Update

So I woke up early today ( last Sunday - its taken a week to get uploaded doh!) filled with enthusiam for treasure hunting at the car boot. But when we got up we discovered it has been
snowing - again! It's just not fun anymore!

The snow is a bit of a nightmare when you're trying to run a business - especially with a shop an hour down the motorway. At the start of the year we lost whole weeks as we couldn't get to the studio, so I'm hoping this cold snap doesn't last long.

The start of the year has been slow compared to the Christmas mania but the shop has been busy and I've been spending more time in there. I've painted a wall and re- arranged everything, creating a cleaner, less cluttered shop. It's easier to see the good clothes and choice vintage bags and I've given more space to my handmade jewellery. All of this has been beneficial and we're already up considerably on last years sales.

The spring summer collection is all designed and sampled and last weekend we went to a trade show in London to exhibit our wares to buyers from around the globe. It was a strange event, I'm used to the hustle and bustle of consumer shows and it was very quiet. There was a steady flow of people through the door but it felt like we were in a blind spot and lots of people just walked past us. A lot of the buyers only seemed interested in speaking to people they already knew. There was an interesting mix of brands but one thing became apparent - Me&Yu is totally different from anyone else!

There were a lot of people who do designs and then send them off to get printed - there was only one other brand who actually prints themselves, Mr. Wingate. The other brands ranged from graphic text tees, to hand drawn illustrations and graffiti style prints but no other brand quite like us who do a bit of everything. We had a much larger variety of garment styles, catering for both men and women - we even print our own fabric! Perhaps we had too much variety on offer and maybe next time we'll just print everything on white tees!

Anyway we must have done something right as we got an order from a shop in Brighton and also a sample order from some Japanese guys doing a trade show in Tokyo - from which we could get some further orders.

Perhaps the most interesting thing is that I met a lovely girl who works as a buyer for Topshop and we're going to have a meeting with them next week. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much as we just might be too small to take orders from someone as huge as Topshop but
I just feel really happy that they loved what we do. With further meetings with River Island as well this week it's an exciting time for a tiny little label from Manchester!