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Downton Abbey at Home new launch from familiar faces
Joanna McKerlie has re-entered the period furnishings market with the launch of Downton Abbey at Home, a catalogue and online marketed collection inspired by the globally successful TV series.
It was last autumn, whilst Joanna was working on a consultancy project, that her client saw some of the Manners catalogues she had produced in the late 1990s. Te client persuaded her to set up a new lifestyle mail order business, echoing the past Manners offering, and the project began. Joanna realised that there was an
obvious connection with Downton Abbey in terms of style, quality, period and overall values. Leveraging this would give the new offering a very strong head start, gain the attention of the media, and entice prospective customers. Te first challenge faced by Joanna was finding out to secure a licence to use the Downton Abbey name. Tis led her to contact Ken Mannering, ex-V&A Licensing Director and a licensing expert, who she had known from her days at Innovations where she worked on the V&A catalogue. An informal meeting with Ken followed in which he advised her on licensing agreements and this enabled her to commence professional talks with NBC Universal. Te next challenge came in the Spring
when the company with which she had been working in collaboration on the project decided to pull out for what Joanna describes as “perfectly understandable reasons”. By that time the project was well under way, had taken up many months of work, and Joanna was reluctant to drop what seemed to be a very strong business opportunity. After much discussion with Ken, the pair decided to investigate financing the venture themselves, as well as looking at existing mail order partners. Joanna called upon various LinkedIn contacts and previous colleagues, and was overwhelmed with support and offers of help.
She also contacted
all the key product and catalogue production suppliers to let them know that there were some issues which she needed to have resolved. Again, the response was one of complete support. One such supplier, Send & Receive, asked directly what was required to proceed and then offered to join forces. Together they set up Send & Receive
Premium Brands Ltd, leveraging all the experience and facilities on hand at Send & Receive Ltd. Te team of Directors – Joanna McKerlie, Ken Mannering, Gregg Giddings and Liam Crane, each bringing different, complementary, essential skills for developing an online / mail order business.
Te first immediate challenge they
faced together was the approvals process; whilst the range was selected each product needed to be presented to NBC Universal for sign off. Time was of the essence if the business was to launch in the key Autumn period. Fortunately, Send & Receive are based at a site close to an empty farmhouse, which was up for sale and, which the business was able to rent by the day. All the products were transported there and the farm house was “dressed” to provide the right environment for the NBC Universal Commercial Team to view and approve the products. Tere were around 250 items to unpack and set up. Joanna was fortunate to have friends living close by who dropped everything to come and help out. Te last two products arrived just
downtonabbeyathome.com
minutes before the NBCU team arrived, and the meeting went exceptionally well with only three or four products being rejected. After this the main issues were logistical
- photography, copy, marketing, website… all the usual things required at this stage. Richard Meadows of Shooting Food photography worked on the shoot for 11 days at Ealing Studios (NBCU arranged for use of the Downton Abbey set), at a rectory in Gloucestershire, and a studio in Cheltenham. Catalogue design, starting with a
Look Book for press, was worked on by Tird Floor Design in Cheltenham, and a main autumn consumer catalogue was produced. Meanwhile, Gregg and Liam were under
pressure to manage both the website build and find suitable carrier companies, the latter needing to integrate into the website systems the launch company is using. Ken is managing international growth.
Te business plans to offer the range in territories where the critically acclaimed drama is aired (there are around 250 in all), starting with the USA. Tis is perhaps where the strongest demand may be.
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