BEHIND THE SCENES OF AN EXCITING WEEK AT MIA TUI

Some of you may have seen the Facebook Live we did from Charlotte's house on Monday. But for those of you who haven’t watched it yet (it is still available to view on the FB page), I thought I would write a short blog post about what’s going on this week at Mia Tui.

We mentioned in the live that on Friday and Saturday this week, we have planned a photoshoot.  Earlier in the Summer, we posted on FB asking for any customers who may be interested in taking part and modeling for us. We had a fantastic response which because of the large numbers of emails we received we had to whittle it down to a handful of our wonderful customers. (We plan to make this a regular Seasonal shoot so will be looking for more customers to take part next Spring/Summer).

This is something that Charlotte has never done before but as with everything she does I have no doubt it will be a great success and although we are both in a state of nervousness in the lead up to the shoot, by Saturday evening I am sure we will be able to relax and know it was a great couple of days.

As I mentioned, we started planning this earlier in the Summer, it started with Charlotte knowing she wanted to update the look of the website so that customers could watch a short video of each style on a model. We know it is hard to buy online with just an image even though bag sizes are listed in the description, having models to wear a bag is something Charlotte has been looking at doing for a while.

The idea of using customers rather than professional models for Mia Tui is something Charlotte is very passionate about. Our customers are, after all, what sets Mia Tui apart. The enthusiasm for the brand and loyalty that you all have for Mia Tui is very apparent to the team. Our customers are real women who want to see the bags on other real women.

At the start of the planning process, I don’t think that either Charlotte or I realised the amount of organisation the 2 days would actually require. We have had to plan each bag, colour, look, style, clothes, shoes for each of the models. How hard could it be? Well, when you think that we have over 15 styles of bag with both current and future Autumn/Winter colours you start to see how detailed spreadsheets were needed!

The joy of Mia Tui is that we can have an idea in the morning and by afternoon it has come to fruition, it's fast-paced and as a team, we work really well like this. From concept to delivery everyone knows their part and we enjoy the immediacy of the brand. This project, however, has been entirely different.

All our models are different sizes, all different complexions, so we add this to the mix and the spreadsheet grows! Finally, on Monday after 2 days of clothes shopping (which sounds like great fun but in actual fact was quite overwhelming), we double checked the spreadsheet and realised we were as organised as was possible.

Tomorrow we start to move all the clothes, shoes, bags etc.. over to the Expose Media studios who we use to shoot all our videos. Our models arrive from all over the country early on both days and we will, of course, be meeting them to welcome them into the team for a couple of days.

We plan to go Live on FB and Instagram frequently during the two days of shooting, so if you follow us on social media do keep an eye out. We will be showing what is going on behind the scenes and chatting to our models. You will also get a preview of the Autumn/Winter colours and a couple of styles we are yet to launch!

The excitement of the week doesn’t end there! On Friday night, the team is off to see Jane McDonald on tour at Milton Keynes Theatre. For Charlotte and I, there will be a mad dash from the studio to the Theatre to meet Sarah and Debbie in time for a great team evening out. Jane’s PR team have been great in organising this for us and we are hoping to meet Jane after the show. It won’t be a late night though as of course we need to be up early to be at the studios once again on Saturday!

I hope this gives you a little insight into what’s been going on recently at Mia Tui HQ! We also have some more exciting news coming in the next few weeks and of course Autumn/Winter colours arriving too!

Have a great weekend and remember to watch out for our Live links from the studios!

Nici