About Hiho & Co - Be all you can be.
At the heart of Hiho & Co, lies the wish to get like-minded people in a room together, to share their love of lovely products and photography.Hi, I'm Emma, the MD of Hiho Silver, founder of the Hiho & Co day and I believe in the power of collaboration and how when we spend time together and raise each other up to "Be all you can be", we really can make a difference to our own lives and the lives of others. So I got together with some of my online friends and we ran our first Hiho & Co day in September 2018 at the Fish Hotel. Gorgeous locations and great food has always been an absolute must for us as a start point!What we do on a Hiho & Co day is bring together a carefully curated selection of brands, some of our ambassadors and a select group of customers, mainly small businesses, bloggers and photographers. We sell tickets to the event so everyone has a chance to come and we love the diversity that this brings to the room.
The day provides the opportunity for our guests to work with us and each other in hands-on workshops, enhancing and developing their brand and personal brand skills. We all believe that this is an excellent way to give back to our customers, as well as celebrate the brands that we ourselves love and use.
So, I'll just take you back to where it all began... this was me in 2018!Have you ever looked at those gorgeous meet-ups on Instagram and wished you were there?
Me too – I used to watch them and wish that I had booked up to go, I’m not brilliant at the crafty, flower wreath stuff but I loved the creativity I saw in the days! Eventually, one day I plucked up enough courage to go to along to one and it was lovely and I met some great people, but something was missing. I went along to another one, had a great time met some really lovely people, but again, something was missing for me. I thought about it on the way home and realised that I’d met a few people who were ‘my tribe’ but a lot of the lovely people I met had very different priorities and ambitions to me. I respected this in them and loved hearing about what they do, but I wanted to talk about dogs and horses and fields and how to fit things in when you’re running a business, a horse, a household – all 3 of the above.
As I talked to more people in my role as MD at Hiho Silver, and took a look around on the internet, I realised that the equestrian and country world didn’t really have a day where you could just come along and be you and unashamedly indulge in your love for all things social! Luckily enough, I knew a group of ladies who had some amazing skills to share and when I outlined the vision of the day to them, they were so up for joining me. Before I knew it, we were up, running and selling tickets.
I can honestly say that each and every one of us had our hearts in our mouths as the first people arrived for the first one at the Fish Hotel in the Cotswolds. What if we weren’t enough? What if the ticket buying guests didn’t enjoy the day? What if the food was rubbish?
We shouldn’t have worried, the ladies we met that day were amazing. They were so ready for an event like this and we absolutely loved sharing our knowledge, learning from them and getting to know them and the brands who kindly gave their time and their products. At the end of the day, as shattered as we were, we were all talking about when we’d do the next one!
The combination of instaskills, styling and just general swopping of stories went down so well, that we’ve kept it as part of what we do, but we changed it up for the second Hiho & Co day held at Blackdown Shepherd Huts and we changed it again for the third one, which we held on 4th November 2019 at our spiritual home of Forde Abbey (Hiho started life there 26 years ago!).
The date for our next one was Monday 27th April, 2020 but we had to postpone it due to the Covid lockdown, however we did run a free virtual one on the day for our Group members.
Hiho & Co - Brand Curators is brought to you by the following very talented ladies and me @emmawarren_1:-
Rachel from @rachelbraggphotography Melanie from @mackenzieandgeorge
Your Event
Our latest Hiho & Co day took place on Monday 13th September. This time, we were off to Oxleaze Barn in Gloucestershire, yet another a gorgeous location that we had exclusive access to for the day. We had a fab day working on self-development with like-minded people.
We were delighted that the amazing Laura Collett (@laura_collett on instagram) joined us for the day as our afternoon speaker - talking about her Olympic gold in the Equestrian Eventing and her journey to get there.
You can find us on on Instagram at @hihosilveruk and Facebook - keep tagging us with #hihoandco in your posts and keep us up-to-date with what's going on with you.
Sign up to our Hiho & Co Newsletter to receive news about our next event.
Your hosts
Emma Warren - Hiho Silver
Emma Warren is MD of Hiho Silver and is also just launching her own brand as Emma Warren - helping entrepreneurs to grow their businesses.
As you can imagine her days are busy, and although one day might see her designing jewellery with the Hiho team, working on sponsorships and collaborations, and higher level plotting and planning, the next day will see her working on photoshoots and packing orders with our office angels Michelle and Amanda at busy times.
Emma has a pretty impressive career and actually trained as and is a fully fledged accountant. She’s worked in engineering and manufacturing at director level, has launched and sold a number of businesses.
Nowadays, if you don’t find her working with the Hiho team, you’re likely to find her on her other business, Dimpsey, which provides luxury glamping experiences on her farm in the Blackdown Hills of Somerset - or doing the business development for Blackdown Shepherd Huts.
Melanie Clarihew - Mackenzie & George
Melanie Clarihew is one half of iconic luxury leathergoods brand Mackenzie & George. A bootstrapped business built with husband Chris, M&G has become a well known name within the country and equestrian circuit.
Starting her career at 18 years old in London marketing agencies, Melanies ability to identify and and find what resonated with a brands audience quickly propelled her through to roles working in product placement and experiential marketing for brands such as Honda and Red Bull.
Now nearly 10 years in to building M&G, Melanie has added a lot of skills to her repertoire - and has learnt a lot about building a business, managing teams and a 360 degree approach to ecommerce, wholesale and marketing. Her current role is wide ranging - incorporating (but not limited to!) design, marketing strategy, social media management, graphic design, HR and new business development, but she always has the overall core values and direction of the business front of mind and confidently steers the now team of 6 through the steady, sustainable growth of the business.
Rachel Bragg - Rachel Bragg Photography
Rachel Bragg, from Rachel Bragg Photography, is a Brand & Business photographer from the South West.
Having spent nearly 20 years in Sales & Management roles for 2 global sports giants, Rachel stepped away from a successful career to pursue her growing passion for photography and in the following 10 years honed her skills first in equine event photography and then as a horse & dog photographer. Today she sits firmly as a Brand photographer with an ever-expanding portfolio of clients – many from the rural business sector, which she thoroughly identifies with given her own background with horses and countryside life.
With an eye for the details her photography style is often described as reportage storytelling, highlighting the little moments or smaller stories. Rachel has always enjoyed flatlay photography, and not just taking the images herself, but encouraging others too. Not only does this method produce outstanding results but it also leads nicely into another skill Rachel is keen to share, and that’s batch content creation.
Events
Still not sure?
If what’s holding you back is a little bit of nervousness about coming along to an event on your own and not knowing anyone, we’d like to reassure you that we’ve all been there! Hiho & Co is all about supporting each other and everyone goes out of their way to welcome new people and make them feel included and people have made new friendships and found a community that they belong to by coming along to the day.
If you’re still not sure, please do feel free to message me and ask any other questions.
Don’t end up kicking yourself afterwards because you wish you had been a bit braver and pressed the button.
Love Emma x (DM me at @emmawarren_1 on insta if you need to)
What Previous Attendees Are Saying...
Take a look at our previous events on #hihoandco on instagram
Don’t just take our word for it – here’s a few words from some of our previous guests.
"What I loved about the Hiho event, was that it was a great chance to meet up with friends I have made on social media and I also made a few new friends too. It was very well organised and the food was fantastic. Can’t wait for the next one X" - @estherinwales
"Amazing people with fabulous knowledge and a ever growing community of social media friends who would probably never have met if it wants for Hiho and Co" - Gem Gilbert
"What a totally fabulous time we all had at the ‘Hiho and Co ... Be all you can be’ instameet in January. This was the second one of these I’ve attended and my confidence is building, thanks to their incredible team of hosts" - Tracey Callahan
"I can’t wait to see what the team comes up with next, & no matter what, I already know it’s going to be an awesome day & I need to reserve that day’s holiday to feed my soul." - Becky Wren
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