Introducing...Part 1...

We've been "in" the business now just over year and have made many wonderful connections and people we'd like to call our friends over this time. We thought we'd share a little more about us so our customers can get to know the people behind the scenes!

I am Gillian, the fairer half of Sovereign Hobbies, I'm lurking in the background silently packing/posting/web controlling/emailing/tin labelling/stock taking and tea making. Modelling isn't my hobby, I'm a bookworm and foodie; married to the other half of Sovereign Hobbies and mother to his bairns. His influence has brought me to the world of model making and made me head-scrutineer of his modelling work!

James (or Jamie) is the true enthusiast in this house. (He is the one to talk to about specifics of colours/products/building - then he'll nudge me to pack it and send it to you!)

Having built models since he was a small child, it was his desire to grab a personal stash of WEM Colourcoats before they disappeared that ended up in us acquiring the rights and stock to Colourcoats paint in late 2014. Thus ensued a mad dash to hire a van, find babysitters and take a long drive down to the other side of the UK to collect 26,000 tins of paint the week before Christmas. Sovereign Hobbies was born that weekend via a Facebook account & many calls to our friendly, patient and obliging accountant!

So we arrived home in Scotland with, literally, a shed load of paint and nowhere near enough models to use it all up. I pitched up at my laptop with 2 kids on my lap to learn how to build a website and Jamie went back to his forums to brag about his "stash"! He calls it advertising apparently. Jamie unfortunately has a day job to pay the bills so in between this and running a household, we cracked on with getting Sovereign Hobbies going. 

Our next step was to carry out a full inventory of stock. A few tins may have got shoogled (Scottish technical term) about in the van and mixed up on the way home so this took a teeny weeny bit longer than expected (otherwise known as 3 solid weeks in a bitterly cold garage in Scotland in winter). Then we were ready to get going...or not.

As many will know, enamel paint brings its own obstacles with it in the form of actually getting it in the post legally. Thus entailed months of emails & phone calls before we could get a courier to understand that it wasn't kryptonite and wouldn't spontaneously combust in the postie's hands. We finally got there with the help of Parcelforce and after package testing we were ready to go live! 

So on the 17th June 2015 - I clicked the button to unlock our store front and sat with baited breath. 90 minutes later we had our first order and thanks to you, our fantastic customers, it hasn't stopped since.

As you'll see, we have changed a bit since we started up, we are now stocking some first-rate products from various other manufacturers alongside our authentic paint range. We are releasing Colourcoats Coloursets (more to come soon), our own Colourcoats thinners and constantly working to improve our ranges and products we offer to our customers.

So that's basically us! We've met many wonderful people through Sovereign Hobbies and many fantastic customers that have been a pleasure to serve this last year. We hope you'll continue to follow us and as always - let us know what you want and we'll do our best to get it for you.