Well hello 2016! It’s January and time to gear up for a whole new year – oh goodness me. It feels a bit overwhelming doesn’t it?! Before I can go forwards I find it is helpful to look back at what we have achieved and set new targets, new goals, come up with a new plan. That’s what we’ve been doing with the team over the last week – reflecting on 2015 and pulling together our plans for this year (more on that to come).
Reflecting back made us realise that 2015 really was rather a busy year! Here are 5 of our highlights…
1. Growing our lovely team
One of our big achievements of 2015 was growing our team. It seems to crazy to think that we only moved into our current ‘studio’ at the start of last year:

Since then, we’ve done some serious redecorating and had 6 lovely new people join our production team. Say hello to some of them:

What a difference a year (and a bit of pink) makes!

2. Being mentioned in the House of Commons
Thinking back to March, a big highlight last year was being mentioned by our local MP Mary Macleod as an example of inspiring women-owned businesses in the House of Commons on International Women’s Day!

 
3. Winning the Notonthehighstreet.com Start Up Success Award 2015
A HUGE highlight of 2015 was winning the Notonthehighstreet.com ‘Start Up Success of The Year’ Award. We have absolutely loved the last two years growing our business on the notonthehighstreet.com platform and it was a big honour to be chosen by them as the new business making the ‘most waves’. Here is me at the awards with the lovely Michelle from Wink Design (winner of the Community Spirit award) and Ali from milly and pip (winner of the Business Advice award):

4. Being featured in Stylist magazine
We were so excited in 2015 to be featured in several National publications such as The Telegraph, Perfect Wedding, Wedding Ideas and Wedding magazine, but our absolute favourite was when my morning routing was featured in Stylist magazine’s cover story in November. It was an interesting (and rather candid – ahem!) article about how several women spend their morning before 9am:

 
5. Being chosen as one of the Small Biz 100 for Small Business Saturday
Our final ‘top 5’ highlight of the year was being chosen as one of the the ‘Small Biz 100‘ – a hundred top small businesses in the UK to be celebrated by Small Business Saturday:

This led to a crazy few weeks campaigning on behalf of the 5 million small businesses in the UK where I was asked to appear in BBC Radio, London Live television and even met George Osbourne…

What a year! Of course. what I haven’t mentioned is our absolute biggest highlight of the year – getting to make so many personalised orders for our customers, which all the above allowed us to do. Definitely lots to think about as we head into 2016 – watch this space! 🙂