Archive for the ‘Chiggs’ Category

Chiggs is a finalist for the 2010 Remote Worker Awards

Wednesday, August 4th, 2010

I received a very exciting email yesterday to tell me that Chiggs has been shortlisted as a finalist in the 2010 Remote  Worker Awards!  We’re up for a gong in the BT Home Business Award-wow!

I’m absolutely thrilled, as you can imagine, to have turned an idea for something to help a friend into a successful home based business that now supplies Chiggs Wheels to shops throughout the UK, online and abroad.  Not only that, but a business that has been shortlisted as a finalist in a national award!!

The award ceremony is held in London on the 1st of September, so keep your fingers crossed for us :-)

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Keep the customer satisfied

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

We’ve been selling Chiggs Wheels since 2005, so have plenty of  knowledge of how challenging it can be to get visitors to your website or into your shop! I’m sure that those of you running a shop, be it online or ‘bricks and mortar’ will agree that it makes sense, then, to give those visitors the ‘complete’ customer experience- make them happy and (heck, why not) increase the amount they spend with you.

For example, if a retailer sells presents for a new baby, or new mum gifts, the customers buying these will certainly want to send a card to the new parents, too.

And this is where we at Chiggs can help (bet you knew that was coming, didn’t you?!) Whether a nursery shop, baby boutique, lifestyle store or a party planner, adding the Baby Feed Wheel to your range works a treat. This Chiggs product is a stand-alone, useful parenting product that new parents buy for themselves to help keep track of baby’s feeds- even buying it before the baby is born to add to their hospital bag. As the Baby Feed Wheel also has “to” and “from” printed on the reverse, and is supplied with an envelope so it can be sent as a new baby congratulations card, it can also be offered as an add-on sale to a customer buying a new baby gift. It saves them the effort of finding another shop or website to buy a card- a retailer can both maximise sales, and increase their customer’s shopping experience by saving that customer time and money. Everyone’s happy :-) !!

If you are a retailer who would like to add Chiggs Wheels to your product range, we’ll be delighted to send you our trade price and terms- please get in touch via the trade enquiry form on the Chiggs website.

(PS apologies to both Simon and Garfunkel for plagiarising their song title for the title of this post!)

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The bullet was bitten!

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

December 2005- research and design was complete and the Patent was approved, so I took a deep breath, bit the bullet and commissioned the first print run of 1,500 Baby Feed Wheels- 500 each of pink, blue  and lemon from a printer over the Pennines in Lancashire, and a Harrogate based designer to develop the Chiggs website.

Just a few days before Christmas [*Chiggs fact* Christmas day is also Chiglet (AKA our daughter, Holly's) birthday] the boxes and boxes of Baby Feed Wheels, packets of pram embellishments and endless envelopes arrived at Chiggs Towers (AKA the spare bedroom).

printing on the reverse of the Baby Feed WheelOnce the New Year arrived, I had a major resolution to fulfil- sell Baby Wheels! In the design process I’d added “To…..” and “From…..” on the reverse of the cards, and decided to present them with an envelope so that they could be sent as really useful ‘New baby’ congratulation cards (or gifts- just like I’d given to my friend). So, another deep breath, and I made appointments to visit a couple of local greeting card shops- and received a fantastic response! Both shop owners loved the cards, and placed wholesale orders there and then. Chiggs was on it’s way!

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What sort of name is Chiggs?!

Friday, March 5th, 2010

A few weeks later, in December ’05, the patent certificate for the Baby Feed Wheel arrived- what a proud moment- I was an inventor!

Naming my company, however, proved to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. I didn’t want a name particularly associated with baby products or with greeting cards in case that proved limiting in the future.

I’d been mulling it over for a while when, on the same day my Dad ‘phoned me up and said “why not call it Chiggs?” and Andy, my husband came home from work and said “we could always call the company Chiggs“.

So why did they both suggest the same name? Well, ‘Chiggs’ is my childhood nickname- it’s the name my Mum and Dad have called me as long as we can remember. So long, in fact, that they can’t remember why they started calling me Chiggs in the first place!

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Who we are and where we are!

Monday, February 1st, 2010

I’m Elizabeth and I run Chiggs. I’m wife to Andy and mum to Holly (age 7 and good at it!)  The business is based at home, so there are many words to describe who I am and what I do – Work at Home Mum (Wahm), Mumpreneur, Kitchen Table entrepreneur etc. etc. I’m rather partial to Managing Director, so much so I’ve had it printed on my business cards. I have stopped short of purchasing a nifty gold name plate to put in the office (or on the coffee table, or dining room table, or the waiting room outside my daughter’s ballet class, or wherever I happen to be working at the time!) 

Chiggs is based in the beautiful town of Harrogate, North Yorkshire. It’s  a lovely, picturesque town with a wide variety of individual, independent retailers – some of which, (including Lemontree Gifts, Magpie Greetings and Beach Studio) we are very proud to say sell Chiggs Wheels

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Hello!

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Hello! And welcome to our brand new Chiggs blog.

I’m going to tell you a little about my business, our products and also introduce some of the lovely companies who sell Chiggs Wheels.

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