She was part of a coach party that turned up when we were in the store, this is quite normal, so the lady who I was talking to said, as the craft stores are all set in historic buildings throughout Extremadura, so they are part of the tourist trail and often have coach parties turn up. The six stores are in Llerena, Badajoz, Caceres, Trujillo, Merida and Villanueva and I think that to start my work would just go into one, I guess the Llerena one, but if I have more stuff and success then it would go into more stores. This is the association’s website – http://www.extremadurartesana.com/
She liked my jewelry and I now have to apply. It looks like we can get around the paperwork side of things by doing this in Ian’s name and we’ll use a non-specific trade name. If it is successful I can register as a business later. We can do this legitimately as long as Ian contributes to the business in some way, which he can do by being the designer.
They liked both my stone jewelry and the felt jewelry which I took in. I noticed that a lot of the things that they sold when the tourists party came in had a local theme and the sales lady made a big thing about local techniques and themes, so I think that acorns might be my first products made specifically for sale there. As the idea is a felt ball with a real acorn cap on it, which will need to be drilled, Ian can drill the holes in the top so we will genuinely have collaborated. My stone jewelry is at the high end of what they sell in the jewelry line, so I think something lower cost, like felt acorns would be great.
So, I’m off now to pick acorn caps…