Phew....all out the door

Right...we are off to the pub.

We have just shipped off the final bags of free gifts and its fair to say we are exhausted... great to see some of our customers who have received their gifts are taking the time to post on the forum. We LOVE feedback so please keep it coming, good and bad, we want to hear it all.

Thanks to all the helpers who came in over the last few days to help us iron on, stamp, stuff, stick, lick and label. If anyone out there is in Melbourne and would like to be part of our "Mailout SWAT team" feel free to drop us a line.

We offer the unique opportunity to see the inner workings of possibly Melbourne CBD's only 4th floor Manchester warehouse... If you love linen it's better than Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory!

Seriously, if you'd like to help out in future drop us a line megan@vilainboutique.com we pay in cash, sheets, towels and love (in any combination)...

Free, Free, Free Frenzy!

We have been floored by the response to our Free Hand Towel/Face Washer giveaway.

We wish to sincerely apologise to any one who has missed out. We had no idea the response would be so overwhelming.

Steam was coming out of our server and Jase our trusty webmaster was in a state of nervous melt down but he was secretly loving it… so much data… (sigh) Jase, get out of the stock!

Over 1000 visitors were successful and we are madly chasing our extremely hard to track down supplier to restock… where are you!?!

We will be re-launching the special as soon as we can confirm new stock so if you are keen to be among the first to hear about its return we suggest you sign up to our mailing list on the site.

To be as fair as possible and reward people for their support when the offer relaunches we are going to offer it to our mailing list and wait a day or so before it is posted on the site so any one who originally missed out will get ample chance to take up the offer.

Thanks heaps for your support and patience.

Got to run, packages to stuff and all that…

Lost in the gift fair labyrinth...

Team Vilain Boutique had a rather exciting excursion out of the office last week. We went to our very first "industry" trade fair at Jeff's Shed and the Graham Centre (another huge aeroplane hanger-type building in Port Melbourne). The theme was loosely gifts and homewares but it pretty much included everything from camping thermoses to Russian Babushka dolls to imported Indian throws and everything (and i mean EVERYTHING) in between. On the whole we really enjoyed the sense of exclusivity that comes with wearing a barcoded lanyard around your neck. You're not allowed to take photos in there so this is a photo off the Gift & Homewares Australia website (I think it might be from the Sydney show though...):

We were also decked out with fancy red show bags that came in handy for holding the 3,753,037 leaflets and pricelists and product ranges that every single stall holder at both venues gave us. It was a bit like when you go to yum cha, everyone says be a bit discerning pace yourself and don't feel you have to sample everything all at once... but you always do and then three hours later you're stumbling around the never-ending isles of stalls feeling like you're trapped in a labyrinth except everything you see is wholesale prices and it's like you've been on a Christmas shopping expedition for four days straight.
We saw lots of great little items that we want to offer in bedroom, bathroom and kitchen bundles. Lots of great children's wear and accessory brands that might only be stocked in a few shops around Australia. We're pretty keen to add kitchen-themed products to our range, and we ordered some samples of aprons, table cloths and tea towels and now delivery men keep arriving at our office with boxes of goodies and it really does feel like Christmas...
We're currently trying to sort through the multitude of pamphlets we collected at the fair so if anyone has any products they'd like us to pursue and maybe offer in our shop please tell us!

We've been posting out products for FREE!

Isn't it ironic how our blog is meant to keep readers informed of what we're up to, but as soon as we start getting run off our feet with lots of crazy different ventures we don't get time to blog about it?
Hopefully regular readers will already know about all this, but we've been flat out sending out FREE samples of our new baby wear and sleep wear products. Our lovely illustrator and textiles designer Penny Gibbs (she's responsible for the pen and ink drawings on our homepage) came up with some cute embroidered baby bibs which we paired up with matching baby beanies.

When we offered 20 sets for FREE they went all went within a day or two. People can still buy them on our site and they come in a cute little drawstring calico bag - they're pretty much alredy giftwrapped and ready to go!
Then we thought, what the hell, let's give away some white camisoles and see what our members think. They're great quality stretch cotton singlets from American Apparel and also come in a Vilain Boutique calico bag. This is what they look like:

Farewell Amelie and Christopher!

If you're a regular watcher of this blog and our website you might have noticed that we're dropped the Enfant and expanded the virtual dimensions of our business to a Boutique. Enfant Vilain no longer, it's all about Vilain Boutique from now on.
Why the change? The official story is that our rapidly expanding product range (just wait, Ok? we're juggling about 3,236,564 balls at the moment) defies classification (gasp!) and we thought it would be easier to group everything together in a nice boutique with polished floorboards and lots of natural light (that's our vision anyway). The unofficial story is a touch seedier.

Our two pyjama-clad cuties, Amelie and Christopher, who helped us launch the site back in March let all this cyber infamy go to their heads. What started as a promising collaboration between us and two Wiggles-loving toddlers started to echo the editorial pages of New Weekly. Outrageous contract clauses and a rider that made Diana Ross look like Mother Teresa. What can we say? We're citing irreconcilable differences. "Team Enfant" and "Team Vilain" t-shirts will soon be available on our website.