Millican in Cumbria Life - NW Mag of the Year

Harry will love this - Cool & Cumbrian on the front cover of this month's Cumbria Life underneath his mug-shot! Quite humbling to share the front cover with Sir Chris Bonington, Cumbria's mountaineering legend, who's 75 this year ...

Mary did us proud, 5 pages on Millican + most of the product and friends' images used, excellent.

We must learn not to bare our soul too much in these interviews though ...

Wash Out

Last weekend's Cumberland Show turned into a Glastonbury-style mud bath and was cancelled at the 11th hour. We managed to get the Millican stuff out just before the Eden river burst its banks, with the help from a little tractor-friend ...

The first time they had to cancel in its 170+ year history, which is an achievement in itself considering we're in Cumbria where it mostly seems to rain.

Such a shame for the organisers, who were ready for 20,000+ visitors in Rickerby Park. And a shame we couldn't parade Millican in front of our home-crowd, but hey - here's to 2010!

Millican in the Observer

On the "Escape" pages of today's Observer - essential kit to take away. Good old Les The Cooler Bag clearly is an essential companion for your escape away from it all ...

Phones immediately red-hot - exciting stuff, Millican's first national press coverage.

However small a beginning, a beginning nevertheless! Thank you Cheryl & Nicola ....

Millican on Tour - Royal Show

The Archers were there, and so were we - at the last Royal Show. With our new competition to win a free holiday in the Lakes. At Harry & Judy's Brackenrigg.

Apart from creating more Millican ripples with our evocative stand (as described by many) and more sales, we also learned a lot about Dexters, Charlorais, British Blondes and Holstein cattle - amazing beasts, some weighing in at over 1600kgs; now who's the daddy ...

A big thanks to Jenny & Harry (0f Gladstone fame) for their help and support, James for his Punch & Judy shows (now know all the words of by heart), Richard for his tropical interest in canvas and Howard for his magnetic charm & drinking partnership. After only 2 shows we're already starting to feel part of the travelling show-community. Cumberland & Cartier, here we come!

Home of Millican

Depending on how you got to our blog, you might not have realised a new home opened its doors yesterday - homeofmillican.com!

Last week was somewhat surreal, being able to have continuous online chats with 2 other people at 2am most nights, to get the site ready to go live. Big thank you to Liz and Dom - if they are anything like us this weekend, they will be good for nothing due to lack of sleep ...

Let us know what you think of the site + if you find anything that doesn't work, we'll get it fixed quickly. Dom warned me I would get hooked on web-stats. He was right, I've already spotted some people from Oregon and Colorado, Belfast and home in Sneek on our site + quite a few visits from Scotland after last week's show; how cool's that.

Happy browsing - just click on the logo top right.

Ripple Effect From No 336

Princess Anne inspects the Millican troops

Nick ready for action, Millican money belt and all

Harry, Mark and Derek on show with the men made of steel & leather

Dave, Stewart, Mark, Harry, Jonathan and Les having a rest

No 336 - where it all began for Millican ....

"Mum, you won't believe what we managed to fit into this van"

What a great start to the Millican Tour last weekend. The Royal Highland Show in Edinburgh was our first outing and despite the wet weather, we came away elated with the great response, feedback and our first sales.

It felt like we've finally been able to throw a pebble in the pond, with the first ripples starting to roll out from this epicentre called Millican - more than 30 people walked away with 1 or more of our products last week and many more with 1 of our little notebooks, postcards and hopefully a great first impression of the brand.

The royal connection was made when Princess Anne exchanged polite hello's with Nicky when she walked past our stand, clearly eyeing up a Harry Gladstone Bag for her favourite nephew ...

We made it back from the show in one piece on Sunday night, just. We've been working on getting the new website launched ever since, now scheduled for tomorrow - fingers crossed, could be another milestone for our fledgling brand this week.

Are we on our way to turning a pond into a lake into an ocean? Who knows. Very exciting, whatever happens.