by Liz
December 5, 2019
5 Things We Learnt in 2019
From pizza lunches to Afro’s breakfasts, sad goodbyes to happy hellos, 2019 has been a full, stressful, happy, and rewarding year for Tall Pink Gumboots. Here are five things we’ve learnt along the way:
1) It sucks to say goodbye
It was a sad day this year when we said goodbye to our graphic designer, Rayne. She was with Tall Pink Gumboots since its early days and was such an integral part of our growth, lending us her visual skills and expanding our services. Our graphic design department was left in good hands though, as we hired the amazing Warren at the end of 2018 and he’s taken to Tall Pink Gumboots like a duck to water. The team grew even more this year in March when we hired Courts as a copywriter to (among other things) whip up captions and write blog posts for our clients. We look forward to seeing what new projects our very capable team tackles in 2020!
2) Westville is full of delicious food
Pizza, strips and tjips, sushi, eggs benedict, you name it, we tasted it all this year. From birthday sushi lunches in the office to end-of-project celebrations with mimosas and breakfast spreads, we’ve eaten our way through the Westville area. It’s a blessing and a curse that the TPG office is situated right above Juke’s Pizza, which we can confidently say makes the best wood-fired pizza in the area. The siren call of their lunch special never fails to tempt our team members to abandon their homemade salads and give in to the irresistible taste of cheesy pizza.
3) Ring-making is harder than it looks
We’re not ones for cheesy corporate team building, so we opted instead for pink gin and a ring-making workshop with Michelle Robyn Jewellery. For our 2019 outing, the Tall Pink Gumboots team was welcomed by the talented Michelle into her Station Drive workshop and shown us how to sand, stamp, and solder some silver rings of our very own. We walked away from that incredible evening with unique rings of our own design and making, and with a new appreciation for jewellery making – it’s definitely not as easy as it looks (and we’re not sure if the gin helped or hindered!)
4) Every cloud has a silver lining
Our chief boot Liz and her right-hand woman Cally are clearly superwomen, because they somehow found the time to launch a second business this year while still manning the wheel of TPG. Silver Lining Gumboots splashed into the scene in April this year at Splashy Fen Music Festival and has been steadily picking up steam ever since (you’d think we were all obsessed with gumboots). You can spot their stylish gumboots at First Thursdays and markets around Durban, or if you absolutely must have a pair right now you can shop them online. Follow them on Instagram and Facebook.
5) It’s important to unplug
There are pros and cons to working in the world of digital marketing and social media. Pro: you can work just as effectively snuggled up on your couch at home as you can from the office. Con: you always need to be online. After a frantic period preparing our clients for the Christmas season and the new year, we’re looking forward to unplugging and taking a break. We want to say a huge thank you to all the amazing clients we had the pleasure of working with this year. We can’t wait to see what adventures the next year holds!
