dewerstone 2015 // quite a year….
As we approach the merriment of Christmas and the undoubtable shenanigans of new years, we felt it worth us looking back on the year thats passed and what we got up to, as it’s been pretty epic on all accounts.
dewerstone started 2015 with our big move to the new premises at Ivybridge which has been our home for the last 12 months (and hopefully more to come). The ‘unit’ has been the central hub for all of our operations in 2015; it's been our day to day office, storage facility, production centre, show room, and often our recreational space. Despite all the work, we’ve thrown a few pretty exciting parties with our bbq’s, slacklines and climbing wall all becoming renowned focal points of whenever we open our doors to our friends and family - and the public - to celebrate what we’re all about. We’ve not had any noise complaints yet and far from it, we seem to have ingratiated ourselves with our local neighbours pretty well, so long may it continue!
The unit acts as our kind of showroom and chill out space as well, so we’re always happy for people to drop round (with a quick heads up just to make sure we’re not in a meeting or something) and have a coffee and see some of the new stuff, so feel free to give us a call if you’re in the area.
We’ve also had a fairly successful few runs of weekly sessions on the indoor bouldering wall in our unit - first the Sunday sessions and then the midweek Wednesday evenings, which have been run by Hannah Phillips and Ben Coombs, giving people the opportunity to come along and have a climb, chill out in our space and generally join in the vibe. Hopefully these will continue next year so please feel free to get in touch if you’d like to come along.
Aside from a change in location we’ve also grown in numbers. Ben, Rory and Phil remain our three full timers, whilst Rich (yours truly) came on board for two days a week back in the summer to help handle twitter and other social media around his own business commitments, and just recently we’ve been joined by eBay guru Ross three days a week, who is working around his own commitments of imminently becoming a dad (literally, any day now….) and moving on from his last job in the cycling industry. We’ve also been aided as ever by our trusty seamstress Jayne who has been putting in hours here and there with the needle and thread to put the finishing touches on our garments. Like any business dewerstone is handling growth and expansion cautiously but hopefully with a sense of progress, and we’re really excited to see who the next new faces to join the team will be as the demand for what we do hopefully continues to grow.
2015 has been a year of some amazing products and changes for us. The wooden sunglasses that have become our flagship have gone from strength to strength, and our collaboration in 2015 with Carl Zeiss lenses seems to have been received well by everyone that’s picked a pair up. We’ve also just recently carried on our natural apparel trend with the wooden watches that have landed just before xmas and are already making their way out of the door. We’ve recently just launched our winter range for guys and girls, including the amazing (we think) new Alpine Hoodies that all of our ambassadors are itching to get their hands on.
As a brand we’ve also been really keen to have a presence at events around the UK and further afield, and have a great relationship with a number of events as a sponsor and running our pop up shops, adding to the ‘trading village’ vibe at events like The Quay’s Deep Water Solo event with Entre-Prises, the Hurley Classic kayak event, and supporting local events like The Barn’s Boulder Beats right here in Devon.
Throughout 2015 we’ve also had great relationships with our ambassadors who have been repping the brand and sharing their adventures. Bren Orten, Doug Cooper and James Weight have all been having smashing years on the water, between them having visited just about every amazing river or shore break in the world in the last 12 months, and most importantly all shredding hard at the end of the year on their home turf at Hurley, and like proud parents we like nothing more than seeing our boys having fun. As we write this we believe Bren Orten is somewhere in South America, Doug Cooper is home in the UK working with the NHS to make sure some of our less fortunate get a merry christmas as well, and James Weight is just getting ready to jet off to Sweden in the new year. Rich Pearson (me again) has had a fantastic year with his business The Slackline School that’s been travelling all around the UK to festivals and events from Newcastle to Jersey and from Glastonbury to South Cornwall. Rich was also instrumental in bringing on new ambassador James Merryweather - a professional musician, freediver and highliner - who has been an amazing representative of our brand through his videos and online content. Alongside that we’ve also welcomed on board new ambassador Darren Swift of Swift Extreme recently, who's career spans from working in the military to safety tech work on Bear Grylls TV shows. Tom Bunn and Mikey Cleverdon have been their usual dedicated and passionate selves on the climbing scene, with both of them coaching and competing at super high levels locally and internationally, and as always being some of the most fun people to be around. In between hitting men with crowbars and shooting others in the face - for his role on Poldark - Bill Mattos has been paddling hard on the river this year and has even managed to find time to have a kid; congrats Bill! This year also saw numerous missions on Fatbikes by Paul Tambini and Craig Howeth across Wales and further afield, many super cool pics from Liam at AS Watersports, and our amazing girls Laura and Louise have been having a great time with Vixon Climbing and their other endeavours. Thanks massively to all of our ambassadors and the work they do to help promote us. If you’d like to be involved as an ambassador in 2016, feel free to get in touch with rich@dewerstone.com and we’ll see if you could maybe end up joining our family.
As we near the end of the year the office has now quietened down to a skeleton staff after our manic few weeks of getting things out the door in the run up to xmas, and we’re all looking forward to a nice break over the festive season before hitting the ground running again in January. We hope you’ve all had an amazing year and we thank you for everything that everyone has contributed to help make this adventure special.
All the best, and merry christmas.
Rory, Ben, Rich, Phil, Jayne and Ross.
www.dewerstone.com
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