Our History (GS) | Susie Watson Designs

I founded Susie Watson Designs with the belief that a thing of beauty is a joy forever. I pride myself on creating classic designs that stand the test of time. When you buy from us, you can be sure that you own something you’ll love for many years to come. 

I describe the Susie Watson Designs look as elegant, yet warm. I always say that homes are for living in and not just looking at. The relaxed nature of my collection means that our designs work for modern family life, creating looks that are warm and welcoming, yet stylish. View our Gallery Showcase.

In the Beginning

I never thought of myself as a designer. I certainly wasn’t trained, but I have always had an obsessive interest in looking at things and wondering why they don’t quite work.

A lot of my ideas are based on the things that I’d like to be able to buy but cannot find them. Certainly, that was what inspired me at the beginning. I still judge things by whether I want them myself – a test that rarely lets me down! I do not believe you can successfully design for ‘other people’!

First Design Project

The first thing I designed was a dress. An elderly aunt gave me some old velvet curtains that I definitely did not want, but they were the most beautiful colour. I thought they might make a great dress which I badly needed at the time. I loved the dress and found the design process riveting.

The velvet dress led to all sorts of enquiries. I quickly learnt that flattering as it was to be asked to design a one-off dress for someone it was vastly uneconomic in terms of time and effort. It was a learning curve. I decided to make a small collection of clothes twice a year that people could buy from.

I ran this little clothes design business for about 5 years. I loved it and I was thrilled by its success but I desperately needed to move on from dealing with each customer individually and the timing could not have been worse. I had 4 small children by then and reluctantly I gave up and concentrated on being a mother, promising myself that I would take the business up again when I had more time to devote to it. The next stage was going to require the sort of dedication that was never going to work with being a mother!

Laying the Foundations

10 years later, when my husband Hamish left his job in a property development company we started our own small ‘Design and Build’ team. I had by then cut my teeth on a large and hideous Scottish lodge where we eventually lived for 18 months. It was not only hideous but had been burnt out in a fire so was stripped of any period detail. Painstakingly we rebuilt it putting back panelling, shutters, and fireplaces along with all the ordinary things you might expect like kitchens and bathrooms and entirely changed the layout. I was on-site daily for almost 2 years.

We moved back South and spent the next 10 years rebuilding large houses in central London. During that period, I took on design projects for other people, particularly designing kitchens and windows. It’s so rewarding to see how houses can be transformed; the more horrible the house the more fascinating the remedy.

In 1998 I persuaded Hamish to buy a derelict freehold shop and flat that we refurbished with the idea that I would keep the shop for my own use. I was almost 50 and increasingly aware that time was running out if I was going to start a business outside the property world.

We ran the shop as a contemporary art gallery. I have a passion for paintings and still take a stand at the AAF once a year. My daughter Anna who had just completed a business degree agreed to help me. Along with paintings we sold furniture which I designed and painted with a cousin, and an eclectic range of other handmade homewares, some designed by me, but with products from other artists as well. I was forever dying pompoms to add to the cushions we made and once dyed 36 metres of silk for some curtains. It was an interesting and charming concept with none of the formality of mainstream galleries but sadly not financially viable! The amount of time spent making things was impossible to cover!

We closed the shop in 2003 and since then have developed the SWD range to where it is now.

Not without considerable problems along the way but also with some exciting achievements. The biggest challenge we faced was finding the high-quality production we needed to make our products in larger quantities. The delightful small factory we originally used in Stoke quickly ran out of capacity and the factory we bought in to help was unable to produce the quality we needed. There was no one else locally capable of this sort of factory-quality work.

The studio we eventually found in Sri Lanka, spent a full year working on the techniques before they could start production. That year I made eight, two-week visits, and seemed to be rarely out of an airport! I always included a few days in Southern India with the textile studio which started by just making table linen. It was a relief to move on from the highly complex and technical problems we were dealing with in the ceramics studio to the naive charm of the textiles and it was at that time that a lot of the designs were created. At first, I often designed products just to help keep the studio busy in a time of recession. Many of these have become core products for us now. It is strange to think how things evolve!

Both the studios we use now are exceptional. Not only in the quality of their work but in the way they are run. I am a constant visitor and do all of my developments in the studio working with the people who make the products. We deal directly with both factories so we know where the money goes! We pay a lot for our products compared with others but we expect a very high standard in return and I take ethical production very seriously. We are in fact almost the only customer of our little Indian factory and it’s really nice to feel that we are making a contribution to the lives of the local people. It is a wonderfully happy place and a joy to work there!