Australia to Dubai, Dubai back to the UK. Just shy of a year since we left, we landed back on home soil exhausted, jet lagged and with a bittersweet taste of return.
Within a week we'd recovered from the jet lag, accepted we'd gone from the Australian summer back into the British winter and more or less lost the tan we'd managed to build up whilst overseas.
14 weeks have passed since our return and it's safe to say, things have got busy. (Thankfully).
The new Race & Taylor website is finally live. We've been rebuilding routines, catching up with people and trying to turn about a year's worth of ideas, screenshots and notes into something tangible.
There's also been the slightly less glamorous side of coming home. Admin, delays, playing catch up and getting back to reality. But this is no longer the same reality we had before we left, taking Race & Taylor to the next level is our new reality, putting words into practice is now the day to day.
But the brand side of things has moved on quickly.
Australia clarified a lot. We came back knowing that Race & Taylor was never just going to be clothing or coffee. It was always everything around it. The people, the spaces, the creative work, the places you end up because of cars. I've said it before but Race & Taylor doesn't belong in just one lane.
In the last 3 weeks we've been proud to announce our new partnership with Conti Monaco, something we've been working on since shortly after our return. We're expanding on the coffee side of the brand, we're no longer simply supplying and roasting coffee, we now offer custom and bespoke espresso machines, machines beautifully crafted and built to last. Quite the upgrade from a camping stove.
There's still a huge amount happening behind the scenes. Probably not enough hours in the day to do all of it properly. It's funny how quickly time passes when you compare working a normal job to now running your own business full time, ironically, weekends are now a nuisance. Petition to extend the working week please.
But for the first time in a while, it genuinely feels like Race & Taylor is becoming exactly what we always wanted it to be.
Which is a good job really, because we've got absolutely no intention of slowing down.