Once again Market is upon us, and we have our normal booth in Suites at Market Square as well as second space in the Stakmore Inc. showroom in the main IHFC building. Steven has had a recurrence of an old back injury and is waiting for surgery, so could not make market.

The booth will be kindly looked after by Jon from Berkley Designs, our next door neighbours at Suites. I will be available during market on our telephone number that we have in the US (which by the miracle that is VoIP, will be routed to the UK and all the customer in the US pays is the US leg of the call), the number (+1) 336 609 7057.

We wish everyone a successful show and hope to be hearing from you soon.

We thought it was time to give the booth in Suites at Market Square a bit of a facelift. We needed more display space. With new ranges being introduced at each show, and with the old ranges still proving as popular as ever, we needed more space.

We have had MMPI erect some new walls, this effectively gave us an increases in display space of 20%. This was used to show the new Nexus range and show our new background finishes, calico and hessian.

Helen and I were busy painting walls as soon as we got into town from the airport, we plan to give the other walls a bit of a freshen up for next market in the Spring.

We have also invested in some new technology for the booth, we now have a US based telephone number. As well as this we now are able to print out customer orders and quotes right on the booth, as well as being able to email PDF’s.

With so much of our business being conducted in the US, to make it easier (and cheaper) for our US based customers to get in touch, we now have a US based phone number ……… (+1) 336 609 7057.

During High Point market this phone will ring on our booth for the High Point Showroom, the rest of the year it will be routed to our offices in the UK at no extra cost for our customers.

Having tried the fax to email service and found it to be truly liberating and having received a phone bill that scared the life out of us, we have been reviewing our whole communication strategy.

For those of you that having tried to reach us, despite voicemail and the like, with the time we spend in the workshop, out on site installing, meeting customers and working away at trade shows, you know it can sometimes be difficult.

We wanted to keep our existing phone number, but wanted the flexibility of using a system that will allow us to remaining in contact wherever we are. We have been integrating our new VOIP system along side our existing POTS PBX. This has meant a disruption to our existing number this week, for this we apologise.

We have also changed the fax number yet again, as people seemed too confused by the other London based number, so the new fax number is 01353 780031, by the way this is with a new more robust service provider as well.

As well as being able to use our old number 01353 723747 (once the change over is completed) we now have a new number 01353 780030 as well.

In this age of rising costs this is another way of making sure try to keep a lid on ours and not have to pass those increases on in the form of higher prices.

We have ordered a US number so our American customers don’t have to pay the cost of an international cll when wanting to deal with.

We have today launched a new range called Nexus. Nexus is a square format, the same size as Coast. It takes the size from the long edge of the Waldorf, in much the same way as the Cobra range uses the short edge.

This means the opportunities for mixing and matching sets has now increased. For example, you could use a Nexus as the central design and place a Waldorf either side to make a triptych.

To read more click here

We have been reviewing just how often our fax rings, as you might guess with more and more of our business being transacted over email and with the time we spend away from the office either working for customers on site or away at trade shows and fairs, we will be testing a new fax to email service. This means we can deal with faxes as quickly as if they were emails.

This has meant us getting a fax new number 0203 355 3716, we will be keeping the old number until Jan ’09 but it will be for voice traffic only. If the feedback from our customers tells us they like the new service we will keep it, if not we will go back to the old fashion way.

Update 20th September – while this service is still live, it will be phased out and a new service has been installed on 01353 780031.

It would seem than no sooner have we finished the Spring Market, and the Fall Market in High Point is upon us again.

We have new designs launching at the show, check back here for some sneak previews. We have increased the space we have for displaying products and we have a new look booth. See you in High Point October 20th – 26th. For us it looks to be a busy market, we have started to make appointments for during market, so please drop us a mail, if you want to make an appointment, if not just come by and we will love to see you.

Eleanor and I have just welcomed Steve & Helen for a visit, some ‘repas’ and lots of Florentine chatting. We have been hard at work all this year putting our house in order and it’s almost complete. Steve has some images so watch that space and our warmest greetings to everyone who remembers us!

The standard Florentine background consists of a hand lime washed back board. We have now introduced two new backgrounds. The first being Hessian.

 

The second new background is called Calico. Both these finishes are hand strecthed and applied on to the backing board and compliment the natural themed designs

 

I was talking to a Florentine customer the other day, and they asked me about contract framing. They actually asked if I could recommend someone !

I pointed them to the tBFW website, it took a while, but then the penny dropped, ‘oh, thats you’ they said rather embarrassed.

They needed a framing company that could handle the size of the contract, including a custom manufactured moulding, mounts cut to specific size images and the whole project installed on site.

Being based in Ely, near Cambridge, we were ideally placed to fix the project for the customer in the City of London.

So don’t forget about Bespoke, and it goes without saying, if you want Florentine Designs signature double stacked hand finished frame, then that no problem.