Hey there!
It's SO NICE to have you here! Welcome to our first ever blog post, and coincidentally we've just had out first ever pop up event. How did it go you ask? Let me tell you all about it!
This little jewellery business was born out of a crazy idea I had whilst on holiday in Mallorca with my sisters, perusing the markets in the beautiful old town I thought 'wow I would love to sell handmade jewellery and do markets' and VOILA... Aelin was born! By the time I stepped off the plane to come home I had decided on the name (thanks to the fantastic book series I was obsessed with at the time) and I had already started to think up different designs and colour schemes.
Here we are nearly 18 months later and we've just had our first ever in person shopping event at the fabulous Hollyhocks florist in south Devon. Holly came to me with an idea to use her brand spanking new unit to host makers markets and I jumped at the chance to help her to organise this, 6 weeks later we hosted the most incredible day! A Christmas makers market with 13 local small businesses all coming together to showcase the very best handmade items that Devon has to offer. We had goodie bags, a raffle hamper and even a coffee van selling gorgeous festive drinks. The market started at 10am but we had a QUEUE (can you believe it?!) from 9am and it continued for the next 3 hours. It was so incredibly busy that my lovely sister who had come for a festive shopping trip with my mum had to jump behind my stand to help me out! Me and Holly kept catching each others eye and just laughing in complete disbelief at what was happening around us. It was an absolutely roaring success (so much so that we've decided to hold another one- Saturday 21st, Sunday 22nd and Monday 23rd December... see you there!)
Having worked in retail for many years before becoming self employed, I knew that merchandising my stand was incredibly important and I spent the weeks leading up to the market making sure I had enough stock and that my stand looked exactly how I wanted it to (vibrant, fresh and sparkly!) We had our mystery boxes on offer (which sold out!), a free Christmas cracker gift with purchase with every £50+ spend and exclusive products sold only at our markets. It was such an amazing day and the best way to soft launch this small handmade jewellery business. Thank you to everyone who came along, hopefully someday soon we will be doing our own pop up in a shop!