How many working days left in April?

Been a tough ol week trying to fit 7 days work into 4 but I think everybody here is ready for the Bank Holiday weekend....we still have quite a bit of work to go over  and are a little worried about the very short working week coming up but as always we’ll find a way. So little time to enter our fabulous iPod competition – have a go as you never know, we are also looking for a Prize for next month’s competition so if you have a service or product you’d like to cross promote then give me a shout.

We have been playing and looking at some new software this week, for planning and sharing ideas and for a Web to Print solution as well, I have signed up for Hubspot’s service to see how this could help our business and also am looking at other ways to improve our web position for the long term. We know what we ought to be doing but spend so much time doing it for clients we leave our own site to last. The planning issue is becoming a “need to sort” issue for us, our current systems worked fine for us while we were doing around 200 orders a month but now we are running at 400 we really need something more robust for design, web and print production. I also wanted a system that could take over our older job costing system for better reporting.

May I say the above issues are very nice to have, these growing pains I can deal with....it’s the panic that I feel if the phones don’t ring or the emails don’t ping that makes me struggle. Our sales team is doing well, Michael is bedding in fine and James seems to have too much going on sometimes, they are both selling the POD systems really well and Michael has some great ideas for an expanded version – I am now working to create a version as a demo and will keep you all posted. We had record sales last week on the back of a great month so things are looking really good, we are being realistic that this extended period of time off will affect our sales but we think we can bounce back week after next.

The design / web team.......where do I start, they make my head hurt with their acronyms and tech speak, it’s like an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation when we have a meeting but they are doing some great things with our clients sites, we have quite a few projects that I hope are about to come off and so much POD stuff it could last the year. We may be expanding our design and web team some more (wage bill permitting) so they may get a chance to get our own traditional marketing back on track, you know...old stuff like emails and Direct Mail. We are of course still getting help from Lucy Venables with our emergency marketing for which I thank her very much....John Hampson from the Newbury Weekly News has started asking me to get copy over “Before” deadlines and without Lucy’s help we’d be in trouble.

I would like to thank Newbury Round Table for the invite to their AGM 2 this week, was a great evening where I met some great guys, John O Brian MD of Dovetail, Adrian Butler from Abbeyfield and Maurice Franks from MD-Technology – I hope we can continue to work together and also help make the Crafty Craft a great success this year. Also my warmest congratulations go out to Russell Downing who has a new job as Newbury BID Manager....we wish him all the best and look forward to working with him in the new role. Tonight I am hitting Newbury with another great client and looking forward to a great meal at Indigo Bay (also clients), taking my dancing shoe’s just in case.

So that’s about it.....the analytic s I see for my blog tell me a few people are reading it but as yet I have no comments – someone this week should be the 1^st......anything you’d like to know or anything I should know would be a good start. Have a great Easter weekend!

A week in design and print.........

.......seems like a long time. I have been very naughty and let the level of work get in the way of my blog for a week. I shall not let it happen again (*cough*).

As I have said we have been very successful, once again, for the last few weeks and have seen unprecedented levels of work coming in, we have the next 7 days fully booked for 16 hours a day on our presses, our studio has two freelancers extra for the next few weeks and the sales team are having some really great results. All in all we are very happy if not a little tired – it also looks like things could continue like this for a little while.

What have we done to see this level of growth in our sales? Well we thought it would be worth looking at to make sure it can continue:

·         Team targets and Weekly sales meeting to discuss the weeks issues and upcoming results

·         Keeping our name out there – you name the media (don’t say TV) and we are using it for marketing, sponsorship, Newspaper, Email, Social Media, Direct mail and face to face meeting

·         Updating our website with new info (may even be a new design coming)

·         Making sure we offer the best service we can and keep our quality standard to high levels

·         Consistent contact with all our clients to make sure we are in their thought when it come to Print and Design

The POD (print on demand) is still going very well – we have a system going live for Jones Robinson this week and hope that Cognito’s will be ready early next week, we also have ESA’s just about there but with some font tweaks required. If anyone wanted to see a demo please just drop me a line as it can make massive savings on print and artwork and we provide the systems for free.

We have also updated the FTP / File transfer system on our website to a new system provided by Yousendit – this new system adds virus checking to the transfer for protection for all parties. There are some new news stories and we have finished the Crafty Craft’s new site – let us know what you think. A fantastic testimonial came in from Marcus Franks, an organiser of the crafty craft

 " I wanted to let you know that Mark Slade’s work on the website is above and beyond the call of duty and I hope you pass on our thanks. As you know Crafty Craft is run by volunteers who all have other day jobs so most of the work is done in the evenings and weekends. Mark  was replying to emails at nearly midnight on Saturday and Sunday afternoon allowing us to get info out quickly and make decisions that normally would take a couple of days."  So well done to Mark.

We have also updated our Business cards offer and have added a competition to win an ipod Touch...so have a look; it’s free and easy (ish) to enter the draw.

We are also very pleased that after a great interview that El Neal will be joining us for the summer for work experience, El, a self proclaimed design nerd is currently doing a degree in Design communication in Norwich. I think she’ll have a great time here and we’ll all learn something from each other.

End of the 1st Quarter and all is well.......

Here we are a quarter into the year...the sun has been out and the nights are lighter. We are beginning to feel very pleased with the way things have been going, a small blip in sales mid Feb gave us the kick we needed to start blowing our sales targets out of the water. The first real 3 months of social media for our business has also paid massive dividends, couple this with traditional direct mail using QR codes, emailers and good old face to face sales we are on for 20% Growth in 2011.

Please all understand that the tools we are using, the joint up marketing ideas and the passion for customer service really can move your business up a level – we love talking about the commercial gain (ROI) for money or time spent. One of our clients who we are helping improve their web site has embraced these ideas and we are all very excited by the developments – I will very much keep you all up to date as things change and move forward. You can find their current site here and on twitter as Mrecex.

I started the week meeting the new Director of the Corn Exchange, Katy Griffiths – I was really pleased to hear the new ideas she has and look forward to a continued relationship with them throughout 2011, the evening also included a modern twist on Romeo & Juliet which was a fast paced passion filled experience and I can recommend the Pilot Theatre Group if you get a chance to see them. We wish Katy the best of luck in her new role and also to Ruth who has now left on maternity leave. On Tuesday we had a visit from the Newbury Sound Apprentice, Chris Wright, who came in to spend some time with our design team.....you can hear all about it on air next week or on their web site soon.

As you may be aware Mark joined our web team last week and has been flat out this week working on updates to many sites such as Auto Link and our own http://www.appleprint.co.uk/ , starting new projects and generally being run ragged, Matt has also been tapping the keys rather quickly all week on POD projects, Micro Focus has been completed, Davis Tate has some updates after a meeting I had this week and Cognito’s demo will be ready by the end of today.

The whole team have worked very hard this week to make sure we got the work out on time and met some very challenging deadlines – we have two new starters next week, Michael Hanks, Area Sales Director (East) joins us with a wealth of experience in print and design...a genuinely nice fellow with a real eye for detail and a passion for service, email him to say hello and remember he does not like to be called Mitch J Also starting on a freelance basis is Louise Ryan, Louise Trained as a graphic designer with Diploma in graphic design from The Gordon Institute - Geelong, Australia we really look forward to the skills she will add to the already tip top team.

This was also the last week for a work experience placement Alec, he worked very hard for both weeks and was a pleasure to have working with us – the whole team have said what a great lad he is and an asset to his school, well done Alec. (see him below happy at his mac)