So last week the children finally went back to school and we ‘hit the ground running’ on the path known as ‘it’s soon gonna be Christmas!’…   the Summer has seen me back off a little from the coal face, to try and practice what we preach and spend some quality time just hanging out with my family.  BUT it also gave my brain time and space to create a much needed review and plan for Pearl and Earl going forward…

First up?  The site which was rebranded with our new strapline “the home of hip happy colour”  because that is the kind of life and home we try and live and make.  Colour, sprinkled with a little creativity, our fondest memories and our latest passions.  We are at our heartland, a design studio, who creates pieces from an art print … to 5m high paper flowers for a window display in Oxford Street.  Our online collection is a way to distill this for our customers into affordable quality pieces they can pick and mix…. creating their own “Hip Happy Colourful Home”.

Sometimes my head gets so full of new ideas and the day to day, that it is hard to step back and see things as clearly as we did when we started our Pearl and Earl journey.. so my new mantra is to Keep It Simple!  Look to the heartland of everything we offer..  sure we can try and do everything (especially as more and more businesses a lot bigger than ours are hot on our heels) but instead we are going to just be confident of who and what we are….  delivering to and delighting our customers with our QUALITY products, that might not be the cheapest, but they are still the best!  *personal point of view*

Our honeycomb for example is from 2 old factories that I had to source 4 years ago (when nobody else sold them)  .. 1 in Europe and the other in the US.  They had not been producing paper decorations in volume since the 70’s… but all that soon changed, and we still use them and their luxury quality (which is 25gms heavier than the cheap Far East imports that are now flooding the market and undercutting us).  But hey… thats the fashion cycle.

So now we are in the midst of editing everything we do…  ensuring the brand values and quality are in all our products.

Our website will be getting weekly updates, our products have new packaging, our trade offer is being revamped and repackaged.  Spring 2014 has been sent off for sampling…  and my lists are getting ticked off!  All in all a very productive first week back ‘at school’.

…  as for Christmas, well I will save that one for later x