This month we’re knuckling down for our busiest few weeks of the year as the Edinburgh Festival season gets into full swing.  Last year we had a record breaking August as visitors to Edinburgh snapped up Instakilts, See You Jimmy Hats, the ever popular Wild and Hairy Haggis – and lots more! We have always traditionally seen an increase in sales in Edinburgh during Festival time, but last year’s sales were staggering.  We discovered that the Instakilt seems to encourage people to embrace their silly side and have fun with Scottish souvenirs, which meant we also saw huge increases in many of our other product lines.   This year we expect the Edinburgh festivals to give us a similar boost.  We’ve asked staff not to take holidays during late July and August, and we’ve doubled our warehouse staff during the summer to help us cope with demand!   Wish us luck!

We were delighted to help keep participants in a famous wooden boat festival patriotic earlier this month by supplying over 100 kilt towels to a very watery Highland Games! The Crinan Classic Boat Festival, which was sponsored by The Crown Estate and Bruichladdich Whisky, is a celebration of wooden boats which takes place at the small village of Crinan on the South of Jura.    During a water-based Highland Games, complete with rowing races, row-boat tug-o-war and haggis hurling, participants were encouraged to wear tartan and so we donated armfuls of kilt towels and jimmy hats especially for the occasion! One of the festival organisers Mike Dalglish said:“We were delighted that Thistle Products were able to help us out by donating the kilt towels and jimmy hats.  Our Highland Games is a great fun event when our participants can let their hair down with some Scottish silliness, and so of course Thistle Products kilts and hats go with that spirit of fun perfectly!” Paula Gibson of Thistle Products says:“The Crinan Classic Boat Festival is a great example of the spirit of Scotland, full of fun, a light approach and plenty of opportunities for socialising. We were very pleased to provide kilt towels and jimmy hats – after all a water based Highland Games is surely one of the most appropriate places in the world to wear a kilt towel!”

A member of our Customer Care team at Thistle Products, Emma Parkinson, joined hundreds of people raising money for Cancer Research this year by running the race for life. Along with her Pink Instakilt she completed the race in 45 minutes and raised £165.00.

Thistle Products staff member, Emma Parkinson, is taking part this weekend in the Race for Life.  Sporting her pink Instakilt Kilt Towel, Emma hopes to raise funds in aid of Cancer Research UK by running the 5k in Dumfries.  We wish Emma all the best!   We hope to post some images of Emma and her Instakilt on the site next week …. tune in!

The ever popular kilt towel has been spotted on the small screen again - this time comforting Mohamed as he languished in the Big Brother jail with fellow housemate Rex.  Oh dear… we hope their incarceration wasn’t too uncomfortable, in fact we hear the deep pile of the kilt towel can make it a very serviceable blanket on cold lonely nights!