What’s actually going on at Jelly Armchair?
So we have and will be telling you that it’s your “last chance” to buy over the next few weeks so for the first time in a while here’s a full update. Like a lot of our wall art prints this is probably best enjoyed as a little light toilet reading.
The main headline is…
We will be closing our website shop at the end of January and we are currently unsure when or in what form it will reopen again.
Firstly a bit of the why…
We’re nine years now into this punny business. Nine years of non stop pun. Through a pandemic. Through having retail shops. Through London and Cheltenham and back. So…It’s time to take a break and reconfigure.
Some detail…
This time last year we had 4 employees and a physical shop and now we have no shop and it’s Cat and I handling things ourselves in a much smaller setup. The pick pack and dispatch department is now me solo most of the time, although I’ve had loads of help along the way from our mum who’s ace at wrapping things and my amazing partner Stephen who has been roped into assist with pretty much every aspect of the company at some point including the madness of the move out of the big shop!
It feels weird to say it but this has been an incredibly positive step overall as a business and has helped Cat and I to start to focus on what we want for the company but also for our own lives.
Ok so what next then….
The next phase is going to need our full attention and a period of taking stock – literally and figuratively! It’s a very different economic climate and we’re very different people from when we started 9 years ago. We’ve spent that time trying to do absolutely everything all at once and this has landed us at a place where somehow we’re handling 700+ different product lines on a daily basis and it makes my brain ache – sadly I don’t think it’s the optimal way to operate a business. If we do return to having the website back open, it’s likely to be a lot more streamlined.
We’re not stopping….
I love this business and I love Cat’s art, plus she can’t and won’t stop drawing puns and silliness so this won’t be goodbye, we’ve got some huge and exciting opportunities on the horizon which we’re so excited to share with you and which mean the puns will continue whatever happens. It’s really difficult to decide to stop in any capacity but it’s become apparent it’s very necessary.
AND.. we are NOT stopping our wholesale business; you will still be able to find our cards in Waterstones, on Thortful, and we’ll make sure to update our stockist list for you so you can still get your puns in greetings card form!
The bumpy track…
We have spent the years since Covid and Paperchase going under in such a reactive space as a company that we haven’t felt able to stop, we have thankfully managed to keep hold of the business in the circumstances and feel so privileged and lucky to have done so, but the next phase is going to need to be proactive and planned around our lives rather than being our entire existence because try as I might to ignore it, burnout is a thing. Not to mention that Cat is incredibly in demand as a wedding illustrator now too and I want to be able to play more bass!
So what’s currently happening then?….
Over the coming weeks we’re going to be selling down as much stock as we can, so we’ll be offering various discounts and things, we won’t be refreshing our stock levels of most lines so some things will sell out completely and they may never return. No, really 😬
If you’ve enjoyed shopping our designs this will be the last chance to shop the collection in its current form.
Thank you so much for the support and love these past 9 years and we can’t wait to see what year 10 of Jelly Armchair brings!
Thanks for reading,
Liz and Cat
