Developing a new Collection
Developing a new Collection
Each collection we develop involves quite some work, it's always important to maintain originality. We know, the famous Coco Chanel once said "If you want to be original, be ready to be copied". So yes, we have seen the terrible side of copying, what surprised us though is that much of the copying has been done by large companies, distributors, and others within the Catholic Gifts market - I guess unexpected.
With all that has been happening in the world recently, and the clear struggles everyone is having, we started developing a new collection last year, during lockdown, focused on family, friends, and relationships. We had a lot of time to reflect on what is important! This new collection is our Little Drops of Love® ❤️
So how do we work? We are a small team here at Little Drops of Water, we are but a few, but we have been working together now for over ten years!
We always start with RESEARCH
This is how we got started with Little Drops of Water. We looked everywhere to see if there was already someone making figurines for the younger ones. Our daughter was the one with the idea, and from there, we researched!
This is the most comprehensive part of the work that we do and this is to remain respectful at all times, to honour the representation of whichever figurine we chose to produce. We have produced over 400 figurines in our Catholic Gifts collection of Saints, Madonnas and Angels, and as one can imagine, each one is very specific in its representation, from symbols, icons, to the colour of the habits, and other parts that make the final figurine complete.
For our newest collection Little Drops of Love® which is yet to be launched, we went through hundreds of sketches. We knew we wanted a special collection representing love, affection, family, siblings, and capture special moments, so we started with this one which could be a mother and daughter, two sisters, an aunt and niece, or even a teacher and student. We didn't want to make it too defined, as it really needs to be as they said "in the eye of the beholder" to decide what it means to them.
The SCULPTURE, a step closer to finishing
This part takes some time as we need to work from the sketches to the first sculpture which will come through with some design faults, or details that work well on paper, but not so well on the actual figurines.
It's incredible to see how much we have learned through this process, especially when it comes to facial features. We've defined the facial features now for all of our collections, which make our collections unique and consistent, and hopefully in the future these will be easily recognised as Little Drops of Water designs.
So at this particular stage of preparing the sculpture, we will make changes, and we will go through at least 6 or 7 samples before we make the final one.
The FINISHED PRODUCT
This is perhaps the most exciting time for us, seeing and having in our hands the final product! This is months and months of work, finally coming together. Our Little Drops of Love® is now a collection of 23 figurines. From here, once the final collection is ready, we take it to market which is a whole other part of the of the work we do! Not all of our collections are launched in B2C. Majority is pitched to retail stores, wholesale and distribution.
