How not be a supplier. Read on….

How a supplier successfully won and then lost my business before I even got started.

Hi everyone again. I’ve been out of the loop for a while but am now back for more.

Lots has happened since the last post and over the next few weeks I will be writing about real business experiences that just so happen to have crossed my path.

This Blog is all about how not to help your customers and the classic example of this is Royal Mail. They contacted me  several months ago about taking advantage of their small parcel service.

The idea is that, if a customer sends out lots of similar parcels, instead of trudging over to the Post office and waiting for ages to be served, the postage could be printed out on a label and the whole lot just handed in to the local Royal Mail office. The alternative is to have Royal Mail collect the bags each day, for a charge of about £500 a year.

Well, as I have started another business that indeed ends up sending out lots of parcels, I thought this service was made for me.

I duly signed up. then everything stopped.

Various staff got in touch with me, made promises and were never heard from again. At last after several calls to the original sales person, I have at last been able to log into our account. I  watched the Demo on the site and it appeared to miss out the crucial part of how to print out the labels.

I really want to do business with Royal Mail with their Packet Service but it seems overly complicated and tricky to use. Perhaps it will be easier once I get going with it. Only 3 months have passed with no progress whatsoever.

I have used this experience to look again at how we look after our customers. I am getting back to them much faster and sorting things out for them as much as I can. The result is that the customers do not keep calling us and the issue gets dealt with. Sometimes we have to wait for another company to come back to us which is very frustrating. In the end it always get sorted out.

Postscript: I have decided not to use the Royal Mail Packet Service. If they can’t help me get started, i have no chance whatsoever in them helping me once I get going. As I am spending £50-150 per week on freight that they could have carried, this is a bad move for them and a good move for me – at least I can keep the business moving along.

More real life business stories next week-all the best, Roy Lewis

www.hebridean-liqueurs.co.uk

 

Getting to grips with too many ideas

Opportunities and getting started.

Hello again,

Ever ended up with too many business ideas all zooming around in your head and driving you mad?

Well, it happens to us all, if you’re in a receptive mood that is.

Before I ran my own company and was an employee, I could never figure out how it was that those that ran their own companies always seemed to be ahead of the game in spotting trends and new ideas. As an employee, I was focused on doing the job I was paid to do, quite rightly, but on long flights and train journeys, I would have nothing better to do that flick through magazines and muse on the ideas and products advertised.

The main issue was how to investigate and get a new business up and running while still being an employee. Everyone I know who has started up their own company has been in this situation. Some get their ideas fully researched before they go for it. Others are just convinced that the new venture will succeed and that’s that. Somewhat risky.

Do you have an idea for a business and just can’t seem to get anywhere with it?

What is stopping you?

If the answer is TV, newspapers and no time, then I’m afraid you need to look again at what is really motivating you and what you really want to do.

If, on the other hand, your business idea makes you wake up at night with the excitement of how it will pan out, then at least that will give you the push to make the time to do the research and get things moving.

Off for Easter Holidays for a week or so. All the best, Roy Lewis

What is stopping you? Fear is the key.

New ventures, overcoming the element of fear and using it to your advantage.

Hello again,

Driving along the other day, I was musing on why I have not gone for certain opportunities that have come my way and why I did for others.

It’s not that the opportunities were not good. Or that I couldn’t work out the risk element and how to mitigate it. I think it was mainly to do with fear of failure and fear of not knowing if I could do it.

Fear of failure is all part of all business enterprises – it takes you to the edge, where simultaneously there is the feeling of fear mixed with the excitement of getting it right. This is the part that entrepreneurs seem to love – the uncertainty of it all. Once you get past this, then the actual day to day stuff is dull. That’s where another opportunity comes along and off you go again.

If you are an employee, there is some degree of this feeling to with new projects etc, but there is usually a safety net, and of course you can always blame the process. If you’re on your own facing it, if it fails, the blame comes right back to you and there is no escape. Not everyone can handle this.

The other way of looking at all this is that to learn anything, you have to make mistakes. Thousands of small businesses close up because they make mistakes that they cannot recover from.  The benefit if having kept a business going for several years is that by that time, you will have worked out what the dangers are and how to avoid a catastrophic mistake.

Getting going early has a terrific benefit of giving you the opportunity to mess things up at an age where you are able to take it. Once you have a good job, mortgage and responsibilities, it is harder to give a new project a go, just in case it doesn’t work. You have too much to lose.

Once you have experience (messed up lots of times) you then have the confidence to go after opportunities and you become better at spotting them, working out how much can be made and how to set up a system to run the new venture.

So, what’s stopping you? Fear? Great, that’s the key.

Have a good weekend. All the best, Roy Lewis

Are you a business mentor?

The benefits to both parties of business mentoring.

Hello again,

This blog is different as it is all about other businesses.

A couple of years ago, I was approached by a local Chamber of Commerce to be a business mentor for a small local business. I was flattered and surprised. But mainly, I was perplexed as to why they had asked me. I did not consider myself as having any special talent for business and couldn’t see how my experiences could translate over to others.

Well, I was wrong on all of those ideas.

Several mentee companies later and I am happy to report that I really look forward to spending time with the companies I now see. It’s not really that I have experienced exactly what they are going through – all businesses have their own unique issues to overcome. I think it is more of a case of at least I have been going long enough to have survived all sorts of disasters and have come through it all with a sense of perspective that the mentees find useful. Or I hope they do anyway.

The other aspect that I find useful is that for an hour at a time, I have the opportunity to help someone out and when I describe how I am handling something similar to their struggle, it often happens that they too have ideas that I can bring to bear on the situations that I am handling.

Some business mentors have a very strict method of going about it. I prefer to chat through things and focus on one main issue at a time and then track it from meeting to meeting, checking progress as we go.

Why not help out another business local to where you live? Too busy? No time? Don’t know who to contact? All these and other excuses are just that. Give it a go and see how you get on. After all, what do you really have to lose?

Have a good weekend. Kind regards, Roy Lewis

Decluttering and progress for the new season

Suppliers and customers – sorting out whom to deal with this year and why.

Hello,

Another wintry week here in Argyll. Odd time of year this, with sales a bit quiet, but Easter looming. Being busy sorting out what we want to keep in our office and what to throw out.

The same applies to our suppliers and customers – which ones do we want to deal with this year? Well, it all comes down to dealing with suppliers that are aware that we rely on them to treat us well and not mislead us on delivery times and availability of their goods and services. For retail customers, it is having ones that are doing well and are willing to pay us in a reasonable timescale.

First impressions can be deceptive. Several years ago, I signed up a ‘very successful’ delicatessen chain of stores here in Scotland. All and sundry helpfully informed me that I had to be in their shops. They took our liqueurs alright but were very reluctant to pay for them. It took over a year and endless calls to get our money. Having done this, I decided not to supply them any more. At the end of the day, it was not worth it as I expected them to go bust at any time and it would be a total loss to us. As it turns out, they are still trading, but even now, I would be reluctant to supply them as they still appear to be very disorganised.

Nowadays I am happier supplying nice steady, but perhaps lower profile retailers, that have a good solid customer base and buy regularly from me with no hassle or tricks. For lots of small businesses when starting, up, they chase too many unsuitable retailers and customers. It does take a while to work out which ones are worth having and sadly, many of these small businesses go under because that have a poor selection of customers and can’t cope with the losses.

Having good suppliers is the same. I want them to look upon us as one of their best customers and that we are worth looking after. I tell them this right at the beginning of our business dealings because I want to be clear from the start that I am serious about doing business with them and want them to be keen to sell their goods and services to me. If they don’t, they will find that we will change suppliers until we find one that does look after us, has an interest in us doing well and shows it.

All the best.  Roy Lewis

 

 

Fuel price increases make mail order purchases even better value

Fuel costs and mail order business – one drives the other.

Hello again,

Like most of us, each time the price of petrol and diesel lurches upwards, I go through the angst of filling up while calculating that my expenditure per minute matches that of a footballers wife let loose in Oxford Street.

From January onwards, I limited myself to one day per week of driving about for work. This not only saved the fuel cost and time involved, but also forced me to plan better, just like we all should. Years ago when I started my first job, my boss schooled me in making each trip worthwhile. If I was going to Edinburgh, I had to try to fit in 4 meetings in one trip,  not plan four trips.

So using the same plan of cutting out trips this year, the result was that I got my fuel expenditure down from £200 a month to less than £100.

I now apply the same logic when looking at buying goods mail order and paying what might appear to be a high delivery charge vs driving, parking and buying it from a shop in Glasgow. To put it in perspective, it takes about 1 hour to get to Glasgow. The cost of this is £15-20 per trip, plus parking and the likelihood of buying more stuff that I didn’t plan to while I am there.

In comparison, buying an item online means that I get what I want and am not tempted by offers for stuff I do not actually need or want right now. It is almost always better buying online rather than wasting time and effort in getting the goods myself.

What I am really doing is paying other people to do things that I do not need to do myself.  It’s the old time and money issue. I am now totally used to having a quick look on Amazon and E-bay, working out the right price to expect, finding the item at that price and then just getting it. Instead of taking 3-4 hours and costing £20 to purchase an item, it takes usually less than 15 minutes to find it online and buy it.

Have a nice weekend – winter has returned to Argyll – keep warm and busy – all the best, Roy Lewis

 

Show Distributors

Booking events for the coming year…which ones to go for?

Hello,

The new season for consumer shows is almost with us. Our Show Distributors are busy evaluating the shows and fees for the coming year and booking up with the organisers. Working out the true cost of attending an event is one of the key factors in making it worthwhile. This sounds easy until you start to factor in the time taken to get to an event, the fuel costs, parking, time taken to get set up, overnight costs, meals etc.

What often happens is the when all the costs are added up, the more local, less expensive events are the more profitable in the long run. I can vouch for that too from my own experience here in last year.

I attended a number of high profile Shows in Glasgow – The BBC Good Food Show and The Country Living Christmas Fair being two. These are both ‘very prestigious  events’ according to the sales pitch, attracting masses of potential customers. They do, however, cost a lot to attend both as a consumer paying the entry fees and for the Trade Stand fees.

I am aways concerned if it appears to me that the consumers are being asked to pay too much for, when all is said and done, is just a different set of retailers. The more the consumer has to pay to go to the event means they have less to spend while they are there. In addition, the consumers can feel ripped off if the entry and parking charges are too high. Not good for business.

I also attended a local event here in Helensburgh. Easy to get to, easy to get set up, lower fees per day and low cost for the customers to attend.

The result? Well you can probably guess from the tone of the above – yes, the local event was more profitable once all the costs were added in. I sold fewer bottles but made more money.

About now, I am called by sales people selling space at the big, high profile events. Sadly for them, it is really not worthwhile us going to most of these as their fees, sometimes over £1000 for a few days, are so out of touch with reality that it is a waste of time even trying to negotiate with them. Perhaps these is a gap in the market for Consumer shows that do not charge so much for everything and that the businesses going to them , will all make a good margin and rebook for the next year. Now there’s a plan.

Have a good weekend – cold and wet here-horrible.

All the best, Roy Lewis

New delivery options

Mail order new delivery service.

Hello,

More new developments in our liqueur business this past week which will have a postive impact on our mail order business.

We have been using a delivery company for several years which has a depot near us. Locally, the staff are terrific. Sadly for them and us, their care and attention to looking after our goods does not extend to the other depots in the UK. What this means is that last November and December it seemed that we were constantly getting into difficulties with getting our mail orders delivered to the right address and arriving intact.

During January I investigated several Courier companies so that we could have an alternative service ready. The company that appears to have the best option for us and our customer is FedEx. So, from March onwards, I will be using FedEx for some of our orders and will see how they get on. There’s nothing like trying out a service to really work out how the process for delivering our orders actually works the way we and our customers expect.

Spring weather has arrived in Helensburgh – out for a bike run yesterday, the first of the year. Not long now until Easter and the real start of our year.

All the best. Roy Lewis

E-bay options

Selling Atlantic Gold Scotch Whisky on E-bay…..and an alternative.

Hello,

Recently I have been listing the Atlantic Gold and Calvay Mist whiskies on E-bay. This generated a few sales and a lot of interest, so I am going to list them on or main site too.

Selling on E-bay is a bit odd for this type of item. You are only allowed to list the bottle or decanter, not the contents and it has to be a collectible. Even so, there seem to be lots of items that are really quite normal and non-collectible there also. Have a look sometime and see what there is. The listings change all the time and occasionally there are some really unusual and very desirable items .

The next thing I am thinking about is putting our standard liqueurs on E-bay. It’s just an experiment but you never know what might happen. I have been pleasantly surprised by the reaction to the Atlantic Gold Whisky – 2 bottles sold already and another one going live today.

During my E-bay research, I have come across an alternative, but similar sounding site called eBid. The difference appears to be that on eBid, there are no listing fees. The charges come in if you actually sell an item – I think I will give it a go and see what happens.

Horrible winter weather here in Argyll – I think I prefer the cold and dry days.

Have a good weekend – all the best, Roy Lewis

New multi-buy options coming soon on our webiste

New liqueur combinations soon to be featured on our website.

Hello,

Last year we saw a big increase in the number of customers ordering a selection of different liqueur brands in one order. This was the case even after free delivery was offered on orders over £18.

On our website, we do not currently cater for this type of order. that is all about to change as I am going to have a number of the most popular combinations available online and offline, for you to order. The multi-buy option will now comprise 4 x 50cl bottles and will include free delivery.

By ordering a multi-buy, you will not only get a good deal on the price but also be able to order your favorite liqueur for yourself and some for birthdays coming up. Or you could just keep them all for yourself!

If you have any ideas on offers we can set up that would be attractive to you, please get in touch and I will see what can be set up.

For 2010, the top offer asked for was the Liqueur Cakes. They were priced at £5 each or free if you ordered several bottles of liqueurs at full price.

Running up to Christmas, I gave away some Christmas Puddings to our top customers who were ordering over £100 worth of liqueurs.

Easter is not far away so look out for our Easter Special Deals on our website.

Kind regards,   Roy Lewis