A personal letter from Rob Johnston, chief executive of Cumbria Chamber of Commerce

Hello

I wanted to update about the relaunch of our Made in Cumbria initiative.

We’ve been running Made in Cumbria for the past 10 years to help food, drink and craft businesses find new routes to market.

But times change, and we have to change too, which is why we’ve embarked on a radical rethink for the whole initiative.

Central to this is the new website, which features stunning imagery and tells the stories behind member businesses.

Its primary purpose is to drive traffic to members’ own websites.

We’re implementing a major social media campaign will promote this new site.

Made in Cumbria already has 11,000 active followers on Facebook and Twitter and we’re adding Instagram to that mix.

There are big changes too at the Made in Cumbria shop in Kendal.

We want this to be much more than a retail outlet where people buy members’ products. We’re making it a destination where members can hold tastings and product demonstrations to interact with their customers.

We’ve been running tastings and demos all this week to promote the relaunch and, in future, we’ll be streaming some of these live on Facebook.

There are also plans to take the Made in Cumbria brand on the road at events.

The final strand is the Made of Cumbria hampers, which have long been popular with hotels and as corporate gifts, particularly at Christmas.

We’re keen to offer these year-round as an authentic taste of Cumbria and the new website features an e-commerce section, where people can order hampers online.

You can hear more about our plans for Made in Cumbria in this podcast. 

I hope you’ll agree that these are exciting times for Made in Cumbria. If you’re a food or craft business, we’d very much like to have you on board.

Membership is open to businesses whose products are wholly produced or substantially manufactured and finished in Cumbria.

To find out more about membership call Michelle Wiggins on 0845 226 00 40 or email michelle@cumbriachamber.co.uk

Kind regards

ROB JOHNSTON, MBE, FCIM

Chief executive, Cumbria Chamber of Commerce