You’d be forgiven for thinking we’re a large company with a team working in all the different departments. But I’ll let you in on a little secret.
*Simon Cowell pause*
We’re not.
Our little company is run from home with only a few employees. In this blog we’re showing a little bit of ‘behind the scenes’ of the Tutu Factory and some little secrets too. If you’re thinking of taking the big step into starting your own business this should show that it can be done! It’s not easy, it’s a lot of hard work and not as straight forward as some people say but we’d never go back now. (Yes, even on bad days)
Our empire is constantly undergoing construction it seems nowadays! It hasn’t been long since we had the ‘Sewing Room’ built and even now looking out the window I can see the poor bloke that has to put up with us, my dad, still working on building the Packing Room.
Well, enough rambling. Let’s get started on the pretty pictures!
It all started with a spare room, a laptop and a sewing machine that my grandad purchased for us. We also had a cutting table in there with all the fabric and accessories. You’ll see this room later which is now the office (not that I ever call it that in ‘real life’)
This is me working on the dreaded Halloween section with my sidekick Rocco. I never would have though we’d be where we are now and with staff!
We ended up moving the machines, cutting table and fabrics down into the out building at the bottom of our garden. This didn’t have ‘safe’ electrics to begin with so we had to fix that and it still doesn’t have central heating. Electric radiators and 10 layers of clothing all the way!
And then we ran out of space again so building the Sewing Room commenced…
Archie, our West Highland Terrier is the Tutu Factory Supervisor and Security. He checks all visitors in and out and will supervise all building work. Unless it’s sunny. Then he’ll sunbathe instead.
Before we start to make it pretty...
So, in the Sewing Room is where all the tutus. veils. etc are made up.
Obviously, Archie has a bed in both the Sewing Room and the Cutting Room.
Above you can see the Cutting Studio/Stock Room. This is where all the tutus are cut and accessories are stored. We’ve also got another machine in there now too. But not enough heaters! It gets cold in here, no matter how many heaters. Not good for early starts in Winter!
And now we go back to the room where it all began. But now it is our pretty office where you will find me, (Luby the Designer) and Laura the admin. Which is rather weird as this room used to be called the ‘playroom’ that myself and Laura played in when we were growing up. Now, we just drink tea in here really and get confused with geography.
No office is complete without any Phuckadoodledoo mug or notebook. Seriously, if you don't have something of theirs in your office how do you get through the day at work??
So, yes this is called the ‘Office’ right now but it’s also where we pack all the tutus, work on the website, add sparkles to tutus, make the Minnie ears as well as taking photos of our products.
(since taking these photos a new shudio has been built for the packing room. Onwards and upwards!)
This is where we’ll let you into a little secret. You don’t need anything huge or expensive to create ‘professional’ looking photos.
The black background is usually hung up behind the door to the office. I just place Katie in front of the black fabric (unless me and Lynz our in-house model get drunk and decide to do a photo shoot) and click away.
Then I’ll simply edit the photos using Boost on PicMonkey (great site for photos) to colour in the black to make it look more professional. Check out our website to see our images for yourself!
And we’re not finished there! If you’ve been on our website I’m sure you’ll have seen the leopard print background we use...
And that, is the wallpaper in my bedroom. The photos of tutus in front of it are actually on top of my bed! And I’ve fallen off it a few times taking photos too!
So if you have some great feature wallpaper that you can use for a background make sure you don’t have to stand on anything to take the photos. Health and safety!
Hopefully, it won’t be long until we can share the Packing Room finished and our office can have some more space!
Now you can see we’re just a little home-run company with big dreams and plans to advance. It’s going to be slow going but it’s achievable. Yours could be too :)