Last year we started making plans for Chapter 2 of Gladstone / Hellen. With the rapid passage of time, these plans are now starting to bear fruit.

Life speeds by. Late last year we started making plans for Chapter 2 of Gladstone / Hellen. And, with the rapid passage of time, these plans are now starting to bear fruit.

With Sarah on maternity leave (all is well with her and Wynnie; she sends her love), Caroline and I have been reimagining what the company should/could look like. Losing Sarah (if ‘losing’ isn’t too final a word for a temporary -albeit yearish long- situation), really focused our minds and the general reimagining of the business has been a daily task for us since the autumn of 2025.

In truth, Caroline and I were probably too busy to do the company justice when we launched. This began to dawn on me towards the end of last year, despite the fact that we had built some good momentum.

So now, we are starting to expand the team and dramatically increase the range. We have started to work with some true pros and will have some of the fruits of this work to show you soon after Easter.

Here are four developments.

We are working on creating a small but complete wardrobe of clothes, both for men and for women. I suppose you might call that a capsule wardrobe. I think that’s the right term. This was the plan when we launched, but we got stuck. Now we are on it and should have trousers, shoes, jackets, hats and more ready soon.

Then we are further developing our range of homewares, including, for example, a full set of crockery and accessories for dogs, as well as luggage.

And we are refreshing the website and Instagram feed to make them fresher, easier to understand and quicker to use.

Fourthly, in late April, Caroline and I will open our studio at Glen Dye as a place to visit. Now, I know that not everyone can come to Kincardineshire, but this is an exciting development for us. This open studio will be called Gladstone’s Luxury Dry Goods and will be a place for people to visit in order to immerse themselves in our world of products.

Through various businesses in Wales and Scotland, our team produce a load of products -from honey to hats, from jumpers to notebooks- all of which start, somehow, with us. This studio will be a place to come and find out more about those: part exhibition space, part brand experience, part inspiration catalyst, and community chatroom (IRL).

Everything (almost) here will end up for sale at some point.

The space is small; it’s really just a glorified shed with good light and a wood burner that we sometimes work from/dream in when we are at Glen Dye, but we wanted to make it immersive for all of our guests, of which we have several thousand each year. The idea at Glen Dye is that the business has three distinct foundations, all of which complement each other.

1. That we provide the best accommodation anywhere in Great Britain (we were recently voted Best in The World for Wellness by National Geographic).

2. That this is run by amazing people.

3. And that we offer a selection of fantastic experiences layered on top of this. The studio will be one of those experiences, open to guests most of the time or by appointment. For fun, inspiration, magic.

So, onwards!

Lots of exciting things lie ahead, we are super energised by them and hope that you will be too.