Once Upon a Time...

Who Are We?

Hi Everyone! My name is Gemma, my husband is Paul, and we are the husband and wife team behind The Krafty Goose! We are proud parents to our two amazing, energetic and beautiful young boys, and live in the sunny seaside town of Southend in Essex!

We both worked in an East London based, front-line, emergency service role from young ages, which is where we met in 2012. We worked shift patterns with long hours, quick turnarounds, and more often than not, were like passing ships in the night when on opposite shifts, but we've made it work over the years!

   

Where The Journey Began

We got engaged in snowy New York City in December of 2014, which ignited my creative flare to create our ideal "Pinterest" wedding. I've always had a passion for Art & Design, and enjoy making things myself, so decided to start creating the wedding of our dreams. Whilst doing this, I realised I could not only do this for myself, but others too, where my first small side-hustle began. I ran this business successfully alongside my full time job for a couple of years, but once our wedding had passed, I decided to take a step back, concentrate on my career, and enjoy married life!

 

Our Family Grew

In 2018, our family grew with our first little bundle of joy, Zac. This sparked my creativity again, where I began making items for him, from fabric letters to wooden toy boxes, and in 2020, two weeks into our first "Lockdown", our second whirlwind Fin arrived!

The Krafty Goose began in 2020 whilst on maternity leave, when a work colleague of Paul's asked whether I'd make his daughter a toy box, which I agreed, and set up a Facebook Page for "The Krafty Goose" to photograph and show my creations. At the time, there was never any aspiration or intention to build this into a fully functioning business, just something small and fun to provide to friends and family. But, look how far we've come?

   

Let's Fast Forward to Now...

The Krafty Goose steadily grew, selling to customers on Facebook, then eventually moving onto Etsy. From 2020 to today, the business has excelled from fabric, scissors, staples and glue guns, to vinyl cutting, through to the business you see today, using sublimation, Direct-to-Garment printing, and home to four multi-needle embroidery machines.

Thank You for Being a Part of Our Story

The main aim of building this business was to be able to spend so much more time with our little family, doing the school drop offs and pick ups, watching swimming lessons, being at rugby training, not having to work every bank holiday or Christmas, and just simply making these memories as a family means so much to us. We couldn't do this without you, so a massive thank you to you as our customers. We thank each and every one of you for purchasing from our small business to enable us these opportunities. 

If you've made it this far, well done!

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts! :)
Gemma and Paul xxx