#TweetHeart

We’re all about saying it your way this Valentine’s Day – forget red roses and chocolate, 14 February should be about celebrating real people, real relationships and real feelings. That’s why we’re offering our Twitter followers the chance to give their valentine a truly personal gift.

We’re teaming up with The Coopers, a musical quartet who won last year’s Futuresound award, who will be turning your messages of love into song. To serenade your valentine, simply tweet us (@nothsdotcom) with your special message, including the hash tag #TweetHeart, and on Valentine’s Day we will post a short music video of The Coopers performing your personalised message.

Get tweeting early to ensure your message makes the cut!

Posted by jenniferbaldwin on 09 February 2012
- 2 comments

from Silicon-on-Thames to Silicon Roundabout

Last month the notonthehighstreet.com technical team made the trip from our offices in Richmond across the water to attend one of the newest and most successful recruitment events of the year – Silicon Milkroundabout. Located in East London, the fair plays on the ‘silicon roundabout’ term which was coined to describe the area around Old Street roundabout where many tech companies are based.

Silicon Milkroundabout is a recruitment fair with a bit of a difference – all the companies looking for candidates are start-ups and graduates attending get the chance to hear about opportunities within these companies rather than just going down the traditional route of applying for a graduate scheme with a bank or consultancy.

We had a fantastic day – our competition offering free beer for a year went down well and we met some fantastic candidates, some of whom are about to join the team! Here’s a photo of our lovely stand (the tech team were too shy to stand in the photo and show off their matching notonthehighstreet.com T-shirts)

Silicon Milkroundabout was great for us as we’re one of the fastest growing companies in the UK and we’re always looking for new talent to join our team As a notonthehighstreet.com developer you’ll help hundreds of small UK businesses realise their dream of taking a creative idea from the kitchen table to the world. We’re a company that moves fast and are keen to continue to do so, constantly learning along the way. If you’re talented, dedicated and passionate about creating perfect code to talk to us about joining notonthehighstreet.com email careers@notonthehighstreet.com.

Even if you’re not ready for a career change just yet or you’re still at university you can hear about any vacancies and get to know our team via our tech recruitment community – JOIN HERE http://bit.ly/uBSFF5

About tech@notonthehighstreet.com

• Work on both internal applications and an award-winning consumer website that is used daily by thousands of people

• Work on a large Ruby on Rails application and discover the limits of the framework, and improve upon it

• Since launching in 2006, notonthehighstreet.com has doubled in size every year: our customers love us, and we’re constantly expanding and growing to meet their needs

• Be part of a very social team, with pub lunches every Friday and regular drinks down by the river

• Our supportive environment encourages you to learn and experiment

• Join a team that values good software engineering – spirited debate is always welcome

Posted by jenniferbaldwin on 02 December 2011

Movembering

Being a man working at notonthehighstreet.com, you don’t get many chances to be manly. The occasional bit of heavy lifting, snatched conversations about the weekend’s football results and that’s about it.

When we realised Movember was rolling around, it dawned on some of us that it was the perfect opportunity to bring a bit of manliness to the office in the form of unshaven upper lips. What’s more, we could help our fellow men too. Movember is all about promoting awareness of prostate and testicular cancer, and raising some funds to help fight them too. These diseases affect so many men and we wanted to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with other blokes, gents, chaps, dudes, lads and hombres, and help to take the fight to these horrible conditions.

So far, through family, friends and of course our wonderful colleagues, our team of mo-growers have raised around £600 at the time of writing this post. And just in case there’s anyone else out there who’d like to help us out, you can sponsor us by visiting our official Movember page.

Of course we were all hoping we’d end up looking like Tom Selleck, Hulk Hogan or (at worst) Super Mario, but it’s still early days really. On a personal note, I really miss my beard (which I shaved off as per the Movember rules) – it’s really cold without it!

Posted by johnashton on 18 November 2011

goodbye Barnes, hello Richmond!

We left our old Tideway Yard offices behind last Friday and moved into our sparkly new offices in Richmond on Monday. We’d been in Barnes for over two years, starting in one office and gradually taking over three more. Inevitably, the time came when there wasn’t room to squeeze in another desk and we wanted to be together in one office rather than three, so we moved down the river, to pretty Richmond. We’re now seated above the Pizza Express – give us a wave if you’re passing! We can’t eat in the Pizza Express yet, as it’s being developed into a wondrous jazzy flagship branch, but we have a feeling that we might become regulars during the winter months…

A very big thank you to Summerly, Cora and Gemma for arranging the move. It all went amazingly smoothly and the new office looks and feels just brilliant. And another big thank you to Kevin at Trinity Associates for the brilliant fit out and the delicious, huge welcome cake. We’re munching our way through it (and we’re not the kind to have small pieces!).

We’re still unpacking, settling in and discovering the many lunch options and shopping temptations that are around us but we thought you might like to see some before and after photos (the new office photos start with the bucks fizz…).

Now we’re all moved in, we’re refreshed and ready for an amazing Christmas. Bring it on!

Posted by jokite on 07 October 2010

Holly and Sophie reveal next stage funding as reported in The Sunday Times

Many of you will have seen Holly and Sophie on the front page of The Sunday Times’ business section this weekend. Hugely exciting news, the article announced an investment of £7.5 million led by Index Ventures, who were joined by Greylock Partners. This funding will enable us to expand the team, enhance the website and underlying technology and to invest in other initiatives to improve the offering to our sellers and customers.

Commenting on the transaction on behalf of the company, Holly Tucker, Executive Chairman, said: “We are delighted to have such experienced and successful internet investors as Index Ventures and Greylock join Venrex and SPARK as shareholders. With their support we will strive to offer our customers the very best personalised online shopping experience and support our small business partners every step of the way.”

Ben Holmes, Partner at Index who will join the board, commented: “Consumers are increasingly looking for unique and personalised items, which are ever harder to find in today’s retail market. Holly and Sophie and their dedicated and passionate team have succeeded where many others have failed in using the internet to transform the way small businesses can find customers and transact online.”

Laurel Bowden, Partner at Greylock Partners, added: “Notonthehighstreet.com is one of the most innovative and original e-commerce businesses to come out of the UK with the future capability to support thousands of small businesses in Britain and abroad.”

Watch this space for exciting developments!

Posted by jokite on 02 August 2010

We're in the Telegraph's 50 best websites!

Websites that are leading the online – and social – revolution…

Who, little old us?

Well, not so little any more. But the truth is, we have only just celebrated our 4th birthday so we are still pretty young, so we were hugely chuffed to appear in this Telegraph article, as one of the best shopping sites, alongside netaporter.com and ebay.co.uk.

And we feel compelled to respond to Jasper Gerard and his plea about our knitted-effect ceramic beakers.

The answer is, you don’t need one. But the reason you must have one (and it’s the whole reason our site works) is because it is beautiful.

And for that reason, you have one in the post! Think of it as a very special thank you gift: distinctive, different and handmade with love.

Posted by jokite on 25 May 2010

Holly and Sophie have their third TV appearance

We were very proud of Holly and Sophie this week when they appeared as the guests of the day on BBC 2’s Working Lunch. We huddled around computer screens and TVs to watch the live streaming of Tuesday’s programme, as the notonthehighstreet.com founders chatted about the business. We were amongst the half a million viewers who tune in daily to see the latest business, consumer and workplace news from across the country.

Watch Holly and Sophie on the programme now on the BBC iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00sjtqt/Working_Lunch_18_05_2010/

Despite our very best plans to make sure the site was equipped for a large amount of hits during this period, visitors exceeded all expectations so please accept our apologies if you experienced a slow site around lunchtime on Tuesday!

Posted by jokite on 21 May 2010

a grand show

Grand Designs Live starts this weekend and offers visitors the chance to buy, build and furnish a house. Within the Boudoir roomset in The Gallery Rooms, a number of notonthehighstreet.com homewares will be on show, chosen by stylist Kate Baxter.

We’ve got some free pairs of show tickets to give away. If you fancy winning a pair, simply write a short message about your favourite notonthehighstreet.com product on our facebook page this week. Click here to get started.

Grand Designs Live, 1 – 9 May 2010, Excel, London

Posted by jokite on 29 April 2010

so who is the small business favourite for the election? We reveal the results of our survey

In 2008 we ran a survey to learn about the hopes and concerns of our small businesses and relayed the results to the Government and the media.

In the run up to the general election and with the final party leaders’ television debate on 29th April focusing on the economy, we thought it was time to run another in-depth survey and over 400 of our female entrepreneurs have spoken out about their hopes and concerns.

The survey concluded:

• David Cameron’s Conservative Party considered best small business champion with the greatest understanding of small business

• Conservative Party at top of election poll although vast majority undecided with Labour and Liberal Democrats equally low, and running neck and neck behind in attracting the small business vote

• Nearly half say they see no signs of a Labour government making a positive difference to small business, less than 6% say Brown puts a high value on the role of small business in the UK economy and only 0.5% say they feel well supported by a government which understands small businesses needs

• Only 3.3% of small businesses say Labour’s recent budget announcement is enough to get them to vote labour

• Easily available start-up and early stage grants are small businesses’ greatest demand followed by better tax breaks

• E-commerce is key to small businesses with nearly half saying they would never have never gone into business if they couldn’t sell online

• Lack of finance and e-commerce knowledge is the greatest obstacle to growth

• Small business sector remarkably strong with over one third saying they have been unaffected by the economic downturn and 23.9% reporting annual turnover is up

• More small businesses have used credit cards to fund their business than have applied for a government grant or taken out a business bank loan or personal bank loan.

Holly Tucker and Sophie Cornish, co-founders of notonthehighstreet.com, said:

“83.4% of the small businesses that took part in our survey told us that they believe there is an important job to by done by notonthehighstreet.com in representing the small business community to the government and the media, so we are pleased to be giving our warts and all report in the run up to the general election.

With over 90 per cent of the 1,500 small businesses we support run by women, we hope this survey will help get the vital female entrepreneur voice heard. Our survey clearly shows that whoever gets into power in the coming election has got their work cut out. The small business sector is strong in poor economic times with hundreds of thriving businesses telling us they are riding high above the recession. But in order to grow this vital part of the UK economy politicians must get real about small businesses demands. We undertook a similar survey two years ago and these latest results show feelings are even more strongly against the government. The same issues are being highlighted again two years on but the government clearly hasn’t listened. We invite each of the party leaders to come and meet us and we will be pleased to tell it to them straight and provide them with invaluable information about our small businesses and what they really want.”

If you have more thoughts on this, we’d love to hear them. Comment below or email us.

(in)decision bag by Mr.PS

Posted by jokite on 29 April 2010

my mum Penny V is no 1 bestseller - again!

For those of you who may not already know, my mother is Penny Vincenzi, the best-selling novelist. Her new novel, The Best Of Times, is number 1 in the UK best-sellers list. It’s the third time she’s been at the top of the book charts, but it’s never any less exciting and we’re all very proud!

She has been a huge inspiration throughout my life – she wanted to be a famous and successful writer since she wrote stories as a child, and that’s exactly what she’s done. She also made me see work as something you should love to do, which has shaped my life in the most positive of ways.

For both Holly and me, our mothers have been fantastic role models in our determination and belief that we will succeed, and we feel specially blessed that they have always understood our personal challenges and supported our own ambitions for notonthehighstreet.com

Posted by sophiecornish on 12 April 2010

magical trees make Christmas sparkle raising over £400,000 for Save the Children

Royalty, rock stars and celebrities came together at the Natural History Museum last week to raise over £400,000 for Save the Children at their annual fundraising gala, Festival of Trees. We were so pleased to be involved with such a wonderful event and support such a worthwhile charity.

Surrounded by glittering bespoke trees designed for the event, Bryan Ferry belted out classics like Let’s Stick Together and Slave to Love while HRH The Princess Royal and celebrities including Helena Bonham Carter, Harry Enfield and Nancy Dell’olio took a look at the trees on show.

Throughout the evening guests were invited to bid for the bespoke trees and unique gifts, specially created and donated to Save the Children to raise money for their vital work around the world. In addition to notonthehighstreet.com, Harrods, Chokolit, My Little Pony and jewellery designer Sam Ubhi were among those who designed trees that were auctioned off on the night.

notonthehighstreet.com created a ‘makers’ tree’ laden with gifts from our website with additional gifts including a holiday in Portugal, a Michelin-star master class, tickets to see Eric Clapton live, Premier League football tickets and the chance to be named as a character in Penny Vincenzi’s next novel. This fantastic collection of magical Christmas goodies raised an amazing £14,000 for Save the Children. We were so pleased.

An original Tracey Emin print raised £6,000 for the charity while a very special tree, created by the children in Save the Children’s Ethiopian programmes raised £11,000 from the philanthropic guests. The money raised from this tree will go towards Save the Children’s work in Ethiopia to save the lives of newborn babies and young children.

We would like to say a huge thank you to all of our partners involved in our makers’ tree – none of this would have been possible without your kind gifts. The tree looked beautiful and we were extremely proud; of the tree, the money it raised and the people who made it possible.

Posted by jokite on 15 December 2009

marketing excellence awards here we come!

We were extremely excited to find out we are finalists for the CIM Marketing Excellence awards in the retail category. We would love to add this to our collection of awards. Please keep your fingers crossed for us! The winners will be announced in February. Read more here.

Posted by jokite on 25 November 2009

Holly appears on CNBC!

Holly was invited to appear on CNBC’s programme Strictly Money to talk about winning the Entrepreneurial Woman of the Future award on Friday. It was very exciting to watch and another proud moment! To hear the full interview, click here.

Posted by jokite on 16 November 2009

happiness is catching

One thing we definitely aren’t short of in our office is positivity – even on those days when nothing goes as planned, we try to laugh through it, so it’s great to hear that our sellers are on the same wave length. Rachel Taylor Designs was chosen as the happiest Twitter user back in July, reported The Telegraph, and you can really see her happy outlook in her gorgeous, bright designs. Get on board, the smiles are catching :o)

Posted by jokite on 02 October 2009

larger than lifesize!

It was a slightly uncomfortable moment, asking the concierge to take my photo in a crowded reception, but it’s not every day you come across a larger-than-lifesize photo of yourself! It’s in the BT centre, to promote the BT Business Essence of the Entrepreneur. Winning the award was fantastic, so it’s lovely to see the photos still being used! Click here if you want to find out more about these awards.

Posted by sophiecornish on 13 August 2009