Category: Hebridean Liqueur Company

Coming soon…20 steps to starting a direct to consumer business

A New Year -the ideal time to start your ‘direct to consumer’ business – what you need to know in 20 blogs.

Well here we are at the end of the year and what have you done? How about getting that business idea you have up and running in 2011? Read on….

I remember years ago when I was an employee, I just couldn’t imagine how on earth anyone could start a business and get going. There was so much that I didn’t know about and when I eventually did have to get on and start a company, because I was no longer needed by my employer, I had to learn by making mistakes, how do do it.

I have been asked for years to write down how to get started in selling something direct to the consumer, so now I have done it. In January, starting from 6th, I will produce a blog each working day until I have it all down. The focus will be on how to start a business selling direct to consumers at events and then how to build a customer base. The same principles apply for an online business too.

Once the Startup blogs are published, I will then have a go at all the new ways to start a business on the Internet. I will report back on how I am progressing, what has worked and what has not and what I did about it. I am especially interested in trying out ideas that all the blurb that goes with it says they are ‘really easy to do’.

So, the objective of the forthcoming blogs is to provide you with some stepping stones, based on years of experience, in all the areas I will discuss. This is not just the same old stuff from textbooks, churned out by yet another wannabe businessman – I have created liqueurs, marketed, sold them and developed a mail order business, on and off line, so it’s all real. I will detail too, all the horrendous mistakes I made on the way, so you can avoid them, save time and money and get to your planned end point quicker and with less hassle.

For the up and coming blogs, you will be able to discover:

  • How to plan your new business
  • Routes to market
  • Building a customer base
  • Setting up a mail order system
  • Events – choosing the right ones for you
  • Setting up your stall – what goes where
  • Talking to customers – which words work best
  • Your year ahead plan and handling doubts
  • Selling or supplying – which is more profitable
  • Persuasive words and closing the sale
  • Things not do do in front of any customer
  • Deciding what to sell and why
  • Confidence boosting measures that work

That’s just some idea of what the blogs will cover and I’ll add more content as they go along too, depending on comments during the process.

So have a good New Year, write down some ideas for 2011 and look out for the first blog of the series starting on January 6th. All the best, Roy Lewis

YouTube video uploaded at last

YouTube video now loaded and working – hebridean whisky liqueur
Mail order ‘Free delivery’ option planned for 2011

What an effort that took. After hours of wrangling with YouTube and Google login pages, managed to not only upload my first video, but also add a title so that it can be found.

Making the video was really embarrassing-viewing it is even worse, for me anyway. If you want a good laugh, just go to YouTube and key in this:

hebridean whisky liqueur

This should take you to my video where you will see a half starved looking man, dressed in warm outdoor clothes while indoors, describing the joys of Hebridean Whisky Liqueur and doing so really badly. Hollywood has certainly not missed any opportunities with me. Perhaps I will get better with practice.

Once I had loaded up the video, I have to choose what category I wanted it listed under – Entertainment or Education? You can be the judge of that.

I will be doing other videos and will let you know when they are up on YouTube. I found the whole process of getting it uploaded fine the second time round. Like many other sites, YouTube assume that you are familiar with their site so don’t appear to explain things very well. This means that it is hard to work out what to do and what they mean by all their special terms.

Facebook, on the other hand, is still complicated , but their explanations are better and on the whole, quite helpful.

On the Internet Exploration front, I have set up a new Domain to tie in with the YouTube persona I have-before anyone else did so. It is:

www.theliqueurman.com

There is nothing on it right now, but I am going to use the set up of this new site as an example of how to do it right from the start. I am not a computer person so I will be able to write a blog telling you what works, what doesn’t, what I think has been helpful etc, and I will be building up a toolbox of sites and programs that I have used to make things work. I will only recommend something that I have actually used. Now there’s a novel idea.

On the liqueur mail order front, nearly all our deliveries have been made and still a few orders trickling in. The ‘Free delivery’ option I tried seemed to be a real hit and when all our prices are revamped with VAT going up to 20% in January, I plan to have free delivery as an option or at least as a special from time to time.

Minus 10 here tonight but went for a lovely walk up a nearby hill this afternoon with my two children. Everything iced up – brought back a 15 inch long icicle from a stream (it didn’t melt, even in the car) and at the end of the walk, stood under a group of massive trees and listened to the ice fragments breaking off the branches and falling over us.

More stuff next week-have a good Christmas wherever you are-all the best-Roy Lewis

Trying something new – should be easy…..

Mistakes made in making a YouTube video.

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

Busiest Internet shopping day-will it be 6th December 2010?

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

Whisky Galore: ‘lost’ stock rediscovered.

The Whisky Galore real storyfrom the 1940’s and what happened to the whisky rediscovered years later in 1990.

Whisky Galore – brilliant Ealing comedy of the 50’s on the S.S. Politician running aground on the Outer Hebrides with over 9,000 cases of Scotch whisky on board plus thousands of banknotes. By the time the weather had calmed down for the authorities to get there, there were  and little currency was left.

All goes quiet for many years, until a company is set up 20 years ago to excavate the S. S. Politician wreck for more whisky. Money was raised, divers employed, thousands of tons of sand and steel plates moved to discover…..24 bottles! The whisky was partly used to make a blend called Atlantic Gold. These were sold round the world at the time along with another brand, Calvey Mist, which replicated 1940’s whisky. Then the company went bust and the stock disappeared into a warehouse. Luckily, the warehouse owner pointed the goods out to me recently – I was intrigued with the story and as I travel to the Outer Hebrides each year, I was familiar with the story.

I have now purchased some of the stock – the Atlantic Gold has numbered bottles and presentation boxes. there are about 60-70 left out of @ 140 ever bottled. Both the Atlantic Gold and Calvey Mist are packaged in a nineties style card box, typical of the time. The whisky used too is the equivalent taste to the 1940’s to preserve authenticity all round.

Both brands are collector’s times – I am getting pictures of these taken and will post these to this blog and to our site in due course. Just shows that it is worthwhile to look into new ideas from time to time – I wonder what other gems lie forgotten? It’s a bit like finding a Masterpiece in the attic or coming across a valuable sculpture at a craft fair.

Roy Lewis

Selkirk Car Rally-Sunday 19 September 2010

Welcome to my first blog for Hebridean Liqueur Company.

I have just returend from Selkirk in the Scottish Borders where I took along our liqueurs to the Selkirk Car Rally. What a nice bunch of people the participants and standholders were. Belst seller was Lord Nelson’s Spiced Rum Liqueur and all the small liqueur cakes went too.

This weekend sees Paul and Sue Bowers, Show Distibutor, at the Alverstoke Michaelmas Fair – more Nelson will hopefully be bought here too. Look out for their stand – it’s the one packed with liqueurs.

Once I get into this blogging, I will send out a regular weekly blog, which will keep you up to date with all the Show Distributers shows and any promotional news.

All the best,

Roy Lewis