The story this season is ‘Frugi beach festival’ and you are all invited! Bring your bongos, ukulele and surfboard and hang ten with us down at the beach.

Our talented designers have been very busy creating our largest collection yet!

We know your customers are going to absolutely love our fantastic new beach-worthy board shorts and perfect summer party dresses, some of you may also have noticed some re-worked ‘Vintage Frugi’ styles back in the collection (we couldn’t resist getting all nostalgic and adding in some of our previous big hitters!)

It’s plain to see we’re growing but we’re still remaining true to our ethical roots – treating our suppliers fairly, creating award winning designs, and continuing to make you and your customers smile wider than ever before.

We are always looking for ways to support our lovely retailers and will be introducing some exciting developments this season.

Don’t forget, our consolidation date is the 10th of July 2013. Get your orders in before then, and you will be in for a chance to win £500 worth of Frugi goodies!

If you simply can’t wait..here’s a sneaky peek at our photo shoot! We had a great time down on the beach, we hope you enjoy watching it!

]]> http://frugiwholesale.com/blog/2013/05/its-party-time-at-frugi/feed/ 0 http://frugiwholesale.com/blog/2013/05/frugi-office-extension/ http://frugiwholesale.com/blog/2013/05/frugi-office-extension/#comments Tue, 07 May 2013 11:02:26 +0000 Kurt Jewson http://frugiwholesale.com/blog/?p=339 Read more →]]>

Boys toys

The Frugi warehouse is looking very, very odd today.

Work has begun on our first floor extension, which has meant that we have had to remove all of our racking and stock to relocate to a friendly neighbours.

The work will see our 1st Floor office space triple in size, and the warehouse boys will also be getting a mezzanine floor.

All should be complete in 6 weeks!!

Will post more photos up, as work progresses.

Exciting stuff.

Cheers

Kurt

Phew!

It’s been a busy few months, here in Frugiland. All of our spring collection orders went out in January / February and most of our Summer collection is now in the shops and selling amazingly.

What has been of note is the amount of sales we’ve been hearing about, despite the weather in the UK and most of Europe. Everyone thought that the cold would slow things down, but we’ve had loads of re-orders from retailers who are in areas with snow!

The other big news is how well the new Nappies are doing. We love them and thought that they’d do well, but to actually getting re-orders of them so soon after launching is brilliant!

A new face in the office is Gordon. Gordon is American and can speak German. Many of you will have already spoken to him, and noted the accent. He’s settled in really quickly, and is doing a great job. He will, obviously, be focusing on Germany and the U.S.A.

On the subject, sales to the states are going really well, especially that now that we have a USD $ pricelist, with a ‘landed’ door-to-door price. This has simplified everything for our retailers, which is great!

Also the € EURO pricelist and bank details are working well for everyone. Had a few issues with retailers who have forgotton  and have paid € into our £ account, but hopefully everyone is sorted now.

Lots of things coming up in the next few months to help you guys. Can’t say what, at this stage, but we’re looking at more ways we can support and help and are putting a lot of resource your way.

Cheers for now, from all the trade team

Kurt

Way back in 2004 Lucy (Jewson) started making clothes specifically designed to accommodate cloth nappies. During this trip in the world of nappy exploration she read an article in a paper about another mum, Fiona King, and her journey to invent a new innovative washable nappy and manufacture it here in the UK.

Suffice to say Lucy was inspired to start her own company. After much planning, including a visit to the bank clutching  that inspiring article, Cut4Cloth was born. If you aren’t familiar with that name it’s now lovingly known as Frugi!

Lucy and Fiona, the founder of TotsBots, met at a trade show later that year and soon became friends and confidants, sharing the highs and lows of running rapidly expanding businesses whilst balancing family life. Zip forward a few years and Fiona brought her family on holiday to Cornwall and thus idea for the collaboration was born over a Sunday roast.

Lucy reminisces, “We have been asked to make our own nappy, ever since we started. When we mentioned this to Fiona (TotsBots) she replied “why don’t we do it for you?”

Fiona, TotsBots founder, added; “We are so excited to be joining forces with Frugi. With over 8 million disposables still being sent to landfill every day, we are continually striving for ways to show parents that nappies don’t have to be rubbish.

The final product combines all the technical excellence from years of award winning product design at TotsBots with Frugi’s trademark design flair and the result is a collection of four stunningly beautiful nappies that are sure to be a hit with all style conscious mums!

The new Frugi nappies are available for all enlightened, and style savvy parents to buy online at www.welovefrugi.com and from all good children’s boutiques throughout the UK, from March 2013.

The Frugi stand at Bubble London in January 2013

It was great to see so many Frugi retailers at Bubble London and Innatex, in Germany, this weekend. What brilliant trade shows! There was a great vibe at both shows and sales of  our spring / summer 2013 collections and our AW13 collections were amazing… thanks guys!

Its been a busy month at Frugi, getting everyone’s stock of our spring collection out in record time. Thanks for getting back to us so promptly regarding when you’d like stock. This has really helped us plan the logistics of everything.

The feedback from all of our trade customers has been great! We love you too!!

And…many thanks to all of you who have already re-ordered. There was a worry that sales would be slow, at least in the Uk, because of the cold weather. It’s fantastic to be receiving top-up orders in January.

Next month sees us travelling to Solihull, for the Independent Kids show and getting ready for the dispatch of our ‘summer’ collection in March.

Ok, that’s it for today

Cheers from us all

Kurt

Great news – our spring collections has started to arrive! A massive lorry has just been unloaded – I did help, honest.

I’m in the process of contacting everyone this week, to make sure that everyone is ready. In the new year it will be full steam ahead to get orders packed and out to you.

Last season we packed a lot of orders, and then spent a great deal of time contacting retailers to tell then that their order was packed and ready to go. Unfortunately, there were some customers who didn’t get back to us and we had to chase and chase, which meant that stock that could have been packed for other customers who had items missing from their orders was stuck in someones elase box.

So, to help those customers who are ‘on it’ much more, we are only going to pack orders once they have been confirmed and we know that the retailer is primed and ready for us to send. This should benefit everyone.

Exciting stuff!!

Kurt

That’s a big old Lorry – Phew!!

We’ve been out and about with our trusty handycam again. This time we’ve made a little movie at our AW13 photoshoot.

It’s a lot of fun, and hard work, at these but the kids always have a ball!!!

We love this little film, hope you do too.

Thought we’d share a video from beauty, bump and baby in Saffron Walden. It’s a lovely little snapshop of their shop and we’d thought you might like to see  it. Lots of lovely Frugi clothes- ( we like that) and a lovely vibe throughout!

Well done to them – love it!

Kurt

I’ve got a bit of a thing for our natural baby gown, I must admit. It was one of those original WOW items that  just sold amazingly well, from the word ‘Go’ and has become a bit of a frugi classic!

The beautifil Frugi natural baby gown

Over the years we’ve had many variations of the gowns. My favourite of that was our Bee print, which was a major hit a couple of years back. Well, there’s some great news on that… keep an eye out for AW13 as we’re bringing some Frugi classic items back!! For anyone who is unfamilliar with the gown, it is designed to help out those night time nappy changes.

They have an elasticated bottom and allow easy access to change the nappy without upoppering baby grows and fiddling around. They are good for newborn to 6 months and mothers that have used them love them! 

And dont foerget the integral scratch mittens. Just fold over the sleeves and there you are. Protection from little shap nails. So all hail the Frugi baby gown.

Find them at all good Frugi retailers… 

Cheers

Kurt

Just a quick note top say thank you all for a wonderful October. Usually it calms down a bit after the mad rush of August and September, but we have had the best October ever which must mean that all of you lovely Frugi retailers are doing a great job!

 Did you all see our spooky video? We had a laugh making it…

Our new Breastfeeding ranges are going really well. We have the final bits and bobs arriving this month, and then we’re all into the Christmas countdown.

In other news we have two new people joining us in a couple of weeks. One dedicated to our German retailers and one for our French retailers. We’re getting quite a team in wholesale now with Kai, Sy, Holly, Fran, Emily, Warren and our two new guys and of course I dabble a bit.

If you still haven’t found out about our wholesale facebook page, drop one of us a line and we’ll invite you.

Cheers for now

Kurt