ONCE UPON A TIME IN 2015
Once upon a time in 2015 Anthony and I officially started running aabe creative together...
We started our journey in the kitchen/dining room and a small bedroom in our old house. We used the dining table and a spare table for a work bench and the kids had to eat their meals on a folding picnic table – poor kids!! We had one basic binder – which was labour intensive and really slow. Our small bedroom was used as a computer and printer room where we had only three printers. This was a logistical nightmare because if we needed to re-print a few sheets of paper, we had to trudge all the way back upstairs!! We was up and down like a yo-yo!
In May 2017 we finally moved the business out of our house and rented a small local workshop. It was fab, we got our house back and we had a dedicated work space. We became more productive which was perfect timing as aabe creative started to take off. Four months later we had the option to move into the largest room in our unit. We had our own entry, a huge space so we could have a little sofa and a make-shift kitchen – it was great. We even had a little TV so we could binge Instant Hotel and Gilmore Girls during our lunch breaks. With all this space we had grown from three to eight printers. We invested in new machinery to punch and bind our wire bound books. It was also in this workshop that we bought Gloria our huge guillotine.
Things all changed in the winter of 2019 when we decided to pack up our family and business and move 2 hours away from South East Wales to the wild West of Wales. This was a massive move, doing our house and business all in one – it was the most stressful thing we’ve ever done!! TOP TIP! Move your house and biz on separate days!! We rented a house as a stop gap while we searched for a house to buy and we set up a workshop in the dining room. We also had a little room downstairs to house all the printers and we put our desks upstairs in one of the bedrooms.
We lived there for 12 months and in the winter of 2020 we finally found a house to buy so we could finally settle down again and call it home. We converted the garage into a rainbow workshop which has been great for us with the kids.
Over the last year sales have been really slow – we know a lot of small businesses are struggling right now. Our primary focus has been getting aabe creative back on track and working around the clock to bring out new products like our My On The Wall Planner’s, Booky Cozy’s and of course the brand new Flexi Organiser’s.
This year has all been about making big decisions and the biggest one yet has been how we run aabe creative. As the business has changed over the last two years we can no longer justify both of us working full time on aabe creative. Anthony is currently looking for a career change and a full time job. We are so proud of what we have achieved together and are equally excited of what the future holds. Thank you to all of you lovely people for sticking around and joining me on this rainbow stationery ride.
