Have you heard the news? We are super excited to share with you that this week we have launched a range of products on Debenhams.co.uk!
For me Debenhams has so many memories, it was the main department store in my hometown of Derby. So back in the early 00’s I’d make what felt like a weekly girly shopping trip with my mum to the town centre and Debenhams. I just remember it being full of magical products. Pre-internet it was just a special place with all the Designers at Debenhams and Topshop, and I’d save up all my pot washing wages for something sparkly!
Obviously, a lot has changed at Debenhams with a buy out and a swap to online only, so when we spoke to the team it was great to hear their passion for brands and reinvigorating the Debenhams brand. So yep, Solesmith now features on Debenhams.co.uk alongside other lovely brands such as Ted Baker, Accessorize and Levi’s. What a pinch me moment!
We’ve launched with only four products this week (yes, we’re so excited we couldn’t wait to share immediately) and have more coming as part of our cosy range. The range isn’t personalised, just gorgeously packaged and indulgent products we love.
So, we’ve started with some socks and slippers with slouchy sweatshirts hopefully coming next week (if I can finally get my spreadsheet links to work!) and whilst we are really excited to have launched here, it has actually been quite a long time coming.
We first bothered Debenhams enough to get them to agree to meet us back in 2019. They kindly invited us to go down to London to visit their head office, so Ali and I traipsed down with a suitcase of products and packaging options to talk about socks in store. Whilst they seemed keen, they wanted more packaging options and then as we were working on a few ideas, the high street was (and is) going through a tough time and they were bought out by Boohoo and adopted an online only presence.
It then seemed any work together was over which was really sad (did I mention Debenhams was such a key part of childhood/ tweenage memories for me!)
So, when they contacted us again during the summer of 2021, we were pretty excited but cautious not to get our hopes up too high again. I was actually in the middle of my maternity leave; we had a big project internally for our order management and whilst we said we’d like to hear more we were actually a little bit slack in committing.
However, fast forward to being back at work, we received an ‘are you still interested, these products would look great on site’ email or two and we had a great meeting and then agreed to get the ball rolling with the aim to get products on site in two weeks (the big Christmas season is coming!)
Cue quite a lot of behind-the-scenes work, re setting products, linking our stock systems, so many spreadsheets, identity proving and contract signings, editing the product photos, and I don’t even want to talk about how many spreadsheets I had to fill in! So, whilst it has a jam-packed process, the collaboration with Debenhams is here, it’s live and we are officially a Debenhams brand!
So, thanks for all the Solesmith support from our customers, social followers and family and teams over the years to make a genuine childhood dream come true.
If you want to take a look at our range officially the link to the Solesmith brand page is here, do let us know what you think!?