We’re no data dinosaurs

Updated privacy statement

When you shop with us…

… we can see your name, postal address, email address and your phone number (if you’ve chosen to give it).  This is all stored in the marketplace or website you’ve used to shop with us, and is not transferred out by us, or saved anywhere else, unless we’re using it to contact you via email, creating a record in gmail or mailchimp (our mail providers).  We don’t share any of your personal data with anyone else, for any reason.  If we print two copies of your packing slip or invoice by accident, one goes in a shredder and then into the composter, while the other one comes straight to you.  We only use your data to process and send out your order, or to contact you about your purchase.

What do you mean by marketplace?

You might have shopped with us via: tictail, folksy, etsy, ethical.market (formerly the lost lanes/the little lanes), indiegogo or gfw.  These organisations are the ‘controllers’ of your data, and you can contact them if you would like to have your personal data removed from their site and records (which is a new right you have under GDPR), or click the links if you want to know more about their privacy policies.

And if I shopped with you via facebook?

We have access to your contact details via your PayPal invoice.  Click on the link for their privacy policy.  If you can’t remember how or where you shopped with us, drop us a note at data@mimiandwill.com and we’ll remind you.  This is the same email to use if you’ve shared photos with us that you’d now like us to delete.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and this site, WordPress also have their own privacy policies if you’d like to find out more about how that works.

We don’t usually send out newsletters, but if this is something you’d like us to do in future, why not hit us up at subscribe@mimiandwill.com and we’ll be in touch! Thanks for getting this far, and here’s a little reward, valid until 31 May: use code DATA for £5 off at our shop

What’s the deal? Thoughts on Black Friday

Hello.  I’m Katy, one of the co-founders of Mimi & Will, and I want to talk to you about Black Friday.  When I lived in America in 1999, I had my purse stolen in a bar on the Upper East Side, the night before Thanksgiving.  Luckily I was a penniless student at the time (and I’d just got a round in), so no major harm done.  I had my Metrocard in my back pocket so I was able to get home, and ironically, my $20 mugger money was safely stashed in my coat pocket, so I had enough cash for the barest of essentials until the banks opened again the following Monday.  This did mean, however, that I missed out on my first chance to experience the cultural phenomenon that is Black Friday.

With internet shopping in its infancy, our local mall opened its doors at 6am to herald the start of the Christmas shopping season.  In a way, I admired the restraint shown by retailers in the US,  and the clear delineation in the promotional calendar.  After all, I’d spent the last few weeks in August before I left the UK stacking shelves in a supermarket with selection boxes.

Fast forward to 2015, and restraint is not a word you can associate with Black Friday.  With the advent and embracing of shopping online, the 6am opening stopped being enough.  The pressure for: Bigger deals!  Instant access!  Unmissable savings!  Time-limited price slash!  has intensified year on year.  The fact that Wikipedia needs a Violence and Chaos sub-heading on its Black Friday entry should be enough to give any shopper or retailer pause.

So Jo and I were delighted when our stockist, The Lost Lanes, decided to take an alternative approach.  This year on Black Friday they’ll be giving all profits to the Starlight Children’s Foundation.  You can find out more by reading founder Raquel’s excellent blog post, and shop here on Friday (or any time) to show your support.  Of course, while our stockists are fully prepared for the rush over the next few weeks, we are treating the festive season as a marathon, not a sprint.  We’d love for you to be able to shop peacefully, at your leisure, knowing that you can buy once, and buy well, and not kicking yourself because you missed a one-hour-only-never-to-be-repeated flash discount.

Let’s make this season about the real joy of giving, and remember that everyone involved in our production chain deserves the fair reward we give them for contributing to our product.  That’s not to say we’ll never run discounts, but we’d like to do it when it makes good business sense for us to do so, not because we feel we ‘have to’.  We already know we can’t compete with a £2.50 supermarket t-shirt, but we don’t want to, we like the fact that what we do supports the UK creative industries, and supports the use of fair labour overseas.  We know that you want the option of better quality, more ethically-produced and well-designed choices for your children, and that’s what we can provide.  We work hard to ensure that such a high quality product comes in at a realistic and fair price point, and we’ve done exceptionally well to freeze the price of our t-shirts for the last two years without compromising on quality or our values.

We’re really heartened to see that this is a stance more and more independent retailers and designers are taking.  We were thrilled to see this blog post from Laura Spring and Hilary Grant yesterday.  There’s a discussion on Twitter this evening for Folksy sellers about their views on handmade and deep discounting practice – check the hashtag #folksyhour to see what others are thinking and saying.  We’ll keep this post updated if we hear of any more, and do let us know in the comments if you’re hearing similar messages from more of your favourite brands.

£5 discount on t-shirts for new Etsy customers

 

For a limited time, the handmade and vintage marketplace, Etsy.com is offering £5 off your first order.  To sign up and claim your discount (we suggest you shop wisely and treat a little person in your life to a Mimi & Will t-shirt), simply follow this link.  

What we did at the weekend

We had a visit to Smile Acorns, the first retail outlet where you can buy a small selection of t-shirts from our range!  Located on lovely farmland in the North West of England, Smile Acorns is run by Emma, a fellow mum and maker of lovely childrenswear.  

                   

The shop is part of a larger farm complex, called Inglenook Farm.  Other shops on site include a guitar shop, traditional farm shop showcasing the best of the region’s local produce, including Lytham Coffee, and the main product of the farm itself – essential oils and soaps from the fields of lavender growing outside!  The stars of the show at the moment have to be the newly-arrived twin baby goats.  

There’s also a traditional team rooms and a barn for hire.  Last week was an Easter fun day for children, but chickens were also welcome, and keen to get stuck in!  

You can find Smile Acorns just off what my dad calls ‘the Southport Road’, or the A570 as the rest of us know it.  It’s close to Haydock, but even with race meet traffic on a busy Saturday, we drove there in about half an hour from the outskirts of Manchester.  A good time was had by all (I went with my daughter, niece, nephew, dad and sister – a real family day out!)

Atchoo!

So we thought we were back and then the household got poorly again – is it just us or has everyone had the non-stop sniffles since about October?

Here’s a round up of things to get you through if your household is similarly afflicted.

First off, cosy in with this blanket from A Home for All Seasons – currently at 50% off:

If you must go out – remember your brolly!  We love this Duckhead umbrella by ethical clothing superstars American Apparel, it’s available in the Mimi and Will colours, too.

Of course colder days mean clearer nights, did anyone manage to spot Mars recently?  Never fear, the planets are fully aligned in this space cape from one of our favourite designer-makers, Sewing Circus.

 

If you’re going to sneeze, it might as well be an educational one!  Ouch at the pricetag, but what a stunning vintage hanky from Orbiting Debris on Etsy.

And if all else fails, well, there’s always Marshmallows, hot chocolate and a movie… We suggest you follow Edinburgh-based Burgh Bakes on Facebook for special deals and news about new flavours *cough* Prosecco and Rose *cough*.  

 

And if you’re under the weather, we hope you’re feeling better soon.

Hello, March!

Image by Clean Mama Printables

After a blogging hiatus at the start of 2014, we’re back with some Mimi and Will news.  Behind the scenes we’ve been beavering away with new plans for the rest of this year.  We’ve been talking to a handful of very nice shops about stocking our t-shirts so that more people can discover the tops that you and your children love.

We’ve been working on our branding, and making plans for an updated website and a photoshoot now that the light is starting to last past tea time and the weather is brightening up, too.

We also have some new designs on the slate, and have been collaborating with some really exciting people from the worlds of illustration, art and design.  We can’t wait to show you our new samples later in the year once our new micro collection is ready.

We’ll be back again soon with more news, thoughts and musings – we have plenty to tell you.  But don’t forget in the meantime, you can always find us on Facebook and Twitter for more frequent updates – see you there!

Catching up with the postman!

Gosh, December seems to have sneaked up on us out of nowhere!  I think both Jo and I and assorted family members have been poorly with the usual winter illnesses for the last month or so, too, so time seems to be doing strange things at the moment.  

We’ve managed to attend a few Christmas sale events where we were delighted to start selling our t-shirts in person, and we’ve received a lot of positive feedback on both the originality of the designs in our collection and the high quality of the t-shirts and prints.  We’ve also set up a way to buy online through our website, we’re just trying out the format at the moment, so if you see a t-shirt you’d like which appears to be missing from the collection, do please contact us and we’ll set up an invoice.

We have a few t-shirts in stock and ready to send right now – including Supersaurus, Tents, Read more books, Puddles, Jelly Loves Ice Cream and Lion.  Puffer and Treehouse are currently sold out, but they’ll be back in stock soon!

We’re now also taking orders for t-shirts on a wholesale basis, whether you’re an independent or chain, online or bricks and mortar shop we’d love to hear from you.

Here’s a reminder of our sizing information, and our full range is available to view here.

A little update – and lots of action!

Inver Cottage

So we’ve been a little bit quiet around these parts for a couple of weeks, but here’s what we’ve been up to:

• Received, quality checked, folded and squirreled away 80% of the t-shirts you ordered via our indiegogo campaign
• Had our first public appearance with actual t-shirts at Inver Cottage – thanks to their lovely patrons we are currently out of all additional stock of the Treehouse design, and down to very limited stock of Puffer
• Finalised the last two designs of our original collection and continued working with exciting new designers behind the scenes for next year’s collection
• We’ve been in talks with potential stockists of our collection and put plans in place for our first trade fair
• Worked on the packaging for our first orders, which will be shipping soon (once said packaging and remaining 20% of orders arrive in the post!)
• Discussed arrangements for the colouring books and badges so they are ready to ship with the t-shirts at the end of the month
• Planned for our next event, at Yuletide in the West End of Glasgow on 28 November – there’ll be reindeer and everything!
• We’ve also eaten A LOT of chips and drunk A LOT of coffee in the interests of getting things done and we also spent a couple of weeks slowing down and generally being kind to ourselves so we didn’t get ill or burnt out.

We can’t wait for the next step – to send you your packages and hear your feedback, too.

Find us at Inver Cottage – this Sunday, 10 November

Inver Cottage really is one of the West Coast of Scotland’s best places to visit.  A restaurant, a visitor attraction, a cosy (and well-stocked) bar, a view you could bottle, space for events both public and private, and home this weekend to the annual Christmas shopping event, which we’re proud to be a part of.

An independent, family-run business, Inver Cottage is one of the UK’s top restaurants for ethically-sourced fish, including local hand-caught scallops and langoustines.  You can have a delicious lunch then take a walk to the ruins of Old Castle Lachlan, to build your appetite back up for scones and tea.  Although you should definitely bring your wellies, we’ve seen hardier locals swimming in the bay just outside the picture window at the front of the restaurant at this time of year!

All the information can be found on the Inver Cottage website, and facebook page.  We’ll see you there with a small selection of our t-shirts, which are being couriered direct from the printer as I type.  We can’t wait!

Winter wrap up

Did anyone else have to scrape ice from the car this morning?  It’s getting chilly out there.  Our thoughts have turned to getting cosy, and we’ve found some very nice things out there to warm up your day.

We want to snuggle with Mabel the Hedgehog, available from Sara Carr on Folksy

 

As t-shirt makers, we are also big fans of the winter layer.  This basic but stylish pattern for a cover up is available from The Velvet Acorn on Etsy – crochet versions are also available, and patterns for all kinds of winter woolies come in styles which work for boys or girls.

One for the mums and dads, here.  Cashmere socks are a staple of my winter evenings.  This oatmeal textured pair are from Toast, which is a fine purveyor of all things toasty-making.  

Although Brora.co.uk is new to me, the brand has been making fine cashmere products in the Scottish Borders for more than 200 years.  They also have a very generous sale right now, with this traditional blanket for children reduced from £72 to £45.

Be warm out there!