Fresh starts in January
With Maxine leaving us at the end of last year, we were lucky enough to be joined by the amazing Natalia Komis.
Serial entrepreneur and brilliant business strategist for social businesses and creatives, she rolled up her sleeves and got straight to work on her very first day.
Love in February
Sometimes we like to get out of the office for inspiration. Like our visit to the Josef Frank exhibition at Fashion and Textile Museum in Bermondsey.
We were inspired into going green in this blog post with our ideas for home makeovers.
Beware the Ides of March
Jane and Preeti headed to the Transition Network plus REconomy Lift event in the Museum of Cinema History to teach a workshop on business planning.
Read all about it here.
April showers
In April we said goodbye to Julia Langley who had been with Blue Patch from the very beginning.
A painter by trade, she headed off to delve deeper into the creative world. You can see her beautiful botanical paintings online here and in person at various events throughout the year.
May flowers
May brought the opening of our business awards.
Last year we had one category. This year, we launched with six. Bigger, brighter, better.
June, and the start of summer.
We had been taking part in #EthicalHour’s twitter chats, but June was the very first time we hosted one with Ethical Hour, all about business awards.
We also wrote this blog post for the Ethical Hour blog with all the reasons why a small business should apply for business awards.
July jewels
The awards closed, and we were blown away by the number and calibre of the people who applied. We got about 6 times as many applications as we did the first time.
We were also inspired to create the Global Impact category based on the fact that there are so many British businesses who make and manufacture abroad in an ethical way.
An August away
This was a month spent prepping and planning for September.
However, Natalia made the wise (and fun) decision of spending this month travelling across Spain and Portugal in a camper van (and living in it!) while working remotely for Blue Patch and launching her own business, Remote Mission.
Wake us up when September ends
This was by far the busiest month of the year for us.
First we announced the winners of our business awards. Then, 10 of our businesses showed at London Design Fair.
We also held the Blue Patch Awards Ceremony there. It was such a manic and brilliant time, and so great to meet so many people in person.
That crisp October air
One of the events that we host several times a year are our Blue Patch breakfasts.
Small business owners come over to Blue Patch HQ and we eat breakfast, share products, talk problems and solutions and generally have a great time.
If you’d like to come to one, shoot us an email or a tweet and we’ll be sure to send you an invite!
Learning in November
We held our first business workshop this year, taught by the talented Nemo Roberts, and it was all about selling by making products look good!
Makers attended a hands-on workshop to learn to take better images for their websites or instagram, without the need for special equipment or heavy post production.
Tips and tricks for every day use!
December Friends
We’re finishing strong! We’ve just launched an opportunity for people who love the ethos behind Blue Patch.
Take a look at Friends of Blue Patch and if you feel so inclined, you too can be a friend! You can even gift the opportunity to be a friend to a friend. Whoa! So much friendship!
We’d like to wish you all a wonderful holiday season and a brilliant new year. May 2018 be bright!
Want to know more about joining the Blue Patch community? Click here.
Preeti is the Marketing Manager at Blue Patch. Born and raised in India, she spent some time in the US, completing a degree in Psychology and Biology, after which she moved to the UK in 2010 to study an MSc in Finance and Management. She can often be found obsessing over her plants, trying to clamp down on an ever-increasing collection of nail polish or exploring and taking photos of random corners of London. She has had a very good year, thank you for asking.