Smiling Vacuum Cleans Up

When you’re involved in a small business like Your Life Your Style, you find yourself doing all sorts of tasks you previously left to others. I’ve had to become a bookkeeper, a sign maker, a decorator and, every so often, a cleaner. 

Vacuuming isn't the most exciting job but what makes it a bit more enjoyable for me is our vacuum cleaner. He's called Henry, he's bright red and he has a lovely smiling face. When he follows me around, it's like having a friendly faithful pet. He certainly cheers me up in the morning but that wouldn't be more than clever marketing by Numatic if he wasn't also the best vacuum cleaner we've ever had.

Pudsey Bear And The Unlimited Appeal of Steiff

Until we started selling Steiff teddy bears, I have to admit they had completely passed under my radar. Now I love these beautifully made toys and their appealing faces and I see references to them everywhere. The other day I read that E H Shepherd’s original drawing of Winnie the Pooh was based on the bear that belonged to A A Milne’s son- and was made by Steiff.

                                  

Amazingly, although he’s been around for 24 years, Steiff have never produced a Pudsey Bear. Until now. This year a Steiff Pudsey made of yellow mohair will be available in a Limited Edition of 2009 pieces, complete with buttoned ear tag. He costs £150 but could be worth a great deal more in a few years time. £30 from each sale goes to the BBC's Children In Need appeal for disadvantaged children.

We’re expecting him in just by the end of November but he can be ordered inadvance from the Your Life Your Style website.

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.

NHS- Good Product, Not So Good Service

As someone who has had two fairly serious illnesses in the last few years, I feel I'm in a good position to comment on the current debate about the NHS.
When I developed Rheumatoid Arthritis three years ago, the joints in my fingers and wrists swelled to twice their normal size and I was considerably debilitated. Initially I was treated privately but went on to the NHS when it became clear I would need ongoing treatment, for which private insurance wouldn't pay. The NHS has been pretty good: I receive thousands of pounds worth of drugs that ensure I am virtually sympton free, and regular outpatient visits and treatments which are always excellent.
There are shortcomings though- the regularity with which appointments are postponed, and the fact that the cost of the main drug I receive has been questioned even though it leaves RA sufferers like myself virtually symptomless .
Five years ago, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and was treated privately by brachytherapy which, without going into details, has far less side effects than other treatments but which wasn't available at that time on the NHS. The private room aftercare was wonderful.
A relative in his late seventies was recently given two hugely expensive life saving operations from an top class specialist on the NHS. There is no way health insurance would have been an option for a man of his age. However his aftercare left a lot to be desired with caring staff overworked and some others completely indifferent to his needs.
When you run a business, especially in retailing like Your Life Your Style, you know that you must not only provide a good value product but that you must also give superb service. The NHS usually gets the first right but falls down far too often at the second. It's the classic failing of an organisation that lacks competition and doesn't put people first, though I don't doubt that artificial competition in the form of outsourcing and targets has also had a damaging effect.
I used to receive health insurance through my employer. I was tempted to give it up when I went into business for myself but all my experience tells me to carry on paying the extortionate health insurance premiums, at least for the time being. On the other hand, the NHS means that anyone who is ill can be treated irrespective of age or income and I wouldn't hesitate to defend it against the uninformed criticisms of American conservatives.

There's More To Life Than Work

Back from France and what a contrast in attitudes to work. An Englishman who lives there told us how he despairs of getting the locals to do any work. But to me that's the attraction. They do the minimum to get by and prefer to eat and relax. Why not when you live in such a hot and food-rich environment?
Of course, the offhand approach of some male waiters can be frustrating but generally they offer friendly albeit slow service in shops and cafes. Chill out, I say to us Anglo Saxons and our work ethic, at least when on holiday.
Still, it's nice to be back and working hard, because that has its rewards too.

A Door Opens On The High Street

The high street is under threat but there's also an opportunity. Shops that sell mass produced products, shops that have grown too big to care, they may go. But new shops can take their place. It's a rare chance for entrepreneurial independents to break into the high street- businesses more in touch with customers' tastes and needs.
Our local council working with the local paper has launched a website shopinhampshire.co.uk to encourage us to support the local high street. Our shop Your Life Your Styleis there and, given the chance, we'll be on more local high streets as well.

Quality Wins

Your Life Your Style is to be Winchester's stockist of Steiff teddy bears. It may be you haven't heard of Steiff but to anyone who collects these delightful furry toys, they are the number one. Why? Partly because they've been making bears for 100 years but mainly because the quality is superb.
Like many German firms, Steiff bring together good design, precision manufacturing and obseesive quality control. They tried making some of their bears in China but found so many items were below their standard that they went back to making them exclusively in Germany.
Our own manufacturers can learn from this. For years, British goods became a by-word for shoddy, thanks to complacency and lack of worker involvement. Then the far east took over mass production.
When Britain did something well, it was a world beater- Rolls Royce or malt whisky for example. Thankfully a new generation of British manufacturers are in that tradition and recognise that you can't beat the Chinese on price but you can succeed by offering good design, skilled manufacture and quality control.
We visited the Grayshott factory this week which houses Dartington Pottery. As well as the special edition pieces we stock, they provide crockery for many restaurants. The work of these thirty or so people, who operate as a co-operative, is breathtaking in its skill and care. If a customer wants cheap ceramics, China beckons but if they want quality and value, Grayshott is there for them, and offers an example to British manufacturers in the 21st century.

Dora Designs On Facebook- Fun Comes First

Our shop Your Life Your Style already has a Facebook page. We've now started an I Love Dora Designs group. We want people who love Dora Designs to find out more about Doras, post photos and news, and to talk to each other. This is not set up to sell Doras but many successful businesses on the internet have learnt that by providing a useful service first, sales follow. If we do sell a few Doras, we'll be happy but, if not, it's still fun to run a Dora Designs Fan Club.

The Price Of Free

I'm far from the first to say this but I'll add my voice to the growing opposition to 'free' information sites on the internet. For a start, none are really free. The internet has reduced the cost of communication but the free information on Google Search is paid for by advertising, the free YouTube service is paid for by Google, the free news is provided by paid for newspapers, the free BBC sites are paid for by licence fees, and so on.
The best things in life are free. And, along with sunsets and making love, I think work done by volunteers is admirable. It's wonderful that so many people are happy to give of their time to provide information online to help or inspire others, just as people through the ages have helped others out of sheer altruism.
What I think is dangerous is the dissemination of material for free that it cost someone something to produce. If those producers- news organisations, music companies, publishers- are put out of business, then there will nothing left to put online for free.

We Need Some Old Fashioned Banking

Today Your Life Your Style changes banks. We've given up on HSBC after feeling distinctly uncared for. What surprises me is that HSBC have never asked why we're leaving. You would think every business would want to improve its customer service yet, despite describing themselves as 'the world's local bank', HSBC appear to be just another global bank who are more bothered with big investments than small customers.

A Gift From Harrogate

Back from the Harrogate Home & Gift Trade Fair with some great new products, which we'll be introducing to the Your Life Your Style website and shop in the next few weeks. The only downside was lack of sleep.
We stayed one night at the Harrogate Travelodge,looking out over a pub. Drunken conversations wafted up until well after midnight, followed at about 2 a.m. by loud revellers singing at the top of their voices, then at 5 a.m. the emptying of the bottle skip into a collection lorry. The luxurious Queens Hotel in Leeds the previous night was about the same price (special Saturday offer) and was a wonderful experience, topped by a flawless meal in The Restaurant Bar And Grill in Leeds City Square.

Your Frontline Is Your Business

Seth Godin makes a good point in his blog about the importance of managers keeping in touch with the front line. When I took over responsibility for the operational side of a theatre, I spent time doing or shadowing all the various jobs. It was an eye-opener and the experience helped me be aware how much of a gap there is between management theory and frontline practice when you have real people dealing with each other, who may be tired, confused or lacking information. As the CEO of Sony once said, 'The company is only as good as its latest recruit.'
Neither can executives rely on middle managers for a true picture of what's going on. They often don't want to admit that their staff are in difficulty in case it reflects on them. I've seen from close by the disastrous consquences to staff morale and company results, when senior managers are out of direct touch with their employees.
I like the small businesses I'm involved in now because I'm in constant touch with all colleagues and I experience at first hand what's going on with customers and suppliers. I find the Your Life Your Style online shop more difficult from this point of view, because while there is endless analysis available of site visitors and customers, I rarely get to actually speak to them. I like these sites where you can click to 'speak' to a real person.

Book Covers And Shop Windows

Seth Godin’s blog is nearly always worth a read. Today he talks about using a book’s cover to attract attention and encourage the customer to pick it up and look at it. He lists a number of ways in which this can be done, all of which could apply to a shop window:

Iconic (because iconic items tend to signal ‘important’)
Noticeable across the room (you see that lots of other people own it, thus making it likely that you’ll want to know why)
Sophisticated (because this helps reinforce that the ideas inside are worthy of your time)
Original (why bother reading a book you already know)
Clever
Funny
Generic (reminding you of a genre or another book you liked, not generic as in boring)

Protectionism Is Bad For Britain

Britain is a trading nation and any attempt at protectionism would backfire on us. If we stop imports, other countries will block our exports. As citizens, we would pay more and earn less. Look what happened in the sixties and seventies when trades unions sought to protect British jobs by preventing industries from modernising. We lost our competitive advantage.
Let’s continue to import mass manufactured goods cheaply and export specialised products and services for high prices. At Your Life Your Style, we stock many British made goods because they are beautifully designed and skilfully made, far better than their equivalent from overseas. Most of the other items that are made abroad more cheaply than thye could be in this country are still designed in the UK.
Free trade means we survive on our ability to be creative and competitive, something we as a nation are very good at.

Mary Queen Of Empty Shops

Mary Portas looked at empty high streets on last night's TV. Fortunately Winchester where our shop is located is so far unaffected by the recession, although some premises in The Brooks are proving hard to fill.
Her answer to the high street woes after an hour of waffle? Work with neighbouring retailers, give the customers what they want and do it with a bit of razamataz. Good advice but did it need an hour to come to that conclusion?

My Loss Was My Copywriting Gain

I'd just written an email for Your Life Your Style customers. I went to the loo and when I got back, someone had inadvertently logged into the website administration and my email was lost. I wrote it once more and clicked to send a test email. The website software froze and again I lost it.

Strangely I was not dishearetned or frustrated by this. Because you should re-write and re-write and re-write again. And ideally you should not refer to what you already wrote.

When you've gone through the process of writing copy a few times, the ideas are firmly lodged in your brain, so you don't have to think about what you're saying. You become one with the copy, grasshopper.

What comes out of your head when you re-write on a blank screen is sharper, leaner and more natural.

The Price Is Right

I love, actually I need to start the working day with a coffee. To be precise, a latte from Costa. And every day I can’t believe I’m paying £2 for a takeaway coffee. How did the coffee houses persuade us to pay such an outrageous price which appears to bear no relation to cost?

To be fair, when we price products for our gift shop Your Life Your Style, it’s not as simple as taking the cost and applying a standard percentage mark up. There are a number of factors we take into account. As I always tell businesses who consult me, you first must consider the market and set a price appropriate to it.

As retailers, we have little say over the product’s position in the market, so we move straight on to how many we expect to sell and how much customers are willing to pay. At Your Life Your Style, we rarely expect to sell products on a mass scale because we offer special gifts and accessories.

However, if we can sell a reasonable number, we can afford a lower margin and make the profit we need through scale. Going back to my old theatre marketing days, I think of the example of Christmas pantomime where the type of audience and the numbers who attend allow for lower prices than for, say, a musical.

On the other hand, if the market is more niche, it is necessary to charge more. Opera comes to mind as a case where, at least when I was trying to sell it, no matter how cheap you made the tickets, there were only so many people interested in buying. At Your Life Your Style, we may go for a higher than average profit margin if we know a product is unique and may take some time to shift.

Of course, how people themselves value the product will have a big influence. And this is where it gets more complicated. Marketing, word-of-mouth and the intrinsic qualities of the product will potentially affect a consumer’s attitude to a product. They may have an emotional attachment to it or make a rational decision about its quality or simply want to show off that they have the taste or money to purchase it. Whatever the reason, if a customer believes the product to be exceptional or life enhancing, they will pay a premium for it.

This is why we don’t automatically charge the lowest price we can afford based on cost. A cheap price means to many people an inferior product because that is what they’ve learned from experience. No doubt Chanel could charge less but their customers want to buy an expensive perfume. In fact, perfume manufacturers and other fashion brands like Levi have fought hard to stop their products being discounted and thereby ‘cheapened’.

Back to coffee (and I am beginning to feel like another latte), Starbucks managed to persuade us that we were getting something special. Special beans, specially roasted, freshly ground, customised to your taste and in a social club atmosphere. Hence the special price. Then everybody started imitating it but the strange thing is, the more popular premium coffee became, the more the price should have come down. Yet it didn’t.

Initially Costa and the rest wanted to show they were the same quality as Starbucks, so they matched the prices. Even so, in all the years since, no-one has broken ranks and reduced prices. I read that at a blind tasting people preferred McDonalds coffee to Starbucks but it will take some persuading people that you don’t always get what you pay for.

Knowing the price people will pay forces Your Life Your Style reluctantly to turn down some excellent products where the cost is too high, taking into account all our overheads. For example, we have found that some (not all) products hand crafted in Britain are so expensive to produce that the retail price looks hugely expensive when compared with either something handcrafted in the third world or something mass produced. Every product must earn the time and space it takes up.

There is always an element of trial and error in pricing. We know there is a tipping point at which a product sells, so it’s easier to start with a higher price first and, if the product doesn’t sell, lower it. This then gives us the opportunity to employ the other great pricing tool- the bargain. Some more cynical businesses deliberately charge a high price to establish that something has a value, not expecting the product to sell, then cut the price. This way, people don’t see it as ‘cheap’ but rather a ‘bargain’.

We prefer to price fairly from the start, because we know that customers have no respect for cynical businesses. Their spend with a gift-cum-lifestyle shop like ours is entirely discretionary so we need their respect. To me, getting the price right is a constantly challenging element of running a business. There is no easy formula but if you get it wrong, all your other good work goes out the window.