Business Babes and Baubles

Last weekend saw the big reveal of a super exciting project that me and my babe Faye from The Bohemian Collective dreamed up while procrastinating on Facebook chat one day. "You know one of the things I miss about employment?" she said to me in between setting some stones in her amazing turquoise rings. "I really miss the Christmas party. Let's meet up for cocktails!" "Great idea!" I replied. "Shall we invite Susy and Sophie, too? Ooh and Kim! I'd really love to meet Zoe and Maria, as well. In fact, why don't we throw a party for all our favourite creative business babes!" And so Business Babes and Baubles was born. On January 12th, 20 of our favourite small business owners in the field of fashion and gifts congregated for cocktails, Secret Santa and not-shit networking at Dirty Martini in Covent Garden. You see, over the last few years I've learnt that one of the most important things for survival in small business is to surround yourself with a bunch of likeminded babes. It's hard out here for a SME, when you're making waves in your field, up against the big boys and in one of the most cut-throat industries around. I'm pretty lucky, that with Crown and Glory we've been able to tap into bridal networks, and blogger networks, but Faye and I envisaged a community where we could share industry specific information and advice, encourage collaborations, and cut-through the catty reputation that fashion has. I'm not going to lie, I think we were both pretty nervous that it'd flop. What if people didn't want to get out from behind their computer and meet the people they talk to off twitter? What if people didn't get on? What if we could find industry-specific suppliers to fill our goodiebags?!
But despite organising it over both our busiest time of year, we pulled it off with aplomb, quite frankly. Everyone showed up. Everyone networked - and naturally, too! Everyone swapped gifts, hugging and laughing when their Secret Santa had done some serious internet stalking to find the perfect present. The food and drinks flowed and everyone kept telling us what a wonderful time they were having. I'd say a good measure of a party is when you've got half the attendees traipsing around the cobbled streets of London looking for somewhere to throw an after party.
I stood back at one point last Sunday, listening to the attendees sharing advice, giving tips and swapping contact details and swapped a wry smile with Faye. They say you're never supposed to enjoy your own party, but quite frankly it was one of the happiest and proudest evenings of my business life to date! We could tell that the friendships being formed here would be continued way after the corks were popped, that we were building the base for a network, a collective, an alliance. I can't wait to see what the future holds...
Images by Craig Dearsley Photography

With thanks to iZettle, Veronica Dearly, One Man Band Accounting, Paper Magpie, Oh Squirrel, Martin Nolan, Kim Lawler Creative, Commercial Creatives and Two Red Trees for making our goodiebags possible!