Time Flies!

Time does literally seem to have flown by lately!

We have been busy in the making shed, busy in the selling shed and busy setting up a craft fair.  Also been busy writing press releases to local and national press.  One of the things that has struck me lately is the amount of absolutely incredible crafters we are getting to meet just because we opened the purple shed!  So sales are not worthy of note just yet, but we are getting some wonderful comments and people saying 'ooh Aunt Sarah would like that, must pop back later' however the frustration in little brain is saying nooo buy it now please!!!  However, that is unfair on our shoppers who have all been very pleased with all the shiny things we have on offer.  And the networking and meeting up has more than made up for a slightly quiet till.

Marketing, ahh the bain of the small brain at the moment! It has been quite tricky to shift from a seller to a buyer brain to try and second guess what people might like, and how they might prefer to see it displayed.  I really must call up my girlfriends (those of the Norman persuasion!) who are wonderfully critical in a supportive way.  I sense a complete overhaul of the shop space if the two I have in mind pop down, but their opinion is also incredibly useful and done without malice or agenda so cannot be ignored.  Well, I could ignore it but seeing as we have too much dirt on each other it will no doubt backfire at some point!

What else have we been up to? We have a craft fair set up - venue booked, all the stall holders are locked in and now the advertising campaign starts.  Prepare to see bunting and Hippos all around the area.  But again, we have had the most amazing response from some superb crafters that we just want the day to come around so we can see them all together.  And the best accidental find was a scrapbook group who are going to make us a memento of the day from scraps gathered from all the stall holders.  Have to confess my absolute ignorance of what scrapbooking is all about but so glad I went to see them - it's stunning!  Can't wait to see what they create for us.

If you are in the area, pop along to the purple shed and if you are a crafter yourself then please bring some work to show us.  That is proving to be the best part of being open, and the ability to be able to say 'oh, you ought to talk to xxx as they could help you with that bit' because they've come to visit us too is just so lovely.  As someone said to me the other day we are linking the crafters together one Hippo at a time, we kind of like that idea too!

We are finally open!

My humble apologies for not getting these onto the blog earlier - but it's been such a whirlwind of a few weeks. Whilst I miss those days of being able to sit around all day in my jimjams chuntering away on blogger and twitter opening the shop has been such a learning curve and I don't think I'd prepared myself for the hours you need to put in. Time management fail, as ever, from the Hippo.

Anyway, we had our fantastic proper opening day - balloons, cake and kinder hippos and the sun came out so we all had a lovely day.

these are the before and after of the shed:

The Hippo knows lovely people!

I promise to blog about the shop properly soon - with all the inbetween photos of us fighting with the paint tins! But, just had to share this with you all before the thoughts go from the small brain.

We had our official opening today, and we had forgotten how lovely our friends and family truly are - apologies if that sounds awful. However, think we're all guilty of bumbling along saying oh, must call her and arrange to meet up and the day to day life gets in the way of remembering how fab our friends are.

So here's a photo taken by my fabulous friend Buffy who just happens to be an awesome photographer, and is happily mad as a badger (in a good way of course!)

l-r: Sam Kat; Clare Sherwen, me, Claire Martin

all the lovely people that agreed to be part of the first wave of the Hippos taking over the world!!

We genuinely want Little Hippo Presents to grow into a social enterprise for local crafters and artists and as luck would have it we just happen to know some rather talented crafters who are also good fun to be around - which makes life much more pleasant.

Time Management Fail!!

Err, there are only 24 hours in one day - this fact is well known to me and has been around for some time now .... so why on earth did I think getting a new shop ready, helping organise a craft fair and getting our stock ready for the craft fair would be a good plan?? Nope, beats me too! However, this is the situation we find ourselves in so it's just a case of roll up those sleeves and get cracking.

We recently took the keys to this fab little place -

near to us is a garden centre where all the retail units are set up in their own huts and it just seemed the perfect stepping stone for us at this time. We've been trading from the web, doing a few craft fairs and not doing too badly so now to jump into retail!

However, the list of things needing doing just keeps growing and growing and as per usual had I actually stopped and considered them properly then we possibly wouldn't be in this position. But, in true Hippo style of yeah, course we can do that! there was a massive leap into the unknown complete with an assortment of paintbrushes and filler. What is fabulous about this venture is that we can do what we like to the hut (within reason!) so we can truly make it the home of Little Hippo.

One aspect of the business which is growing fantastically is the idea of selling with other people and use it as a sort of community arts venture. Ultimately we would love to have Little Hippo Presents as a social enterprise supporting local artists and crafters and Chez Hippo remains as our commercial venture. That's a way off yet but as per the true Hippo logic in my brain it's only a small step away. Not even finished painting and fitting this shed out and already thinking about the next idea! Beware all of those you that have agreed to sell through us - my ideas brain just keeps going, and going, and going ......!!