Four Years of Cherry Grove Craft — From a Garage in Wales to Where We Are Now
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Four years ago today I started Cherry Grove Craft. Not with a business plan, not with investment, and not with any particular certainty it would work. Just a laser engraver, a converted garage in Wales, and the idea that making things properly — made to order, for real people, with no mass production and no plastic — was worth a go.
It started on Etsy, while I was still working full time. A side project. Something to see if there was an appetite for it. There was. When I left my job in January 2023, I set up this website, and that's what we've been building on ever since.
Where the name comes from
My mum's name was Cherry. We live on Maple Grove. We make crafty things. That's it. I wanted a name that meant something, not one assembled in a branding meeting. It felt right immediately, and it still does.
What four years looks like from the inside
A converted single garage. Two industrial laser engraving machines that run most days. A lot of oak, bamboo and MDF. Orders coming in, products going out — every single one made from scratch when it's ordered, to the customer's specification.
No warehouse full of stock. No blanks pulled from a shelf and stamped with a logo. When you order something from us, we make it. That constraint is also the point. It means every sign, badge and keyring is yours — not a generic version of yours.
May was our best month on record. June is tracking ahead of it. We've gone from personalised gifts for individuals to a business increasingly focused on hotels, schools, companies and events — organisations that need things made properly in quantity, reliably, with their branding on. That shift has happened gradually, and it's still happening.
What hasn't changed
Everything is still made here. I still read and respond to every message personally. The materials are still the same — oak, bamboo, birch. The approach is still the same: made to order, no plastic, Royal Mail Tracked out the door.
Suzy still has her day job, but she's also the best marketing brain I know. When things get busy she's in the thick of it. Our two kids pitch in too. It's very much that kind of operation — and I mean that in the best possible way.
The goal we're working toward is growing enough that Suzy can join full time. We're getting there.
Thank you
To everyone who has ordered something over the last four years — thank you. To the businesses who keep coming back for badges and keyrings and signs, to the schools ordering leavers gifts, to the hotels who put our door hangers in their rooms: you're the reason this is still going, and going well.
Here's to the next four.
Pete
Cherry Grove Craft — made in Wales