the all new weddings department!

With a wedding gift list service that 97% of our brides would recommend to a friend, a wedding styling department packed full of the most unique and beautiful little touches for the big day, jewellery and accessories that suit only the most stylish of brides, a gorgeous selection of wedding gifts that delights any wedding guest… it’s no wonder that brides get super-excited when they discover notonthehighstreet.com weddings!

Our weddings department relaunched on monday and it is so beautiful we wanted to share it with you. You will find three categories in the department – for the wedding gift list service, styling your day and inspiration for guests.

Some of the new wedding features in the department include:

• Improved functionality including an innovative list builder to make creating a gift list incredibly simple and fun
• An informative blog with features on the latest wedding list finds, styling inspiration for your day, beauty tips, real bride stories plus much much more
• The choice from hundreds of unique wedding gifts and items to create a stunning wedding and home
• A personal service on hand for all your questions and needs
• A printed wedding stylebook for brides to be, a must-have for accessory inspiration and beautiful decor

To request more information about our wedding gift list service, click here

To request a free 24 page wedding stylebook, click here

Our wedding blog, www.tietheknotonthehighstreet.com, will be updated daily, giving you a source of wedding inspiration whenever you need it!

Posted by jokite on 23 May 2011

we are proud to sponsor...

Discovering the unique and original comes second nature to us at notonthehighstreet.com, so this year we are hugely excited to be supporting East London Design Show, an event that itself supports small creative businesses and fresh design. We are delighted to see a selection of our sellers playing a key part in it. The event runs from Friday 3 – Sunday 5 December in the rather beautiful Shoreditch Townhall, and is designed to be a brilliant Christmas shopping fair that caters for all the family. The Crafthouse Cafe, decorated by notonthehighstreet.com, is on hand when you require some well-deserved tea and cake and a sit-down, and you can help create a knitted paper chain while you chill.

notonthehighstreet.com is also hosting two awards this year, for best notonthehighstreet.com seller at the show and for best newcomer.

Find out more about the event here.

We are pleased to offer notonthehighstreet.com customers 2 for 1 tickets. Simply click here for your voucher.

Posted by jokite on 19 November 2010

the Christmas gift favourites as chosen by InStyle, Elle Decoration, Marie Claire and Easy Living…

We love seeing our sellers and their gorgeous products in the press! In the run up to Christmas we spend hours pouring over some of our favourite titles to see who’s been featured in the hotly coveted Christmas gift guides. We were thrilled to see that many of our sellers had made it into the top spots. InStyle listed both the original London poster print by Wue and the hand thrown glazed bowl by Roost Living, whilst Elle Decoration opted for the bespoke single heart map by Bombus, Marie Claire selected the personalised initial coin purse by Alphabet Bags and the decorative frame chalkboard by Letterfest. Easy Living chose the personalised love hearts framed picture by sarah & bendrix. Take inspiration from the experts, we know we will be!

To see more press coverage for notonthehighstreet.com and for more gifts that the press love please click here.

Posted by emmawood on 16 November 2010

you could be here

We wanted to make sure everyone sees our current competition – it’s one of our best yet, and we know everyone will want the chance to enter!

Mauritius is one of the most sought after holiday destinations in the world, with white sandy beaches, crystal clear waters and tropical weather. It is also home to some of the world’s most desirable hotels and resorts, acclaimed for their attentive service, superb cuisine and contemporary style.

The Residence Mauritius is one of the most beautiful Mauritian hotels, offering colonial charm with the contemporary cool elegance of a modern refuge. The Residence will exceed all expectations – if your idea of a dream holiday means not having to lift a finger, not even to unpack your suitcase; The Residence is definitely the hotel for you. With designer furnishings, beautiful views, and exquisite menus, you will experience once in a lifetime luxury.

notonthehighstreet.com, in association with The Turquoise Travel Company, are thrilled to offer one lucky winner a week’s holiday at The Residence in Mauritius for two worth £5000. The prize includes flights and accommodation based on half board.

The Turquoise Holiday Company was founded with the belief that they could offer unique and authentic holiday experiences in extraordinary locations around the world. They offer boutique-style holidays to Mauritius, the Seychelles and the Maldives, as well as a range of destinations in Africa, Asia and the South Pacific.

The winner will be announced on the 18 December, and the prize can be taken between May and September 2011 – this should give you enough time to plan the perfect holiday wardrobe!

Click here to enter, and for full terms and conditions.

Posted by jenniferbaldwin on 09 November 2010

PM announces 'tech city'; Holly is there to represent small businesses

On Thursday 4th November, David Cameron announced his vision to create a UK version of Silicon Valley. This technology hub will stretch from Shoreditch, the vibrant area of London where technical start ups are currently taking root, through to Olympic Park. The 600,000 sq foot accelerator space would go with the grain in nurturing organic growth from the best in technical creative talent with the aim of becoming the most attractive place in the world for new technical start-ups to begin and thrive.

The big names in technology will all contribute. BT will bring forward the roll-out of superfast broadband, giving ‘tech city’ the fastest internet speeds in Europe. Google will create an innovation hub, while Facebook will provide a permanent home for their successful developer ‘garage’ programme. Intel, Barclays and Silicon Valley bank, to name but a few, will also be contributing to this leading technology destination.

Holly was honoured to be invited to sit on one of just two panels, as a tech-leader and representative of small businesses. In a room full of journalists and VIPs, and on behalf of notonthehighstreet.com and our small businesses, Holly openly questioned the government on their £200m equity pledge for growing businesses and how they will make the money more accessible to small businesses, as government loans of this nature have failed many businesses in the past. Offline, she was asked directly by one of the participating MPs to come back to him with a detailed account of why she felt these loans had previously not performed. Watch this space for developments!

Posted by jokite on 05 November 2010

we've got the doodle bug!

We love to celebrate innovative designs from our partners, and one new product in particular is experiencing great success. The doodle duvet cover by Stitch designworks has been awarded Best New Product at Top Drawer, one of the most prestigious trade fairs in the UK. The doodle duvet is a 200 thread count, white cotton single duvet cover designed to resemble a giant piece of file paper. It comes with its own pack of eight wash-out colour pens, for drawing a masterpiece, writing a story or leaving a message – then the duvet cover can be easily washed to start all over again!

Chrissie Probert Jones, founder of Stitch designworks and creator of the doodle duvet cover, said the product was born from her passion for both textiles and stationery: “I just love the idea of going to bed under a blank sheet of paper to decorate at will, and then be able to wash and change completely. I love the slightly subversive side of giving people permission to draw where they normally shouldn’t and the freedom of totally wash-out colour so there are no limits to what you can do – a really positive addition to your interior and one you won’t tire of!”

We have a sneaky suspicion it might be the most talked about children’s Christmas present this year…

Posted by jenniferbaldwin on 22 September 2010

our new website has launched!

We are all so absolutely overly excited and joyously happy to announce that our gorgeous new website has launched, giving you a totally refreshed shopping experience with us.

So what has changed? You will notice immediately that the new site is bigger, and that the design and navigation have changed. The beautiful new design and larger size were natural progressions, and with over 35,000 products now selling on the site, it became time for a navigation overhaul! The mega drop-down menus may appear a little daunting at first, but they soon become really easy to use and make it much quicker to find your way around the site. The search facility is now more advanced, and includes a predictive element – this means that when you start to type in your search term, we guess what you might be searching for and show you the options. Just so clever. We have also created even more inspiration sections for you to discover, as we know what style-hunters you are. You will also soon see a new addition to the top navigation bar called ‘discover…’. This area will pull together all of the inspiration sections of the site, giving you a wonderful journey down discovery lane whenever you want. Whether you are seeking a gift, or something for yourself, this section will give you loads of gorgeous and original ideas.

Start looking around and you’ll see lots of other fabulous new features too, including a product summary zoom on product lists (just so slick) and a drop-down shopping basket showing you a little summary of everything in your basket when you hover over it – you don’t even need to click into it. In addition to all this, there is another brilliant feature that will transform your lives along with ours. You can now ‘view all’ on product pages (no trawling through 10 pages of products) – just keep scrolling and the products keep appearing! Now not very many sites can do that, you know. We know how precious your time is, and these little tricks save our customers all those unnecessary clicks.

We’ve also joined forces with a trusted independent feedback forum called Feefo so you will start seeing reviews being added to products. This will help guide you when making a purchase. You can now read reviews from customers and will be invited to write your own following a purchase. You can also see our overall service rating in real-time.

The website refresh team have been extremely dedicated in producing the best customer experience possible and have been working all hours researching, building, designing and fine-tuning the new website. We’ve consulted customers, usability experts and brand afficionados to make the site, in short, absolutely brilliant. A huge thank you to the team for doing a wondrous job, and to everyone who contributed along the way, including our customers!

Now have a play, and do tell us what you think.

Posted by jokite on 09 August 2010

Holly appears on Sky News

Holly is getting to be an expert at TV appearances! She was interviewed by Joel Hills on Sky News at 10.45am this morning to discuss the recent investment in notonthehighstreet.com by Index Ventures and Greylock Partners. They discussed the opportunity of funding from individual private companies compared to banks and the success of notonthehighstreet.com. See Holly’s interview on Sky News here.

Posted by jokite on 02 August 2010

who's behind the sale?

Guess which fashionistas are holding our sale bags? It’s Greta, our freelance designer, Mark Cranton, designer, Emma Cathie, new business executive and Joanne Griffin, merchandising coordinator. They all happened to choose to wear stripes on the day we were shooting the sale bags, so Kate, our creative director, spotted that they would make the perfect models.

Our sale is now live! Start shopping

Posted by jokite on 26 July 2010

squ-eel for Heidi

It was a delight to see Heidi Mottram featuring in today’s Metro, for all you non-Londoners who might have missed it. Her stunning eel skin bags and purses have been a huge hit on notonthehighstreet.com ever since she joined us, and we love them in the office for their softness, satisfying shape and vibrant colour palette. As graduate from London College of Fashion and Central St Martin’s, she has worked with many of the most famous fashion designers, and continues to develop the use of eel skin so keep an eye out for upcoming new designs.

The perfect gift for your best friend, or to add to your wish list…

Posted by jokite on 17 June 2010

a belated birthday celebration!

We hit the grand old age of four at the beginning of April, and finally found some time to have a good old knees up later on in May. And now we’ve finally got round to getting some photos on the blog! It’s enormously busy here right now but we definitely wanted to share this photo with you.

As a birthday gift, Home sent us ALL a shopper bag, personalised with our name and year of birth! Such a brilliant idea and coming in extremely useful. There are so many of us in the office now that we couldn’t all fit into this photo but rest assured we were clutching our bags happily, even the boys! We also each found a delicious chocolate letter inside. And coupled with some divine cupcakes from soon-to-be-a-partner, Rachel’s Kitchen, and some fizz, our sugar rush sent us rather excitedly on our way for an evening at the pub. We ventured a little further than our usual haunt, and discovered a wonderful little pub in Barnes called the Brown Dog. It was one of those rare gorgeously warm sunny evenings and we monopolised the pub garden til we were sent inside for being a bit noisy. The sign of a good evening! What a lovely birthday indeed, with a big thanks for all who arranged it and kindly gave treats.

Posted by jokite on 15 June 2010

Charlotte's style

Sneaking a peak through OK magazine for celebrity gossip took on a whole new dimension when we spotted one of Delightful Living’s personalised house signs in one of the photos! Charlotte and Gavin have their very own pub (to keep them out of the eye of the media) down the bottom of their garden, and have very stylishly hung a Delightful Living sign outside which bears the pub’s name, The Cockerel’s Quiff. Thanks for making such a fabulous choice Charlotte!

We definitely think it is something to crow about (sorry).

Posted by jokite on 29 April 2010

take a closer look

Our summer catalogue shoot got into full swing today, luckily on a gorgeously sunny day! It certainly looks like summer even though it might not quite feel it yet. We had to share this photo with you as it is rather hilarious really – look more closely and you will see photography assistant Jane and stylist Claire hidden in the bushes, assisting with the foliage! Well, if the garden doesn’t grow how you want it, you just have to get involved.

You’ll have to wait a little bit longer to see the Summer Catalogue, but our next one, Stylish Living, is out on Monday so watch out for your copy in the post! You can shop from it on the site from Monday.

Posted by jokite on 15 April 2010

ain't no mountain too high for Kate!

In two days, our very noble creative director is taking on a huge challenge. She is off to do a charity trek with her father, Tony, to raise money for the myasthenia gravis association. Never heard of it? That is exactly why they chose it as their charity!

The trek will start with a flight from Kathmandu to Lukla (the world’s most dangerous airport… it has an inclined runway that is much shorter than most!). They will then trek for 16 days – ten days to get up to Base Camp and six days to return. Along the way, they will stay in Namache Bazaar, walk Hilary’s Suspension Bridge and visit Tengboche Gompa. They plan to travel beyond Base Camp to Kala Pattar (Black Rock) which is 5,545m above sea level for the best views of Everest.

It is by no means going to be an easy trek. At Base Camp there is only 50% of the oxygen that there is at sea level, and it will be about -16C at night. Needless to say, Kate has invested in special equipment to ensure she stays warm and safe and arrives back in one piece (very important to us!).

During the trip, Tony will turn 64 which makes the trekking duo even more admirable. They will be celebrating his birthday along with Easter – Kate has packed a huge variety of chocolate easter eggs to make sure at least one easter Sunday tradition is upheld! When the trek is completed, Kate and Tony are going to do a sunrise flight over Everest to see where they have walked and get an amazing view of the summit from above

It is going to be an amazing adventure and we wish her a huge amount of luck – we know her go-getting spirit will take her through!

So far Kate has raised a brilliant £1,300 for the myasthenia gravis association but she would love to raise more – to read more about the charity or to donate, click here.

We gave Kate a little gift to take with her and to keep as a reminder her of the trip. Kutuu designed a special bespoke piece shown above.

Kate can be seen above during a training ramble in West Sussex. There will be more photos after the trip to inspire you!

Posted by jokite on 31 March 2010

easter treats starts early

Our team meeting today ended rather deliciously, with the sharing of goodies sent to us for Easter from Whisk Hampers. By the time we remembered to take a photo, we had demolished much of it, but here is some of the rather beautiful evidence!

Whisk Hampers make a rather cool gifting choice, re-inventing the traditional hamper and giving it a new twist. Their range of hampers include something for everyone – with names like Casino Royale and La Dolce Vita, they can cater for any gifting occasion, from leaving present to romantic picnic, from your parents anniversary through to your best friend’s birthday (we love The Brilliant Bloody Mary Kit!). And they don’t restrict their talents to combining gorgeous collections of food and beverages – if you love your kitchen, you’ll love their sleek kitchenalia. And you can’t beat their eye-catching silver champagne bath for the most indulgent of parties.

Excuse me while I nab another one of those delicious crumbly buttery biscuits…

Posted by jokite on 31 March 2010