Katie & Jane Annual Review: The Year that was 2014… Our Second Year in Business!

Happy New Year and Happy Birthday to us! 

We are now officially two years old and into our third year of business. We have decided to make our annual review a recurring habit and so, as with last year, this blog post looks back over the last 12 months, selecting our highlights, the moments that mattered, what we have learnt, the favourite bits and the challenges we had to overcome.

Apps…

April 2014 saw the launch of our first app Countdown Keeper in the App Store. We developed Countdown Keeper as a simple app to allow us to learn everything we possibly could about the journey of app development and app marketing. We had spent most of 2013 evaluating trends in the App Store and felt that the countdown apps that were available could do with a makeover plus we could see lots of simple features that could improve the experience for consumers of this type of app.

One thing we did do was underestimate the time it would take to test the app – especially for two perfectionists like us, but, in April, we felt it was ready to launch the first version of the app. It was the first time we coined a term we now use frequently in the business; ‘minimum loveable product’ – as long as we know our target consumer is going to love it in its minimum form, we will get it out there and make improvements as we go along.

The most surprising thing of all is that 50,000 people have downloaded Countdown Keeper (something we never, ever thought would happen!) and the authentic app reviews and emails we get from our users are so supportive and exciting to read.

You can find Countdown Keeper in the App Store here, free to download, but to unlock access to all of the features you can upgrade the app for £0.69/$0.99. Our first major improvement and update will be completed by the end of this month.  You can see how our growing community of users love Countdown Keeper and join in with all the fun we have on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter & Google+ too. www.countdownkeeper.com

Social Media…

2014 saw us further establish Katie & Jane as a social media training offering. We had a whole lot of fun working with the team at Virgin Trains in 2014, helping them to further their expertise in social media – they really do have one of the best customer relations team we have ever worked with. Working so closely with the team we have realised how valuable social media toolkits are and so, for 2015, we have some exciting changes on the horizon resulting in lots more toolkits and an online hub especially created just for them! Watch this space…

We also spent a lot of effort on our own social media channels in 2014. We know how effective they are as a marketing tool, and more importantly an amazing way to hear from customers and people in the network. We currently juggle 11 separate social media channels for our business all with their own strategies and target audience. We are enjoying watching them grow organically and testing which are working best for us too – you can’t go too wrong with social media if you are learning from it all the time! 

You can find all our social media channels on our relevant websites throughout this blog post, and to see Katie & Jane across social head to the hashtag #katieandjane on Twitter, click here for Facebook and follow all our inspiring images across the whole of the business on Instagram and Pinterest.

Our ‘By Katie and Jane’ blog is still going strong and we truly love documenting our journey. We can’t wait to look back on our posts ten years from now and we hope you enjoy reading them, but mostly we hope they are helpful and inspiring – as simple as that!

Food…

The greatest, scariest and challenging step forward in 2014 came about this time last year when we decided to start taking the idea of a vegetarian hot dog truck seriously… and there was no turning back once we’d decided our new venture would be called Not Dogs!

Not Dogs was created because we struggled to find mouth-watering veggie food and trustworthy meaty meals while out and about at festivals and outdoor events. Ever since we created the idea, we have put the consumer and our brand values at the forefront of the many daily decisions we make, most of which we had absolutely no experience in at the beginning.

What a difference a year makes, from concept to us making it happen; our highlights have been Lovebox, Festival No6 and ending the year at the Oxford Christmas Market. We were runners up in Virgin’s search for the 'Tastiest Start Up', just missing out on the title but finalists as Virgin Food Entrepreneurs. You can see our pitch to Richard Branson, Paul Lindley, Hemsley & Hemsley, Michela Chiappa and Mina Holland in the video below (we're at 5 mins 47 seconds in!) Write ups in Stylist Magazine, making the final 30 in most inspiring women and praise from Elle Magazine, then finishing with wonderful review in the Oxford Times Business Section ended the year on an incredible high.

It’s been the hardest work of our lives, Katie has chef fingers now and Jane has endured many guacamole and French’s mustard explosions, but we have had the best fun, met so many amazing and supportive people who already love Not Dogs and of course some of the funniest characters who have had us in tears laughing. For 2015 we have lots of plans yet to be finalised but could involve a London pop-up venture, Summer festivals, European adventures and much, much more! Keep up to date with us on Twitter, Instagram and find out more here www.notdogs.co.uk

2015…

Who knows what this year has in store, but we are already working on lots of changes to Katie & Jane – all good we promise! We have an exciting new online project which we will be launching by Spring, a new app to start developing, Not Dogs events, social media projects and lots of fun! As always, you’ll find out about it first here.

Have a positive and motivating January, here’s to the next 12 months!

Katie & Jane x