Delivering with a Whole Load of Heart
This blog post has been a long time coming. If you’re new to Lilian Daph, welcome. It’s great to have you here. If you know us well, thank you for returning to our brand spanking new website - it’s lovely, right?
We are so excited about the launch of our new online store; but it’s been a little (no, long actually) slog getting here, and we are by no means perfect and there’s a still load of work to do - so thanks for your patience and bearing with us.
We promise to bring you lots of creative, inspiring and rambling blog content, but for now I just really wanted to share the vision and the whole reason this new space has happened.
As a small indie biz, we are truly passionate about what we do. About the people we work with, the products we choose, how we curate them and of course getting to know you, our support network. Like lots of independent businesses, this biz came about after a feeling of need for something lacking.
It’s been a feeling for a long time, through personal shopping experiences (past and present, shock - I do shop elsewhere and don’t just nick stuff from our own store) and also from lots of market research that made me really notice the gap in the industry.
So there are the big boys; Heals, Conran, hey even Barker and Stonehouse up here in the North; they all sell great products, but you know they have a warehouse of them and huge teams of people making their orders happen who probably go home at night and forget about their ‘job’.
Then there’s the SIB’s (Small Indie Businesses). Just like us, there are heaps of other talented folk trying hard to break boundaries in the retail industry. They tend to deliver through their precious bricks and mortar stores alongside third party sites (like Trouva) and their own that, let’s face it, maybe aren’t up to user friendly levels. This is due to loads of reasons like experience, manpower and of course, BUDGET.
Now please don’t mistake me for knocking these guys here, they all deserve medals. But what I have found is there is a REAL HUGE gap for independents delivering like professionals. You know, slick and beautiful looking websites driven by an in-house team consisting of a photographer / stylist / buyer / customer sales rep…
CUE a love affair between MODEST and Lillian Daph…
Working with a local business, just as small and independent as ourselves, has meant that we have been pretty involved with building our online store.
The aim is to create something special that we believe in, and deliver it from Number 10 Station Street, Saltburn. No outsourcing, no big city, just four girls, one guy and a few dogs learning the ropes of shipping, packing, product photography, merchandising…
The list is endless…
We are passionate about making this happen in our small hometown store in Saltburn, via our in house team.
My team don’t go home at 5 and forget about their ‘job’. They text me when the alarm goes off and it notifies their mobile, when they have forgotten to tell me something, and even when they have seen some cool inspo in a magazine.
We are the heart, and we will deliver the coolest goods with all of it.
XOXO
