WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS
We can't believe it's been 2 years since we launched NRBY. It's been non-stop ever since and if we didn't before, we certainly know the meaning of all-hands-on-deck now.
When you start a new small business it's never just the core team that make things happen. It's also all the people around you - your family, your friends, your neighbours, your suppliers and producers. Those who pass you in the street and say "How's it going?". Those who say (rather alarmingly sometimes), "Wow, you're brave!"
Without our friends (and friends of friends), we would not have launched our first season on our own website or opened our beautiful shop in Elizabeth Street (thanks for rustling up the Parmesan crisps, Al!). We wouldn't have been able to organise a fabulous (if painful) Barrecore class and pottery workshop in our neighbourhood, or been able to pull off our fabulous summer residency at the Anthropologie store on the King's Road.
Many different hats have been donned by very few people. Thanks to sons for hand-stamping all our recyclable cardboard hangers, daughters who stepped in at short notice, and to friends who dropped off and picked up press samples at various newspapers and magazines offices.
And of course without our wonderful suppliers in Portugal, Indian and Hong Kong, the NRBY collection simply wouldn't exist. It's been a joy to work again with our delightful "Gentleman of Knitwear" at our Hong Kong knitwear factory, whom we've now known for (shhh!) 25 years. Ines in Portgual, who has been making all our wonderful jersey pieces, is our second-generation connection to her family. We worked with her father before her.
People and the power of positivity have been the rev in our engines. Now that's allowing us to motor on into our third year. Thanks to everyone who helped us. You'll now find us at John Lewis in Peter Jones, Oxford Street, Kingston, Oxford, Cambridge, Southampton and Reading once lockdown finishes and online at johnlewis.co.uk.
NRBY is testament to how much you can do with a little help from your friends - those near and far away. So here's to them and to 2021.
