I recently found the article below via the Carreducker blog and thought it might be good to share with all our readers (and there are quite a few of you now!).

http://www.mydigitalfc.com/fashion-and-style/luxe-goes-crafty-193

For those of you that don’t have time to read it, the basic premise is that high end luxury brands (Louis Vuitton etc) have been pulled up for representing their brands as ‘craft’ and ‘handmade’ while the truth is they’re just pumping out mass produced machine made goods – granted, they are using high quality materials – but not in the ‘little old Italian man sews them together by hand’ way they imply in their ads.

This has lead to a renewed interest in associating ACTUAL hand crafted goods and labels with bigger brands, so that they can retain their heritage values. Sort of absorbing real makers and craftsmen to keep their street-cred.

Anyhoot, the article tells the rest of the story, but this is quite topical for Dani and I at the moment as we are preparing a thorough business plan and looking at sourcing funding / grants to get this all off the ground

Seems we’re on the opposite side of this issue, plenty of skills, no money – so it is good to read that our concerns that we might be too tiny a fish in the big commercial world of luxury goods are perhaps not that big a worry… if we stick to our guns and MAKE what we sell, and also keep our integrated show-and-tell style workshop it will help us stand apart from the not-really-handmade luxury brands that are losing their credibility to real (not Nouveau Riche trashy luxury addicts) traditional luxury customers.

That said, what we personally have in hand craft skills we lack in crucial admin and business skills, so we are now weighing up the idea of getting a 3rd person on board who has some room in their brain to plan and run this business. If you’re interested, let us know, we will probably put out an official ‘expressions of interest’ thing in the coming weeks.

Cheers!

I just noticed that it’s been 10 days almost since the last post, so I thought I’d just reassure everyone that we’re still here, still working, still internetttttting.

It’s been hot in Melbourne lately and our house doesn’t have air con, so Dani and I have been taking a little longer than planned to get back in to full enthusiasm mode for 2012. We have had some nice social occasions lately thought, so at least that’s a plus. We also have had some new studio pop-ins lately (Hi Laura) which has made us both happier about having our own little empire in the city again, it’s great when you get to meet people from all over the world just by chance.

I am plotting and planning how to get all the things done that I need to do by a self-imposed March deadline, so expect some serious craft work to go on in the next 2 months. Resin casting, leather work, making boxes, making shoes, making videos……. everything, all at once (that’s my motto).

Steve

Listening to : Big Sean – Finally Famous

ps. We have TUMBLR account now where we’re sneaking up our inspiration images from the last few years  > http://deadburied.tumblr.com/

Hey Hey,

If you want to fight the crowds and try to have a look at our pop-up shop on it’s (belated) first day of trading, come by tonight at 6pm and say hi!

www.quickanddead.com  << all the info is there.

Hellllloooo….

Dani and I have returned safely from another whirlwind trip to Sydney and would like to say a BIG thankyou to the Sydney shoppers for giving us a big boost by buying most of the stuff we had on sale. Although we cant complain about selling lots, it does mean we have less Dani M stock to fill the Quick and the Dead shop with on Day #1 , but never fear, she is hard at work making more as I type this…

It was a crazy 48 hours, flying up, arriving at our hostel accommodation (sydney was totally booked out hotel wise), finding out we were assigned separate shared dorm rooms, not sleeping much due to us being in noisy rooms of strangers, setting up the cardboard stall that our pal Michael Hili made for us – more on that in another post – and then the market began…. no stop market trading for 2 days …. packed up at 5:10pm, arrived at the airport at 5:45pm, flew back to melbourne, caught a taxi and a train home, and ate a pizza.

So we have 4 days now to add extra stock to the shop, and to organise a PARTY! wooooo.

Wednesday night, be here or be square.
Dead & Buried’s first in-house launch event.
Full details will be online asap, but just assume it’s 6-8pm, here, in the Nicholas Building.
Beers are on us.

Off to work, what better way is there to spend a Sunday?

Listening to - Sweet Apples + Witch  … J Mascis is on a roll with his new bands!

Hi there, just a quick post to apologise if you’ve been checking back over the last week for some sort update……

Dani and I are swimming in to-do lists, and typing about them on the internet is counter-productive!

In summary, the shop is painted, shelves are up …


…branding is resolved, we will be mailing out PDFs to all of our suppliers tonight, we are working with Nick on some AWESOME merchandise for his Turd Circus illustrations to coincide with him releasing Volume 2, We have attended another wedding this weekend, I am sifting through the 1000 or so patterns I generated for digitally printed bags, I am dying Italian Silk for Michelle’s wedding shoes (as I type this) so I can make the final ones later this week, I have necklaces on the go, leather goods to sew up and a website to update (for the pop up shop).

my slightly insane work area last week

Dani has literally hundreds of bits of jewellery scattered around the studio in preparation for xmas sales and markets, which reminds me… we will be at the Sydney Finders Keepers market in 2 weeks time (of course, why not?) and she is also involved in the Melbournalia pop up shop collective – more on that next week.

So, I could keep typing but it’s getting silly… you get the idea, we’re busy.

If you’re reading this, and are crafty and want to intern here for a few days, let us know, there will be something we can hand over to you to do!! We can pay in coffee and home made salami.

See you all soon!

ps. HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Millie Damen, we’re missing her 2nd birthday party today, which is giving me a massive sad face – so I will have to make it up to her at christmas time.