2022 closes - what a year!
It’s a wrap!
I’m writing this on the train on the way up to Newcastle to spend the day sampling our chocolates in the wonderful Fenwicks flagship food hall, it’s a great way to end what has been a really challenging, but ultimately fruitful 2022.
After Dragons’ Den in March, out-of-stock until June, then the hottest summer on-record (painful for a chocolate business) and rampant inflation (painful for everyone), finishing the year with Royal Mail and Rail Strikes in our peak Festive season it has been bumpy!
So it’s a great time to thank our team who do a lot of the work behind the scenes:
- Our fulfilment team Adam, Kizito and Luke, together with Maisie and Sharon who have worked tirelessly to pack and get all your chocolates out to you
- Our customer-response team Clare, Jess, Nikki and Val who have often worked evenings and weekends to respond to questions and help progress orders
- Our new marketing lead Sofya who seemingly helps everywhere
- To the finance team Katie and Amy who keep us on the straight & narrow
- Our many suppliers who responded as quickly as they could to the increased demand and activity
- Our partners, Becky and Gary, family and friends, especially Myles who have always encouraged and sometimes worked gratis to help us
And above all to you - our wonderful customers who have been generous in supporting our startup throughout the year, predominantly patient when we’ve not had stock and predominantly understanding when issues like heatwaves and strikes are beyond our control!
We’re still a small business with real people (no bots, AI or call centres on the other side of the planet) and so we’ll be taking some real time-off to spend with our family and friends and recharge for new year. Any questions to our consumer team over the holiday period will likely take substantially longer than our typical 24 hour response time – sorry – we will get back to you as soon as we can.
You can order from the site, we will next post fresh chocolates out on 3rd January 2023.
We’ve posted out the last orders for the year, the overwhelming majority have made their way successfully to their destination; there are one or two stragglers that we’re monitoring and counting on Royal Mail to deliver in the timely manner we were promised, but given strikes, they may be a couple of days late - very sorry, but entirely out of our control.
2023 is going to be exciting for us – new flavours, a new format, new people coming into the business and we’re likely to be fundraising for our next growth phase – more on all of that later!
And finally, many thanks again for playing a part in our journey and for your generous ongoing support of our business.
Steve & I wish you a very happy and restful festive season and a healthy and successful 2023!
Giles & Steve
