2023 seems to have flown by so quickly – it’s been another busy year, we’ve welcomed new people to our team, celebrated the birth of two babies and added lots of new products to our collections. Here are a few of my favourite memories from 2023.
Celebrating 10 years of Wrendale ♥
The extended celebrations of Wrendale’s ten year anniversary culminated in a film celebrating everything that we’ve achieved over the past decade. I can honestly say that when I started out painting wildlife on my kitchen table I would never have believed where the next ten years would take us, so it was lovely to relive the memories and produce a film putting it all together. The film crew followed us to Spring Fair, a trade show in Birmingham where we introduce our stockists to our new collections, and they interviewed some of our retailers – we were so overwhelmed by the lovely comments and felt so proud to hear them. There were a few tears when we first saw the film!
Launching the new pet collection ♥
It’s probably no coincidence the staff at Wrendale are all animal lovers and so we were all excited to launch a new collection of pet accessories, the fabric items all made from recycled fabric. We had a lot of fun filming and photographing the collection and it featured many of our pets including Jura the Rhodesian ridgeback, Miley the spaniel, Chip and Nugget the guinea pigs and of course Elvis our very own poodle. Everyone got involved and it was one of our best photo shoots ever!
The Coronation of King Charles III♥
2023 saw the coronation of King Charles II and I created a piece of art to celebrate the event. It took me a long time to come up with something that felt original and really captured the occasion in a ‘Wrendale’ way but I was very happy with the result and we were so overwhelmed by the response. We created a small collection featuring the artwork as we had no idea how it would be received but we sold out very quickly and wished we had produced more!
Awards ♥
In November, our customer service team was listed as a finalist in the Customer Focus category at the Institute of Customer Service awards. Offering the very best customer service has always been extremely important to us and is at the heart of our values so this news meant so much to us. We’ll find out next year whether we are winners! I also won an award at the National Business Women’s Awards – although I feel slightly guilty taking the credit as all of our successes are down to the hard work and dedication of the whole team, it was wonderful to win the award and we had a fantastic night meeting so many inspirational women.
Welcoming beavers back to Lincolnshire ♥
Over the past four years, Jack and I have been beavering away behind the scenes (!) transforming our 300 acre farm into a site for nature restoration. A few weeks ago, we welcomed the first beavers back to Lincolnshire for 400 years into a 70 acre enclosure on the farm. As ecosystem engineers and keystone species, we are expecting them to make some exciting changes, creating a complex network of habitats that will benefit many other species and help to improve the biodiversity and abundance of wildlife on the farm. We can’t wait to see how the land changes as they get to work.
WHATS NEW FOR 2024?
We are all really excited for the start of a new year and the launch of more fantastic products we have been busy working on behind the scenes. In the meantime, here is a sneak peek of a new design for 2024...
Make sure to keep an eye on our 'New in' category on our website in the new year to be the first to see any new products launches.