As part of our Sbri & Friends giveaway celebrating the best of Dorset's small businesses, we caught up with Sammy Murphy, founder of Pier Journal.

As part of our Sbri & Friends giveaway celebrating the best of Dorset's small businesses, we caught up with Lauren Forecast, brand manager at Dorset Tea.

As part of our Sbri & Friends giveaway celebrating the best of Dorset's small businesses, we caught up with Andy and Claire Burnet, founders of Chococo.

We’re not even three weeks into the new year and yet 2022 already seems so long ago. For most of us January is a time for refreshing, goal setting (or committing to a new-year-same-me, if that’s more your thing) but it’s also a great opportunity to reflect, take stock, and recap on all there is to celebrate from the last twelve months. Some great things happened in the Sbri world in 2022 – our first artist collaboration, new product launches, and some pretty cool press features too. 

Our small business first dipped a toe in the world of PR in 2021 (we wrote about it here) but that was just the beginning. 2022 saw Sbri products popping up in magazines, newspapers, blogs and websites all over the shop, and it’s always so exciting to spot a new feature. We love to see it. So, in the spirit of celebrating big and small victories, here’s a round up of some of our favourite press snippets and editor-approved Sbri products from 2022 in case you missed them the first time round…

It’s that time of year again: it’s getting dark at 4pm, there’s a waft of gingerbread syrup in the air, and the office Secret Santa is upon us once more. We love the Christmas season in the Sbri Studio (give us the sparkles, the food, the twinkly lights…) but we know present buying can be hard going, especially when inspiration has run dry and it feels like last Christmas was only a few months ago, surely.

So if you need to find a gift for someone you don’t know that well, or you’re struggling to find the perfect present for someone you do, let us help solve your Christmas shopping dilemmas. Take our gift finder quiz and find them the perfect personalised present from Sbri in just 5 easy questions…

“Hey Sbri, I love this purse - but can you make it in vegan leather?” – is a question that lands in our inbox from time to time. We’re a leather accessories brand with a sustainable focus, offering beautifully handmade colourful personalised bags and purses (and more!) that aim to make a big impact on your mood but a small one on the planet. From our materials to our production methods, packaging and beyond, we consider our environmental footprint at every step and try to run our small business in the most sustainable way we can. 

So why don’t Sbri offer a vegan alternative to leather, when the vegan lifestyle is so heavily associated with sustainability? It’s a big topic, one that we’ve already covered in this blog post asking how sustainable is leather, and this blog post debunking 5 myths about sustainable fashion. In today’s post we wanted to break it down a bit more and share three reasons why we don’t currently work with vegan leather at Sbri. We’re going to discuss whether vegan leather is good for the planet, whether vegan leather is sustainable and why we’re dubious of the term “vegan” to describe it at all. Let’s get into it…