Coming soon - exclusive new range!
As some of you already know, Tales is now a Community Interest Company - Sean and I decided we wanted to grow not only this project into an engaging, inclusive tour, but future projects too so we've made it a separate social enterprise. For those of you new to the whole thing, that makes it a regulated organisation that makes profit for the benefit of the community. Company profits and assets have to be used for specific purposes rather than the usual business practice of straight into someone's pockets. It also means that a set percentage of our income has to come from trading (rather than grants etc) - which brings me neatly to something else we've been working on behind the scenes.
Ta-dah! We're creating a range of exclusive merchandise using the book illustrations - all proceeds from merch sales go directly into a separate account that is just for the CIC, so you know your purchases are supporting our work on accessibility. At the moment we're trying out different products and layouts so if you have any requests we'd love to hear from you! We're looking at homewares and personal accessories in particular, though we think these poker cards are a brilliant idea - we've found some jigsaws we'd love to print up too.
We've chosen a print on demand company so we can offer a wider range without having to use tour funds to buy stock in, they manufacture and post orders from centres around the world so that's international shipping taken care of too. That's a huge help with heavy or bulky things, it lets us keep costs down while still making a sensible profit so we can get things done.
Our next step is getting some samples made so we can see the end product for ourselves - mock-ups like these are great for playing with ideas but when using images like the illustrations it's important to test print. As any goth will tell you, getting your blacks to match can be surprisingly hard work :) We're hoping to be releasing some items out into the wild in the coming months so you lovely people can have a go with them too, for updates make sure you're signed up to our newsletter at the bottom of the page.