The Story Behind Wharfrats

Two years ago I started working at a nightclub in Newcastle called Digital. I made friends with another Rachel who was hired at the same time as myself. We share a lot of interests, and although I hate to admit it, she's like a better version of myself. We started tie dying clothes together at her house. We were just playing with patterns and old clothes, but we had a lot of fun.

As planned, I left the UK to travel Australia for three months. This trip broadened my mind a Hell of a lot. Although travelling may seem exciting, it leaves you with a lot of spare time sat in airports and on Greyhound buses. Armed with a sketchbook and a pack of coloured pencils I started designing.

I have always been creative, and have drawn clothing for as long as I can remember, but I have never had too much confidence in my art skills to study design at uni. But I do like to draw nonetheless.

I decided to make a few of my designs come to life, and when I returned to the UK I moved back to Manchester, got a part-time job in a bar, and started saving for equipment.

After a month or so I had saved up enough money to buy dyes and invest in a supplier. Whenever I had some spare time on my hands I was using it to create my designs. Each design took roughly about a week to make, and usually a further week to find a photographer and list them online.

To begin with, a lot of interest was shown in my designs, and I was making a nice profit. However, I didn't start designing to make money, I do it because it's something I enjoy doing.




One of my lecturers at uni ran a small market fair in the canteen one Wednesday, and invited the students and staff of the faculty to run stalls of their own. I took part in this, and began creating new stock. As it was close to Halloween, I even rolled out some special stock. This was a great experience, and preparing to run a market stall was hectic. I made bunting, flyers, stickers, a look book, custom forms,  labels, and other decorations. I got my photographer to help me, and take photos on the day. It was a long day, and a long week leading up to it, but it was really fantastic in the end.




This helped me learn more about my brand too. I could see, first hand, what people thought of Wharfrats, and the specific market it was attracting. Operating a store online is cheap and easy, but you will rarely ever get to meet your customers, and this can be a huge disadvantage. From experience, I know how difficult it can be to receive feedback on your products when selling online. Although I have never had any bad feedback from any of my products, I almost feel insulted that someone wouldn't want to leave me any kind of feedback. But I do live by the motto "no news is good news".

I have decided to create a new range for my brand, and as I am in the process of creating this new range, I thought I would share some of my favourite items I currently have in stock.

All stock is available in my Etsy store here.

A Working Weekend

Saying as it is a bank holiday today, my family and I decided to get away for a long weekend. We ended up camping in Beadnell on the North coast. Being a bank holiday in England, it was inevitably going to rain. After walking the dog on the rainy beach, giving up on the barbecue and settling for tomato soup, there wasn't much else to do. So I decided to get creative! I ended up making a lot of bracelets for my online store. Some of them aren't complete yet, but by the end of the week they should all be available to buy!

Here's a sneak peak:

I also collected a 'few' pebbles and shells from the beaches we visited over the weekend. I'm not 100% sure what I'm going to do with them yet, but I have a couple of ideas to keep me busy.

All-in-all we really enjoyed our little weekend away, despite the weather and a trip to A&E (my mother slipped on the beach and broke her wrist). Now it's back to working hard to get this stock out!

It's been too long

It would appear that I have been neglecting my duties of a blogger. I have my reasons, but none of them are good enough! Well they kind of are...

So I began my final year of university around the time I last updated. It was one hell of a year! I don't think I've worked so hard in my academic life! There were a lot of assignments to get done, exams to revise for, and a personal research project to conduct, and I had to put my time and effort in if I wanted to do well. But I tried my hardest and received a 2:1 honors in International Fashion Marketing.

My good friend Hope and I keeping to traditions and throwing our caps in the air.

During my final year of uni I also had a part-time bar job, where I worked about 16 hours a week to pay for treats like clothes, make up, hair dyes, books, etcetera. I quit this just before my final deadlines and exams to focus on my studies, but now I'm feeling rather poor for doing so. Nevertheless it meant I could enjoy my summer to the max before I throw myself into employability.

Of course, as I mentioned in a previous post, I started my own clothing business, Wharfrats. This was a big venture for me, and although I have made a lot of sales, it's not quite paying the bills just yet and is still a work in progress.

So they are my excuses. Good enough? I didn't think so. I'll be trying to update a lot more now that I have a lot of spare time on my hands. Hope you're all looking forward to it!

☯ Peace out ☯