2012 - the Charley Chau year in review

2012 Year in Review

What a year for Charley Chau!  At the end of our second full year of trading our tiny little business that we started off as a part-time venture has really started to take off! 

A huge thank you to all of our existing customers, Facebook friends, Twitter followers and everyone we’ve met over the last year at the shows we’ve attended up and down the country for all your support! And a special thank you to Helen Rishworth who helped us on our stand through the show season and was basically brilliant!

Looking back at the year we’re reeling at the thought of everything that has happened … a major event for us was that Christine finally left her day job running Marketing Events and Sponsorship for the Mayor of London to work full time on Charley Chau from August!  Quite scary but also very exciting!

Another big event was the arrival of Theo ... another Italian Greyhound who joined our pack in March this year all the way from America!  He’s a gorgeous boy and you may have seen him starring in lots of our photos on Facebook and on our website already :-)

On the product front we launched bundles of new products this year including a new range of Faux-Fur & Fleece Blankets, gorgeous Italian Calf Leather Collars & Leads, three beautiful Rattan Dog Baskets, as well as our fabulous Double Fleece Blankets. They have all been really well received and we’re really pleased that we’ve been able to keep developing products that our existing customers and new customers seem to love!

There was time for lots of fun stuff too and in April we ran a Funniest Photo Competition on Facebook which saw lots of our Facebook Friends posting fantastic photos of their dogs on our FB page – there were so many that we couldn’t choose just one winner and ended up with three. Fabulous!

We were delighted to partner with the Kennel Club in the run up to Discover Dogs in London to celebrate the positive impact that dogs can have on our lives with the Charley Chau Companion Dog Awards. Four finalists chosen over four weeks with the overall winner being Jacqui Watts and Harry the Blind Dog – a real little super star and a very deserving winner.  Harry and Jacqui came to our stand at Discover Dogs and we were blown away by the bond between them. Truly inspirational.

Charley Chau had a monster show schedule through the year where not month went by without us packing up the Charley Chau stand and heading off to another event. We always meet lovely people and dogs when we’re out at a show and we love meeting our existing customers in person. We attended the Burghley Horse Trials for the first time where we camped for 6 nights and were very lucky to be given our own stand space on one of the premiere shopping avenues at the showground. Can’t wait to go back in 2013!

And now we’re looking ahead to 2013 ... we think it’s going to be another exciting year for our little company with a whole lot more Charley Chau gorgeousness planned!

Wishing all our friends health, wealth and happiness for 2013! HAPPY NEW YEAR!

x Christine, Jenny, Charley, Anna, Tino & Theo.