Uncategorized – Hebridean Spirits & Liqueurs

Shows in North West and The Lakes coming up

Show coming up in North West England

Here are some of the events that John and Margaret Fullalove, Show Distributors for Cumbria and Lancashire, are attending over the next month or so;

30 April/1 May, Morecambe Festival.

15 May, Hoghton Tower Farmers Market, south of Preston.

21 May, Otley Show, Yorkshire.

28/ 29/ 30 May, Chipping Steam Fair, east of Preston.

4/5 June, Country Fest on The Westmorland County Showground, south of Kendal.

18/19 June, Scorton Steam Fair, south of Lancaster.

25/26 June, Fylde Farm and Vintage Show, not far from Blackpool.

If you would like to know other events they are doing, please call them on; 07985 924782

Show Distributors – last few areas left – hurry if you want to bag one of them

Looking for a handful of good people to work the last few available areas of the UK with our selection of spirits & liqueurs. Single Cask Scotch Whiskies are supplied exclusively to our Show Distributors to encourage purchases at events from you.

Show Distributors Wanted-the last few areas

Most of our fifteen Show Distributors Earn between £5,000 and £10,000 per year by selling our range of Spirits & Liqueurs at consumer shows. To achieve this level of income most of our Show Distributors will work on average, two days per month.

Available for new Show Distributors are these county groups:

Wiltshire & Berkshire
Bucks., Herts. & Essex
Hereford & Worcester, South Wales and Birmingham
Cheshire, Shropshire, North Wales and Manchester
Yorkshire, parts of North Yorks., South & West Yorkshire, Humberside

London is an open area – any Distributor can book and attend shows as the area is so big and the number of events so many.

Business Summary

Hebridean Spirits & Liqueurs sell direct to the public at consumer shows all around Great Britain, via Show Distributors.

View our brands on our Website:

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

The benefits of owning and running one of our Show Distributor businesses are:

Ø Pre-start meeting to discuss Show plans and experience the brands

Ø Steady, regular income from selling direct to consumers

Ø In business for yourself, but not by yourself – we help you to get started and there is no pressure on you to sell more or do extra events

Ø Designated area with full training package

Ø Free Annual Distributor Training Day including Accommodation, Dinner, Breakfast and refreshments – meet other Distributors and exchange sales ideas. This is only for trading Show Distributors

Ø Good margins – tasting stock supplied free so your markup is protected

Ø No purchase or ongoing fees – all you pay for is the stock

Ø Money back guarantee on unsold stock – no danger of being left with a garage full of unwanted goods

What else do I need to know?

No licence fees or ongoing marketing charges to pay

The Show Distributor signs Licence to sell our Brands in a specified area

All the materials required to sell the Liqueurs at a show are supplied, free of charge:

o Graphics and marketing materials

o Sample glasses and sample bottles of spirits & liqueurs

o Bags for the customers to take their purchases home

o Branded clothing to establish a professional image

The Show Distributor chooses which shows to attend, pays for them and obtains a liquor licence as appropriate. We help with this and it is a straightforward process.

Orders stock from the Hebridean Spirits & Liqueurs to be delivered prior to each show.

Depending on the size and number of shows the Show Distributor is attending, an outlay of £2,000 to £3,000 is required to get started and to keep trading.

All stock is paid for prior to each show and are delivered to you free of charge.

We offer a full sale or return guarantee on all stock.

What type of person is a Show Distributor?

Perhaps between jobs, have some spare time, retired or semi-retired with a desire to do something fun to stay busy and earn some extra income. The difference here is that as a Show Distributor, you have control over when you attend events – no-one else decides when you are to work.

Maybe working full time but looking for extra cash to make ends meet and able to spare one or two days a month at weekends.

Someone who;

would like an independent income
enjoys meeting people at Fetes/Craft Fairs and getting paid for it
misses feeling useful
bored being retired
owns a business and has time for another business

Previous occupations of our Show Distributors include Headmaster, Petrol station owner, Salesman, Computer analyst, Policeman, Business owner, Promotional staff company owner, Warehouse Manager, IT Manager, Ex Forces

If you are interested please call 01436-679935 and ask for Roy Lewis, or send an Email to roylewis@hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

New Show Team Areas available-Yorkshire & North East

Show Distributors Wanted-New territories available

Most of our Show Distributors Earn between £5,000 and £10,000 per year by selling our range of Spirits & Liqueurs at consumer shows. To achieve this level of income most of our Show Distributors will work on average, two days per month.

New territories now available for Show Distributors are:

Hereford & Worcester and Birmingham
Cheshire, Shropshire and Manchester
North Wales
South Wales
Northumberland & Scottish Borders
Yorkshire
North East England

London is an open area – any Distributor can book and attend shows as the area is so big and the number of events so many.

Business Summary

Hebridean Spirits & Liqueurs sell direct to the public at consumer shows all around Great Britain, via Show Distributors.

View our brands on our Website:

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

The benefits of owning and running one of our Show Distributor businesses are:

Ø Pre-start meeting to discuss Show plans and experience the brands

Ø Steady, regular income from selling direct to consumers

Ø In business for yourself, but not by yourself – we help you to get started and there is no pressure on you to sell more or do extra events

Ø Designated area with full training package

Ø Free Distributor Training Day including Accommodation, Dinner, Breakfast and refreshments – meet other Distributors and exchange sales ideas

Ø Good margins – tasting stock supplied free so your markup is protected

Ø No purchase or ongoing fees – all you pay for is the stock

Ø Additional profitable mail order and Internet business

Ø Money back guarantee on unsold stock

What else do I need to know about how this all works?

No licence fees or ongoing marketing charges to pay

The Show Distributor signs Licence to sell our Brands in a specified area

All the materials required to sell the Liqueurs at a show are supplied, free of charge:

o Graphics and marketing materials

o Sample glasses and sample bottles of spirits & liqueurs

o Bags for the customers to take their purchases home

o Branded clothing to establish a professional image

The Show Distributor chooses which shows to attend, pays for them and obtains a liquor licence as appropriate. We help with this and it is a straightforward process.

Orders stock from the Hebridean Spirits & Liqueurs to be delivered prior to each show.

Depending on the size and number of shows the Show Distributor is attending, an outlay of £2,000 to £3,000 is required to get started and to keep trading.

All stock is paid for prior to each show and are delivered to you free of charge.

We offer a full sale or return guarantee on all stock.

What type of person is a Show Distributor?

Maybe working full time but looking for extra cash to make ends meet and able to spare one or two days a month at weekends.

Someone who;

would like an independent income
enjoys meeting people at Fetes/Craft Fairs and getting paid for it
owns a business and has time for another business

Occupations of our Show Distributors include Headmaster, Petrol station owner, Salesman, Computer analyst, Policeman, Business owner, Promotional staff company owner, Warehouse Manager, IT Manager, Ex Forces

If you are interested please call 01436-679935 and ask for Roy Lewis, or send an Email to roylewis@hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

Ancient Mariner Vodka coming soon

Ancient Mariner Vodka out soon…

For a while, we have had customers requesting an up market, premium vodka. Now we have sourced one from the same family business that makes our Mariner gin.

The vodka has 25% of the production-the start and end of the distillate, redistilled again. This means that it is nice and smooth, important as at Shows and Events, we will be sampling it neat – it has to taste good at that moment plus with a mixer later at home.

The vodka has been ordered up and the new label design for the Mariner bottle is being worked on. It will be in the same style as the mariner range of gin, Navy rum and malt whiskies that many of you have seen at our trade stands around the country.

If you have a favourite vodka cocktail recipe, send it in and after judicious sampling , we are likely to add it to our Mariner cocktail list.

Recovering from being snowbound

Big companies fail to deliver the goods. I deliver myself as I can’t let my customers down.

Well, what a muddle the transport system here has got into. Found most of our shipments to customers, apart from the one sent via a massive company, whose 20,000 employees or whatever they have, appeared unable to advise me that they had lost my consignment – and still have not found it nearly 2 weeks after a 1-day service was booked. Makes me think of the maxim of not running away from problems and admitting mistakes. Funny that our biggest supplier is most guilty of both of these traits.

Last week was fraught indeed – I ended up driving stock down to one of my Licensees at a consumer show in the centre of Newcastle, as the Courier used couldn’t even make it to the warehouses. Given that I had more to lose than they, did, I managed not only to collect from two unreachable warehouses but travelled through Scotland to Newcastle, and then on to The Lake District for anther delivery. In commercial terms it might not really make sense, but I couldn’t let my customers down when I knew I could sort it out myself.

Pity my suppliers didn’t have the same view.

What would you have done? I’d like to know your opinion.

On the Internet front, all I have manged to do is get used to looking at Keyword Spy and Google Trends. It is amazing to have these tools available and mostly for free – these type of products are usually in two forms – a free standard one and a version with more features that you pay for. I use ‘Log Me In’ for remote PC access. I am actually using it now while writing this on a Netbook PC logged on to my home PC located in my office. The Log Me In program I use includes remote printing, which is what I want and pay for. The standard version doesn’t have this feature and is free. For me, the extra functionality is worth the cost of @ $40 per annum.

More fun and games next week – keep warm – all the best.

Roy Lewis

One didn’t work but another did…….progress of sorts

Update from last week. My ‘exciting’ YouTube video did not in the end, load after all, so I am going to have another go at it and when I work out the way to do it, I will do a blog on it so you too can YouTube, as it were.

What has worked and took hardly any time, was to put an advert up on Face-book. Took me a while to work out how to do everything, but the instructions do appear to match up with the options. I ended up putting on an advert on a ‘Gifts for him’ headline and choose our Nelson liqueur. The only real snag is that when you upload a picture, it gets squashed so the Nelson 50cl bottle looks a bit odd. For the first time, I inserted a link to the actual Nelson ordering page on my site-let’s see if it gets approved and then the outcome. It is amazing to choose the age and interest profile for your potential customers for adverts-no wonder the traditional media are having a hard time of it.

Uk still in the grip of people unable to get backlogs of orders sorted due to an odd combination of schools off (stuck with kids all day), very icy roads (and they are), piles of snow gumming up smaller roads (which is the case here) and general paralysis of the entire transport system, including the petrol tankers who can’t get to the refineries etc. All this means that than instead of our Courier collecting our orders, I am delivering them to the Courier and some bigger orders, am driving down to England tomorrow to deliver it myself as the Show Distributor is at a show and is running out of our liqueurs.

With luck, by next week, things will have calmed down and I will be able to move ahead on several exciting fronts-I will announce what next week.

All the best.

Roy Lewis

Personal Development Day-When are you planning to have one?

Today is my son’s Personal Development Day at school. Great idea for him – for me too? Why not? Imagine setting aside an entire day just to focus on making your business better, your offering to customers more valuable, your products and services more in tune with what your customers want? The list of what you could spend a day doing are endless. I wonder how many business owners ever take a day out to do any of this? I am now planning to set aside a day per month for this – no interruptions or checking e-mail allowed. Now that’s a real challenge, but at least it will give me a chance to get some projects off the ground that I know will be helpful in the long run.

Mail order news – last offer of free Miniature Display pack plus free gift surpasses all records. Hit the mark with this one, so I am setting up another simelr offer now. To get the offer, send us an email with your address by 22 November.

Very wild here in Argyll tonight-driving slow just in case of fallen branches.

Roy Lewis

BBC Good Food Show – aftermath

An interesting 3 days indeed. Lots of people wanting to sample our liqueurs and whisky leading to sales, which pays for everything. More importantly, everyone I asked to complete my new Customer Survey did so willingly. Excellent results and I am planning to change the special offers for mail order and Internet customers on the back of the Survey results.

So, what does this all mean for you ? Having taken the step of asking our customers what they want, I will continue this by sending a survey to all our mail order customers. I think I have been doing this type of survey face to face with customers for years in a more casual way, but is is so much more powerful when they actually commit to writing down their responses to a standard set of questions.

Coming soon will be an opportunity for you to make suggestions for a new brand that I am planning to launch. More on this later.

All the best, Roy Lewis

Lost blog

Just returned to my Word-press page to find that my draft blog has evaporated from the drafts section. Does this happen to anyone else? Is this software flaky? If the drafts option is a dud, then it’s back to square one, again.

Anyway, my blog was about having a stand at the BBC Good Food Show – doing these events is something I have wound down from but now miss them, There is something edgy about having to sell your wares direct and answer questions from the public. after a good day a ta big event, it can be very satisfying and without fail some new angle on a brand is unveiled by a customer, just adding to the stock of stories – a bi like a discussion group. More on how I got on next week.

Retiral vs keep doing something you like

I’ve been thinking a lot about retirement recently as the value and expected pension payouts plummet. Over 50% of millionaires questioned on the subject have no plans to retire.

Why should the rest of us retire anyway? I suspect that many of us approaching the dreaded retirement date, will be dropped into a world of daytime TV, pastimes that become boring with too much time and not enough reasons to get up in the morning.

I cannot imagine retiring. The trips I go on are worthwhile because they are a break from running businesses. It is the anticipation of the trip/holiday that is part of the fun. I can’t really think of a sensible reason to give up what I do now. Why should you either?

If you are wondering what to get involved in, why not have a look at our Show Distributor business? By joining our team, you would be part of a positive, forward looking group of like minded people just like you, you would have to be organised, plan your show schedule and make some money too. If you are interested and you are in an area not already covered, I will send you an information pack to mull over. Just send an e-mail to me at:

roylewis@hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk