Black Heart is Two Years Old 🖤
Unbelievably, Black Heart is now two years old!
At the end of August Black Heart Equestrian turned two, closely followed by my 22nd birthday so, of course we had to celebrate with a flash 22% discount sale! OMG that was a crazy 12 hours and you guys pretty much wiped us out of leggings. We have been frustratingly waiting for our restock as we have had no black leggings in most sizes for ages and we get dozens of requests and messages every day asking when they will be here! Thankfully they are here now and I am hoping we will have enough stock to get us through HOYS, Your Horse Live, Olympia, Black Friday and Christmas! It takes over 8 months to produce our leggings and base layers from order as the fabric is specially woven for us to our specifications before being dyed, cut, silicone printed, sewn etc. When we ordered this latest collection at the start of the year we didn’t expect them to be in such high demand so here’s hoping we have enough to last until the next drop!
It has been an incredible second year for Black Heart and also myself personally. I somehow managed to graduate from university with a 2.1 Batchelor of Science degree - the last academic year being particularly hard as I was so busy coping with the incredible growth of Black Heart, training my horses and getting through the hardest year of my three year degree! Somehow it all came together and I can tick that box = University completed ✅ I am very lucky to be leaving university with a ready made full time job with Black Heart, doing something I absolutely love. Being so busy, I haven’t been out competing with my horses for absolutely ages so I am looking forward to getting some competitions in soon and testing out some new products!
Black Heart is really blossoming with age and we are so proud to have over 66,000 Instagram followers plus 8,000 on Facebook. Our Pinterest account is also going from strength to strength with something like 300,000 monthly views! I am very grateful for the wonderful support of my friends - Ellie and her stunning horse Lancelot plus my gorgeous friend Eby and my cousins Amelia and Isobel who give up their time to model for Black Heart. Watch out for a new model coming soon!
As the business is growing, we are having to move into a bigger stock warehouse soon to stop us from getting completely swamped by boxes! We also have some new faces in the office, adding to our Customer Service Team so we can get all the emails and enquiries dealt with quicker. It’s so busy on social media that we are now having to request that any important or urgent queries come via email as it’s easier for us to keep track of them to make sure they are responded to.
A new addition to our show calendar this year was the Royal Dublin Horse Show in August. It was quite an ambitious move from us as it involved traveling by ferry to Dublin (meaning no SOS back to HQ requesting more show stock!), doing everything in Euros and leaving a busy office and 6 horses behind at home! But what a phenomenal show! All my family are Irish and I have spent a lot of time in Dublin but nothing prepared me for the wonderful response from the RDS visitors and the friendliest show ever! It was lovely to meet so many of our Irish customers. A great moment was the large group of young girls who literally squealed out loud when they realised we had a very well known visitor come to say Hi ... the delightful this_esme who was incredibly busy for days signing autographs for the hundreds and hundreds of fans queuing to meet her.
We are now just back from a super busy week at Horse of the Year Show. It was great to see everyone and so pleasing to see riders come to the stand wearing their Black Heart leggings that they bought at HOYS last year! The shows are a really good opportunity for the Black Heart Team to meet our customers and actually see the product being tried on and worn. I was very grateful for the help from my gorgeous friend Eby as it was a very busy show, especially at the weekend!! We ran out of some sizes in leggings and hoodies at the show so had to have them sent out directly from our office at Black Heart HQ!
Next up is Your Horse Live in November followed by Olympia in December. At both shows our stand is in similar locations to last year. If you are around do drop in for one of our special cookies!!
So, plans for Black Heart's third year ….. we have some very exciting new products in the pipeline, more shows and trying to improve on everything we do! We are continually tweaking our products, sizing and currently working on improving our packaging to be more environmentally friendly and working out ways to reduce our carbon footprint. We are heading out to visit our main factory soon to sign off new designs, develop prototypes for new products and see all the wonderful new fabric samples they have for us. We are very proud of our factory which is female led and has a National Sustainable Development Award plus a Carbon Footprint Certification for their positive efforts towards a greener environment.
With our growth and success we are pleased to be able to use our position to raise funds through our range of Limited Edition Charity Hoodies with all profits going to the A-Sisterhood organisation. A-Sisterhood seeks to empower, support and protect women worldwide through a series of international causes and charities. Click here https://a-sisterhood.org.uk for more information about A-Sisterhood's current causes including Stop Acid Attacks in India, Female Genital Mutilation, The Black Mambas, South Africa's first all-female anti-poaching unit and the UK homeless women's charity Llamau.
Finally, a massive thank you to all those who have supported Black Heart over the past two years, I am so grateful to everyone. So many exciting plans ahead! Thank you.
Erin x