Archive for Jo Stroud

Fabulous’ first visit to Baselworld

April 30, 2013 at 10:15 am · Filed under All About Jewellery, Jo Stroud, Watches, What's Happening at fabulous!

Jo and Sinade visited Basel at the weekend to see The World Watch and Jewellery Show! Sinade tells us about their time there.

Myself and Jo were inspired and excited about what Europe and the rest of the world had to offer during our first ever trip to Europe’s biggest Watch and Jewellery show, Baselworld.

After a very efficient train and tram journey to the exhibition hall (where we even spotted a Rhino), we arrived at the exhibition hall on Friday morning. We swiftly entered the main hall and were overwhelmed with the sheer size of this show. The hall was full of world famous Swiss watch brands such as Rolex, Tag Heuer and Raymond Weil with stands that transformed the hall into a high end shopping destination -Breitling even had a fish tank!

We spent the first day exploring everything the 6 halls of jewellery and watches had to offer.  If felt like a cave of wonders, with everything from highly embellished animal rings to show stopping pearl designs. During our exploration we found a new French brand, GL, who have a stunning array of designs in gold and silver. The delicate, cut out designs in the rich shade of yellow gold were fabulously chic and screamed high summer in Marrakech. We’d love to see this brand at fabulous this summer!

The scale of the show was nothing like we’d attended before and it was the perfect setting to see some of our existing brands as the global successes that they are.

Swarovski was particularly amazing with a stand that sparkled. They had a stunning exhibition of all the aspects and history of the world renowned Swarovski brand, from their amazing catwalk pieces to the gemstones they cut and the newest additions to their popular collection. This was also the first opportunity we had to see the complete collection of watches that Swarovski design and these will arrive in our Bath store and online shortly! Each design we’ve picked exudes glamour and sophistication and of course a lot of Swarovski sparkle!

Swatch had its own ‘Planet Swatch’ exhibition that showcased every Swatch design from the past 30 years. It was wonderful to see such a vast display of their designs and a nice surprise to see how so many of their retro and quirky designs are still best sellers today.

We caught up with Calvin Klein and Kenneth Cole and had the chance to sneak a peak at their Autumn/Winter collections and their new advertising images. Both have released stunning designs and striking advertising campaigns, with gorgeous new models. There were so many designs myself and Jo didn’t want to put down, so we know they will be on everyone’s wish lists for Christmas 2013!

We finished our trip on Saturday night with an event hosted by Ice-Watch. We caught up with some familiar faces from the UK and were given a tour of some of the new designs that will hit fabulous stores this summer, whilst enjoying pink Moet Champagne and some Ice-Watch themed canapés in all the iconic Ice colours. We are particularly excited about the love, the pantone and party designs.

Fabulous knows the importance of finding exciting new products for our customers and Baselworld was a great opportunity to find something unique.

Watch this space for more exciting developments that we spotted in Basel, from must-have new designs from Lulu Guinness, to a couple more brands that are on the fabulous wish list!

Sinade x

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Kenneth Cole A/W 2013

 

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Sparkling Diamonfire

 

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Sinade with super size Swatch

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fabulous at Bath in Fashion 2013

April 23, 2013 at 10:38 am · Filed under All About Jewellery, Events, Jo Stroud, The fabulous Team ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

We showed fashionistas what we have to offer them during Bath in Fashion Week 2013. With events going on all around the City we love getting involved every year, and this year we went big!

Bath in Fashion Week got off to a great start for fabulous, we served Bubbly and canapé’s in store and watched the flash mob’s in Southgate Square, there was so much going on.

roland-mouretOn Monday Jo was honoured to be invited to hear visionary designer Roland Mouret being interviewed by Susannah Frankel of Grazia. From the front row Jo heard all about Roland’s inspiration and design process. Roland Mouret curated the Norman Parkinson exhibition which we went to see that night. Roland Mouret loved the moment of privacy captured between Parkinson and his models, and it is this intimacy Roland hopes to achieve with his designs. Jo loved the idea that his designs were created for real women, not just models and designed to give freedom of movement – which led perfectly to the ‘Exhibition of Mouvements De Femmes’ by Norman Parkinson, which we went to see that evening. Champagne flowed and the photographs were exquisite, a pretty fabulous Monday all round!

Thursday was a busy day for us at fabulous, with an event and catwalk to organise and party to attend (I know, poor us!).
elinor-jo-lynFrom 12.30pm, Jo Stroud of fabulous and Lyn Bromley of First Impressions hosted a Styling lunch at Hall & Woodhouse (the first of many – watch this space). We were delighted to welcome over 40 guests to the fabulous lunch and loved talking through this seasons jewellery trends. Lyn gave an insightful talk on styling, wardrobe personalities and how to pick colours, shapes and scales of jewellery to suit you. We also enjoyed a two course lunch with wine, which gave us plenty of time to chat to our fabulous clients and provide one on one advice.

model-catwalk

Cut to Thursday evening and we’re at the Assembly rooms getting ready for two catwalk shows featuring fabulous alongside other great brands such as French Connection, Reiss, Phase Eight and Lk Bennett. Once all the preparation was done, we settled down on the front row and joined 600 other guests to watch our Nikki Lissoni, Swarovski and Thomas Sabo jewellery sashes down the catwalk.

We had a great view of the catwalk and were sat just across from Made in Chelsea’s Jamie Laing! Jaime’s Famous Candy Kitten Store was also showcased on the catwalk with fabulous.jamie-mic

We just had time to pop along to the Ted Baker store for catwalks and cocktails from the amazing team at Circo (a fabulous favourite of ours in Bath) we loved the Summer range from Ted Baker and enjoyed more shopping at the beautiful store.

We ended the week with more bubbly and canapés in store. A huge thanks to everyone who helped out, modelled and came along to beautiful Bath to make it a truly fabulous week, we can’t wait to do it all again next Spring!

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UK Jewellery Awards – FINALISTS!

April 16, 2013 at 3:12 pm · Filed under All About Jewellery, Events, Jo Stroud, Pandora, The fabulous Team ·Tagged , , , , , ,

The UKJA party was hosted at London’s slick Groucho Club sponsored by the sparkly and fabulous Tresor Paris! We’re absolutely delighted to be selected as finalists in two categories, Retail Star of the Year, sponsored by Jolyon Marshall and Marketing Campaign of the Year, sponsored by CMJ Media.

The winners of the UK Jewellery Awards will be announced on July 4th at a gala dinner, which Jo (Stroud, fabulous owner), Sinade Prosser (Nominee for Retail Star award and manager of fabulous Solihull) and Becky Johnson ( Manager of Pandora Bath and fabulous Bath) will be attending at the Natural History Museum on behalf of team fabulous.
Time to dust of those red carpet dresses ladies! We can’t wait for the awards, and want to say a huge congratulations to team fabulous, as well as all of the other retailers and designers shortlisted. Also, a massive thank you to all of the fabulous well wishers on both Facebook and twitter.

Retail Star, Sinade from our Solihull store

Retail Star, Sinade from our Solihull store

Retail Star of the Year, sponsored by Jolyon Marshall
Sinade Prosser, Fabulous

Pandora Tree of Life Campaign

Pandora Tree of Life Campaign

Marketing Campaign of the Year, sponsored by CMJ Media
Pandora Bath store launch – Tree of Life Start Your Own Story

UKJA Finalist

UKJA Finalist

Keep up to date with news on the Retail Jewellery awards by following #UKJA, @JewelleryAwards and @FabCollection

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Lauren Pope visits Fabulous!

April 8, 2013 at 11:14 am · Filed under All About Jewellery, Events, Jo Stroud ·Tagged , ,

Owner, Jo Stroud, tells us about the recent Lauren Pope visit to Fabulous Bath.

Lauren Pope with Jo Stroud and Becky Johnson

Lauren Pope with Jo Stroud and Becky Johnson

We were delighted on Saturday to have Lauren Pope, one of the stars of reality tv show, ‘The Only Way is Essex’, come to do a personal appearance for us at Fabulous in Bath. 

Lauren has recently become the face of new Dutch jewellery brand, Nikki Lissoni – an exciting new collection of composeable necklaces with interchangeable ‘coins’ which allow you to create numerous different looks in Silver, Yellow Gold and Rose Gold.

 It was the first time most of us had met Lauren, and we were extremely impressed by her professionalism and hard work on the day, as well as her warm personality. 

Long before she started appearing on TOWIE, Lauren was a highly successful businesswoman in her own right, having established a very successful hair extension business (Hair Rehab London – www.hairrehablondon.com ) backed by Dragon’s Den entrepreneur Peter Jones. She has now bought Peter out of the business, due to its success. Having started her career as a glamour model, loved by all the lads mags, Lauren is also a talented DJ, with bookings all over the world.

Far from being simply a tv personality, we all found Lauren to be warm and engaging, with plenty of time and friendly words for everyone who wanted to meet her, and her enthusiasm never flagging as over 250 people lined up to meet her over several hours.

She is a great ambassador for the Nikki Lissoni brand, as she loves the collection, and owns several pieces. With her gorgeous looks, Lauren would make any brand look glamorous, but the Nikki Lissoni collection looks great on everyone, the sheer choice in terms of necklace length, size, colour of metal, and designs of coin making it the perfect must-have fashion collection.

Come and see the new Nikki Lissoni collection in your local Fabulous store, or on-line. And look out for Lauren’s next appearance for us in our Solihull store – coming soon!

Jo xx

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Happy New Year!

December 28, 2012 at 2:09 pm · Filed under All About Jewellery, It's all about Fashion!, Jo Stroud, Perfect Presents, Things we Love, Watches ·Tagged , , , , , ,

2012 has come to an end, and we’ve had a brilliant year at fabulous!
Jo Stroud, owner of Fabulous, was selected as one of the ‘Hot 100’ in the jewellery industry; our Bath store moved to be bigger and better, whilst we opened a new Pandora concept store alongside it; the year saw many new arrivals to the fabulous team in all our stores and on the web team, and new designers joined our collections such as Diamonfire & Pure Attraction, including an ever growing collection of watches, with new designers such as Lulu Guinness & Glamrock!

Now we look forward to 2013, a new year for more diverse and vibrant collections, new celebrations, and of course new year resolutions (which we will keep this time!). Keep up to date with all that is happening at fabulous by following us on twitter and facebook, and keep checking our blog for the latest trends, events and the know on the best collections throughout the year!

Let us begin the new year with a guide for all things fabulous for January and the best designer pieces to add to your collection or to give as a special gift for a celebration this month.

SALE

We currently have up to 70% off designer pieces making this the best time to add to your collection or someone else’s! Get online for some fantastic discounts on designers such as Lola Rose, Chan Luu, Alex Munroe and more. For all those Chlobo fans out there, we currently have 50% off selected pieces, including the fun Ice Pop collection! We also have something for our male customers, with 25% of Toy watches and 50% off bracelets and cufflinks from designers such as Fred Bennett!

Chlobo Ice PopAlex Munroe

Birthstones & Zodiac signs

The official birthstone for January is the beautiful Garnet, a semi-Thomas Saboprecious stone also known as the “Pomegranate Stone” due to its deep red colour and resemblance to the fruit. The Garnet signifies loyalty and friendship whilst it gives the wearer commitment and truth. Thomas Sabo’s deep red garnet charm is the perfect charm for all those fiery personalities, which would look stunning hanging from Thomas Sabo’s Black Obsidian Bracelet!

Those born between December 22nd – January 19th have the zodiac sign Capricorn, whilst those born between January 20th – February 18th have the zodiac sign Aquarius. Team a birthstone charm with a zodiac charm in collections from Nomination, Thomas Sabo or Pandora for a personal and unique accessory! Thomas Sabo’s charm bracelets can hold up to three charms, whilst with Nomination and Pandora, you can mix them in with as many as you like!

Ideal for special birthdays or occasions are initial charms and bracelets, featured in collections from Trollbeads, Nomination and Daisy. Another favourite is Trollbeads Little Silver Scroll bead which gives you 10 characters x 10 lines to compose a personal message for someone special, or to mark an occasion!

Trollbeadsscribbles necklace

Romance

For a romantic touch, look no further than Linda Macdonald or Sphere of Life who feature delicate collections of necklaces. The beautiful Scribbles necklace from Linda features 9ct Gold, whilst Sphere’s Unity necklace signifies that “we are inseparable”.

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New year, new wardrobe

Up date your look and sparkle at every occasion with a beautiful set! For something eye catching, choose a sparkling Tresor Paris bracelet and earrings, whilst for a subtle edge, Fiorelli and John Rocha ooze sophistication in Sterling Silver. For some glamour at work, accessorise with a brand new watch from Radley or Glam Rock and set the trend!

Tresor setJRoch chain set

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Christmas Kick Off Quiz

November 19, 2012 at 2:26 pm · Filed under All About Jewellery, Events, Jo Stroud, The fabulous Team ·Tagged , , , ,

For the 6th year in a row, we held our Christmas Kick Off Quiz in the stores this week – an intershop challenge designed to test product knowledge about the designers and collections that we stock, and to test the teams’ ability to come up with interesting and appropriate gift suggestions for customers, at this busy time of year.

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Free gift wrap and UK delivery

We always hold the Quiz just as the Christmas season is about to get into full swing, to get everyone excited about the collections for Christmas. It’s always a fun event – with several different rounds and various individual and team challenges – interspersed with pizza and a few glasses of wine – but it has a serious aim of giving staff an opportunity to show us how much they know. Product knowledge is always a continual challenge in a multi-brand store, with collections changing all the time and new designers being added every season – and we expect our fabulous staff have to know about over 30 different designers, from big brands like Pandora, Swarovski, Ice-Watch, to smaller designers like Dinny Hall, Lund and Linda Macdonald.

“I worked as a Training Manager for a book retail chain years ago, long before I set up fabulous, and used to create all sorts of fun activities to train new store staff. I carried many of these ideas over into fabulous, as we pride ourselves on giving customers great service, in-store and online, and that means being seriously knowledgeable, in addition to being friendly, helpful and efficient. The Christmas Kick Off has been a key feature of our training for many years, as a fun way of testing this knowledge,” explains Jo.

Training on designers, brands, materials and collections is something we take very seriously, and Becky Johnson, who manages both our Bath stores, is also our Training Manager, ensuring product knowledge is at the forefront of our staff training.

Huge congratulations this year to one of our Solihull team – Victoria, who is our Retail Supervisor – and to Natalie, who works part-time in our Pandora store in Bath, for each winning the individual prizes this year. Now we’re all set for Christmas!

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Laura and Elly practice their gift wrapping skills.

1.How many centimetres is a 16 inch chain?

2. Name at least two TV shows that Tresor Paris has appeared on? for a bonus point, where is this brand from?

3. In which Italian city is Murano Glass made?

4. Gold naturally comes out of the ground as a yellow colour, hence yellow gold. Other metals are added to it to change its colour and to harden it. What is added to make Rose Gold?

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The fabulous prizes

Answers…
1. 40/41 centimetres
2. Made in Chelsea, The Only way is Essex, London
3. Venice
4. Copper

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Bath Midnight Walk for Dorothy House Hospice

September 10, 2012 at 11:57 am · Filed under All About Jewellery, Competitions and Offers!, Events, Jo Stroud, Pandora, The fabulous Team, What's Happening at fabulous! ·Tagged , , , ,

It’s been a fun and busy weekend for Jo and the fabulous team in Bath…!

On Saturday evening, Fabulous participated in the Midnight Walk, a 5 mile hike around the hilly streets of Bath, as a fundraiser for Dorothy House Hospice. 800 women join this fantastic event every year, to raise much-needed funds for the brilliant local hospice, Dorothy House. The Fabulous team wore pink flower garlands to show how ‘fabulous’ we are, and were joined by a number of customers and friends on the walk. Everyone doing the walk with us received a Nomination charm of a moon and stars, to represent ‘midnight’ and thank them for joining our team.

The event followed a very successful day with our ‘Tree of Life’ competition to celebrate last week’s opening of our Pandora Concept Store in Bath. The cherry blossom tree was erected for one day only, outside our Pandora store, and became a wishing tree for the day, as people wrote down the memorable moments in their life that they would like to celebrate on their Pandora bracelet. We are donating 50p for every entry to Dorothy House (up to a maximum of 500 entries), and we were absolutely delighted with the response from the public.

Phillippa Watson, lead fundraiser for Dorothy House, picked out our winners at midnight, pulling 3 lucky entries out at random, one winning £500 to spend on Pandora; while the two runners up each win £250!

Jo Stroud, owner of Fabulous, explains why Fabulous decided to support the Midnight Walk and Dorothy House, with both events:

“Dorothy House is a wonderful organisation, providing practical help, support and care to people diagnosed with life threatening illnesses, and to their families, right through from diagnosis to the final stage of an illness. The Midnight Walk is a demanding but fun event for women-only, which Dorothy House organises every year to raise much-needed funds, and we felt our customers and staff would all appreciate the opportunity to join in, to raise awareness and raise money. We also decided to dedicate our Pandora ‘Tree of Life’ to Dorothy House, donating 50p for every entry, as a Pandora bracelet commemorates special events and people in your life, and is a lovely way of remembering and celebrating a loved one who has passed away.”

More donations can be made to Dorothy House, at www.justgiving.com/dhhc

Ready for the 5 mile hike!

Check out our facebook page for more photo’s from the whole day! https://www.facebook.com/FabulousCollections

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Professional Jeweller Hot 100 party

September 7, 2012 at 9:41 am · Filed under All About Jewellery, Events, Jo Stroud ·Tagged , , , , ,

After a busy day of browsing AW12 collections at IJL and a brief moment at the ‘GQ Men of the Year’ red carpet, Sinade and Anna from Solihull joined other guests from the jewellery industry at the Freemasons Hall in Covent Garden to celebrate Jo Stroud being recognised as one of the Hot 100…

The party, hosted by Professional Jeweller, kicked off at 7.30pm in the historic Freemason’s Hall, with guests ushered into the grand room at 8.50pm to hear the names of all the Trendsetters, Retail Stars, Business Big Shots, Trailblazers and Nextgems of the jewellery industry for 2012.

Sinade and Anna took their seats in the hall alongside Jo Stroud, owner of fabulous, eagerly anticipating the list.  When Jo Stroud was announced as a Retail Star they couldn’t help but cheer and support Jo as she was recognised, deservingly for her hard work and achievements over the past year.

Jo wasn’t the only familiar name at fabulous to be recognised, Tresor Paris’ Lillian Louski and ChloBo’s Chloe Moss also got their name in the 2012 list!

After the big reveal it was party time, guests worked their way back into the main hall and enjoyed live music, celebratory drinks and delicious canapés whilst mingling with and congratulating the Hot 100!

The Venue: Freemasons Hall

The Band

Waiting for the reveal!

Jo Stroud with Bering’s Henrich

Anna, Sinade and Jo with Daisy’s James Boyd

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Fabulous makes the Hot 100!

September 6, 2012 at 9:55 am · Filed under All About Jewellery, Jo Stroud, What's Happening at fabulous! ·Tagged , , ,

Jo Stroud, owner of Fabulous, is selected as one of the ‘Hot 100’ in the jewellery industry!

The Hot 100 is an annual project run by the UK’s leading jewellery magazine Professional Jeweller. Each year the magazine’s editorial team selects 100 individuals from the UK jewellery industry that it believes have shown true innovation and contributed to the UK jewellery industry. The list is kept entirely secret until it is revealed at the Hot 100 party, with a commemorative book created profiling each Hot 100 star, with an outstanding portrait photograph taken by the staff photographers of Harpers Bazaar.

The evening kicked off at with a champagne reception inside the sumptuous Art Deco Freemasons’ Hall in Covent Garden, on Tuesday 4th September. Hundreds of guests turned out in their finery for the event where champagne and vodka flowed long into the night with the Swing Ninjas keeping guests entertained.

Professional Jeweller editor-in-chief Rachael Taylor said of the event: “The Hot 100 2012 was an absolutely stunning event. The Hot 100 party recognises the best of the best in the UK jewellery industry. Everyone who has made it into the 2012 Hot 100 has excelled in the past year.”

http://www.fabulouscollections.co.uk/Information/About-Fabulous/fabulous-Make-The-Hot-100.aspx

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Our new Pandora store is open!

September 3, 2012 at 9:47 am · Filed under All About Jewellery, Competitions and Offers!, Events, Jo Stroud, Pandora, The fabulous Team, What's Happening at fabulous! ·Tagged , , , ,

It’s been a busy few weeks for Jo, Becky and team in Bath as they’ve been working hard to open the new fabulous Pandora Concept Store! Jo explains:

‘We were thrilled last week to open our first Pandora Concept Store, in Bath. Opening at 5pm last Thursday, with bubbly and canapés, the store has been transformed over the last 3 weeks from its former life as a pink ‘Fabulous’ store, to its new look in crisp clean white as a dedicated Pandora Store. Now that Fabulous is in its new, larger home, just across SouthGate Place, we have two beautiful stores in the lovely SouthGate development in Bath, for you all to come and see!

Peter Andersen, Pandora UK and Northern Europe President, popped in for a visit on our opening day, and loved the store. With our ‘Tree of Life’ coming this Saturday (8th), giving people the chance to win £500 to spend on Pandora, we’re in for a busy opening week in the new store. So, if you happen to be in Bath in the near future, pop in and see Becky and the team in Fabulous and Pandora!’

Peter Andersen, Pandora President, with owner Jo, Store Manager, Becky and Michelle from Pandora

Our ‘Tree of Life’ is set to look fab, and we would love it if you added your own memories to it.

In reflection of Pandora’s ‘unforgettable moments’, all are invited to write about five ‘unforgettable moments’ in their life and attach it to the tree, to enter a draw to win a £500 Pandora voucher to spend in Bath!

We’re looking forward to reading all your special life moments and to seeing you soon!

For more details, and to download the entry form, please follow the link to our website.

http://www.fabulouscollections.co.uk/tree-of-life.aspx

Check out our Facebook page for more photo’s of our fabulous Pandora store!

https://www.facebook.com/FabulousCollections

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