A Happy New Year to all our customers from everyone here at Snuggle Feet!

I ‘m sure you are all settling back into the routine of work and school as we are, the holidays always seem to fly by.

We have been very busy over the Christmas period. Les and I have designed five new Snuggle Feet shoes…these include a gorgeous puppy shoe for a girl and a brand new car design for the boys. Watch this space as there will be a sneak preview very soon.

We are also very pleased to add a couple of new stockists to our ever increasing list! Bebe Jour in Hastings old town is an independent boutique; they are stocking a small range of Snuggle Feet shoes. Green Baby in Islington is stocking a wide range of designs and we also welcome Greenwich baby who carry a large variety of Snuggle Feet styles and sizes.

We love to hear from our customers, you can join us on Face Book and Twitter where you can keep up to date with all our latest news.

We have been very busy at the Snuggle Feet offices over the last few months. Our customer feedback prompted us to introduce two new products to the Snuggle Feet web site…Snuggle Legs and Snuggle Socks.

Snuggle Legs are fabulous baby and toddler leg warmers; we designed these in response to our customer demands. They can be used in many different ways and are a perfect partner to our soft leather baby shoes. Snuggle Legs can be worn instead of tights, under skirts or shorts so still keeping legs warm and protected whilst making nappy changes much easier.

Also, coming soon are a few new designs! We have ducks, rockets and a new trainer design for girls, plus a few more too.

We already know how many of you buy Snuggle feet as gifts for a new baby or a birthday, so, again in response to you, our customers we will be bringing gift sets to the Snuggle Feet web site, we will tell you more about this soon!

Rio, wearing an early Snuggle Feet design.

We really got things going in 2007, after we decided on our product, we had to find someone to manufacture it. We had contacts in the baby industry as we had been running www.abcbabygifts.co.uk since 2003, but this was different. We needed to make the baby shoes at a price that meant we could then offer them to our customers at a fantastic price!

Firstly we approached leather factories and manufacturers in the UK, we always love to support local or UK business if at all possible. The stumbling block we had with the UK suppliers and manufactures was the cost…We really wanted our USP to be our price, this just wasn’t going to be possible however much we would have loved it.

So, the next step was approaching manufacturers abroad, again the experience we had gained from setting up the baby gift business really helped out, we were confident to ask the right questions and get all the information we needed. We had to do allot of research regarding the leather that would be used, toxicity reports and all the important information that we would need to feel confident in bringing the baby shoes to market.

It took a while but we found a fantastic factory. The manager, Sharon, was really helpful and held our hands through the whole process. We ordered samples, requested reports, decided on designs (the fun part!) designed a logo, this all took place over a few months. So, we had our shoes…designed in the UK, manufactured in Shanghai!

Finally, midway through 2007 we had a pair of  Snuggle Feet in our hands…It was the start of a new venture!

We have been thinking about expanding the Snuggle Feet range for some time now, but as always we are cautious. We add new shoes designs every few month’s and this year we introduced some lovely Christmas styles which were a hit!

So, after careful consideration we have decided to develop an idea we have had for a while now. We noticed that many of our customers were buying baby leg warmers to wear with their Snuggle Feet shoes, but of course they are buying these from somewhere else! So we have sourced a manufacturer and Snuggle Legs have been born! We are hoping to take delivery in the next couple of weeks!

We recently received an email form a lady in Leeds, she was arranging a charity event to raise money for Sands, The stillbirth and neonatal death charity which supports anyone who is affected by the death of a baby,  the event was going to include a raffle. She wondered if we could offer anything for this event…Well, we try to support both local charity events and also events that relate to our business’s, Babies!

So we made up a lovely baby gift basket and threw in a few pairs of Snuggle Feet shoes for good measure!

As always it’s been a busy few weeks at Snuggle Feet HQ. Tamzin and I have had our ‘design heads’ on as we come up with some great new ideas for Snuggle Feet shoes. In the making and soon to be on sale are a Ginger Bread Man, Skull and Cross-Bone and a Snowman, just in time for Christmas.