So today it is 1 year since we launched Love Give Ink! I will never forget the day I walked into my old job with my resignation letter in my hand feeling an incomprehensible mixture of fear and excitement. Leaving in August 2013, I set an ambitious target to launch our little business from scratch that autumn… I’m not quite sure how, but somehow we did it, launching on Notonthehighstreet.com on 1 October 2014 and this website in November 2014.
What a year it has been… we started small, entirely self-funded and basing ourselves from from our spare room (‘Paint HQ’) at our home in West London. Those first few months, I did everything myself, from designing the products, to photographing them, to marketing and PR, as well as making every single order. But my we have grown at quite a rate, By Christmas I was roping in family members, and by the spring of this year I was employing contract staff, and the ever patient Mr Love Give Ink and I were falling over increasingly accumulating boxes! A month ago we went past 4000 Notonthehighstreet.com orders, as well as all those through this site. Wow, just wow.

It has been quite an emotional roller coaster and jolly hard work. There have been days where I’ve been making orders from 4am and have dreamt of packing (quite strange, I tell you). But, when we hear from customer’s the delight and happiness our products have brought them, we remember why we started this. We regularly get lovely customers contact us to say that our gift has made a family member’s day, or made them cry with happiness. And that’s what makes all the hard work worthwhile.
Thank you to everyone who has come and helped here at Paint HQ over the last year and thank you to every single person who has bought something from us.

Here’s to the next year… but right, now I’m off to enjoy the cake Mr Love Give Ink has bought me 🙂