David's AW News: Secrets & Surprises!

Greetings from Sheffield, UK..

:) it's almost Christmas!

Yes it's true I am actually back at the mothership.. at AW Aromatics and AW HQ.. Home for Christmas... and found some big surprises.

Last week I was making a flying visit to Spain just in time for the AW-Artisan Christmas party, which was lovely and very emotional, if you missed it you can catch up here.

On Wednesday evening I returned my hire car to Malagacar.com (best car hire by far) and checked in for my EasyJet flight to Manchester. The flight was almost empty.. and left early arriving 30 minutes ahead of schedule in Manchester. Whilst the staff were friendly and kind, the seats are basic and the experience is third world.. actually any Indian or Asian budget airline is much better. Then I arrive at Manchester airport, it's such a bad impression for first time visitors.. (apart from Kathmandu) any Asian airport is class. Manchester on arrival feels distinctly 3rd world. It makes me feel something is wrong with Great Britain. But not everything..

It was 2am before I made it to my bed at the super friendly and cosy (city centre almost) Kenwood Hall Hotel. If you are in Sheffield I can recommend it. At 4am I'm dealing with some production issues with Mr Suman our Nepal supplier, talking to Debbie our office manager in Bali and resolving some design details with Mr Chatterjee in India. By 9.30am, a little late for work, I get an Uber to AW-Aromatics, a friendly guy tells me he is one of only three Sri Lankan Uber drivers in Sheffield. By the time we make it to work, he has called his friend in Galle, Sri Lanka who has interests in tea exporting and we have swapped WhatsApp numbers. Most surprising morning!

At AW-Aromatics I found the place buzzing with creativity, and visited the beautiful showroom (if you are into creating your own products we can definitely help you). James and Bryant and team have done a great job this year with some truly award winning products some of which we are struggling to keep up with..

I was given a really surprising sneak preview of next year's big launch.. top secret - but imagine fortune telling bath fizzies linked to your star sign.. whoops I'm hopeless at secrets..

Great excitement as the company was doing it's secret Santa..

We think that the Zodiac Crystal Candles will be a massive hit.. so we are keen to develop more like this..

Shhhh.. it's a secret.

Then I went to our HQ at Affinity park just across town.. the place was as usual a hive of activity.. delighted to see the return of the Big Buddhas - regular readers may remember my trip with Bondhan to Java a few months ago. Well that container just arrived (the first I hope of many).. Years ago we used to sell these statues made in a vast artisan workshop in a village on the outskirts of Yogyakarta, Java. Bondhan and I called to visit our old supplier. It's a family business and the driving force is the youngest son, who now a few years older has developed the business tremendously .

They cast in a unique fibre concrete mix all sorts of things, from life size dinosaurs and horses to fantastical fountains. Not many of these huge beasts fit in a container, so minimum order is a 40ft container and they load containers every day. Now the shipping cost of these big things would be astronomical but they kindly allow us to deliver other Java produced stock (textiles, teak items etc) and they stuff them carefully in the void spaces around the big statues. Reducing the shipping costs by half.

We are interested in the oversize Buddhas - Big Buddhas we used to sell well years ago, but we had issues with them easily getting damaged. Saying that we had one outside our old warehouse to welcome visitors. When we had the fire in 2020 and everything was destroyed, only our lucky Buddha survived (Surprisingly!) and now he sits at the entrance to Affinity Park.

Teams of skilled artisans cast them in a mix of concrete and resin - and they sold very well but we had issues with them easily getting damaged. Now the technology has changed and the finished statue is harder and stronger. Still surprisingly light, and finished with more detail and polish for a realistic metallic / stone look.  Securely packed individually on wooden pallets wrapped in plastic with foam protection padding.

We opened one and installed it in the lobby to greet visitors.

Then we held our annual Christmas jumper competition..

Hope you are having as much fun as us..

Enjoy the week. Wishing you lots of Big Surprises!

Take care

David