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

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 18th November.

Related articles:

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

]]> http://www.blog.coulsonmacleod.com/2010/10/21/international-trader-of-the-year/feed/ 3 http://www.blog.coulsonmacleod.com/2010/10/06/elle-decoration-loves-typographic-art/ http://www.blog.coulsonmacleod.com/2010/10/06/elle-decoration-loves-typographic-art/#comments Wed, 06 Oct 2010 13:35:47 +0000 Macleod http://www.blog.coulsonmacleod.com/?p=2058 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

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 16th November.

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

Thank you.

Related articles:

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

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.

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.

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 18th September so we’ll let you know.

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

Our artwork ‘Love Makes The Ride Worthwhile’ is on page 11 on the Editor’s letter page. Susie Forbes says, “Finally — this Coulson Macleod panel (£149) with its sweet and poignant message takes us right back to feeling the love — and let’s face it, there’s nothing quite like it!”

So thank you very much Susie Forbes, Editor of Easy Living. You have great taste!

Now we don’t do a great deal of advertising, because advertising costs lots of money. We’d like to though. We appear monthly in Elle Decoration and Livingetc. And if you follow this blog, you’ll know that we did advertise in the January issue of Elle.

Our adverts always attract lovely new customers, which is obviously the point. But there is also a part of us that simply loves opening a magazine and seeing ourselves in print!

And now we’ve just launched our third version.

Each time we strip it back further for an even more uncluttered look. We love simplicity. And we totally love our new version, which was designed by us.

Would love to hear your comments.

We’ve got 174 shots to work through. As you can see from the bottom photo, some of the shots need cropping (we obviously don’t want to see wall sockets in the final image). But we love the overall feel. We were lucky with the light that day too, which flooded through the chapel windows and meant that most of the shots were taken without needing artificial light.

Can’t wait to put them on our new-look website. In fact we can’t wait to show-off our new website.

So if you’re from a magazine and fancy featuring Coulson Macleod art, then we have plenty of high-res images to send you.

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