The Little Dog Story
Chapter Seven – Recessions and rabbits
There is nothing quite like a recession to dampen the spirits, make you doubt your design abilities and turn the working week into an arduous uphill muddy crawl. These are the obvious effects of a recession and 2009 has been one long slog but there is only so long you can stay down before that British Dunkirk spirit kicks in and you decide that giving up without a fight is quite simply not an option.
Bubba Gump’s shrimp boat has been our mantra for the year and if you look hard enough you can always find little positives tucked behind big fat negatives!
A complete overhaul and nuts and bolts study of your business is always a good thing and it definitely sharpens the brain knowing there is no margin for error.
With a quiet phone, slow re ordering and cautious buyers placing cautious orders it affords you the time to tackle the problems and jobs you neglect when business is crazy. The recession has also highlighted the strength of our banking decisions and prudence in the early boom years, so in truth this little family firm found itself in a relatively healthy position despite having to make some tough business decisions. On the team front we said a very sad farewell to Little Jo who moved onto fresh challenges and pastures new. It’s impossible to replace the irreplaceable and we miss her dearly but we did welcome Jackson “bomb head” Smith into the fold, Nathan’s newly adopted Jack Russell cross.
He is an endearing little chap but competely mad. It’s been hugely entertaining watching Nat test out his Cesar Millan theories and Jackson foil every single one! Anna also had her third (and final) baby boy, who is a true delight and adored by all who bear witness to his smiles.
Our Girl Friday, Natalie has gone from strength to strength and made herself indispensable within the work place and the young Ashley has time and again proved her value in the design studio. Gavin’s unquashable enthusiasm for life and leadership has been called upon daily over the year and he has constantly risen to the challenge.
Creatively, 2009 saw the birth of Rufus Rabbit ‘s Did You Know collection, an in house idea inspired by a Wetherspoon’s father’s day menu and Anna’s annoying habit of making up statistics to prove her point. The range features humorous and endearing but completely made up facts based loosely on real life.
We were so thrilled with Rufus we launched him with forty eight designs, quite crazy considering the norm is twelve but thankfully our enthusiasm seems to have been justified as lots of other people think he’s the bees knees too.
We quickly realised we would need to separate Rufus from the Really Likes range as he would over power the other collections. We have worked so hard to try and produce card collections that are fresh and different and it’s important to us that Really Likes continues to develop as a company that can offer this.
The Little Dog’s loyal following of admirers have helped keep spirits up and the stories and emails we receive are a constant delight. The pet range launched at the end of 2008 has proved extremely popular and sold out in record time so we’d like to say a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has bought and enjoyed our designs over the years. And so, as we head into 2010 and what looks set to be an even tougher economic year despite being told the country is out of the recession, we have armed ourselves with a brand new mantra “Come on Rabbit”. Remember where you saw Rufus first!
