Tinpot Alley: Stainless Steel Planters & Custom Metalwork

I’ve well and truly learnt my lesson about spouting my mouth off, counting chickens and all that palava after the many disasters that have befallen mostly me to be fair.

Things like:

The Canary Wharf Garden Show. (Rubbish, sold bugger all and half-wrecked the hire van.)

Free photo shoot in Gardeners’ World. (They took the photos but never told us that the planters weren’t going to be in, but we still told all and sundry to buy a copy. (All and sundry then laughed at us.))

Planters on the telly.(Rushed around like loons for a paltry link from the Channel 4 website.)

Those three things are the ones that stick in the mind, but there’s one or two other things that also crashed and burned.

And the one thing they had in common?

I bleated mercilessly about every single one. I’ve become so convinced that any prior mention on this blog renders a project useless that I’ve decided to stop doing it so I don’t put a hex on anything. (I must be more superstitious than I let on.)

So, it’s with a certain amount of relief that I can report we’ve finally been approved for a NeedIT grant to invest in computer stuff and e-commerce.

This means that we’ll have a far better computer setup and we’ll finally be able to trade properly online and show our full product range as opposed to leaving it to your imagination.

We’ve spent enough time now with a computer that’s more tempremental than your average menopausal fishwife; it also has to be said that we’ve been awfully slack with things like brochures and other offline marketing efforts aswell - or at least that’s the conclusion me and John came to in the pub after six pints of Kronenburg. (You really don’t want to know of any conclusions drawn after that.)

It also just so happens that Robo-bender Matt and Deadly Derek have finally sorted out the press tool to make up square planters without the need to get them lasered. I think we might just have the production side screwed down. (More on that another day.)

It obviously would’ve been bloody marvellous if we’d sorted out the grant and the tooling before the spring/summer as opposed to afterwards, but the point is it’s sorted.

I’d also recommend using your local Business Link, who were extremely helpful and efficient in doing our micro business review and sending us down the right path.

For designer stainless steel for your designer home, it has to be said that you can find all sorts over at Trendir. There’s still some life in that old stainless steel dog yet.

It’s not that I have a current thing for sinks at the moment, but here’s another that’s made from 16swg 304 stainless.

I do like how they throw the grade of stainless out there like a badge of honour.

They’re doing us a great favour by raising public awareness.

We regard 304 stainless as being a bit of a middle ranking stainless; it’s not as expensive or high a grade as 316, but it’s not nearly as cheap as 420.

We make most of our planters from 304 stainless as it looks the same as 316 and won’t cause you any real problems unless you’re leaving rusty spanners on them and you live on Blackpool front.

Do you recall how John trounced the competition alive in the Trawden Container Competition but I was unable to show you with what?

Well now I can.

This is the lovely little number that actually romped home in first place - not forgetting that there were only three entrants in the first place.

I never knew John had such a flair for planting.

And here’s a couple of cylindrical rusty planters in his back garden.