16 interesting facts about our 2016 and 17 things to expect from us in 2017

12/16/2016

2016 is almost over and you will find that the month of december is often a time of relfection for many people. Despite our excitement for the festive celebrations, we took some time out to reflect on how 2016 has been for the Joy and Joe baby wrap brand, customers and families. So it is time to count our blessings with you (both big and small blessings!). So enjoy our 2016 recap and also check out some of the things we have in store for you in 2017.

2016 has been an 'interesting' year for us as brand and family !

In 2016, we started settling down into our new environment, St Helens and it is awesome that we even hosted our very first st Helens event, our Christmas pop-up shop this month (Remember that we moved from Bolton to St Helens because we found a super spacious family home.. yayyyy!)

2. Before our pop-up shop happened, we can't forget our epic 5th year business anniversary event. The venue was the lighthouse Manchester and our event was a huge success. Thanks to everyone who attended and bought something on the day.

3. One of the most remarkable event this year was our first ambassador program, we wanted to create an opportunity to have a some of our customers or fans or even complete Joy and Joe newbie(s) on board to support us as we propagate our customer-centric vision online and offline. With the support of our ambassadors, 2016 has been a very fun filled year, we have seen relationships blossom both on our chatter page and offline. Thank you so much ambassadors for leading the way action photos /social media wise and infusing our brand with loads of friendly chatter and happiness. We can certainly say that as a brand, we are very fun and friendly.

4. How can we talk about 2016 without mentioning the amazing wrap releases we had this year! Please forgive my mummy brain! This year, our first woven wrap release was the monochrome dream around the month of March. You need to join our chatter page to catch the 'team gold' versus 'team silver' daily chatter, photos and excitement. The monochrome dream was undoubtedly one of our most enjoyable wrap releases this year thanks to our every supportive 2016 ambassadors who ensured that we were never short of beautiful real life babywearing photos and videos.

5. Our PR/customer happiness manager, Becca settled into her role in Joy and Joe and it has been great getting to know her and her family

6. We added some new colours to our stretchy wrap collection

7.Our first meet the maker event happened this year

8. Our first book 'dear new babywearer' was published via Blurb this year

9. We were featured on the 'still made in Britain' website

10. We released our super soft cuddly, connected and Cartostyle range as a sequel to the 2015 trillusions, feathers woven wrap. Which one of our beautiful slings came to live with you?

11. We expanded our live video customer service and moved it from blab to Facebook live!

12. We released a special woven wrap collection to celebrate our 5th year brand anniversary

13. Wrap you in love released a video showcasing breastfeeding in a long woven wrap to commemorate the breastfeeding awareness week and guess what? It was a Joy and Joe wrap she used! Yayyy!

14. We raised money for several charities this year. Some of the charities are UNICEF, Focus on disability, Friends for disabled children etc

15. We enjoyed some really awesome babywearing moments during our instagram takeovers organised by our 2016 ambassadors. We can't forget Te's babywearing moment when she showcased how she multi-tasks as a mum of 3 boys! You can catch up with these posts from our instagram platform

16.Our chatter page members aka the super lovely #joyandjoefam requested that we re-weave our popular SMP in two new colourways and guess what? The hot chilli and purple rain was born! Okay, we said 16 memorable moments but we can't forget witnessing Laurna wear close to 30 snoods at the same time live on video, breaking the babywearing world record as the first person ever to do this. Last but in no way the least and you will agree! Our super thick, beastly Quad blends and shimmery cranberry dream woven slings beautifully wrap up 2016 for us. We have also recieved some fabulous feedback eg 'I'm honestly taken aback by this being a 100% cotton blend! It seems most people are into their silk blends these days, but this blend renders cotton underrated!
The only cotton wrap mildly similar to it is Mako, but the Cartostyle blows that out of the water. It also has less of a budget feel'~ Lisette from Wrapt (Australia) . We've have a fun ride with our customers this year and we are so grateful <3

Without further ado, here are 17 things to expect from us in 2017!

A reweave of some of our iconic designs in a completely new scale, colours and weave

2. Custom woven wraps. We choose the warp and you customise your weft! Awesome!

3. New packaging! Our higher end wraps will be presented to our customers with a luxury custom magnetic box, all nicely presented as per our usual. Our regular range will be presented with our new branded postal bags.

4. Subscription style service ( we will tell you more about this later! Yes, you need to watch this space so that you won't miss out when we finally launch this service)

5.Our kangaroo care collection will be finally introduced

6. New woven wrap designs, new patterns

7.Our first SSC.. Yayyy (We've been working on this forever! Please cross your fingers for us. Manufacturing on a bigger scale isn't child's play)

8.New accessories
9.Our very first brick and mortar boutique style showroom will be launched and open to the public by appointment

10. A re-design of our teaching wrap

11. A more robust support system for sling libraries and babywearing groups

12. We will also host some epic events this coming year (6th year anniversary, babywearing meet-up events, ambassador meet-up events?
13. Interesting and engaging Facebook live discussions from us and our 2017 ambassadors (we will add more photos soon)

14. Instagram takeovers where you get to know each of our 2017 ambassadors better
15. We are re-stocking our sold out stretchy wraps next year
16. Joy and Joe archive where you can read about some of our past slings
17. More amazing giveaways (Yesssss, you know we are very generous) We said 17 points! One more thing! From our family point of view, we are also planning to create a lot more awareness about the African kanga carrying which is a core part of our heritage, kangaroo care from our family experience and disability advocacy.