Their creativity unleashed after the birth of “Hot Stuff”, Emma and Hayley developed 11 products in the next nine months.
The sleeves were all designed based on a traditional matchbox but once again, the scale they were working on proved an issue.
They were working with fonts of 4pt or less which still had to look right and be legible. Also, the information had to be ‘informative’ and humorous, based on the traditional matchbox label.
Naturally, the contents had to fit and many a potential supplier was eliminated at the first hurdle.
If the description on Amazon was 50mm and the sample received was even a millimetre larger, it could not be used.
Emma got impatient (unusual for her to be fair) and took to phoning up the suppliers directly, supervising them as they measured their product and getting them to tell her the exact measurement to the millimetre and what the standard deviation was!
They were rapidly collecting a range of unsuitable mini dog toothbrushes or vintage nappy pins.
Another major consideration was the business name.
Whilst the product range was ‘In A Matchbox’, Hayley was concerned that if this range did not take off (she of little faith) it would be difficult to diversify.
The whole concept was based on the idea of this wonderful thing in a tiny box with concept ideas coming from the posters of the flea circuses of Victorian times and Barnum Brothers.
Inspirations came from Alice in Wonderland and The Little Matchgirl - they wanted to get across the idea of this marvellous thing in a matchbox.
A ‘Marvel’ in a matchbox was a runner but a certain film company showcasing people with freakish powers had dibs on “Marvel”!
In the end they decided to make a new word, a portmanteau (as explained by Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland) joining together the sounds and meanings of two existing words.
“Marvellous” and “Thing” became ‘Marvling’ - they added “Bros. Ltd” to make it sound grand.
It never occurred to them that anyone would think they were men, but like everything Marvling, they like that not all is as it first appears and it is just two suburban mums running the show.
