Posted on January 15th, 2010 in inkydeep by inkydeep
Andy and I first ventured into Newquay in the early nineties and those days there was a slightly different vibe to the town which had a small yet dedicated tribe of surfers. Being well and truly bitten by the surfing bug Andy was keen to have his own surfboard. There were not many surf shops selling boards and a custom surfboard was the way to go to get a board suitable for someone learning to surf and so we were introduced to a shaper who made surfboards in a shed in his back garden.
Once in the shed Andy entered a world of templates, rails, rockers, convex, concave, nose and tail shapes, and fins. After what seemed like a very long time in the shed we retreated to the shapers house where his wife generously offered us a cup of tea. It was when I was chatting to her in the kitchen that she gave me one of my oft quoted phrases when she asked me out of the blue “… so you like shells then?” I asked why and she replied “by the look in your husband’s eyes I predict you will be spending a lot of time on your own on beaches”. And its true – in the last 20 years I have!
Sarah
Posted on December 20th, 2009 in inkydeep by inkydeep
Our blog entry of 10 October was about how, in 2005, we found a name for our surf clothing company inkyeep; a name that encapsulated the concept behind our surf clothing brand.
Next on our ‘to do’ list was to create a logo. We wanted a graphical representation of the brand.
As inkydeep is about origins; of surfing and of waves, we wanted the logo to symbolise the origins of waves and it was this concept that we took to the design agency we were working with.
Going through the design process was quite a ride for the both of us, never before having to describe our brand and the concept behind it and then watch how that was interpreted by the team at the design agency.
A number of design concepts were presented to us, we chose our design and after some tweaks had our logo – a graphical representation of what inkydeep means to us.
The parallel wave forms of the icon symbolize the life cycle of ocean waves; from the creation of ocean swells from the inky deep oceans through to that wave energy being expelled as breaking waves on a distant shore.
Andy.
Posted on November 27th, 2009 in inkydeep by inkydeep
Have had some fun over the last couple of days setting up our inkydeep profile on the music web site Last.fm. We have started to put together some of our music likes – a rather eclectic mix that we hope you will enjoy. We are thinking of putting together a couple of surfing related playlists, one of ‘surf music’ and the other a collection to get you amped before surfing. We would love to hear from you if you have any suggestions for either of these collections, either leave a comment for this post or drop us an email at contact[at]inkydeep.com.
So why not listen to some sounds from the inkydeep with a cold cerveza in hand, while you decide which of our fab soft organic cotton tees to buy?
http://www.last.fm/user/inkydeep
Andy.
Posted on November 7th, 2009 in inkydeep by inkydeep
In setting up inkydeep Sarah and I established a number of company values that we see as key to building a credible business and brand. One of these values is to ensure our fledgling business causes minimal impact on the environment – to be as environmentally sound as we can.
The reality of achieving this has been an interesting challenge – as we considered and evaluated each component and products used within the lifecycle of manufacturing t-shirts through to packaging and postage – we realised that it would not be easy to achieve this particular goal on a limited budget.
For example, our 100% organic cotton t-shirts are from a clothing producer whose products and factory are certified by the Worldwide Fairtrade Standard. This factory uses renewable “green” energy generated by wind turbines and solar power. The cotton (certified by the Soil Association) is grown from their own Indian organic farms. They’re really good but not the cheapest we could have chosen. The prints on our t-shirts are water based and the printer has an Environmental Management Policy in place. Our mailing bags are environmentally friendly – 100% degradable and re-usable. The postage labels we use on them are from sustainable resources and are also eco-friendly.
As we grow we will continue to work on reducing our impact on the environment and look at what we can give back. With our limitations we are happy with our choices and believe we have made a good start in achieving and adhering to this company value.
We are not going to keep on about it – we believe that it should be locked into our company DNA, it should (and will) come naturally to us.
Andy.
Posted on October 21st, 2009 in inkydeep by inkydeep
A big step for us today – we have placed our first advertisements!
Being a start up company we have a limited budget for marketing and advertising so we were determined that we would spend our money with an organisation we felt was right for our brand. We considered loads of websites and finally decided that Magicseaweed fit the bill. We already regularly visit the website to check out the web cams and surf forecasts and it also has loads of other info useful to surfers.
Our ads can be found under the Directory section of the Newquay (Town Beaches) and Newquay (Fistral) Surf Report and Forecast pages (the slots used for the ads are shared with others, so if we are not immediately viewable refreshing the page may bring up our ad).
Our journey continues …
Sarah
Posted on October 10th, 2009 in inkydeep by inkydeep
Since the early nineties we had played with the idea of starting a surf related business but only took that important first step in 2005. We knew what we wanted our company to be about – but had no name for it.
We found some names we liked and some names we loved and even registered domain names based on them but the one we chose we later found was associated with another company and we felt it was too big a risk to go with, and besides we wanted something unique. So one weekend we decided we had to dig deep and find a name that encompassed our ideas and personality.
Many hours were spent going through our collection of The Surfers Journal, surf mags such as Surfer, Surfing and Wavelength and various books on surfing.
The eureka moment came when I found the words “inky deep” in a short story about a dolphin and the “inky deep ocean”. A quick check on the Internet for www.inkydeep.com to our delight returned the error ‘Server not found’ – we had found the name for our company.
Andy.
Posted on October 3rd, 2009 in inkydeep by inkydeep
Well it has been a long and lively journey to get us to where we are today, we are stoked to finally have the site live. We have some fabulous t-shirts made from soft organic cotton with great designs. We hope you enjoy wearing them as much as we have enjoyed making them. We value feedback and would love to hear from you.
Sarah and Andy (ps – Andy is hoping to go surfing a bit more now!)
Posted on August 30th, 2009 in inkydeep by inkydeep
We are currently testing our new website and would value feedback from anyone who stumbles across it. You can contact us at contact@inkydeep.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
Andy.
