Fairs and Filing

There seems to be a never ending pile of admin at Ochre HQ at the moment - orders to be logged and stock updated, bills to be paid and filed, and what feels like piles and piles of paper. Although we strive to be green in all aspects of our business, we recycle, shred and reuse, and try to do as much as possible online, we still seem to end up with a desk covered in stuff.
We have occasional purges where afterwards we feel very self righteous and Monica like, then we go back into the spiral of mounting piles of stuff.
With the big Spring Fair approaching at the Nec next month, we have extra piles dotted around - piles of samples requiring ironing and labelling, paperwork that needs to be taken(more paper!), and random props - a few mannequins dotted around and a ladder!
Going from working all day in the beautiful Malverns, with stunning views and the ability to get up and stretch your legs in fresh air when ever the want takes you, to spending a very long 6 days in the NEC, with no daylight and recycled air is not something we are looking forward to - but it will be the first chance we will get to get a reaction to our new design and feedback from existing retailers of the Ochre And Ocre brand, so we are weirdly excited.
Right better get on with reducing the next pile....it's nearly the weekend!

Happy New Year - finally!!

Why finally you ask?? Because I have been woefully tardy on updating our blog, but I do have good intentions of keeping it more up to date this year! (New Year resolutions and all that!)
We have already had a busy start to the year at Ochre HQ - the Clearance sale has been going great guns, and it is great to start seeing some empty space on the store shelves. Just in time as our new addition to our British Collection, Katie is arriving shortly. We had a great photo shoot with our photographer pal Rachel Spivey just before Christmas.(a sneaky peak at one of the new images below). It was a lovely clear day, which gave our images a beautiful winter light. We have been laying out our new brochure, and trying a few new things in there to give it a revamp.
We are also working on giving our newsletter a fresh look and have a new feature that we are very excited about starting in February. More on that in a later blog.
Our annual trip to the Spring fair is only a few weeks away as well - and we have been updating our stand ready for the wholesale crowd. So as you can read, although we've been quiet we certainly haven't been putting our feet up, it's full steam ahead here ready for an exciting year at Ochre And Ocre!