Art­icle on me in today’s local paper…

A busi­ness­wo­man is in the final three of a major regional award after turn­ing the design com­pany she star­ted from her front room two years ago into a thriv­ing global brand.

Han­nah Macleod is up for Small Busi­ness of the Year in the final in the East Mid­lands Women of Worth Awards.

Ms Macleod said: “This is a really big award. Last year more than 1,000 people entered that cat­egory alone.

“It’s abso­lutely phe­nom­enal. If I don’t win, just being in the final three is incredible.”

The awards aim to recog­nise the com­mit­ment and con­tri­bu­tion made by busi­ness women to the East Mid­lands eco­nomy and the achieve­ment of the region’s entre­pren­eur­ial and forward-thinking women.

Without any busi­ness loans from banks since set­ting up in 2009, Ms Macleod and her part­ner Mark Coulson have been ship­ping their typo­graphic art to 21 countries.

Last year chef Jamie Oliver com­mis­sioned a piece for a char­ity auc­tion. The oak-framed piece, which fea­tured Mr Oliver’s catch phrases, like “pukka”, “bacon sarnies” and “geezer”, was bought for £1,100 by the chief exec­ut­ive of a global media company.

Ms Macleod said: “Every day is amaz­ing for us. It’s not a job, it’s not a busi­ness, it’s a passion. We enjoy every side of it.”

She will meet a panel of judges on Feb­ru­ary 11, and the win­ner will be announced at the Women in Busi­ness Con­fer­ence at the East Mid­lands Con­fer­ence Centre on March 8.

Ms Macleod reached the finals of the Best Online Busi­ness Award in the national Mumpren­eur Awards last year.

The busi­ness, Coulson Macleod, also reached the finals in the Northamp­ton­shire Busi­ness Excel­lence Awards for Inter­na­tional Trader of the Year.

But Ms Macleod has vowed not to rest on her laurels.

She said: “We will con­tinue doing exactly what we are doing. Whatever it is we are doing it right.”

Related art­icles:

• Small Busi­ness Of The Year
• Inter­na­tional Trader Of The Year
• Inter­na­tional Trader Of The Year: Part 2
• Our Web­site Wins Gold

Hoo­ray! Coulson Macleod and our glob­ally loved typo­graphic art are award final­ists once again.

We’ve made it to the final four entrants at this years Northamp­ton­shire Busi­ness Excel­lence Awards for Inter­na­tional Trader of the Year sponsored by HSBC.

Inter­na­tional Trader. Us!

Well we have shipped our typo­graphic prints to Aus­tralia, Canada, Fin­land, France, Ger­many, Greece, India, Ire­land, Italy, Neth­er­lands, New Zea­l­and, Nor­way, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United Arab Emir­ates, and right across the USA.

The win­ners will be announced at a gala din­ner on 18^th November.

Related art­icles:

• Mumpren­eur Awards 2010
• A Little Bit Of PR
• Mum In Line For National Award
• Mums In Business

Once again Coulson Macleod’s typo­graphic art has been chosen by interi­ors style bible Elle Dec­or­a­tion to fea­ture in their fab­ulous magazine.

ELLE Dec­or­a­tion, Novem­ber 2010 issue.

ELLE Dec­or­a­tion, Novem­ber 2010 issue.

Elle Dec­or­a­tion chose ‘The Roar of Tree and Crack of Branches’ typo­graphic print from our Winter Trees collection.

We hand make the frame and pan­elled back­board from reclaimed wood. Actu­ally the wood used to be Vic­torian roof tim­bers. How cool is that? We paint the wood and print on top with dis­tressed image and typography.

Each art­work is totally unique. And totally unique to Coulson Macleod.

Related art­icles: Coulson Macleod is in Elle Decoration

No. We haven’t won. But we have entered.

The short­l­ist will be announced the first week of Octo­ber. The win­ning web­site will be announced by Doug Richard, former BBC Dragon at a recep­tion held in Lon­don on 16^th November.

If you think we deserve to win Web­site of the Year, please click on the logo above and tell the organ­isers why before 30^th September.

Thank you.

Related art­icles:

• Mumpren­eur Awards 2010
• Mum In Line For National Award
• A Little Bit of PR
• Mums In Business

Coulson Macleod is now on Sheer­Luxe, the lux­ury shop­ping directory.

Sheer­Luxe, who say they are the defin­it­ive guide to lux­ury online shop­ping (and we agree), fea­ture such estab­lished and cool new brands as Liberty, Space NK, Astley Clarke, and Browns. And Sheer­Luxe invited us to join. How hon­oured are we?

One of the fea­tures of Sheer­Luxe is that mem­bers can cre­ate a Lust List. Back in May, we saw that we’d been added to Laura Colonnese’s Lust List. Laura, who is the Brand Man­ager at Eng­lish lux­ury goods brand Thomas Lyte, had also added Louis Vuit­ton, Solange Azagury-Partridge, and Jimmy Choo onto her Lust List. Now that’s my kind of shop­ping spree.

Then in August Sheer­Luxe sent out one of their Luxe Mails to all their mem­bers. The email news­let­ter, called Home is Where the Heart is, was only about Coulson Macleod.

We’re abso­lutely delighted to be part of SheerLuxe.

As a final­ist in this year’s Mumpren­eur Awards I know that I’m up against five other busi­ness women. I’m not yet sure who all of them are, but I do know about Vic­toria Dixon who runs Enhance Me.

Vic­toria cre­ates per­son­al­ized enchanted por­traits from your own pho­tos. And they really are quite charming.

In par­tic­u­lar I love her Fam­ily Tree…

You could have real fun pos­ing your fam­ily. I rather like the idea of hav­ing Great Granny swinging in the upper­most branches.

Coulson Macleod’s PR for the Mumpren­eur Awards 2010 con­tin­ues. Yes­ter­day our local paper wrote this art­icle on me…

A mum who built a busi­ness up in 18 months has made it through to the finals of a national entre­pren­eur com­pet­i­tion cel­eb­rat­ing women in business.

The Mumpren­eur Awards recog­nise busi­ness­wo­men through­out the UK who juggle a com­pany with fam­ily life, and 39-year old Han­nah MacLeod of Ket­ter­ing, has been singled out in the 2010 awards.

She has been short­l­is­ted for the Best Online Busi­ness award for her inter­net art busi­ness, with the award going to the final­ist who has the most deserving busi­ness and most inspir­a­tional website.

Ms MacLeod, who runs Coulson Macleod with her part­ner Mark Coulson, is delighted to be in with a chance.

She said: “I was very pleased to find out I had made it through to the final. I feel proud the com­pany has grown so much since it was estab­lished 18 months ago and delighted to be recog­nised by these awards.”

The busy mum launched the busi­ness with no ini­tial invest­ment and has watched it grow – the company’s goods are now stocked in shops around the UK and Nor­way, is a favour­ite of Saat­chi and Saat­chi, and has been fea­tured in numer­ous magazines includ­ing Elle Dec­or­a­tion UK, Easy Liv­ing and County & Town House.

Because she has been nom­in­ated for an award, she is also in with a chance of win­ning the title of Inspir­a­tional Busi­ness Mum 2010, which will be judged with the rest of the awards at the Mumpren­eur Con­fer­ence on Septem­ber 18 in Warwickshire.

She added: “It is import­ant for mums to know that they can do it – they should be con­fid­ent in their abil­it­ies. Being a mum makes you a multi-tasker – and you can put a load of wash­ing on, send an email and talk on the phone at the same time.”

Found out yes­ter­day that I’m a final­ist for a Mumpren­eur Award. Out of 302 entrants from around the UK, I’m down to the final six in the cat­egory Best Online Business.

So what do you think, is Coulson Macleod in with a chance of winning?

The award cere­mony is on 18^th Septem­ber so we’ll let you know.

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