The CZ Blog: Sasha's diary of life behind the scenes at your favourite family sweatshop

I am writing this newsletter in bed with a hangover! It was the second instalment of my friend’s big fat Indian wedding, it was fun, I got dressed up, drank way too much and woke up next to a kebab. Love that for me. If you follow us on Insta you would have seen most of this shit show develop in real time 😂🙈. I sometimes panic that I share too much, but ultimately, we’re all about keeping real and unfortunately, my real self is an absolute shambles but hopefully, that’s OK and you’re here for all the madness. In...

Happy New Year! If you follow us on Insta, you'll know I'm coming off a landslide defeat for our 2022 Employee of the Year because you decided to award it to my 72-year-old Nani instead. Admittedly, she packs most of our cards for free, but I don’t see how that’s relevant! Family sweatshop aside, I’m determined to make this a huge year for us in our pursuit of global card domination and have some exciting things planned for you all! Including but not limited to, the launch of our birthday and occasion reminder service, the best Valentine’s Day range we’ve...

I’ve clearly lost my mind but after endless grumbles about continuously electing myself employee of the month 🙄, I’ve decided to leave the Employee of the Year up to you. So, here’s a quick round up of the candidates 🎉 First up Mum. She’s chief spellcheck and sass. She’s tough love, emotional support and the reason I haven’t quit. However, she recently buggered off on holiday (during our peak season) and sent daily photos of one of our mugs living its best life on a beach. Second up Auntie: operational powerhouse, zero tolerance for my nonsense and the reason our mugs...

Ok, so it’s not so much a strike as Mum and Auntie going on a planned holiday. But still, who signed them off going away in DECEMBER in the middle of our busiest Christmas of all time!!!To be fair, it’s gone quite well, we’ve got into a rhythm and Nani has genuinely been incredible. I’ve become a mug pressing machine and have yet to print a single one upside down! Although my brother did point out that the kitchen now resembles a crack den as it's basically 80% boxes and 20% stray packing peanuts. It feels like each week is...

Since our recent success i.e., finally overtaking Clintons, Nani keeps warning me not to be a “big head”, so I figured I’d humble myself and share my top 5 business fails so far 😂🙈. Let me know if you have a favourite fuck up, number 4 definitely caused the most tension 🙃💁🏾‍♀️. Selling 20k cards to a major retailer and convincing every person I’d ever met to help us pack them, only to make like 2p in profit a card because I didn’t do the maths properly 🙃 Getting threatened with legal action by M&S despite having an actual law...