finding a shop and the BBC visit for tea !

So by now the product is slowly being signed off, shape first then pattern...this tends to take a long time in the ceramic industry, it's quite a complex process, luckily the factory were great and made things as painless as possible.

While the prototypes were being generated I was tasked with naming the company, it was going to be so easy and obviously the name of our house Walton Bank.........but it already existed as a farm shop in staffordshire , we went through all sorts; walton and bank ( a dragon comment - stuffy solicitors ) , walton-bank (a Jak comment  bad for google ), there was nothing left to do but go to the pub and have a brain storming session....one pint later Little Walton Bank was conceived and we think it's perfect !!!! With the name in place we could start getting the business stuff sorted....to be honest Hayley did a lot of this, we also started to talk to Jak about our future website.

I enlisted Graeme's ( very patient husband ) help to get the logo sorted, he's a mac genius, I drew the house and he turned it into the logo it is today, this is going to sound bonkers but we spent hours agonising over things like ; should we include curtains in the windows, what about wellies at the door and the list goes on............we hope you like it as it is special to us.

With our first production ready prototypes Hayley arranged a meeting with the lovely people at Bennetts. We pitched to them in the brasserie over coffee and to be honest it wasn't like 'The Apprentice' it was a great experience. I must say the reaction made us feel very proud, they loved the product,  the branding,  and the story. They agreed to be our first customer !!!!!! Not only this they happened to have the BBC in making a programme about retailers, so within minutes we were agreeing to them calling in at the studio and filming at Little Walton Bank. All very exciting, I'll let you know when/if we get aired but watch out for me throwing a pot!

Ian and I talk pots

At this point I must mention the website and our friend Jak....who has had to have the patience of a saint. We tried lots of different visual ideas to get the site off the ground and to be honest we were going round in a big circle...aesthetics v's technical capabilities....in the end Graeme came up with the visual solution, we'd been scanning in my sketch book for moodboards and then somehow he had the idea of using it as a backdrop for the homepage..Eureka moment..I left him to it and the results are there for everyone to see.....Jak scratched his head a lot and technically made it work and I must say we get some great feedback so it was well worth the time and effort.

Okay we are more or less up to date so from now on we'll be blogging in real time and there is quite a lot going on so hopefully you'll be sticking around for more postings...................