Olympic Gold 
Cartoon courtesy of shorelines art Rentokil won several lucrative contracts from the Chinese Olympic organisers. Despite using home grown experts China failed to eliminate rodents, cockroaches, mosquitoes and flies. All the pests thrived in their peak breeding season which coincided with the games. Rentokil developed a new strategy to solve the problem which won them the contracts. This included a specially designed ‘wind curtain’ to deter insects and ‘the world’s smartest mouse trap’. Source The Daily Telegraph Back to the top Grow your business Looking to grow your business? Then choose which way to go vertically or horizontally. A vertical growth strategy involves finding new products or services to sell to your existing customers. Do this by adding new products and services to compliment what you already offer. A horizontal growth strategy involves finding new customers for your existing products and services or developing new products and services for new customers. One way to expand your customer base is to sell to the same profile of customer you sell to now but in a different geographical area. Sound simple doesn’t it, but practically how do you achieve this. Tesco achieved vertical growth by moving into financial services including insurances. The initial method they used to sell these new products was to existing customers in Tesco stores. Tesco have recently announced that they are to take this one step further and turn their financial services operation into a full scale bank. Green Giant who up until now has exclusively sold tinned vegetables including their famous sweet corn hope to achieve horizontal growth by the launch of a soup range, aimed at new markets. The soup comes in microwavable pouches and a spokesman said ‘Our ongoing research revealed that there is a real gap in the soup category for a product with a fresh, natural, high-quality offering’. . Back to the top Web site news Notonthehighstreet.com sources quality clothes, gifts and home wares from hundreds of small businesses. The business was started two years ago by Holly Tucker and Sophie Cornish and has experienced rapid growth. Sales are up 350% on last year and are predicted to reach £3.5m this year. Not only that but they have just secured £1m from a private investor for further expansion. Small niche firms or those with an expertise will be well placed to flourish as suppliers to these virtual marketplaces, said Alison Wade at Buyagift.com, which had sales of £11.7m this year, up 30%. The small retailers that supply notonthehighstreet are benefiting from the success of the online shopping site. Notonthehighstreet follows in the tradition of other umbrella sites such as Asos.com and Notonthehighstreet.com “The days when you had to wade through a million hits every time you searched for an item have gone,” said Tucker. “Driving traffic to the site is key,” said Tucker. “We spent £250,000 on search-engine marketing last year. The size of the average customer’s shopping basket, brand awareness and trimming overheads to a minimum are all key things to concentrate on.” Back to the Top Decision Making 40% of Europeans change their minds when deciding which brands to buy from following online research. The British are most likely to be influenced with 49% changing their choice, with the Danes next at 48%. 44% of the Dutch, 27% of Italians and 34% of the Spanish have their decision influenced. Source Direct Marketing International How easy is it for you to buy fine quality wines from family run vineyards? You will not find the wines Andrassy's sell on supermarket shelves. Andrassy fine Wines are a family run business and they buy from family run wineries in France, Germany, Hungary, Spain, Portugal and New Zealand. www.andrassy.co.uk |
2. Compare prices Internet comparison sites in many ways fulfil the same role as old fashioned insurance brokers. Once you become familiar with using the sites they save considerable time ringing round individual insurance companies for quotes. The comparison sites work in a similar way to insurance brokers. The client pays nothing for the quotes, the insurance company get the business and the companies behind the comparison site get a fee. However consumer group Which have warned that results which should be identical for the same customer, using for example three different sites, are not. There is no suspicion that the companies behind the sites are anything other than honest. However the results suggest the comparison sites could be favouring the companies that offer them the greatest referral fee. Unlike insurance brokers comparison sites are unregulated. Source Which & The Independent Back to the top Rising/falling Sales John Lewis reported a fall in sales in the week August 9th to August 16th across the UK. The store believe that customers are cutting back on spending, but also blame the Beijing Olympics and school exam results. Marks & Spencer's and Laura Ashley have also reported falling sales compared to the same period in 2007, although somewhat greater than John Lewis. Retailers of high priced goods, furniture and larger electrical appliances are experiencing the greatest losses as fewer people move house. All of this is in contrast to official government figures which reported a rise in sales in July of 0.8% last month (August). The numbers were greeted with scepticism by the British Retail Consortium, the main trade body for shops and stores in the UK. In contrast to the British Retail Consortium the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that sales of household goods, which includes furniture and electricals, had seen strong rises. The British retail consortium in response to the government statistics said 'The report did not seem to reflect the current retail reality" and 'few retailers will recognise this positive picture. ONS don't measure like-for-like sales, but our figures show July sales down on a year ago. It's hard to see what could produce the sales-growth boost ONS are reporting, or their finding that smaller retailers are outperforming larger ones,' he added. Economist Vicky Redwood at Capital Economics said 'The figures should be taken with a pinch of salt, given that the official sales data have been unusually volatile over the past few months. Sales had appeared to be broadly flat since the start of this year, she said, and warned that the ONS was giving an "overly upbeat picture". The (ONS) said their figures could be partly explained by a trend towards discount supermarket shopping with food stores such as Aldi and Lidl doing particularly well as consumers become more price conscious. source The GuardianBack to the top 
Harmony House Cookery School One for the boys Thursday 11th September Harmony House The Green Stillingfleet Harmony House Cookery School Ring 01904 720933 or 07889 808749 |
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and finally.............. Harvey Nichols are using Wallace and Gromit to promote its new store in Bristol. Photographs of the duo show Wallace in a Dolce and Gabbana fitted shirt and an Alexander McQueen cashmere jacket, while Gromit wears a Paul Smith scarf. Another shot shows Wallace wearing a Prince of Wales grey two-piece suit by Paul Smith and Gromit wearing a pair of Ray Ban sunglasses and Duchamp silk scarf. A third image shows Lady Tottington in an Alexander McQueen dress and Christian Louboutin shoes. Sean Clarke, head of marketing and licensing at Aardman (who produce Wallace and Gromit), says: "I've never seen Wallace and Gromit looking so chic and stylish. I think it only fitting that W&G a great British institution celebrate another institution in retailing Harvey Nichols coming to Bristol." | 
