Every March, 1000’s of designers/makers/artists/crafts people etc take part in a social media challenge called March Meet The Maker. It’s been running for many years now and I’ve taken part for probably most of those.

Basically, each day (or few days this time around) there’s a prompt to write your posts about, all intended to give a bit of a deeper dive into what you do, and show your wares to more people in social media land.

I’m still doing the social media bit and posting on instagram and facebook, but this year, I’m also going to put some longer posts on my blog and Substack. So, onto today’s prompt…

“Brand Re-introduction”

Well…a few months ago, I changed my branding back to my full name. I used to just use my first name as my business name for a couple of different reasons, but folks just kept getting confused and thought my surname was “fine”.

The word “fine” in my business just refers to what I make - Fine Jewellery. I thought everyone knew what this was, but I was obviously only going on my own personal knowledge of jewellery, which is probably a little more than the average (if there is one of those) person.

I do love my surname nowadays. It’s not one of the “very” common ones, and I do like that link back to the fact that I might have a few distant Irish roots, (even if they are many generations ago)... but… when I first started at school, I used to get told off and made to feel really stupid because I couldn’t spell it! This probably had quite a bearing on not wanting to use it for my business.

I know now that I’m dyslexic, but back in the early 1980’s when I started at school I’m not sure the word had even been invented! Luckliy we now know better than to define someone by their terrible spelling, and after 48 years of practice, I can now just about spell Mcloughlin!

I’d actually been thinking of reinstating my surname for a few years, but the deciding factor was receiving a letter from a jewellery company, not even based in the UK, claiming that I was using their name. Well, they may have been called Anna too, just like millions of other Anna’s in the world, but I was a little offended that they thought their mass produced jewellery was anything like mine! They’re a big company though, and so rather than spend my precious time and money trying to prove that I was perfectly entitled to use my own name as my business name, I decided to use this as a sign to finally go back to using my full name.

Just to avoid any further potential issues, I decided to hand draw my logo as hey, nobody can try and claim that my own handwriting is not mine, and if anyone tries to copy me I’m in a pretty good position to argue my case ;)

So, sorry to everyone that thought Anna “Fine” was a real person. Anna Mcloughlin Fine Jewellery has now become my brand. My website and email addresses are still the same though, so you don’t have to learn to spell it!