Month: November 2010

This blog is the start of a slightly different tack from the recent ones. The past ones have been mostly about shows etc. This and a number of subsequent blogs will be about the new ideas I am having a go at and how I get on with it, what worked, what didn’t and how I get round the issues – which may be finger trouble on my part or just not reading the instructions properly, not that that has ever happened.

The reason for setting up all these forthcoming blogs is so that others who are attempting similar activities can see that it can be done, it is worth the effort and that they are not the only ones feeling a bit overwhelmed by some of the new skills that need to be learnt just to set up one new idea.The new idea I would like to cover in this blog is making a YouTube video of me explaining the background to one of my liqueurs, namely Hebridean Whisky Liqueur. I have thought about doing this for over a year, got the equipment needed but not started. Analysing this, I have come to the conclusion that it is the number of areas involved in actually getting a video on YouTube that has put me off even starting. This is ridiculous as I have explained the background to Hebridean Whisky Liqueur thousands of times at consumer shows over the years-I can do it without thinking. But what happened when the camera was on….

Well, to my amazement, I started to stumble over the words and forgot half of what I was planning to say, It was almost as if not having an audience to perform to, made it impossible to be natural.

So what now. I have two options – keep practicing or try making the video with an audience to explain it to.. My first attempts were so bad that I deleted them right away. By next week, I aim to be able to send you the details of the new YouTube video – has to be less than 1 minute or no-one looks at it apparently.

Have a nice weekend.

Roy Lewis

I’ve been thinking about the results of our customer survey and how I can tie in an special offer to coincide with the busiest Internet shopping day running up to Christmas. It’s an odd date for us because we can usually ship liqueurs almost right up to 3 days before Christmas. Customers often have an idea that they need to get their orders in really early to get what they want in time for Christmas. As I aim to send all our orders on a next day service, this is the reason I can keep up with demand at that time of year. Watch out for the offer on our e-newsletter. If you are not receiving the newsletter, you can register on our site. Here it is:

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

After the very positive and interesting feedback from our customer surveys at the BBC Good Food Show, I ma now including one with each mail order I send out – if you return the survey, then you get 10% off all your orders placed online between now and Christmas. The point of the survey is to help me identify how I can serve you, my customer, better with new products, new ideas and new services – the critical question is, ‘What could we do better?’ If you have ever watched any of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmare series, you will recall that this is the question he is most interested in finding out customers views on, right at the start of a project to help turn a restaurant around. Usually the owners only want to hear praise and just ignore really helpful suggestions from their customers.

Very wet and horrible weather here in Argyll today-here’s to a better weekend.

Kind regards,

Roy Lewis