Sophie

Our team members Martha and Hepsie are celebrating a very exciting new stockist this week. You can now find them in the new John Lewis flagship store in Leeds! We had a little chat with them to find out more…

Who are Martha and Hepsie?
We’re a sister team based in Sheffield and Devon designing and selling our own collection of homeware, stationery and gifts.

Martha (the northern one!): With a degree in Textile design from Nottingham Trent, Martha moved to London to develop her career in design and production working for designers Lisa Stickley and Gisela Graham. With experience under her belt Martha returned to her Northern roots relocating to the steel city of Sheffield to focus on Martha & Hepsie, where she designs all the whole product range.

Hepsie (the not so soft southerner!): Gaining experience from placements at Mathew Williamson, Copperwheat Blundell and trends agency The Bureaux during her Fashion and Business Studies degree at Brighton, Hepsie returned to Devon and progressed a career with jewellery brand Kit Heath. Now she is ploughing everything she knows into Martha and Hepsie.
What is the Martha and Hepsie ‘story’?
We both craved autonomy whilst working for other people and whilst Hepsie was on maternity leave we decided to set up the business initially as a 5-9 hobby with the dream to make it full time, then a couple of years later the businesses we were both working for were affected by the recession and we were both made redundant within 6 months of each other – this was our sink or swim moment and we decided to put on our armbands and dive in at the deep end with ‘Martha and Hepsie’!

Despite living in two opposite ends of the country we’ve embraced technology and don’t need to physically be in the same room as we share all our business documents online, we both have samples and we phone each other a lot!
Our brand strapline is – designs inspired by life, who we are and a little bit of laughter…! We’re both quite confident, a little cheeky and love to laugh! So our designs are bold in pattern and colour and have characterful narratives to go with them.

All our designs are illustrated by hand in Martha’s snug Sheffield studio and made in Great Britain.

Where else are you stocked?
We sell to a selection of independent retailers across the UK and as far afield as The Falkland Islands, as well as on our own website, Etsy and Not On The High Street.

What does it mean to be stocked in John Lewis Leeds – at a shop on home-turf in Yorkshire? Both personally and for the business?
To be acknowledged by a store such as John Lewis is a real milestone for our business which makes all the hard work we’ve put into growing Martha and Hepsie so worth it. We’re both very proud of our local roots and to launch in a brand new John Lewis in Martha’s home county is the icing on the cake.

You can see more of Martha and Hepsie’s products in their Etsy shop or follow the on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

One of the great things about our team is that we don’t just chat online. Thanks to the team being geographically based within the boundary of the Sheffield city region, we are able to have a regular monthly team meetings to discuss our upcoming projects and events in person.

It’s great to be able to natter online about how best to promote our shops, what new resources team members have found and other useful tips and hints. But nothing beats catching up in person and strengthening our support network “in real life”.

We meet on a Thursday at the Sheffield Tap, handily located just beside (some would say within!) Sheffield train station. It’s also handy for the bus station and for getting in from the motorway, not just by rail. The other draw, as Rob our Team Captain, will confirm is the quality of their brews too…especially the beery ones, not just the coffee!

We usually have a spot reserved for us in a snug, just past the toilets, behind the bar. I know – I’m not selling this as classy, but that really is the best description for where to find us! It is a rather large venue with quite a few rooms. If in doubt though, just keep an eye out for our orange flags, courtesy of Etsy.

Sheffield Sellers on Etsy Team Meetings — As you can see by the drinks it’s not all work, work, work!

If you miss the flags, you can usually follow the sound of laughter before we get down to business. Our usual turnout is at least a dozen of us from month to month. As we alternate the time of day, either 11.30am or 6pm, it means different folks can attend whilst working around other life commitments.

We always start with an intro around the table and welcome any new attendees. There is always an agenda, just to help keep us on track. As we seem to have had at least one project to discuss at any of our meetings, this does mean we don’t over run and also that we, the leaders, don’t miss anything out. On this month’s agenda was:

an update on the progress of Etsy Made Local 2016 and the associated Art Installation project
product call outs for promotion via our social media platforms
Etsy’s #DifferenceMakesUs campaign
our upcoming photography workshop and social

All that before finally getting to Any Other Business. You can see why we need an agenda!

Sheffield Sellers on Etsy Team Meetings - Captain and scribe! — Donna showing off her tan and Rob with a pint!

For those that can’t make the meeting, one of our team leaders Donna is our official minute taker. It is really important to us to keep all members updated about the outcomes of the meetings, especially if they are unable to attend themselves. We publish these via our dedicated Facebook Group as well as on the team discussion pages via Etsy. As you can see, Donna is so speedy on the laptop, her fingers are just a blur!

We hope this little snapshot helps makes the idea of walking into a room full of strangers a little bit less scary. We do all have one immediate thing in common though, we all sell on Etsy. We all know how much hard work it can be, how frustrating, how time-consuming, as well as the rewards it can bring when things go well! That’s why we get together to share our knowledge and experience along with creating wider opportunities to try to make things a bit easier.

If you fancy joining us for a future meeting, please do check out our Events Page for the next date in the diary. We look forward to seeing you there!