Croft & Cleo started, if we're honest, out of frustration. It felt like every home and garden shop stocked the same things — mass-produced, interchangeable, the kind of items you'd see in three different stores in the same afternoon. At the same time, there was a real love of art in the house — paintings, statues, one-off pieces — but a growing realisation that filling a home with genuine one-off artwork simply isn't realistic for most people, ourselves included. Somewhere between those two frustrations, the idea for a small Scottish home and garden shop began to take shape.
The Gap We Kept Finding
It's one thing to notice that shops feel samey. It's another to work out what to do about it. What kept nagging was the gap between two extremes: mass-produced homeware on one side, and truly one-off art on the other, with very little in between that felt genuinely interesting without being unattainable. We wanted pieces with some character to them — a little unusual, a little unique — at a price that didn't ask too much of anyone.
From Vinted to Something of Our Own
The other half of the story is less romantic and more practical. Selling a few things on Vinted turned out to be something we properly enjoyed — the finding, the choosing, the small satisfaction of a sale. It wasn't a huge leap from there to wondering whether the two things — the love of interesting, characterful objects, and the enjoyment of selling — could be combined into something more deliberate. Croft & Cleo is that combination.
Finding the First Pieces
Sourcing has been a mix of approaches, and honestly, still is. Local markets have been a good source of inspiration, and a visit to the Royal Highland Show in Edinburgh — and its craft market in particular — proved genuinely useful for finding things with real character. Alongside that, we've gone looking for wholesalers who aren't just pushing the same mass-produced lines everyone else stocks, but who work with makers producing something a little different. It's still trial and error, if we're honest, but it's turned up some lovely things.
The pieces we keep coming back to are our woodland moss mushroom ornaments and our molten glass bowls — no two are quite the same, and both sit at a price point that doesn't ask too much of anyone. They're the kind of object that tends to spark a conversation when a visitor spots one on a shelf, which is exactly the quality we look for.
A Few Weeks Old
At the time of writing, Croft & Cleo has genuinely only been live for the last couple of weeks — so there's no long history to tell yet, just an honest account of where things stand. We're currently looking at making our own soap for the Siabann range, rather than sourcing it in, which feels like the right direction for that part of the shop. We've also brought in a few items, like our salt and pepper shakers, that don't sit 100% within the brand in the strictest sense — they were simply too charming to pass up, and we'd rather be honest about that than pretend every choice was a perfectly calculated one.
The biggest challenge so far has been getting the full range of stock live with photography that does each piece justice, while also learning — properly learning, from scratch — how to bring people to the website in the first place. Neither is solved yet. Both are ongoing.
Between Loch Ness and Strathglass
The look and feel of Croft & Cleo is shaped by a very specific stretch of country: the hills above Loch Ness, sitting between the loch to the south and Strathglass to the north. It's quiet, changeable country, and it's the backdrop we have in mind whenever we're choosing what goes into the shop.
Come Along With Us
We're also on Etsy, and just getting started on Pinterest — which is entirely new to us, and something we're genuinely enjoying learning about as we go. If you'd like to follow along with a shop that's very much still finding its feet, you're welcome to.
Browse the full Croft & Cleo collection — or explore Soap & Bath and Garden & Plant Care if you'd like to see where this started.