Small Albums Arrive!

Yippee.....
Our best selling album LG1' small album have arrived this morning.
We have 500 of them to get out today just to cover our back orders! Not to mention all our current orders for them.
They make a great gift for any occasion. You can choose almost any of our card designs to have on the front, wedding, christening, new baby, hen night, age cards.

They are A5 size with 20 clear plastic wallets to slot your photo's in. Great for that special occassion. Available online again from Monday.
Our LG1 albums is pictured below (centre of picture) with our LG2 signing book and LG4 large album.

New for Aut/Wint

A couple of sneek previews of some of our new lines for Aut/Wint

A fabulous new corsage 1 of 3 new designs. Called Kingdom.
Bracelet, 'Buttons', a military style bracelet which has a matching necklace and earings
made from antique silver effect metal.
Picture three shows a new bracelet, Trinket, a fine gold finish and crystal beads with peacock charm. This also has a matching necklace.

Tuesday - What are we wearing today?

It's Tuesday again and this is the day when we take a picture of someone here at Lello and show you which Lello jewellery they have on today.

The girls are really busy designing on the Macs so I quickly caught Fiona (my sister and Bus partner) and Laura one of our designers while I had the chance. Both wearing black today which never happens as everyone here is usually so colourful.

Laura is wearing our long black beaded 'Globe' necklace £10.00 and Fiona is wearing our Black glass 'Eva' bracelet with large clear heart £11.00.

Left: Laura Right: Fiona

What are we up to?

We have some new samples in today of our Aut/Wint jewellery lines, so we are checking over those to make sure we are 100% happy with them, so far the response from our team of agents around the country has been very positive and they all like the new designs.

Our design team are very busy with a large design project we have on this week, so it's all hands to the pump. We have an important client coming to see us today, so everywhere is looking very tidy and the samples are out ready to show them what we can do.

We are also very busy packing lots of orders to our customers now that all our miracle bead necklaces have come in so the dispatch area is filling up quickly.

Although along way off, some time is now being devoted to how we will promote ourselves at the Clothes Show in Birmingham in December. We exhibited there for the first time to the public last year and the stand was a great success for us. Looking forward to the mayhem this year! More information about the Clothes Show nearer the time.
Karen

What are we wearing at Lello Today?

It's Melanie's turn today. Melanie is our senior designer and has worked for Lello since it's conception 10 years ago.

I snapped a picture of her quickly while she was working on some new Spring season jewellery designs. Melanie is wearing 'Alice' necklace, a long metal beaded necklace with large antiqued metal heart. A real favourite of ours.

The second picture shows the design team hard at work at 9.25am this morning. Lello creates a great deal of pure graphic design for one of the UK's major supermarkets, so the team is split between graphic illustrative and surface designers.

My you son is just visible sat at one of the computers designing a little card, we start them young here!

Alice necklace: £17.00



The studio this morning.

Decisions Decisions!

Trying to decide today which lines to discontinue to make way for the new Autumn/Winter jewellery lines. You might think it is an easy decision to make but even if some lines sell really well for us we need to make way for new lines. Although customers will phone and ask why they can't buy a particular item when we have discontinued it, there would be more complaints from our retail customers if there were not sufficient new lines each season.
I think we have made our choices, with over 40 new lines coming for Autumn/Winter we need to start making room in our new brochure and also on site.
Busy day here with another jewellery delivery coming in and lots & lots of orders going out to customers who have been waiting for our miracle bead necklaces.
Karen

Handbags

We have finalised this week the new range of handbags we are launching for Autumn / Winter 09/10. Just a small range of six large bags and six smaller bags, 'to test the water'.
The bags we hope will be a great addition to our jewellery offer. The design and colour of the bags is simple, tasteful and elegant and we hope to suit women of all ages. The bags will be made locally here in Leicester and some of the fabric we have used was in a former life 'plastic bottles'.
It was not our intention for the bags to carry the recycled 'tab' however we are pleased that we have managed to incorporate a part of the bag which is made from recycled material. This will follow the theme of some of our recycled greeting cards, having them made locally is also a huge bonus!

The new bags will be launched alongside the Autumn / Winter jewellery at the end of August.
Karen

To all those mums & working mums out there!

My sister and I run Lello and we thought it would get easier when the children got older during the summer holidays, but I would say it gets even more challenging. Coming into work this morning hit with a barrage of 'I don't want to go to park this morning' from the four of them. Two want to go to cinema, one is too small she doesn't know what she wants and the other just isn't bothered. Our wonderful nanny and her helper are left very 'confused'.
Plans have been made for the day now and I can get on with booking all our stock in which arrived yesterday. Lots of items currently out of stock on the webiste will go back into stock today and tomorrow.
I will then grab the chance to have tea and cake with my youngest at lunchtime up at Starbucks, our local lunchtime haunt. I think it's just as hard for those mums at home as it is for those who work full or part time trying to fit everything in and make the best of every situation!

We are setting up behind the scenes 'Lello World' an opportunity for people to download images of themselves wearing our jewellery, a section for people to chat in and for you to register with us to get all the latest news about our jewellery. I think I'll add in a section for multi tasking mums aswell, those of us who run our business's should set up a club!!
Karen
(Picture taken of Fiona and me, taken Sept 2007).

Lello on the Internet

You may have seen a number of mentions about Lello on the internet in addition to this blog and the main Lello website.

If you are a user of Facebook, why not add Lello Direct as a friend? Our Facebook page can be found at
www.facebook.com/people/Lello-Direct/678977903.

Why not add some photos of you and your friends wearing Lello jewellery either to our Facebook or to our page on the photosharing website Flickr?


There are also a number of news articles, regarding Lello.
Mothers Who Work - Karen and Fiona interviewed by motherswhowork.co.uk

Making It - Outlining ten of the UK's top female entrepreneurs.

Bright bold and bracing – jewellery from Lello

Little Lello jewellery collection is on the cards


If you know of any other references to Lello, including fashion blogs, news articles or forum messages, we'd love to hear from you.

FACEBOOK!

Why not become a friend to Lello on Facebook? Help us to tell everyone about Lello Jewellery!

Little Lello jewellery pictured below is selling really well.
In pretty pink blue lilac silver shades with two matching necklaces it is the perfect gift for a little girl aged 5-12years, or for those women out there, who have little wrists!

Lello Direct

Sisters, Karen Wilborn and Fiona Oxley, run Lello Direct, from their office in Leicester. The firm specialises in offering a creative design service and also the manufacture of distinctive jewellery and greetings cards.


As owners of a busy design and manufacturing company they tire of the constant "doom & gloom" being presented in the press and on the news. Business is stressful no matter what industry you are in and the design industry is no exception. However, at Lello, they feel that they have a lot to be positive about.

"We employ like-minded people, we don’t take ourselves too seriously and everyone has their say. We stand up for ourselves and have learnt over the past nine years in business that you have to make the best of every situation no matter how bad it may be.

We all work very hard and sometimes very long hours. We and our staff enjoy what we do, working in a relaxed, comfortable and happy environment. We have schedules, rules and regulations like all companies do however we do our utmost to make our employees feel they are all as important as each other.

The work life balance is key for us as directors, mothers and employers."

Take a look at the Lello Website to see the full scope of their Design Team and view the whole range of ethically manufactured jewellery and cards.