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About Us
 The great thing about starting your own company is that it can be anything you want it to be. I'm not just talking about lovely quality products, about sales, marketing and finance. I'm also talking about ethics, about translating who you are and what you believe in into your working environment, into how you work with your colleagues, your customers, your business relations. At Lavender & Sage we firmly believe in kindness, honesty, fairness, and a great sense of humour. We believe in giving back when we can.
For many years I worked as a property restorer and Interior Designer, which meant living on building sites. Lavender & Sage was started for Jessie, my liver-spotted dalmatian who was then 13 years old, so that our work place should be warm and dry and without steel toe cap boots to step on her pretty Princess' feet. I used the contacts I'd made during the three and a half years we'd lived in Provence and away we went. Lady Jessie was always firmly in control, you must understand. Even our courier said: 'In the end, everybody reports to Jessie'.
My beautiful darling Jessie passed away on 2nd February 2008, but her memory lives on in Jessie's Trust. Read all about Jessie's Trust and how it's helping to raise much-needed funds for animal charities.
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IN MEMORIAM
Christer Klingwall
2 July 1954 – 20 April 2009
My husband and partner Christer passed away completely unexpectedly on 20 April, after having been a cornerstone of my life for 26 years.
He was the financial brains behind Lavender & Sage, our own lovely Finance Director, and was a never-ending support to me. One of the million things that I will miss so painfully, is how proud he was of me, and of everything I did. And how he was always there to pick me up when I fell.
He was the dearest, sweetest, funniest, most intelligent, caring and wonderful man in the world, and he and Jessie were the loves of my life.
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Ethical trading
You can buy from Lavender & Sage with a clear conscience.
As well as checking the credentials of all our suppliers, we aim to have minimum impact on the environment ourselves. Also, we would never never knowingly sell products that contain animal ingredients, or have been tested on animals.
As much as possible the packaging and stationery we use is recycled, biodegradable or recyclable, or any combination of these. We are always on the lookout to improve.
But: first and foremost the items we sell are of excellent quality and are meant to last.
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Some of our Suppliers
Comptoir de Famille
French supplier Comptoir de Famille specialises in authentic reproductions of beautiful objects from the past. Imagine the kinds of lovely bygones you might find in a typical French brocante, or in a corner of the attic - handmade, individual and showing small imperfections which add to their charm - and you'll get the flavour of what Comptoir offer.
Some Comptoir goods are manufactured outside of the EU. As is the case in the EU, however, these factories are regularly checked, conditions are good and workers are paid a living wage. Absolutely no child labour is employed.
Their body products and candles contain no animal ingredients, nor are they tested on animals.
Les Sculpteurs du Lac
High up in the French Alps, deep in the woods and beside a narrow, fast flowing mountain river you'll find Les Sculpteurs du Lac. It was worth the hour long, hair-raising drive to get there, as you'll see when you look at their products. Les Sculpteurs is a family business, quintessentially French with a truly original style, unlike anything else you will have seen for sale in the UK sofar. They aim for exceptional quality, and they're not prepared to sacrifice their ethics for the sake of business growth. Just the way we like it. Wonderful products, very nice people.
No Nastys
No Nastys is a handmade soap company dedicated exclusively to producing ethical, pure, natural French-recipe soap made without nasty chemicals, additives or colorants and using only the highest food-grade ingredients. Environmentally sound production and packaging.
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Media Relations
Our marketing consultants are Eggbox Marketing. They have been involved with Lavender & Sage from the start, and provide a range of services from copywriting and managing our email newsletter, to strategy and planning.
Working alongside Eggbox is Sam McArthur of Forty First who handles our search engine marketing and has helped Lavender & Sage gain high rankings for hundreds of keywords. Sam enjoys working with small and medium-sized businesses and seeing them compete with the big players in the search engines.
Our PR is handled by Grylls + Reade (www.gryllsandreade.com), an agency that specialises in interiors & lifestyle public relations. A unique mix of experience, enthusiasm, imagination, and expertise, not to mention excellent media contacts, makes Grylls + Reade second to none in its sector. For press enquiries please see our Press page.
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