The History of the Rocking Rabbit

Our company started out as a gift shop, back in the 80's. We acquired it in a bit of a rush, no sooner had we signed the lease, when we were expected to open up and start paying rent. The upshot was that we had a shop, we had the stock, and we were soon to have the customers, but we didn't have a name! In fact, we were still waiting for a lot of the stock too, but one thing we did have was a big hand carved pine rocking horse, only it was a Rocking Rabbit(hence the logo)! This was made by a Lancashire craftsman who also made rocking pigs and elephants, and was a pretty spectacular item, well worth featuring in the bay window, which we did, dressing it with various gift items. Well, we took one look at the window, and realised that had to be the name as well, problem solved.

So in that case, how did it wind up becoming the name of a bead e-commerce business? A few years after the shop opened, we bought a job lot of beads from a jewellery company in Cambridge which had gone bust. We were amazed at how beautiful they were, lovely large antiqued silver pendants, small frosted glass flower shapes, and the like, beads had come a long way from what we had seen before, bright ugly plastic things mostly. And our shop customers liked them a lot too, even though there had never been any demand expressed before, but word got around the area.

It wasn't long before we were selling beads to other gift shops, and then we started getting people asking at the gift trade fairs and in the shop if we would sell beads by mail order to the general public.We realised that we should also sell beads this way, and again, we were stuck for a name for our new venture. So we looked at the competition, all of which were called Beads this or Bead that. We figured we might stand out better and be more memorable if we just called on our old mascot again.  And that was how the Rocking Rabbit Trading Company got started, now Rocking Rabbit Beads. We produced several catalogues, some of  which were sold in WH Smiths. Now of course, it's all e-commerce and websites, which is better for you the customer, because we can keep our site up to date with new lines constantly, as well as remove out of stock or discontinued ones to avoid disappointment, a constant problem with annual printed catalogues.

So there you have it.  A mystery explained!