Sheer Luxe Conference

I am very excited to be attending the SheerLuxe conference this week, in Fulham. Titled "Gearing up for Christmas", it is aimed at online businesses, and covers a wide range of topics from some top industry pundits. I'm hoping to pick up some tips, as well as do some essential networking. There is a really interesting mix of people attending, from fashion companies, to homewares and food.

We have had more press coverage this month for our Cut Flower Bouquets. In the Western Mail Home section, our bouquets were recommended by Design Guru, Nicola Wilkes, as the answer to eco friendly and stylish flowers. Nicola runs a great interiors website, with large and small companies, as well as design advice, and news on the latest trends. go to www.WalesAtHome.co.uk to see more.
We have also been selected as Editors choice in the Gloucestershire Preview, summer edition, for our handcrafted wooden napkin rings.

I've had a preview of our house pictures, that David Giles took a few weeks ago, and they look fantastic. Our house looks so big and light, fingers crossed a magazine is interested. I also managed to get a few tips off David regarding photography, which I will put to the test next week, when, hopefully weather permitting I will be doing some wedding pictures in Kim's garden. Kim has a gorgeous garden, as you would expect from someone who sells lavender plants for a living. Check out her website, she has over 60 different varieties of lavender!

Press Coverage for Ochre & Ocre

Image by pixelized via Flickr

It is great that our new additions to the Ochre & Ocre range are getting some press coverage:
our lovely British cut flowers have made the press again this week - this time in the fun online magazine Daisy Green. Our Handcrafted Gifts range is also featured in this months Gloucestershire Preview.

No shows this weekend - but Paul has his Dan grading on Sunday, with the BFFA, (British Free Fighting Association), so we will be holding our breath until that is over!
I have threatened to turn up with Gert dressed as a cheerleader, but he was not very impressed - I don't know why, I thought she would look very cute in a ra ra skirt!

Sunshine!

After a lovely relaxing weekend, its life back to normal at Ochre And Ocre. The empty hamper boxes arrived last week, so I am spending this week planning the perfect Christmas Hampers, calculating the costings, and writing the text. After years of working as a buyer, you would think I would be used to working a season or two in advance, but it does seem particularly surreal at the moment, given the gorgeous weather.
I've finally relented, and dragged my laptop with extension cable outside, along with the bulldog and her box. It is baking hot, the screen isn't that clear, but at least I can enjoy the weather, without feeling guilty!
The labels for our new hand wash and hand lotion are also nearly ready, so I will need to start bottling soon!
As you know I like to share my secrets with you when it comes to great online companies, and I have just come across a lovely website called; Sage, inspired by life. The site has a great mix of unique gifts and things you would want to buy for yourself, mainly sourced within the UK. I love their quirky "knitted" porcelain pots, as pictured above, as my friends know too well, I love nice ceramics, but that's because you can take a girl out of Wedgwood, but you can't take Wedgwood out of the girl!

Chilling Out

Image by ianmalcm via Flickr

I am really looking forward to this weekend! The last three have been tied up with Ochre & Ocre, from photoshoots to shows, life certainly hasn't been boring. But this weekend is my annual get together with three of my closest girlfriends. Glenys I've known from my pre school years, as we grew up on the same lane! Amy and Mary were best friends from school, and we've kept in touch ever since.
It is an annual event, and over the past few years we've got together once a year at a nice hotel in different places from the Cotswolds, to Dublin. But like everyone else we are tightening our belts and having our weekend at home, budget style!
We are having a few luxuries though - I am soooo looking forward to the Aveda treatment at Halcyon Beauty in Leamington Spa. It is a lovely little salon, run by two friends - it is intimate, relaxing and always welcoming. We are then going to be ladies who lunch somewhere in Leamington Spa, then returning here for a few glasses of vino, some simple Italian food, (with the finest table linens of course!), and some very cool chick flicks. The only issue is which one will we watch first: Dirty Dancing / My Best Friends Wedding / Bridget Jones.....

The Future of Retail

Image via Wikipedia

Not sure if any of you watched the Money Programme last night with Mary Portas - you still have chance to catch it on iplayer.

For the past ten years, the British have shopped till they dropped. Now recession is threatening the nation's favourite pastime, and one of its biggest industries. It is the latest blow for many of Britain's beleaguered high streets.

Retail guru Mary Portas tried to discover why boom towns are becoming bust towns, and what can be done to stop the extraordinary number of shop closures around Britain. Can anything be done to keep tills ringing and high streets alive?

It was interesting if slightly depressing programme for someone involved in retail,as even the die hard shopaholic was cutting back on her spending.
You wonder what will happen to our High Streets - and closer to home for me - will sales start to pick up on online with our Organic and Natural Homewares?
For shops on a high street you can put on special events - pamper your customers and give them good sales advice. For a website based company, although you have the advantage of being open 24/7 - and no rent, you are relying on people finding your site online.

It has got me thinking about what is unique about our product range - and certainly from listening to 100's of potential customers at the shows over the last few weeks one of our key strengths is that we do good quality table cloths in XL sizes. (Our 230 x 350 cloth is huge!).
The other thing everyone said alot was how good the make up and fabric quality was -but that is a hard claim to make online when nobody can see your products. How I get this message across will be one of our biggest challenges.

I'm interested to know what you think?

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• Online sales set to double within two years (telegraph.co.uk)

Cheltenham Food festival

Life is slowly getting back to normal, after we spent 3 days over the weekend at the Cheltenham Food Festival, with Ochre & Ocre.
We had a really great reaction to our new Organic Italian Linen range, with people really understanding the beautiful finish.
It was a really nice show, and the other exhibitors were very friendly. Our friends from Riverford Organics were there with their great value, organic veg boxes. Whilst chatting with Marc, I sampled their Italian Organic white wine, and fresh strawberries, which were yummy.
It always suprises me how much work there is after a show - it took me several hours yesterday to pack away the stock and all our shelving etc. I also had to wash and iron all the display stock, as we were quite close to crepes stand, so everything had a foody smell about it!
Our new honey handwash and hand lotion is ready to go - I just need to pull together the labelling information. The organic essential oils smell divine, with fresh lemon, basil and bergamot.

Local Acclaim!

A quick post today, as we are off to the Cheltenham Food Festival.
Our plans for a mellow day setting up te stand, and then exploring Cheltenham went awry yesterday, when my beloved Mac decided to crash and I lost all my emails. A panicked call to the Apple helpline made the situation worse, when I was told to delete all the history, on the premise it would come back - it didn't.
I had to leave it whilst we went to set up - and then turned to my favourite computers expert Phillippe, from Blue Earth Solutions. I realised after chatting to him, I had neglected my housework, and managed to sink my mailbox by keeping all the large graphic files. A hard and stressful lesson to learn!
One good point yesterday was that we made the local rag - a very cheesy picture of Paul & I on the stand at The Good Food show appeared in yesterdays edition. Check out the pdf on our news section on the Ochre & Ocre website to see more.