Aside from the jewellery which Lello now seem to be known for, our greetings cards and photo albums are selling better that they ever have done. Handmade on site, our cards are made using beautiful embossed board with pretty and delicate handmade embellishments.

Our albums are a great favourite and our signing books which sold through this season much faster than usual are back in stock on Monday. This will please a lot of customers who have been waiting for them, August is a prime selling month for our retailers. The signing book/guest book is great for Weddings, Christenings, Hen Nights, Birthdays any gathering where you’d like to offer your guests a book to write their comments in.

These books are made to order and there are a huge variety of covers for each occasion for you to choose from. They also make a fantastic present.

Below are just two alternatives for our album range. One range showing the 18th birthday caption and the other with one of our many wedding designs.
LG1 – small album with clear pockets
LG2 – Signing book (with trace interleaves, packed in a box)
LG4 – Largealbums (with trace interleaves, photo corners and voile bag packed in box)

We are working on the new handbag concepts at the moment and as always there are last minute glitches! Fabric and handles being ours. But as ever I am confident it will all go to plan and the six new designs will launch along side the new jewellery ranges at the end of the month.

Our agents are already selling the new Autumn / Winter jewellery lines even though they don’t come into stock for another 4 weeks, this is great news for us.

Our Little Lello stock has sold out in 4 weeks, WOW!. We knew it would be popular but it has taken us by surprise. More is on order and I think the new lines for Autumn / Winter, a pretty glass pearl necklace and bracelet and a metal finish necklace and bracelet will go down a storm.

We’d better get our thinking caps on for Spring / Summer 2010.

Karen

We have some new samples in today of our Autumn / Winter 2009 jewellery lines, so we are checking over those to make sure we are 100% happy with them, so far the response from our team of agents around the country has been very positive and they all like the new designs.

Our design team are very busy with a large design project we have on this week, so it’s all hands to the pump. We have an important client coming to see us today, so everywhere is looking very tidy and the samples are out ready to show them what we can do.

We are also very busy packing lots of orders to our customers now that all our miracle bead necklaces have come in so the dispatch area is filling up quickly.

Although along way off, some time is now being devoted to how we will promote ourselves at the Clothes Show in Birmingham in December. We exhibited there for the first time to the public last year and the stand was a great success for us. Looking forward to the mayhem this year! More information about the Clothes Show nearer the time.

Karen

It’s Melanie’s turn today. Melanie is our senior designer and has worked for Lello since it’s conception 10 years ago.

I snapped a picture of her quickly while she was working on some new Spring season jewellery designs. Melanie is wearing ‘Alice’ necklace, a long metal beaded necklace with large antiqued metal heart. A real favourite of ours.

Alice Necklace

The second picture shows the design team hard at work at 9.25am this morning. Lello creates a great deal of pure graphic design for one of the UK’s major supermarkets, so the team is split between graphic illustrative and surface designers.

The studio this morning

My young son is just visible sat at one of the computers designing a little card, we start them young here!

Trying to decide today which lines to discontinue to make way for the new Autumn/Winter jewellery lines.

You might think it is an easy decision to make but even if some lines sell really well for us we need to make way for new lines. Although customers will phone and ask why they can’t buy a particular item when we have discontinued it, there would be more complaints from our retail customers if there were not sufficient new lines each season.

I think we have made our choices, with over 40 new lines coming for Autumn/Winter we need to start making room in our new brochure and also on site.

Busy day here with another jewellery delivery coming in and lots & lots of orders going out to customers who have been waiting for our miracle bead necklaces.

Karen

We have finalised this week the new range of handbags we are launching for Autumn / Winter 09/10. Just a small range of six large bags and six smaller bags, ‘to test the water’.

The bags we hope will be a great addition to our jewellery offer. The design and colour of the bags is simple, tasteful and elegant and we hope to suit women of all ages. The bags will be made locally here in Leicester and some of the fabric we have used was in a former life ‘plastic bottles’.

It was not our intention for the bags to carry the recycled ‘tab’ however we are pleased that we have managed to incorporate a part of the bag which is made from recycled material. This will follow the theme of some of our recycled greeting cards, having them made locally is also a huge bonus!

The new bags will be launched alongside the Autumn / Winter jewellery at the end of August.

Karen

My sister and I run Lello and we thought it would get easier when the children got older during the summer holidays, but I would say it gets even more challenging.

Coming into work this morning hit with a barrage of ‘I don’t want to go to park this morning’ from the four of them. Two want to go to cinema, one is too small she doesn’t know what she wants and the other just isn’t bothered. Our wonderful nanny and her helper are left very ‘confused’.

Plans have been made for the day now and I can get on with booking all our stock in which arrived yesterday. Lots of items currently out of stock on the website will go back into stock today and tomorrow.

I will then grab the chance to have tea and cake with my youngest at lunchtime up at Starbucks, our local lunchtime haunt. I think it’s just as hard for those mums at home as it is for those who work full or part time trying to fit everything in and make the best of every situation!

We are setting up behind the scenes ‘Lello World’ an opportunity for people to download images of themselves wearing our jewellery, a section for people to chat in and for you to register with us to get all the latest news about our jewellery. I think I’ll add in a section for multi tasking mums aswell, those of us who run our business’s should set up a club!!

Karen
(Picture taken of Fiona and me, taken Sept 2007).

Join our growing team of Lello Ladies.

Women who buy our jewellery at cost just as a retailer would do and sell it on to friends and family, work colleagues, at coffee mornings, school fetes and through party planning.

Min spend £75.00 plus vat and £2.50 postage. Happy to send you our colour brochure! New Autumn Winter stock due in late August.

Email me, karen@lellodesign.co.uk for more information.

I am wearing one of this seasons best sellers, the “Zara” Charm Necklace and it’s taken me months to get my hands on one as they are so popular and forever going out of stock.

I keep seeing women in town wearing them and also the mums at my son’s school and think, I really must grab myself one of those.

I saw a lady in Starbucks with one on at the weekend and she must have thought I was a mad women staring at her.

BACK IN STOCK AT THE END OF THIS WEEK!

Necklace Zara, made from antique metal finish beads with large hoop and clasp

How lovely it is to come into work this morning and have some sunshine after all the rain.

I made sure I was wearing something to reflect the happy mood and threw on my Alice necklace, long metal beaded necklace with matching bracelet Alexa, it makes such a statement.

All these metal lines which have sold so well for us since their launch in January will be back in stock at the end of this week.

We are working on our new 2010 lines of handmade card designs this week, discussing ideas around the studio and looking has what sold well for us this past year. Much of our manufacturing came back to the UK after all our problems overseas with the dollar and factories going bust. It’s the best thing we ever did.

We will be looking at new boards and beautiful new embellishments to add to them to exhibit at the Spring Fair, Birmingham in Feb 2010!
Karen