Inspiration

We’re putting out the balloons at Ben P towers (thank you to Mr Tim Walker for the fantastic, dreamy image – Eglingham Hall).  We’re five years old this week, but I also wanted to say a few thank you’s (Ben’s Oscars speech, please… run for your handkerchiefs now).

Thank you to Colin, and Bridie, Kath and Sophie, in the shop, for incredible and tireless efforts in creating the new website.  Thanks to Connie Dickson (… um, nice website Connie!!) for helping us with brilliant graphic design skills and for bringing a lovely smile to every meeting.  And thank you to all the very kind twittersphere readers who’ve been saying some very nice things about her and Colin’s work.

And thank you, above all, to our customers.  So, to put the balloons out on your own Friday afternoon and weekend, we’re offering a 15% off everything discount on the new website.  Lots of new features, including a completely updated and improved international shipping facility (welcome to 5 new customers yesterday, from New Zealand, France and the United States), and, we hope, a much easier browse around the whole website and the shop generally.

We’ll be adding more and more products in the next few days, and next week we will be thinking all about… dread word… C H R I S T M A S.  In the next few weeks we’ll be making many more improvements, including a completely updated mailing facility – many people have been writing to us that they don’t get alerts when a blog is posted, for which we apologise once again – the system has become completely overwhelmed by demand.  Which is a nice problem to have, but a problem nonetheless.

INSPIRATION will itself be migrating over to the new website in due course, where Bridie will also be starting to blog about some of the fantastic stories of our suppliers – the potteries in Stoke-on-Trent, small batch makers of blankets, notebook designers, letterpress printers, artists and painters (Bride, we might even ask you to debut with a blog about your own beautiful new studio above the shop, one of the most-creative-spaces-per-square-inch that I’ve seen in a long while).  One of the joys of the last five years has been working with people like these – people who would never be able to supply big-volume retailers, with their crazy demands and mental terms and conditions (believe us, we’ve seen it from the coal face having started to wholesale our new range of gift wrap).

So it’s a very exciting time for me, and for Bridie, and for everyone in the shop. Colin’s got the well-deserved day off, so please let us know about any problems you encounter ON MONDAY. In the meantime, have a happy browse, and if you’re really clever, you’ll get all your Christmas shopping ordered, with a very nice discount, and shipped to you in a beautiful brown paper parcel on Monday. Phew. We must be crackers. (okay enough already… Ed).