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Totally awesome news. Literally. About a month ago, I said we’d been asked to take part in the Red Tricycle Totally Awesome Awards. Well, now we’ve been chosen as finalists!
And it’s thanks to you guys. To anyone who nominated us (you know who you are) we’re VERY grateful. To everyone else, it’s not too late to help. Final voting is going on now!
Just scoot on over to the voting page for Most Awesome Bedding, Accessories and Room Decors and vote for us! We’ve got some stiff competition, so every vote counts!
Please feel free to share this post/link with anyone you know who likes Olli & Lime too. Thanks so much for your continued support of what we do. We really do appreciate it 
Not an expression I use often, but it’s justified here. The lovely people at Red Tricycle have invited us to take part in their ‘Totally Awesome Awards’. That’s where you come in.
We need a favor. PLEASE nominate Olli & Lime, in the ‘bedding, accessories and room decors’ category. Just follow this link, enter our name + your details and submit. Easy.
If you can help, we’ll be extremely grateful! Oh, and if you know someone else who’s a fellow Olli & Lime fan, please pass on this link so they can nominate us too. Thanks!
By the way, this is just the initial nomination phase. I’ll be posting again if we make it to the next round, and (no doubt) requesting your help again! Happy Tuesday people!
Huge collective sigh of relief at Olli & Lime. Thanks to us finally achieving our ambition (one that regular readers will be acutely aware of) of officially relocating O&L to the US.
I mentioned we were in the UK managing production of our new design. True, but we also visited the US Embassy (below) for VISA approval to run O&L from here. And we got it!
And by ‘here’, I mean Boston, where Olli & Lime LLC is now located. This brings all sorts of benefits for us, and the 95%+ of our customers who also reside in North America.
We already had US warehousing and distribution, but now we control this directly. This means orders are processed immediately, and products reach our customers way faster.
It also means that everything will now happen in the same location, and in a similar time zone, as our customers. This makes customer service far more efficient and responsive.
It all provides a great basis to grow O&L. And, from a selfish perspective, it gives us the opportunity to live in a city we love, while we continue exploring this amazing continent.
Oh, we weren’t allowed to take anything electronic to the VISA interview so I grabbed this pic from the US Embassy website…way too nervous to start snapping photos anyway
This truck parked outside for two hours today, as super-efficient removal men unloaded the contents of its 20-foot container and transplanted it, box-by-box, into our new office.
This giant box traveled all the way from England, over land and sea, taking about four weeks door-to-door. So, a big relief it got here. We got the container seal as a souvenir.
This means we’re (finally!) nearing completion of our US office set up. It’s an exciting phase but, in all too familiar fashion, it feels a little like the boxes have taken over!
Predictably, blog posts have been a bit scarce just recently. This is because we’ve been frantically preparing to set up a new office in Boston. And now, finally, the time has come.
Boxes packed. Flights booked. Everything arranged. No going back now. Frightened? A little. Excited? A lot! However, there is a slightly negative bi-product I need to share…
Our UK business continues to run in our absence, but there will be a slight interruption. Rest assured, we’ll be back on track in no time. See you on the other side of the pond
Despite being ultra-busy with the whole moving thing, I’ve found some time to redesign our newsletter. From this month, we’ll be sending out regular news and special offers.
If you’re already signed up, you’ll get one email a month, with news snippets, updates and special offers. If you’re not signed up, and want to be, just click on the form above
Things are pretty crazy around these parts. We’re sorting through a whole world of ‘to do’ items before we wave goodbye to the UK – for a while at least – and jet off to Boston.
It’s a logistical nightmare, setting up a US business – from the UK – with shipping stock, sourcing new suppliers, filling in countless forms, the list goes on…and on…and on.
So, that explains why I haven’t been posting as much lately. But rest assured, once we’ve reached the other side of the pond, we’ll be anything but short of things to tell you!
I’ve been sat on this amazing news for days, partly due to our recent crisis. Anyway, at last I finally get to announce it. We’ve been selected as finalists for the Cribsie Awards!
The Cribsie Awards are “dedicated to recognizing the best brands, products, services, and websites for babies and tots”. Being selected is fantastic recognition for all we do at O&L.
We’re in the Nursery category, in the running for the “Statement Crib Bedding Worth the Splurge” award. This remarkably titled award really sums-up what our products are about.
But…we’re amongst some pretty stiff competition; companies with way more customers than us. Honestly, it’s unlikely we’ll get the award. All is not lost, but we need your help!
HOW TO VOTE
Visit The Cribsies. Register, then go to the Nursery page, click “Statement Crib Bedding Worth the Splurge” and vote for your fave; hopefully that’s us! Voting ends March 18th
Cribsie Awards hosted by Stroller Traffic and A-list Mom. Sponsored by diapers.com.
We’re in Boston right now, making arrangements for our office set-up in April. Not exactly a hassle-free experience, as you can imagine, but things have been going fairly smoothly.
However, on our first night here, we got some thunder and lightning. Next day, turned the MacBook on, heard a pop, and it was no more. Our sole computer while here. Cue panic!
Have to say, the guys at the Apple Store were fantastic and, just over 24 hours later, we have a new MacBook Pro (which is a bonus) with everything transferred; a big phew!
We paid for the new MacBook (of course) but are hoping to claim on our insurance. Oh, we just launched our new site. Still a few tweaks needed but we think it’s looking good.
We’re fine-tuning over the next week or so. Lastly, amidst all this, we’ve been chosen as finalists for the Cribsies! This is AMAZING news, and a separate post is on the way…
Over the past year or two, I’ve intermittently mentioned our master plan to set-up an Olli & Lime office in the US. Well, it’s finally within reach. And it’s getting a bit scary.
We’ve had an amazing year of North American exploration – Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Boston (of course), thanks to British Airways.
Winning the grant has allowed us to check out all the places on our American short list (Vegas was for a trade show, incidentally) and, unsurprisingly, we’ve settled on Boston.
I say unsurprisingly, but there are 101 other places that would have made things far smoother financially, but none that would have fit our future plans and needs so snuggly.
So, now just the small matter of getting our VISA. I jest. We have to invest plenty of $, commit to employing US citizens, etc, etc. So it’s certainly not to be sneezed at
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