It’s been an exciting year for gift and greeting card company Crumble & Core – co-founded by Jilly Mercer, Lucy Rigby and Louise Pike – who recently licensed 40 of the company’s designs to Rich and Zina Hocker, the husband-and-wife owners of the Pavilion Gift Company in the US.
Crumble & Core worked closely with Pavilion Gifts to create the initial collection, adapting the sentiments to suit the market, for example, by changing ‘mum’ to ‘mom’. “While in the production stage, Pavilion Gifts showcased us at trade shows in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Las Vegas, Minnesota and Toronto, and by the time the first stock was released in mid-September nearly all the lines had sold out,”Louise confirms.
“Zina fell in love with Jilly’s watercolour artwork, the fact that we were British, and the concept of our unique boxed silver jewellery cards,” she told GiftsandHome.net. “In addition to having licensed 40 of our images to manufacture and distribute across the US and Canada, there is a large market for scripture products in the States, so we then created an additional ten cards for their range with bible passages.”
Continued Louise: “We also did some additional artwork for them that was geared to the US. For example, in the UK, we are fond of the sentiment ‘robins appear when loved ones are near’. In the US, the cardinal is synonymous with that saying so Jilly painted a cardinal with the card reading ‘cardinals appear when loved ones are near’.”
She adds that entering into the North American market has been a fantastic journey. “We are really excited for 2024, and are currently working with Pavilion, using our artwork on china products which will launch in the New Year.”
Top: Working with Pavilion Gifts in the US, Crumble & Core has adapted sentiments to suit the market, for example, by changing ‘mum’ to ‘mom’.
