Hello!
So, I've been keeping some exciting news under my hat of late, purely because I didn't want to make a big deal of it, and add more pressure to myself, but now it's done I can share with you all!
On Tuesday this week I made the journey up to London to pitch my products to John Lewis! I won the opportunity through Start Up Britain's amazing competition 'Pitch up'.
Which is part of a national enterprise to encourage bigger businesses to help out the smaller ones.
Out of over 400 entries Start Up Britain choose their top 100, and then John Lewis choose their final 13 business to come and pitch to them.
So armed with my presentation and lots of samples I left on a very early train!
I arrived full of nerves and worries about how my pitch would go but the ladies running the event from Start Up Britain were fabulous and provided a comfy area (and an amazing buffet) to help us relax.
We heard from Julia - founder of Oily Rag, who had been in our place a year ago and her products were chosen by John Lewis to stock in their stores. (wowee!) Again, she made us feel much more at ease and the John Lewis buyers popped out to introduce themselves too, I can't tell you what a friendly day it was.
After arriving at 11.30am I didn't pitch until 3pm so it was a little wait but the time soon flew by and it was time for me to go and do my pitch.
Now my memory of my pitch is a little hazy but I'm told it went very well and that John Lewis were very impressed with my products. I think I must of pulling off the swan trick (where under the water it's going crazy, but on the surface cool and composed.) They highlighted a couple of areas for me to have a look at but it was a very positive experience.
After my pitch I went to grab a glass of water and then got taken into a separate room to speak to two lovely ladies from the Country Living Magazine who said 'that my pitch had been very inspiring' which was amazing to hear! So we had a chat about me and my products and it was just such a pleasure to feel like all my hard work was being noticed and paying off! :)
I left the building in whirlwind of emotion. I have never done anything like this before, and not only was it a shock to the system but all the great feedback I had received was just amazing.
John Lewis told us all at the beginning of the day that because they were so impressed with us all we would all receive an hours mentoring session with our relevant buyer!!
So I'm still trying to get my head around how amazing the day was, and I will of course let you know when my mentoring session will be, and if anything else happens ;)
It was probably for the best I had a long bus ride home to help to calm down again haha.
You can read about the other finalists and find out more about Start Up Britain on their blog post about the day here.
You can also look back on the tweets from the day using #PitchUp.
Louise x