Gold Nuggets from Kate Pickering

Vanilla Ink, Ink Baby. Have you met Kate before? She’s all at once quiet and lively and incredibly, incredibly motivated. There’s not many people that work quite as hard as she does, and it was real pleasure to get a chance to ask her all our questions. Vanilla Ink is a jewellery school based in Glasgow, anyway, we’ll let Kate tell you all about it.

Tell us about yourself and Vanilla Ink.

Hullo - I'm Kate Pickering the founding director of Vanilla Ink, Scotland's unique Jewellery School. From Fife, to Dundee, to Glasgow, where I now live in the Southside with my two dogs, Brutus and Rita. 

Vanilla Ink was founded in 2009 and has grown a few arms and legs since then. Primarily set up to bridge the gap from education to industry and support start up jewellers in their transition from learning jewellery and being a jeweller. Vanilla Ink also started teaching classes to all walks of life in its original studio in Dundee and was always striving to support the jewellery industry. It moved to Glasgow in 2014 where I dipped my toe in the water and thankfully Glasgow loved it! We expanded and I brought on a business partner, Master Goldsmith Scott McIntyre. We crowdfunded to turn Vanilla Ink Studios Ltd into Vanilla Ink Jewellery School CIC and raised £30,000 to build our school in our current home in The Hidden Lane in the WestEnd of Glasgow, that we love! We teach, we train, we support and we make. We believe in 'Educating, Inspiring and Empowering' anyone who walks into Vanilla Ink. 

We hadn't even been open a year when we opened up our second location in the beautiful Banff Aberdeenshire, Vanilla Ink The Smiddy, specialising more in Silversmithing, we doubled our team and now the fantastic Megan and Alison run the incredible space up there and things are just rosie, incredibly busy but we are so grateful that things are going well.

What’s the one thing you wish you knew before your first year in business?

The basics of accountancy! The terminology still baffles me and I put my full trust in accountants, which hasn't always been the smartest move. I really enjoyed the book Business for Bohemians by Tom Hodgkinson, Tom talks about how Indie businesses and particularly creative businesses bury their heads in the sand when it comes to numbers and financial planning. His advice is to get an accountant but to still know the basics to keep your business afloat and to call bullshit when an accountant is not doing their job properly (happy to say we have fantastic accountants but we are definitely their problem children because we are playing catch up). 

What are your top 3 tips for supporting other small businesses to grow?

1. Ask for help whenever you need it. I am an advocate of throwing your hands up and admitting when you are stuck. I would rather ask for help than waste hours trying to figure things out on my own.

2. Trust your gut. I'm guilty of talking to A LOT of people and getting advice from everyone that it sometimes muddies the water and pulls me in a direction that I wasn't necessary going. I think that's a confidence thing.

3. Be you and be honest! I'm not afraid to stand in front of a crowd of suits in a floral jumpsuit and tell them about my journey and I've always been quite open with my lessons and insights. I think what you give out, you get back.  

“ Be you and be honest! I’m not afraid to stand in front of a crowd of suits in a floral jumpsuit and tell them about my journey”

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What was the best bit of advice you have been given and who gave you it?

My first advisor from the Princes Trust told me to just let it grow (try not to sing that song from Frozen). I was trying to force Vanilla Ink into something it wasn't ready to be and I've done it on a few occasions and I then rein it in and let it tell me what it wants to do. Vanilla Ink has grown from a one woman sole trader, into a limited company, then a Community Interest Company and now a form of franchise. We haven't rushed it and just listened to the business!

You’ve launched your newest location this year, what’s your ambition for Vanilla Ink?

That's a good question as opening the newest location was one of 5-year goals and we got it in year one. Right now I'm going to try and enjoy the space and perhaps just sit back and congratulate ourselves on what we have achieved in such a short space of time. However, knowing me that won't last long and I'll start getting twitchy. 

Our ambition is to keep growing...international Vanilla Ink anyone?  We would love to see our Glasgow location grow in size too, create more spaces for Jewellers and Silversmiths to work, more classes, bigger facilities with MORE TOOLS.

What song gets you moving in the workshop and what do you love about it?

I'm a wee mosher at heart and anything nu-metal will get me dancing, a bit of System of Down, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park but what will always get me up on the dance floor of the Catty would be Killing In the Name - Rage Against the Machine. A total throwback to my high school years, it wasn't the best of times but I remember coming home and playing this very loud and feeling so free.

Gold Nuggets from Lauren Currie

We are on fire! With an amazing batch of interviews heading your way. This week we caught up with Lauren Currie who is an incredible force to be reckoned with. She’s got an OBE dontcha know!

Over to you Lauren…

Tell us about yourself and Letter Love Shop.

Ahoy! My name is Lauren. I’m a mother, a designer and an entrepreneur. Letter Love Shop creates wild alphabet artwork for the little people you love. We make letters, names and alphabets.

What was your inspiration to launch a new business this year?

It happened by accident. My baby was two weeks late so I busied myself by drawing their name for their nursery. I wanted to create something gender-neutral focused on animals and nature. Chris is a biologist and I love building ideas that carry a progressive message. When I saw how our friends and family reacted to my first sketch of Atlas’ name I knew I’d created something really unique.

A quick sprint of research revealed two key insights.

• The majority of children’s artwork is gendered in both content and colour.

We believe that marketing any item to "boys" or "girls" reinforces harmful stereotypes.

• Children’s artwork lacks variety and diversity of animals. There are too many Giraffes, Elephants, and Bears and not enough Komodo Dragons, Jackals and Mayflies.

We believe that the current and possibly the next generation will suffer from nature deficit disorder and are in an educational tragedy, we want to inform and inspire using the complexity and wonder of our natural world.

I get joy from launching ideas into the world. It was the perfect distraction whilst I waited for Atlas to arrive. We both stayed up into the small hours; me in the kitchen drawing all fifty-two letters of the alphabet and Chris in the living room building our Shopify site.

Our business will be 1 year old at the end of Jan 2019. We have spent no money on marketing and have sold over 80 products to 40 customers across Europe and Australia.

We sell three products; individual letters, names and the alphabet. We make all three products in any size and ship all over the world (free shipping!) £1 from every product we sell goes to Pregnant Then Screwed; a remarkable charity fighting to end maternity discrimination. I’m proud to be a chairperson on their board and can’t wait for the UK’s Festival of Motherhood and Work on Jan 19th!  

What are your top 3 tips for starting something new and completely different from your career?

I love this question! It made me realise that actually what we’re building at Letter Love Shop has a few things in common with the work I’ve been doing for the past 10 years. It’s about craft, service and insight. Of course, I know absolutely nothing about selling artwork online or in retail... I’m always hungry for advice. My top three tips are:

• You can use the internet to learn most things:

If there is a gap in your knowledge or skillset holding you back from starting - use the internet to learn the bare minimum.

• Ask for help:

The first thing I did when I had this idea was to chat with my friend Tash, an amazing illustrator. The second thing I did was research a ‘hit list’ of people who are at the top of their game in this stuff - it’s amazing who will have time to give advice to a small unknown business if indeed you only ask! The first to reply was Toby Hextall, Head of Product Design at MOO.COM, and Lisa Donati at Gie It Laldy. Neither of them knew me or Letter Love Shop beforehand, I’m kinda proud that they do now.

• Lean in to what you are:

  This learning has really hit home for me over the last two months of launching NOBL in the UK. It’s tempting to exaggerate your client list or headcount. I choose to do neither of those things across all of my businesses. At NOBL, we’re purposefully designed to be small with low overheads so we can deliver complex, intimate work fast. Letter Love Shop is my wee family. Chris and I are a couple and we’ve just had our first baby. It’s just the three of us. When I look at Letter Love Shop competitors, I’m momentarily tempted to glorify the truth but instead, I lean into what we are; a family business inspired by our love for our little boy.

What was the best bit of advice you were given and who gave you it?

Oh, that’s easy! Prototype.

For as long as I can remember I have had a very strong bias towards action and doing. When I was little I wanted to have my own copy of Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl. My impatience to have my own copy instantly led to me typing every single one of the 9387 words on my typewriter. Studying design and launching my own business at a very young age only strengthened this muscle.

We had 5 letters drawn and this gave us enough data to know that people would pay for this product. This is the email we sent to a small group of trusted friends for our first round of feedback (click image to expand).

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What’s your ambition for Letter Love Shop?

Short term we’d like to get our product into local shops as well as high street brands like John Lewis. Long term, we’d like Letter Love Shop to take the best bits from Cath Kidston and Lush to build a home furnishing retail store that promotes nature and equality whilst supporting the rights of working parents.

We’ve focused on animals and nature for now, and we might stay there, but I think there is a market for the same work focused on cities, pets and hobbies.

Here’s how you can help

1. We have a bunch of email addresses of buyers and wholesalers and I don’t really know where to begin - any advice?

2. If you run a nursery, playgroup or a school we’d love to send you one of our alphabets.

3. If you run a cafe or a restaurant, our products make the perfect colouring in book for little ones during meal times.

4. And of course, buy our product and use this special 10% discount code for friends of Paved With Gold: Gold01. It’s true that every time we get a sale Chris and I do a little dance in our kitchen.

What’s the tune that motivates you through the long nights?

I’m really loving this tune right now.

You can email Lauren at Lauren@letterloveshop.co.uk or get her on Twitter check out our Instagram to see lots of happy babs with their illustrations.

Gold Nuggets from Alice Dansey-Wright

We’ve taken a wee sabbatical from these this year, as Richard’s been running the show solo, while Kaye’s been on maternity leave, but now we’re back, and it's time for some more Gold Nuggets where we talk with some of our most loved makers, founders and do-ers.

For our first chat we caught up with artist and fellow Glasgow dweller Alice Dansey-Wright. Alice creates bold often black and white designs across various mediums, and we love spotting her partnerships cropping up around town.

Image Credit: Nu Blvck

Tell us about yourself and your work.

I’d describe myself as an artist and designer - I used to say illustrator but artist/designer feels more like it. I studied Environmental Art at GSA and back then I had quite a conceptual practice (although the focus was the public realm rather than galleries and I still wanted my work to be accessible and to a degree, collaborative). I took a break from making art for about 8 years and emerged with more of a design focus. To be honest I think it just took me that time to figure out what I wanted my practice to be and also to do a bit of living and working out with a world/industry that I’d lost confidence about my place within.

My work now consists of:

• Mentoring/facilitating/teaching (both creative business skills and art/design techniques)

• Public art and private commissions, usually taking the form of murals and large scale paintings or textiles

• Design commissions, usually products

• Collaborations, both collaborating on products and art projects

I’m inspired by the human body, identity, fashion design and textiles. Thematically I like to explore accessibility and ownership/collaboration.

Recently I’ve worked on a series with Platform including weekly adult art classes, a shop project, a collaboration between myself, platform and Alliance Scotland to create new waiting room designs for Easterhouse Community Health Centre and a mural project with Grow Wild / Seven Lochs Wetland Park.

I’m also a panellist and mentor for the Glasgow Visual Art and Craft Maker awards.

A design commission for the Local Heroes ‘Made in Glasgow’ project which resulted in the Glasgow Raincoat which I made in collaboration with love and squalor. And product collaborations with SQUINT clothing, Giannina Captani Knitwear and Tenement Design.

I love what I do- it’s taken me a long time to get here and I’m really grateful to have the opportunity to work with the people and organisations that have been clients and collaborators along the way.

The Glasgow Raincoat from Alice’s Local Heroes collaboration with love and squalor.

When designing a product, what’s your approach? Where does the inspiration come from?

A lot of my inspiration comes, I think, from fine art - I guess no surprise there! Especially abstract painting and figurative sculpture. I like to make digital mood boards - actual pdfs that take ages rather than Pinterest for some reason! Plus I have a lot of books at home and membership of the GSA library as a resource. Regularly visiting exhibitions and collections really helps too. I do keep sketchbooks also but they often end up more like big notebooks. If i’m painting a mural or a garment or making something freehand I don’t like to have the absolute final product all drawn out in advance- An element of surprise and spontaneity that comes about through the making makes it more interesting.

What’s the best bit of advice you’ve been given and who gave you it?

I'm not sure if this is advice or more just an acknowledgement: 'pretty much everyone feels like an imposter' - good to remember this if you ever feel that way. Can’t remember who said it but it’s been corroborated several times!

Alice’s collaboration with Squint Clothing.

You do a lot of collaborations in your work. What are your top 3 tips for partnering up with other designers?

1. Agree your terms before you start - finance/marketing/naming the co-lab - sometimes for me this involves some sort of official contract/agreement and sometimes it's less formal. Getting the nuts and bolts sorted before proceeding is a good idea, whichever way you do it although obviously if you're working with a big company or just someone you haven't met it might be worth getting external advice around setting your terms.

2. Make a plan / schedule that works for both of you - you're in this together so respect your collaborators availability and remember to state yours, being mindful of over estimating how much time you may have!

3. Approach your dream collaborator…just ask! it’s ok if they say no and they may well say yes...

What song motivates you while you’re working and why?

All Night Long by the Mary Jane Girls - perhaps not as motivation but as something that I listen to when the flow of work is in full swing, it’s both relaxed and upbeat so I guess I’m trying to absorb that! I have to add though that I’ve never been able to work really late or through the night (unless you count having twin babies). I’m very much a 9-5, 3 meals a day sort of person!

Gold Nuggets from Alex Peet at CRL

Welcome to another edition of Gold Nuggets where we talk with some of our most loved makers, founders and do-ers. Digging into their stories to reveal tips, precious wisdom, and even some music to get your under-the-desk feet dancing.

We recently partnered with the Central Research Laboratory to deliver Kickstarter training sessions to the startups on their accelerator programme. We were delighted to discuss product development with Alex Peet from Central Research Laboratory, and are excited to share his fantastic advice.

Tell us about yourself and the Central Research Laboratory.

My name is Alex Peet, I’m the Product Development Lead at the Central Research Laboratory. My background is in Mechanical Engineering. Prior to CRL, I worked for Dyson developing their products, with a team of engineers.

CRL focusses on helping prototype and get products to market, be it via crowdfunding, private investment or traditional routes. We’re the first product-specific accelerator in the UK, with the biggest open access prototyping labs in London.

What’s the one thing you wish you knew in your first year?

When I came to CRL, I had just finished a two-year project leading a team of engineers to design a pretty complex product. Even though you're expected to consider the end user all the time, you're also given a pretty long list of things the product must do, which is governed by energy requirements and the competition in the market. The difference with designing a completely new product is that this list of key features is defined totally by you. This has to shift your attention to understanding your customer first, before jumping into engineering. That's something I had to learn quickly at CRL.

Top 3 tips for designing your Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?

If you’ve read ‘The Lean Startup’ by Eric Ries, it describes the MVP as the quickest, cheapest way to get a version of the product you can show to your potential customers. In product design, this can be a difficult task and there will always be some technical hurdles along the way.

Tip 1. Understand what you’re testing.  Before you start making your MVP, write a list of things you’re looking to learn.  For example, if you expect the customer to use your product in a certain way, you can create a quick prototype with interaction points, in the rough shape you’ve envisaged, explain to someone what it’s going to do, and ask them to use it, without explaining how.

Tip 2. Simplify. When you’re designing a product it can be tempting to keep adding feature after feature. The trick is to understand what the core offering of the product is and execute that well. One of the startups we’re working with at the moment is designing a coworking space management system. The MVP we’re developing together does one thing: it allows you to book meeting rooms. The plan is to execute that well and add features only when the customer demands it (and you’ll know when that is because you won’t stop hearing about it). I would recommend the book Rework by Jason Fried, designer of BaseCamp to read more on reducing product features.

Tip 3. Don’t be afraid to show an unfinished product. Crowdfunding sites are a great example of how transparency can get people on board with the product creation process. By working with your customer, you’ll be able to get real feedback on a lot of things you weren’t expecting because the product is in a changeable state. The other great litmus test is that if the prototype goes down well with your target users, even in an unfinished state, you know you’re onto a winner.

What was the best bit of advice you were given and who gave you it?

Oh man, this is getting deep. I think the bit of advice that resonated with me most was given to me by my Dad, when I say advice, it was more of a bollocking! I was 15, just before my GCSEs, I think I came home from school and told him I didn’t care about school or any of the subjects I was studying. He preceded to explain to me that if I want to join the ‘bums and losers’ out in the world, then carry on thinking that. It’s the people that care about the things they’re doing or trying to achieve, are the ones that get places. Pretty heavy advice for a fifteen-year-old, but it actually made a big difference, and since then I’ve put a lot more effort into everything I do, and so far, it’s paid off.

What’s your ambition for CRL?

My ambition for CRL is the same ambition for the UK startup scene as a whole, to consistently produce world-class product-based businesses. What we can do to help that, is bring together the best minds to provide the right support to make that happen.  

What song motivates you at CRL and why?

Well, it’s an album actually: Bowie’s ‘Ziggy Stardust and Spiders from Mars’. It’s an amazing album and the vinyl was pressed in Hayes, in the old EMI headquarters where CRL is based.