2022: A Year of Connection
The year end is almost here. This means a whirlwind of fun and festivities, of fabulous fairy lights and Father Christmas. It is also a time to pull up a chair, settle into the wintry quietude and breathe a soft sigh of relief; a collective exhale as the world begins to slow its pace and grind to a halt before the calendar flips to January. This past year has been a year of connecting and reconnecting. Connecting with our local community via events and new partnerships, connecting and reconnecting with our retailers at international trade shows, and connecting with you, our valued customers, to share in your feedback and imbue this into our latest designs. Read on to find out what we’ve been up to in 2022.
At the end of last year, we promised to share more of our behind-the-scenes projects with you. This culminated in the launch of our News and Noteworthy newsletter, running in near-monthly instalments. These regular updates provide you with all of our latest information relating to our designs, ongoing projects, upcoming events and seasonal campaigns. We are delighted that this newsletter has been so well-received, and we will continue the regular instalments in order to grow our tight-knit community. If you haven’t already and you would like to, please sign up to our newsletter via the footer of our website.
For those of you who have been following RUSKIN for some time, you will know that sustainability has always been at the heart of our brand. We realised that we have been working on many interesting projects that respect the limitations of the environment, but we felt we could do more to effectively communicate these initiatives. To that end, 2022 saw the release of our first fully fledged Responsibility Report. This provides an accessible overview of our practices and brings transparency to what is happening behind the scenes at RUSKIN. As a small business, with mills in Yorkshire and a leather studio run by two brothers and a small team of artisans in Rome, it is no mean feat to carry out end-to-end supply-chain reporting at this scale. It is crucial to us, however, to demonstrate that responsibility isn’t just an industry buzzword, it is at the core of everything we do. We aim to tread lightly, remain in creative control and offer lasting value to all those in our supply chain. We believe that this is an approach we are truly able to sustain. If you missed our report, we’d love it if you gave it a read. We are pleased to have taken action on the objectives to the extent that we are working collaboratively with an independent, woman-owned business called Six Acre Meadow who now creates our delicate, handmade dust-bags that come with every RUSKIN ordered. Finding a sustainable packing solution was one of our key goals within the report and we are thrilled to give back to our local community. We hope this report is enlightening and allows you to discover more about our story.
One of the best ways for us to connect is via seasonal campaigns, as these really capture and communicate the essence of what RUSKIN is all about. Our Spring/Summer campaign, The Escapists, conveyed the wistful essence of childhood memories, of those lazy months that spanned June to September and our Autumn/Winter campaign, The Curators marked the release of our latest design, The Chester. The Chester subsequently inspired our latest video that gently encourages us to slow our pace and hold tight to small analogue pleasures that continue to bring us meaning. We are so grateful to Laura Meek, Flavia Catena and Antonia Blunt for their creativity and for working tirelessly to help us capture the spirit of RUSKIN.
This year we have partnered with two new stockists and we are thrilled that RUSKIN designs are now available at Limited EDITION in Miami and Skibo Castle private members club in Scotland. It is a real privilege to be part of their expertly curated collections and expand our international footprint, which we are looking forward to continuing throughout 2023.
Sneaking in at the end of the year is a restock of our sell-out Camille bag which is also now available in two of our brand colours, birch and rouge. Now we are looking forward to closing out this year with a glass of fizz at Soho Farmhouse’s annual Christmas market on 10-11th December.
We are hugely grateful for your support throughout this year, without which none of these achievements would have been possible and as ever, we extend our gratitude to you for supporting us along our journey. We are excited to continue to share our journey with you in 2023. Keep an eye out for our new design, The Quentin Weekender, which will be released early next year and for a fresh take on our Bennet Bucket Bag.
We are sending you and your loved ones all the best for the festive season and for the new year to come.
Warmest wishes,
Alli