I have never been to India. I’ve seen it on TV, I’ve heard other people’s accounts, I’ve read all our producer stories and yet nothing was quite enough to prepare me for what I was seeing first hand; it really is a different world.

 David (Wholesale Manager) and I arrived in Mumbai on a particularly hot day, not just hot for a pale-skinned British girl, but hot even by India standards. Straight off the plane we were driven to one of our oldest suppliers. I have to admit, I was a little intimidated. I found it hard conversing with suppliers as (to begin with) my background is not wholesale. I know nothing of individual wholesale figures per product, or when shipments are due, whether we can package something this way or that, so I sat in a corner, accepted my bottled water and smiled a lot. Despite my own insecurities though they were great.

In fact they all were. I was embraced and made to feel welcome at each one of our visits despite the fact none of them knew of me prior to the trip, just a name in the Shared Earth crowd.

I quickly learnt to not get side-tracked. David has seen a vast amount of the stock already but I hadn’t. There’s a lot to take in and not really that much time to do so. I had a blast looking round, feeling nostalgic reviving old products we no longer sell, wondering "why not?”. But I put my buyer’s hat on, and I don’t mean to brag but the July 2017 and January 2018 catalogues are going to be epic. I’m already super excited.

Work aside my favourite part has been the sheer hospitality and kindness of our suppliers. To those at Aspiration, thank you so much for inviting us to your home and putting on such a tasty meal, and the same to all our other suppliers who let us sample all their home cooked delights. I’ve never eaten so much Indian food in all my life. But then again… who says that’s a bad thing? For those not in the know, authentic Indian curry is quite different to our English versions. The Indians love Dahl and mostly eat vegetarian curry with chapatis as opposed to heavy rice and … naan.