Blog 15: Social Downtime & Summer Round-Up! (August)

Due to various issues with Facebook and Instagram, we have been off-line for a month. APOLOGIES everyone!

A big belated summer hello to everyone, and all those who are new to our gorgeous pages. Catch up on our August news here!

We are excited to announce the welcome to our beautiful new Seaview range, the first full collection we’ve created since we launched XV Stripes just over a year ago. This is also our first collaboration, and we’re so happy to be making the journey hand in hand with the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust (HIWWT).

The range is based around detailed hand-drawn images by our designer Vicky, whose images tell the tale of the marine life you’ll find around our Isle of Wight coastline. So now you can have fishes, seaweeds, anemones, seals and seahorses populating your soft furnishings in a bright new palette of pinks, reds and deep blues. Look out for the Sea View range from mid-September.

More to come on this on our social feeds, and exclusive preview offers through our newsletters, sign-up on our website now!

There’s nothing quite like the old favourites, though, and you can always rely on us to stock our signature stripy blue and white Cowes range of cushions, duvet covers and throws. Our classic stripes with their trademark tonal blue will always stay the same across every range. But now we’ve a new blue hue, notably brighter and extending across six cushion covers, a duvet cover and two new throws.

You ask, and we love to deliver! By popular request we are thrilled to announce plans to launch a tableware range, just in time for the run-up to Christmas. Start prepping your dining rooms for a stunning selection of napkins and tablecloths, perfect for kitting out your homes and offices, as well as your boats (or wrap them with love and give them as gifts).

In amongst our festive goodies, we’ll be bringing back the lavender fish you all loved so much, cleverly using fabric scraps in a brilliantly efficient and sustainable way. We’re also thinking of adding a Christmas candle to our range, and possibly some more of those new note cards you might have seen in the shop.  

We do so much of our marketing around Facebook and social media, so when we found our system had been hacked this month, we were braced for disaster. Luckily, we’re a half-full kind of team, and we instantly saw the social silence as a chance to get out there and do some face to face talking with our suppliers.

As all businesses do from time to time, we took a step back and got stuck into some important planning. Izzey put her consulting head back on and had a chat with our suppliers. Designer Vic visited our new UK based finishing house, and Izzey met our UK fabric printing company, in Uckfield, to chat about new designs.

It’s been so brilliant to see each other in real life, well worth investing half a day for each meeting. There’s nothing like a real-life handshake to solidify a working relationship. As a result of all these talks we’ve made some exciting decisions based around improving our supply chain, and also to do with getting products made locally.

Meanwhile, our little shop in Yarmouth has been a busy bee, with a regular flow of customers through the door all summer. It’s been great to see so many of you in person! Island life still has a little bit of summer left: if we’re not in the shop or running around meeting people we’ll be out on the water, sights set firmly on the horizon as always.

See you soon, from all at XV 

PS: Look out for us at Clems Fairs in Tisbury in September and November. We’ll be bringing our brilliant ranges right to the stalls. Come down and see us, we can’t wait to meet you!