5am. Time to get up – but I must admit I stay in bed until I have completed my daily Wordle and shared it with my family in New Zealand via our text group, McWordle. Coffee in hand, I head into my home office to process orders for Tambo Teddies. I prepare postage labels, determining which bears get sent from Tambo or Toowoomba based on stock. Once the orders are sorted, I get ready for the day and do a quick run around the house to tidy up and do the washing.
9am. The store opens in Tambo, our town of around 380 people surrounded by sheep and cattle properties. I head down to capture some social media footage. I film Casey, who is managing the shop today, chatting with customers and explaining the differences between our various bear families, as well as promoting sheepskin and wool. I capture a heartwarming vignette of a customer whose husband had purchased her first teddy bear after fifty-nine years of marriage.
10am. My business partner, Tammy (above right), arrives and we go through the accounts. I’m very fortunate to have a partner who enjoys bookkeeping, since it’s one of my least-favourite tasks. We then have a Zoom catch-up with Bonnie, our manager in Toowoomba, 736 kilometres away, to check on the team’s progress and address any issues or ideas.
11am. Shhh! – we’re developing a new product, a quirky little pink piglet. Creating a new sheepskin product to join the Tambo Teddies family is a slow process. Working with our Tambo sewer, Lauren, we examine the prototypes and make suggestions for tweaking the pattern to set the ears at a more pig-like angle. He’s nearly ready!
11:30am. We’re having a Tambo team meeting and lunch – we’ve ordered from the local cafe, Fanny Mae’s, conveniently located next door. Our team meetings are very open and casual, providing a chance to discuss how things are tracking, answer questions and brainstorm. Today, we’re also celebrating with a belated cake for Lauren, who was away on her birthday.
2pm. My next task is to take stock of the skins and colours available for making our piglet. As a former wool classer, I love working with woollen sheepskin. We only have a few dusty pink skins for the piglet, so I place a call to our skins distributor, Peter, who say she has sourced some more first-cross Dorpor and Merino spotty skins, which is very exciting! These are natural in colour – not dyed at all – extremely soft to handle, and the spottiness allows us to create the most unique products – Spotty Lambos, Tom Thumbs and Toby Teddies.
3:30pm. I head back home and tackle some more computer work.
5:30–6:00pm. It’s time to knock off and take the dog for a stroll along the Barcoo River – akin to a muddy creek, it’s nothing like the mighty Waimakariri River back home. It just doesn’t have the right smell – I miss the smell of the New Zealand bush.
7:30–8:30pm. I sit down for dinner with my husband. Afterwards, I pack my suitcase for tomorrow’s trip to Toowoomba, and head to bed to watch the latest crime show. It will be an early start – leaving around 5:30am – to work with the team on our piglet.
Shepherdess first caught up with Alison in 2022 to talk about how Tambo Teddies came to be. Read her story on our website at shepherdess.co.nz/teddies-to-treasure.
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