Interview: Vanessa Bee Designs

How did Vanessa Bee Designs start?
Vanessa herself started the business some 25 years ago, with a small range of hand made cards. The cards proved to be very popular and were stocked by many retailers up and down the country. In 2006 Vanessa felt that she wanted a change in her life and decided to sell the business. At the time we were running a retail business and were stocking Vanessa’s cards. Knowing how well the cards sold, we jumped at the chance to buy the business and, so, at the beginning of 2007, the business was ours. We decided to keep the name as the cards were a well recognised brand.

How has the product range developed since then?
We soon realised how popular the sheep themed cards were, so we decided to introduce some different products with sheep designs on them. We started with fridge magnets and bookmarks, both of which are still going strong. We soon added keyrings, and a very successful range of shopping lists and note pads. In 2010 we introduced the first designs in our reusable shopping bag range. These were very well received and have sold so well that the range now boasts 14 designs. When the plastic bag charge was introduced in Wales and Scotland we saw a big increase in sales as consumers realised the benefits of having their own reusable shopping bags. We expect that the same will happen when the plastic bag charge takes effect in England on the 5th October. We have recently added mugs and coasters to our range and these have proved very popular.

Tell us about your famous knitting bags?
We became aware that our shopping bags also made great knitting bags, and so we introduced the “Knit One, Purl One” to appeal to knitters. Recently we decided to go a step further and design a purpose made knitting bag. We made up a prototype design and then sent samples to the editorial team at Lets Knit and also to a couple of Knit and Natter groups. We asked a series of questions covering design, colour and price and we found the answers to be extremely useful in fine tuning our design. Therefore when we launched the knitting bag last month we were confident that it would be well received. This has been the case and initial sales have been very encouraging and we are still a long way from the busy run up to Christmas. The smart blue and red colours have been equally popular, so clearly the opinions of our focus groups have been very useful.

Why is it important to you that your products are made in Britain?
With the exception of our bags, all our products are manufactured here in the UK. This is important to us as we want to support the UK economy and we also enjoy working with local suppliers. We have a team of outworkers who manufacture and pack most of our products, and because they are local to us, we are able to respond quickly to fluctuating demand for our products.

What’s on the horizon for Vanessa Bee Designs?
We are just putting the finishing touches to a range of knitting themed mugs, coasters and fridge magnets. These will be available in time for Christmas, and they will be advertised in the next issue of Lets Knit magazine. We are planning to introduce more colours to the Knitting Bags, and we are working on a new range of accessories bags for knitters, so there are lots of new products to look forward to.

For more info on Vanessa Bee’s great range of products, visit www.vanessabeedesigns.co.uk