German Fair

So we are now back in the office after a week away travelling and visiting Germany for our first European retail show.

We left fairly early, 7:30am to be precise, and started our first road trip of the year! All the preparation was just about finished and the van loaded with stand and stock just hours before we left. Anyway, we did it, obviously with the help of our fantastic, JS team! Thankfully Jane and I spent the entire journey in hysterics and a whole 14 hours later we arrived! 

We got to our first B&B with still an hour and a half to go to the exhibition grounds, Das Fürstliche Gartenfest, Schloss Fasanerie. The first day was our set up day making sure the stand was complete and in pristine condition for all our customers. The show started at 10am each day and we were surrounded by such lovely people, the highlight has to be having a food stand opposite us that also sold prosecco, strawberries and cream! What a bonus! 

We love seeing our customers enjoying our products, even our little ones!

Above is the complete stand, have to say we thought it was a rather lovely, British looking stand! Who would have thought the weather would be so cold too, we ended up wearing most of Carina Hildebrandt's clothing, thank god she over packed!

Here's Carina Hildebrandt's stand. Note; very warm clothing!

So there you have it, the first road trip of the year! Stay tuned for our next adventures...

Top Drawer Trade Show

It’s all go at the moment in the office with Jane and myself getting ready for Top Drawer, just to add, the first trade show we have ever done, no pressure…! 

Jane and John left shortly after 10:30, not quite the 9am they were planning! Everything all prepped and boxed up in the van, how much easier it is planning for Top Drawer rather than the Spirit of Christmas, no stock needed, one of each product, and then just the two of us. 

The first of the pictures I started receiving from Jane, it definitely didn’t look like much when I received this…

Getting there… It’s easy from where I’m sat, at my desk at HQ!

Nearly there…don’t think I’ll mention it sloping along the top!

Think they both deserve the next picture I received…

and it’s complete, rather impressed for the first show this year hopefully many more to come. 

Sunday morning I catch the train up to get ready for the next three days, meeting new potential customers, putting names to faces and looking for new products ourselves. Doesn’t sound like we are going to stop. It is a great show to network with people and really make the most of new products we have available.

Staying in London really adds to the show as I get to catch up with friends that live there, it is so different to where I live, we can actually socialise after 9pm and there are bars and restaurants open! It really makes you feel refreshed for the next day, or not! 

Breaking down after the show is something I have never done before, so I will describe it in one word…easypeasy, not quite one word but so much easier than the Spirit of Christmas breakdown!

Again we have managed to bump into our Spirit of Christmas friends and have brief catch ups before we must all head home, back to HQ’s and to crack on with the workload we have brought back!

-Shannon 

Spirit of Christmas 2015

We all know at JS that Christmas has approached once we attend the Spirit of Christmas show in Olympia, London. 

Whether you attend Spirit of Christmas for the food and wine, a social event, or to start the christmas shop, the week long fair has all of the above!

So Jane and John head off from our Somerset studio to hit the road, early should I say! It’s all go once we get to Olympia, vans pulling in from everywhere, boxes being unloaded, the odd fragile box you hear drop… We leave the stand looking like we aren’t going to be ready for the Monday and that the week is going to be an utter disaster.

Sunday is when I (Shannon) come along, I get the long straw for setting up! Pricing products and making the garland look ‘pretty’. The Sunday flies by as does everyday when we are exhibiting, but, ta dah the stand is complete, so the week commences!

On the Thursday it is late night shopping, the day still seems to fly by even when it closes at 8pm. This is the night I manage to escape from the stand and check out the show, need I say more when Lily, from Branche D’Olive and I end up sampling the upstairs which is of course, the alcohol…!

The whole show this year was a complete success, it was our second biggest year since we have been attending and that’s been quite a few years. It was such great fun, meeting repeat customers, new customers and also networking with other businesses, what more could we want. We have the lovely ‘Branche D’Olive’ opposite us, ‘Helen Moore’ to the right and ‘Carina Hildebrandt’ just around the corner, such a fun and festive atmosphere!

We hope you have a lovely Christmas from us all at Jonny’s Sister and hope to see you at next year’s Spirit of Christmas! 

-Shannon

New JS Staff

Since the last blog we posted we had the likes of, Lisa, Leanne and Martha working for us. A lot has changed since then, their choice to leave though, not ours! They have all taken the next steps in their careers, Lisa has gone into admin in a school, Leanne has gone to a college working in admin and Martha is doing a university degree. All three of them started at Jonny’s Sister doing an apprenticeship in business and administration. 

(Clockwise- Alec, Shannon (ME!), Martha, Leanne, Lisa and Lara) 

Although they are all sadly missed at JS we have employed some newbies! It started with Becky, then Emma, Katie and Rhiannon. Here’s a little bit about them;

Becky is our chief despatch person! She is in charge of despatching all items on time and making sure they are sent out in a JS standard state, poor Becky as we have such high standards!

Emma is our new admin team member! She has office experience and is a whizz at speaking to customers on the phone, she deals with the order management making sure everything is with the correct suppliers and being despatched on time.

Katie is another new admin team member! She used to work at TESCO dealing with the charity events that happened in her local store. She is a very bubbly person and was chucked in the deep end when she joined about 6 weeks before Christmas! 

Rhiannon is a new studio member! She finished her design degree in summer just gone and is super talented with her work, although she doesn’t say so herself! At JS she works on the production of orders that are done in house and new product development. 

So there you have it, a quick introduction to our new JS members. There are still the three of us from the old team, Alec, Lara and Me, oh and don’t forget Jane, John and the dogs! 

-Shannon

Let Go Wild!

So this week amongst the Father's Day rush we took some time out to do something a little different...

Jane's brother, Jonny, has created a very unique and original drink called 'Wild'. It's kind of like a very classy and upmarket alcopop! The drink is a gin based sparkling cocktail infused with either elderflower, plum or sloe. As there are 5 under 20 year olds working at JS HQ at the moment, Jonny thought that it would be a good idea to do some market research on us. We agreed in a flash. To say that we liked a drink would be a bit of an understatement, 10 bottles later (and slightly giggly) we all came to the conclusion that it was our new favourite drink. Each flavour was unique and so refreshing, the elderflower tasted of a summers day in a beer garden, whilst the plum tasted of a night out. We are all very excited for these to be released into the bars and clubs of the UK and have our fingers tightly crossed for an invitation to the launch party (hint hint Jonny!).

So in the near future if you see a Wild on the shelf of your favourite bar or club, we highly recommend that you get one!

From left to right we have... Sloe, Elderflower and Plum!

Shannon, John, myself, Alec, Sam & Hollie enjoying the Wilds!