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In Conversation With... Toasted Crumpet
“The eureka moment was when I put the phone down, having just turned down what I had previously thought would be a dream job,” reveals Jo Clarke who turned her back on a glittering career in the City with Price Waterhouse to launch her card, prints and gift company Toasted Crumpet. As every crumpet deserves, PG gives Jo a good ‘grilling’ about the trials, tribulations and triumphs of juggling a business with a young family.
With a beaming smile almost as wide as the handful of Retas Golden, Silver and Sunshine Tickets she was holding, a jubilant Jo Clarke, founder and creator of Toasted Crumpet bounced into the organisers’ office at PG Live to redeem her riches. This was further evidence that Toasted Crumpet’s dazzling debut at the show the year previous was not a fluke, when the company’s stand was equally as well blessed with special tickets, testament to the groundswell of retailer endorsement for Jo’s British country style of illustration that graces her cards, prints and giftware.
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PROGRESSIVE GREETINGS WORLDWIDE
And, what’s more, post PG Live 2018, orders are now winging their way to France and Australia as a result of two new distributor appointments. Meanwhile, on home turf, with five agents now on board, the retail representation of the brand is expanding as is consumer brand awareness (enhanced by its presence on Not On The High Street and at select consumer shows). “I vividly remember setting up at PG Live in 2017 thinking: ‘If this doesn’t work then perhaps I am not destined to be a card publisher.’ Thankfully the response I received blew me away and spurred me to do so much more,” says Jo. Although she had always loved painting and drawing, with a natural tendency to countryside imagery due to her farming upbringing, until she set up Toasted Crumpet in 2016, her working life had been in the corporate business world. “I took a business degree, joined Price Waterhouse and became a chartered accountant in
Top: Jo Clarke, founder of Toasted Crumpet with one of her mugs on the steps of her studio. Above: Bees feature strongly in Toasted Crumpet’s portfolio - on cards, stationery and giftware. Left: One of the Toasted Crumpet Spring Season designs. Below left: A display of some Toasted Crumpet products in National Trust’s Polesden
the City. I loved it and it was great for 14 years,” explains Jo. However when the time came for Jo to go back to work after maternity leave with her second child it was crunch time. “Lee [Jo’s husband] and I decided that it just wouldn’t work for both of us to commute in and out of London. Plus I wanted to spend lots of time with our little boys, but be involved in a business too,” explains Jo. It was when Jo turned down a part-time post with Price Waterhouse, that nailed