Delivering The Goods

Like Amazon and others, we've switched frrom the Post Office to private couriers to ship our online and phone orders. We're very impressed so far with the service we're receiving from Fastway. It's a fairly new network of independent franchisees who each have their own area in which they collect and deliver. At present they cover about 70% of the country and they offer an excellent price and service.
It looked like the postal strikes would be a blow to our business but we find we're saving on delivery costs as well as having a service that picks up from our door. It's a shame that a dispute about the unprofitable door-to-door delivery service which clearly is in need of reform but not necessarily in the ways proposed by the management should damage the profitable part of the Post Office business.

If Don't Ask, You Don't Sell

I never cease to be amazed by my wife Julia and my sister-in-law Wendy's ability to sell to customers in the Your Life Your Style shop. They never force themselves or a product but, by an apparently simple process of making contact ('hello'), offering to help, listening carefully to the customer's needs and being able to match products to those requirements, they sell far more than any pushy or passive salesperson.

Carbon Footprint Made By Slipper

At our shop Your Life Your Style, we're very excited by the arrival of new products from Moore And Moore of Devon.
We're selling their slippers and hot water bottles (including some that come with soft toys for children), all handmade in incredibly soft faux fur. You can turn the central heating down and still feel warm as toast. What a luxurious way to reduce your carbon footprint.
And if you want to do even more to save on your heating, we have Dora Designs' gorgeous animal draught excluders.

The Last Post

I've always thought it was a marvellous thing that you can post a letter and the Royal Mail will deliver it to someone's letter box anywhere in the country probably the next day for a flat rate.
But since I've been involved in a business that relies on sending parcels I have quite a different impression of the mail service. Many of the packages we send are under 2Kg and therefore qualify to be sent as a £4.41 Standard Parcel. Anything heavier, it's cheaper to send by courier. Firms like DHL, UPS and the Fastway all offer not only a better price but also collect from the door and track the parcels with a barcode.
Now strikes have meant that we can't rely on the Royal Mail at all. Online customers of Your Life Your Style expect a reliable speedy service. So it was perfect timing when Fastway arrived at our door with a service that is cheaper than Royal Mail even for smaller packages- and they come into the shop to collect, thus avoiding a long wait in a Post Offic queue. Of course, the Royal Mail will also collect- provided you spend over £15,000 a year with them or are willing to pay £500 per annum!
It seems symptomatic of state owned businesses- or indeed any companies that have grown complacent on lack of competition- that the Royal Mail's management and workers live in a past where enterprise and efficiency are way down the list of priorities compared with, say, resisting change.
The Royal Mail should look at the example of Fastway where franchisees are 100% committed to giving a good service because they have a stake in the business.