Interview with Tile Fire

Greetings

Things have been a little bit up in the air at the moment, what with the mum being in hospital and all that. This leads to lots of deep thinking and pondering, which is not always a good thing. Everyone needs a little helping hand at times, whether it comes in the form of a hug or in the form of sound advice. So I have been thinking a lot lately, about the support I have received, and am still receiving, from the The Prince's Trust 

If you are a small business, self employed, freelancer kind of person, it is sometimes hard to do all the networking that you would like to. So I have decided that I would feature some of the other locally supported by the Prince's Trust type creatives, on this blog and shine a spotlight on all their hard work. I might then branch out to other small business like folk, but I wanted to start with my Prince's Trusties first. Not sure the 'Prince's Trusties' is a cool enough nickname for us though? So I hopped over to a 'Random Gang Name Generator' site and input 'Prince's Trust'. After it suggested 'Black Pimp', I swiftly left and came back here and will stay with 'Prince's Trusties' for now. Please feel free to suggest something else!

First I had to find some of these other creative folk, so I met up with my original Prince's Trust mentor, Heather Peers and wrangled some names from her. Okay that is slightly untrue, she gave the names of some super talented people and I then contacted them to see if they were willing to answer my hard hitting questions. 

 First up is.....  Tile Fire 

Who are they? 

We are Tile Fire Ltd. That’s me, Andrew Cousins, business founder and director/procrastinator and Rachael McNally, blogger and press handler, sandwich maker and all round great girlfriend!

Where are they?

We are based in Liverpool City Centre, operating out of The Static Gallery on Roscoe Lane. You can pop in anytime to see what we do, but we trade mostly through our website www.tilefire.com

What are they?

Tile Fire Ltd. specialises in the application of digital images to ceramics and porcelain. Our main focus is applying designs, photographs and images onto ceramic tiles for use in the home, business or workplace. We create single patterned tiles as well as tile murals, both of which make a great feature wall.

Tile Fire in Action

What is the best thing about working with the Prince's Trust?

The Prince’s trust is great because of the wealth of business experience the people who volunteer there have. If you have a problem with any part of your business, they will find someone who can guide you through it or find a relevant course that you can enrol on to learn whatever it is you need to.

Any advice for budding entrepreneurs/those striving towards self employment?
It’s an uphill struggle! When I started out I thought I would be a millionaire by the end of my first year, but unfortunately that looks unlikely. Be realistic and keep plugging your business at every opportunity, if potential customers don’t know you exist how are they going to buy from you or use your services!?

Social Media Time

Website : Tile Fire Ltd

Twitter : @TileFire

Facebook : Tile Fire 

G+ : +Tile Fire

Many Thanks to Andrew for answering my questions! 

Please have a look at their website and follow/like/stalk all the various social media playpens, it really makes a difference to small businesses.

Tile Fire was also interviewed by The Double Negative: Studio Series: Andrew Cousins. This interview gives you more than a peek at the cool studio space, where the tile magic happens.

I am now seriously wishing that I had an area to tile, how does a life size Grumpus in tile form sound to you? 

Where would you like to tile and what images would you use? As the folks from Tile Fire have demonstrated, any image could be used. I know a lot of photography folk, wonder if they would be tempted to use their own photographs create something tiled in their own homes? 

I really liked Andrew's point about continually plugging your business, otherwise how do people know that you exist? I think that really speaks to where I am at, at the moment. I know I am good at pushing others to interact and shout about their own stuff, but find it hard to sell myself. So, I have made some grown up decisions about the future of 'The Doodologist', which I will be talking about very soon. How about that for a cliffhanger ending? 

Dun dun DER! Drama Button.

(I laughed WAY too much at that button)

(Still laughing)

/runs away 

In all seriousness if you have any questions you would like to pose to myself about The Prince's Trust, please do leave a comment or send me an email. 

Soon to be interviewed are The Style Factory and AJ Media