Hello, it's Mags here! It's Toolally's ten year anniversary and that seems like the ideal time to look back at how far we've come.

I started Toolally as somewhere for my daughter Katie, who has cerebral palsy, to work when she finished her education. I’ve carried on managing The Fabl throughout, but Toolally satisfied a need to make something rather than just market other people’s “somethings”.

It’s been an incredible ten years. Success came very quickly when Lucinda Chambers liked what she saw and featured our bestselling Art Deco Chandelier earrings in Vogue. The year after, at our very first trade show, John Lewis picked us up for a trial. The trial was a success and we were rolled out across their estate.

At this time we were so busy making for John Lewis that we didn’t do much online. We built our own ecomm site and ticked over. I did a stint on QVC too  - not my finest moment! 

We had the absolute pleasure of making some earrings for Strictly for a group dance after the lovely Faye from Steps introduced us to the exceptional wardrobe team and we’ve supported them ever since. 

I’ve learnt a lot over the years and it’s been great to be able to speak about marketing to Fabl clients with absolute conviction and first hand experience of spending my own money on it.

Covid changed everything - some good, some bad. John Lewis stores closed and orders stopped. We were forced to look at other routes and turned to direct mail to drive traffic to our own website. This was very successful whilst the stores were closed in lockdown.

Social media and digital marketing weren’t something I was up to speed with at that time - we dabbled but never really cracked it. 

In the midst of Covid my son Jack ended up staying with us after a weekend visit that turned into a lockdown. I got an opportunity to see him at work. Jack’s background was significantly different to anyone I thought I could employ to work on Toolally - Deloitte, Monitor, Strategy at Net a Porter  - but I took the plunge and persuaded him to give me a couple of years to see if we could make Toolally more than a just place for Katie to work.

Today the business is transformed in many ways. One of the first things Jack did was sort the website and really get us to focus on our offer. I became the creative director and Jack ran the business, set the strategic goals but at the same time turned up at 6am to set up trade shows and learn about the industry from a standing start. We’ve been shortlisted for industry awards two years running, done collaborations with Laura Whitmore and The Little Blazer Co. and launched in America with Nordstrom.

This year we are up 40% on last year and we’re doing it the right way. We’ve refined the offer, worked on the pricing and the value of our average basket has increased significantly. It’s not been easy, business isn’t, and there’s no such thing as overnight success, unless you have huge amounts of money to begin with and even then it won’t be overnight. Toolally has always been entirely self-funded. 

We operate in a niche market and realistically there is a limit to what is possible but I couldn’t be prouder of the whole team. We’re still here ten years on, we’re learning what our customers want from us everyday and Katie is having the time of her life. Which is what it was all about to begin with.

Happy 10th birthday to us!