Our new Willow Lane shop – Founded August 2022
It began as a way to try and get art into the hands of Australians who cannot access our Willow Lane notebooks at the moment. As we are originally from Australia (Lisa is in the UK but Naomi still lives there), it mattered to us that our friends and family back home had access to our art and products. The problem is, Amazon do not currently print hardcover books in Australia, and shipping them in from the USA is proving to be outrageously expensive. So, we came up with the idea of packs of cards: cheaper to ship in bulk making it cheaper per card, and it gave people some to keep for their wall or creative projects and some to give away.
We started to work with a distributor to create a whole new range of cards using Lisa’s art and Naomi’s designs and as we began to put in the time and invest our passion in creating a diverse range of styles and sizes, it became the most natural thing in the world to expand into prints, then mugs, then totes, even stationery. We then decided if we were selling everything else, why not our notebooks through our site as well? And so we contacted a whole new supplier for our notebooks. Our Willow Lane shop was born.
We want the process of finding the right card, print, or gift to be a joy all its own – a treasure trove of beautiful and inspirational art and design. Don’t explore it in a hurry. Sit back with your favourite hot drink and immerse yourself in the experience.
After months and months of hard work we now have a rather large range of items in a diverse range of styles, materials and prices. We want the process of finding the right card, print, or gift to be a joy all its own – a treasure trove of beautiful and inspirational art and design. Don’t explore it in a hurry. Sit back with your favourite hot drink and immerse yourself in the experience.
Shipping is international and we’re currently working on trying to get everyone the best possible price for sending around the world. Due to sizing differences with printers around the world, we’ve had to split our card/stationery range into US & CA vs everyone else (i.e. the rest of the world or our ORIGINAL RANGE), but hopefully we’ve made it very clear that you need to select a region.
As for notebooks, you can still get six of our designs through Amazon – the original six – but the rest are available through this site. Our supplier is a bit slow to print the books because they are hardcover and bespoke products – it can take up to 10 days plus shipping time – and some people are finding books don’t arrive until about four weeks after ordering. We don’t like this aspect of print-on-demand technology but it has at least meant that we can supply our notebooks for everyone in any country you come from. If you need a notebook much quicker (and possibly cheaper), and you are one of countries Amazon prints hardbacks for, try finding one our original six designs by typing in Willow Lane Notebooks in Amazon.
Creating the products for Willow Lane has brought us SO much joy. We really mean that. And we hope it shows and that you find as much joy in perusing our products as we experienced making them.
And while we’re at it, can we ask that you help us out with word of mouth? Small businesses need all the help they can get to get off the ground. We don’t have the budget for lots of advertising and heavy marketing and we personally don’t enjoy marketing tricks and gimmicks. But we need help. So if you like what you see, even if you don’t intend to buy, we’d love it if you tell as many people about us as you can. We believe that one day Willow Lane will be a well-known name, and you will be able to say it was because of your word of mouth and your interest that we are what we are.
Here I am gleefully unpacking some of the sample stock we ordered from the distributer and printers we have partnered with.
Have you taken a look at our Willow Lane Notebooks yet? We have twelve notebooks as of November 2022 with plans to add two new books every two months from January to October every eyar. Take a look at the notebooks link above or CLICK HERE and find your favourite.
Who is Willow Lane? Find out here.
About the Author: Lisa Saul
