Not For Squares

Yes I know it’s a Bill Wither’s song, but there really is just the two of us. And we can make it if we try (I’ll ignore the castles in the sky bit).

Coulson Macleod is a teeny weeny company.

There’s Mark, he’s the Coulson half. And there’s me, Han­nah, the Macleod half.

The busi­ness is built on love and driven by pas­sion. This is true. This is not some made-up mar­ket­ing spiel.

Mark and I met, fell in love, moved in together and then got bored of star­ing at blank walls. We knew what we liked. But couldn’t find it to buy. Or if we did, we couldn’t afford it.

Then we said, “I bet there are other people out there just like us,” (or words to that effect).

Coulson Macleod is our baby. We love it and nur­ture it. We wake in the night to think about it. We proudly tell oth­ers about it. We glow with pride when it does well. It is ours. And we’re on a won­der­ful journey.

Per­haps Mark and I are build­ing big castles way on high. Just the two of us. You and I.

Lim­ited edi­tion vintage-style art print by Coulson Macleod

IMPORTANT NEWS: As of 1^st Septem­ber 2010 Coulson Macleod will be a little bit more expens­ive to buy. Sorry.

We’ve been debat­ing this for some time now here at Coulson Macleod HQ. Basic­ally we don’t want to put our prices up. But if we want to con­tinue grow­ing, then we have to.

For any reg­u­lar read­ers of this blog, you’ll have been fol­low­ing our pro­gress as we grow and learn, the way you do when you launch a new business.

In Septem­ber Coulson Macleod will be 18 months old. It’s been a fant­astic 18 months. When we star­ted the busi­ness we had no idea just what a global brand Coulson Macleod would become. Of course we hoped that people would like our art, and that some would become customers.

As the busi­ness has slowly grown we’ve made little tweaks here and there. And occa­sion­ally we make some whop­ping changes. Over the course of 18 months, we’ve had three com­pletely new web­sites, can any­one remem­ber the first ver­sion? We’ve cre­ated then deleted entire col­lec­tions. And we’ve talked end­lessly about where we want to go in the future. Some­times to each other, some­times to any­one who’ll listen.

The out­come is always the same. That in order to sell through stock­ists, and online mar­ket­places, and to go to trade fairs, and to cre­ate new and excit­ing col­lec­tions, (and then there’s some­thing called VAT, which I don’t under­stand and Coulson gets fed up try­ing to explain!), our prices are just a little too low to make this a long time viable and prof­it­able business.

Our plans don’t involve char­ging Damien Hirst prices so we can retire to a villa in Anti­bes (although that would be nice). When we set out we wanted to cre­ate afford­able art that we loved. This will remain the same. But you’ll just need a few more pen­nies (oh OK then, you’ll need a few more pounds).

So if you fancy own­ing a won­der­ful and unique piece of art at their cur­rent bril­liant prices, then I’d sug­gest buy­ing your Coulson Macleod before 1^st September.

Thought I’d just tot up where in the world we’ve shipped our art to. So aside from the UK, Coulson Macleod prints now hang in homes in the fol­low­ing countries…

Aus­tralia, Canada, Fin­land, France, Ger­many, Greece, India, Ire­land, Italy, Neth­er­lands, New Zea­l­and, Nor­way, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United Arab Emir­ates, and of course from the east to west coast of the USA.

How very, very cool!

Yes, that’s right, Coulson Macleod is one today!

The idea to sell art popped into our heads just over a year ago. And by the 4^th March 2009 Coulson Macleod became an offi­cial business.

We launched our web­site on the 20^th, and cel­eb­rated our first sale of a lim­ited edi­tion print two weeks later. Now, in the nor­mal world of retail, two weeks would be rather a long time to wait for a cus­tomer. But at this stage you couldn’t have found us by search­ing on the inter­net. And we hadn’t advert­ised. We were ecstatic!

It’s been a bril­liant year.

We’ve shipped prints to far away lands. Aus­tralia. New Zea­l­and. Canada. And to prac­tic­ally every state in Amer­ica. Cus­tom­ers some­times buy more than one print at a time. Cus­tom­ers are com­ing back to buy more. For birth­day gifts, wed­ding gifts, or another print for their own walls.

So we’d like to take this oppor­tun­ity to thank all our cus­tom­ers. And to every­one all around the world who has taken the time to write about us. Whether you’ve just pos­ted an image of our art­work with a link back to us, or writ­ten a gush­ing wordy art­icle, we still get totally excited at see­ing our name out there.

We’ll be drink­ing a toast to our next year, which we’ve already got heaps of plans and designs for.

Cheers!

So there I am, mind­ing my own busi­ness, when Macleod says the words that bring all this into being, “Don’t take this the wrong way but I don’t think much to the pic­tures on your walls”, she’s like that, tact­ful in the extreme.

So what’s a boy to do?  Buy new art obviously.

Easier said than done.  We just could not find a thing we liked.  Or if we liked it we couldn’t afford it.  We wanted some­thing cool and funky and not mass-produced, there’s noth­ing worse than see­ing your prized pos­ses­sion on the walls of Ian Beale’s home in Eastenders!

We also had the usual “I’m not put­ting that on the wall!” type con­ver­sa­tions, whenever I looked admir­ingly at a pop-art supe­hero or she pro­duced a pic­ture of a daisy from behind her back!

Even­tu­ally, to get exactly what we wanted, we decided to make our own (I am a graphic designer after all), and the idea was born — Coulson Macleod — in all it’s shiny glory!

Oops, got a bit car­ried away there…

Any­way, ‘Dead Cool’ was the first print to make it onto our walls and the start of a whole new adven­ture for us.

Coulson Macleod’s lim­ited edi­tion con­tem­por­ary typo­graphic art print — Dead Cool

What do you think?

(And please tell me you get it… so many people don’t!)

Coulson Macleod is now just over six months old and slowly start­ing to find its feet, and this bit of our blog is all about Coulson Macleod the busi­ness — the highs, the lows, maybe a few more lows, then pos­sibly another high, you get the pic­ture. It will all be here. Please feel free to join us.…