our new brochure, with help from the very talented Lindsey Joyce. I tend to put together a very rough mock up of how I want each page to look, along with the text and pics, and Lindsey somehow manages to turn it into a professional looking brochure.
In preparation for the launch of the new colourways, I've also started to make Lavender Hearts in the new colourways. As boredom tends to set in quite quickly, I try to batch the tasks - spending a few hours one day cutting them out, sewing on the brand label another day, and so on, until it's time for the final stuff and stitch. A lovely fragrant job, which I tend to do sat in front of the tv at night, aided and abetted by Mr Ochre!
Right - it's swatch cards next, a night ahead of me of double sided sticky tape and piles of swatched fabric. 

New Year - January Sale!

We have had a great initial reaction to our first ever sale at Ochre And Ocre. I was determined that it should be a "proper" sale, with genuine reductions. As an ex buyer I know all about special "sale buys", and I hate getting conned by the not so real savings. Another bug bear of mine is when you purchase something in a sale, then two weeks later it is reduced even more. It does make you feel like you should have held off a bit longer, to save those extra pounds - everything in the Ochre sale is only being marked down once, so as to avoid upsetting those customers who have purchased already.
Some of the lines in the original Chateau collection will remain marked down to clear, but all the print ranges, Organic Cotton table cloths and napkins will have new pricing for 2011.
Since we originally launched Ochre And Ocre in 2008 all the prices have been held. But in order to run a profitable business, (a sensible goal I think!!), we have to increase our pricing for two reasons. When we first bought the range the sterling to euro exchange rate was strongly in our favour, but this has declined hugely over the past two years. Another more recent issue is the price of Cotton. There are major cotton shortages worldwide, and Organic Cotton is even more scarce. I read on the BBC Website this morning that Next are increasing their prices by up to 8% due to the cotton prices. As a "small" company, we are at the back of the queue against the bigger retailers in trying to grab some of the remaining Cotton stocks.
Allowing for all the above factors, because we are only "small" we are fortunate to have small overheads, and more flexibility than some of the larger firms, so our price increases are modest, and still allow us to be competitive. It will be interesting to see how 2011 will pan out, but I am optimistic of a good response to our new additions to the ranges this year,  and am grateful to have a loyal and growing band of customers.