Transforming your home and office
A personal touch
Originally trained as a traditional sign writer, founder Adele Mackinnon spent eight years working for sign and graphics companies: ‘I gained valuable experience in the practice of sign-making and, just as importantly, met my husband whilst working my way up.
‘After leaving to have our first child, I decided to work freelance, which eventually lead to the creation of Nutmeg. Along the way, I made some wall stickers for our children’s rooms to personalise them and make them a bit special. Friends and family loved them, and I made some for their homes and offices, after which they encouraged me to set up Nutmeg and sell my designs.’
The initial design requests from personal contacts to help brighten both their homes and work spaces helped shape the product and service offering of Nutmeg Studios: alongside wall stickers that can be bought through the company’s website, they also offer signage for businesses, including graphics for walls, windows and vehicles, A-boards, clothing, merchandise and exhibition materials.
Nutmeg’s first studio
The business really took off after it was accepted onto Not On The High Street; it soon outgrew the home attic space that Adele had been operating from, so she moved into her first CapitalSpace studio in October 2014: ‘I chose the Milton Keynes Business Centre as it’s local to us, there is free parking right outside our unit and everything is fully serviced, making it hassle free to move in and maintain. I also work on my own quite a lot of the time, so the fact there is good security makes it that much better. Having a main reception is very handy as I’m not always on site for deliveries.
‘It’s great that we can scale up and down when we need as we’ve just moved in to our second unit, giving us more space to grow and add new machinery. It’s a larger studio than our previous one and the move couldn’t have been any easier. We literally moved everything across, plugged it all in and we were up and running with no stress.’
Adapting to new markets
Nutmeg Studios are clear on where they want the business to go in the future: ‘Our vision for the next five years is to continue to develop new products, increase our offering to B2B businesses and launch our range of off-the-shelf retail graphics.
‘Customer satisfaction is very important to us; if our customers are happy, we are happy. Also getting the balance between work and family life, as well as the ability to self-generate our own work to a level where we are financially independent.’
We can vouch for Nutmeg’s great designs as they were the company that created the wonderful Willen Hospice Swan stencil, which was featured in our Willen Room campaign in August 2017.
