This week you can find Coulson Macleod and our typo­graphic art here…

If you’re plan­ning on vis­it­ing the ‘Home of Christ­mas Shop­ping’ the Spirit of Christ­mas Fair do pop by and say ‘hi’.

You’ll find Coulson Macleod on stand GR9. Upstairs in the gallery.

Cun­ningly posi­tioned halfway between the Cham­pagne bar and Mosimann’s Winter Restaurant.

Inter­est­ing art­icle in the busi­ness sec­tion of the Sunday Tele­graph. Headline…

‘Made In UK’ at John Lewis

John Lewis is to launch a ‘buy Brit­ish’ cam­paign in its stores and mark all products sourced in the UK with a Union Jack. They are doing it because they believe busi­nesses should be sup­port­ing UK manufacturing.

And so do we at Coulson Macleod. Obvi­ously the design of both the art­work and the frames are done by us at Coulson Macleod. So the entire piece is unique to us. That is very import­ant. All of our typo­graphic prints are made in the UK. In fact we source not just UK-based busi­nesses, but busi­nesses as local to us as possible.

At the moment we use six busi­nesses in a twenty mile radius to us and two more that are a little fur­ther afield. Most of these are small artisan firms, spe­cial­ising in their craft whether it be high-end bespoke car­pentry or reclaimed wood or Fine Art Guild fram­ing. Most are in our own county of Northamptonshire.

We could buy in bulk from China. Which would bring the cost down. But we value crafts­man­ship. And we value the idea of sup­port­ing our region.

In our own small way we are mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. And that feels good.

Related art­icles:

• Coulson Macleod Is Eco And GB Friendly
• Some Recent Press…

Yes­ter­day Coulson Macleod was very for­tu­nate to be a speaker at the Northamp­ton­shire Busi­ness Sum­mit 2011 along­side such house­hold names as Tesco, Avon, and Carlsberg.

This is what vis­it­ors to the event had to say about our talk…

Phil Jones (award-winning busi­ness edu­cator), “Your present­a­tion was excep­tional. Well done!”

Alison Kelly, owner, Nor­folk Hol­i­day Guide, “Fant­astic. Very inspiring.”

Rus­sell Cod­ling, “A superb speech today at  the Northamp­ton­shire Busi­ness Sum­mit in Sil­ver­stone. Your enthu­si­asm is infectious!”

James Wilson Asso­ci­ates, “Inspir­ing speech today at #nbs2011 Good to see small Northants com­pan­ies com­pet­ing on a global scale. Will now improve my social media.”

Julie Barnes, Green Umbrella, “Great inform­at­ive day at Sil­ver­stone. Par­tic­u­larly good talks from Coulson Macleod. I think the whole room was inspired by your story.”

French Part­ridge, “Fant­astic talks at the #nbs2011 today. Lots of inspir­a­tion from Coulson Macleod. Thank you.”

Richard Osborne (busi­ness­man, speaker, mentor), “Your talk was very good and I liked your use of social media to grow your business.”

Philip Wald­ing, Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Part­ner, Moore Steph­ens, “Fant­astic event with inspir­a­tion from Coulson Macleod.”

Related art­icles:

• Northamp­ton­shire Busi­ness Sum­mit 2011
• Small Busi­ness Of The Year
• Inter­na­tional Trader Of The Year: Part 2

Can you spot the Coulson Macleod link?

Han­nah, the Macleod half of Coulson Macleod, will be on stage at 1pm present­ing ‘reach­ing new audi­ences through online mar­ket­ing’ along­side Zoe Twyn­ham, Avon’s head of ecommerce.

Related art­icles:

• Coulson Macleod On Facebook
• We’re Into The Spirit Of Christmas

Fancy. No longer just a word. It’s also…

• part store
• part blog
• part magazine
• part wish­list

Fancy is a place to dis­cover great stuff. Like typo­graphic art. You can cur­ate a col­lec­tion of things you love. And get updates on your favor­ite brands and stores. Such as Coulson Macleod. And share your discoveries.

Just look for the blue ice lolly.

Use Fancy to cre­ate a cata­log of your favor­ite things around the web and around the world.

When you find some­thing you love some­where on the web, you Fancy it.

And Coulson Macleod is on the Deals page.

This is our Fancy but­ton. Look­ing pretty fancy. Don’t you agree?

Fancy some­thing you love and unlock a spe­cial reward.

Related art­icles:

• Coulson Macleod On Facebook
• We’re Into The Spirit Of Christmas
• Top Drawer 2011; The Build-Up

Do you like Coulson Macleod?

And no, we don’t mean the two of us. Coulson & Macleod. The couple behind the busi­ness. Although we are, actu­ally, pretty likeable.

We mean, do you like our typo­graphic art?

Yes. Maybe. Not sure.

Whatever your answer (well, unless you really hate us) do come and join in the fun on our Face­book page.

Click the ‘like’ but­ton to get…

• All our announcements.
• See new art­work before any­one else.
• Facebook-only sales.
• Gen­er­ous giveaways.
• Gen­er­ally good banter.

It’s really worth being our Face­book friend.

Prom­ise.

Related art­icles:

• The Row House Nest Interview
• We Love Blogs: Lark & Linen

Christ­mas? We know. We know. It’s only Septem­ber. And we’ve men­tioned the c word.

Well as a retailer, Christ­mas is pretty much a year-round subject.

But actu­ally it’s because we want to announce that Coulson Macleod will be at the Spirit of Christ­mas Fair.

As you know, we were recently at the trade show Top Drawer, held in London’s most gor­geous of ven­ues, Olympia. Here’s an old photo to show you its Vic­torian loveliness…

Whilst there, we were secretly vet­ted by House & Garden magazine. How cool is that?

And House & Garden wanted our hand­made typo­graphic art to be part of their ‘Home of Christ­mas Shop­ping’ event.

We could hardly say no. Could we?

Our stand is now booked. Stand GR9. Upstairs in the gal­lery. In a mighty fine pos­i­tion. Halfway between the Cham­pagne bar and Mosimann’s Winter res­taur­ant. Rather handy don’t you think?

Spirit of Christ­mas Fair is described as ‘a hand-picked (well we know that’s true) col­lec­tion of unique gifts (yep, that’s us) you simply won’t find on the high street (well, you can find our typo­graphic art in quite a few loc­a­tions now, but we’re hardly mass mar­ket).

Spirit of Christ­mas is a retail event, so open to the pub­lic. Tick­ets are £16. The Fair opens on Wed­nes­day, 2^nd to Sunday, 6^th Novem­ber. That’s five days of shopping.

And on the Thursday it’s late night shop­ping; until 9pm.

We can feel our feet hurt­ing already.

Related art­icles:

• Top Drawer 2011; The Build-Up
• Top Drawer 2011; Know Thy Neighbour

One of the lovely parts of exhib­it­ing at a trade show is get­ting to know your neigh­bours. We were very lucky and had some inter­est­ing and friendly people to chat to dur­ing the quieter moments of the three days.

To our right was…foun­ded by tex­tile designer Chris­sie Probert Jones, ex-Beauty Editor at Vogue. Her Doodle range of duvets, pil­lows, and table­cloths that you can draw on, then wash off, was cre­at­ing a big buzz. In fact her Doodle Duvet was awar­ded Best New Product at Top Drawer last year.

Chris­sie and her col­league Emilie were not only super friendly, but also fonts of know­ledge. Our little stand C42 felt like home for three days although we prefer Chrissie’s descrip­tion of them being like little nests.

To our left was run by Dan.

Dan’s super bright stand was piled high with scrump­tious look­ing cakes and desserts. Except they weren’t. They were actu­ally fol­ded face cloths.

Three doors down, on a raised plinth, was Laurence Llewelyn Bowen’s stand. And no. He wasn’t there for the full three days flog­ging his home fra­grance. He put in an appear­ance on the Monday. For a few hours. Mainly to pose a bit. Show off his nice tan. And his coiffed hair.

Other folk we saw caus­ing a com­mo­tion were Zandra Rhodes, who is pretty unmiss­able with her bright pink bob, and Jan Con­stantine was book signing.

The only clue we had that there was ‘some­thing’ going on was that we’d see bottles of Cham­pagne on ice being rushed past. Sadly we stuck to bottled water. Which by the way, if you ever become an exhib­itor at a trade show, buy at the super­mar­ket on your way in. Not at the event. £1.80 for a small bottle of water. £1.80!

Related art­icles:

• Coulson Macleod Around The World
• Coulson Macleod Is Eco & GB Friendly

Coulson Macleod’s very first trade show is under our belt. Top Drawer 2011 at London’s Olympia.

The whole event went remark­ably smoothly and we thor­oughly enjoyed ourselves. We made friends with our neigh­bor­ing stands. And loved chat­ting to all the retail­ers who came onto our stand to come and see and order our typo­graphic art.

We’ll be blog­ging lots more about Top Drawer 2011, but for now here’s a few pho­tos of Sat­urday — the build-day — to get our stand C42 ready for the show open­ing the fol­low­ing day, Sunday 11^th September…

Stand C42. An empty white box.

Put­ting up prints.

Proudly dis­play­ing our Eco-Certified by Oliver Heath and Product GB stickers

Stand C42. Ready for the show.

Under Olympia’s grand arches.

The wall fea­tur­ing our solid oak prints.

The wall fea­tur­ing our mater­ial prints.

Related art­icles:-

• Coulson Macleod Is Eco & GB Friendly
• Typo­graphic Art & Glas­gow Style

Little update.

Coulson Macleod has shipped typo­graphic art prints to homes and offices in Aus­tralia, Aus­tria, Bel­gium, Canada, Cyprus, Fin­land, France, Ger­many, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Ire­land, Italy, Korea, Lebanon, Neth­er­lands, New Zea­l­and, Nor­way, Poland, Singa­pore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzer­land, United Arab Emir­ates, and right across the USA.

That’s 26 countries.