Crashing around!

Yes, I’m still here! The weeks are flying by, and things are getting more hectic now as we build up to hopefully the busiest time of year for us, the run-in to the school summer holidays.
I’d planned to write this diary earlier on in the week, but an altercation between my car and a Saab (my car came off worse!) meant that I wasted virtually all of Wednesday trying to sort out insurance, arrange for a (decent!) hire car, and re-book all of my appointments.

One of the ‘joys’ of working on your own means that if anything like that happens, you don’t have a PA or admin team to do all the legwork for you.

So apart from that, what have I been up to?

Well in terms of PR we’ve been quite busy. We’ve secured quite a few articles in consumer magazines, regional press (I was on my way on Wednesday morning to a photo-call for one of them) and even the national press.

I’m pleased to say that, when I look at the figures, I can see it’s all working. And gradually we are building our profile through word-of-mouth. It’s just so time consuming!

But when I look at the unique visitor numbers, the signed-up paying members, and our rankings on the search engines, they are all showing a very positive picture. That makes it a lot easier to keep going through the hard slog, because we’re now starting to see some results from all our efforts.

A couple of months ago, when we were still only a couple of months’ old, it was hard to keep that adrenaline going. You had to maintain your self-belief, even though you couldn’t prove anything, and you didn’t know whether the decisions you were making were the right ones.

The results take a while to come, and that’s been hard for me because I’m not the most patient of people!

We’ve been planning to do this for ages, and we’ve finally just added an email sign-up field to our home page. This means we can capture data, even if someone doesn’t join up when they first visit us. Then they will automatically receive our monthly email newsletter, and hopefully we will convert them at a later date.

I’ve generally been networking quite a lot, both at formal networking events, and also by contacting some well respected industry names. We’re actually looking for a non-exec chairman, who in particular is going to be able to provide contacts for us in a certain aspect of our planned future strategy.

It’s quite difficult, because we want to do something that I don’t think has been done before, and so there’s no single person who will have all the knowledge we need. But hopefully if we can find someone who’s high profile, has a good understanding of e-commerce and B2C marketing, and has plenty of contacts, then we’ll be delighted.

Unfortunately headhunters don’t generally charge on a results basis, they work on a retainer. And so that avenue has been closed to us, simply due to lack of available cash to finance that huge cost. Recruitment consultants, who do generally charge on results, don’t appear to have the right calibre of candidate for us.

And so it just comes down to lots of networking, ‘putting the word out’ and asking people if they know of anyone. We’re in contact with a couple of people – but if you know anyone, please pass their details onto us! In the true entrepreneurial spirit of start-ups, we’re offering a share incentive to anyone who comes on board.

Until next time, when the summer holidays will be upon us..!

Kirsty

Quick update

Luke’s been ill this week, and we had a couple of days in hospital – which were very scary but thankfully now all over and he’s made a full recovery. So needless to say work was dropped completely for a few days and I’m now trying to catch up.

So in terms of the website, we’ve made some great progress with a new feature we’re planning. I’ve employed an editor for the pages (Michelle), who’s got some great experience and I’m sure she’ll make a fantastic job of it. It will be one of the ‘freebie’ items on the site, and will add to the editorial content, whilst remaining focused on our key objective of helping parents/carers entertain their kids.

There’s quite a lot of research to be done before we launch the pages – hopefully by Autumn we should have something to run with. Michelle’s got all the information she needs from me after I started investigating this idea a couple of months ago (until I realised what it could grow into & I decided we’d be much better designating someone to take care of this as a separate project in its own right).

She’s pretty much got creative control of her pages, much like Wendy does on the Holidays pages. Michelle needs to consider now how she wants them to look, and practically how they’re going to work. In a week or so, when she’s had chance to formulate some ideas, I’m going to arrange for her to meet Lee, Andy & Ste at Fluid, who now form the core team responsible for the design of our website. So they can discuss her ideas, translate them into something workable, and get the pages ready for launch. In the meantime, Michelle’s going to be doing the research, writing the editorial and getting sufficient content for a steady growth of the pages after launch.

Talking about growth, our Holidays pages are looking a bit full now, and I think it’s time to bring in a contents list to breakdown the different reviews into sections. Otherwise it’s going to become too difficult to find what you’re looking for. So that’s something for Wendy to think about over the next couple of weeks too.

Holidays are kicking in now, so we’re all away at some point over the next couple of months, and inevitably things take longer to porgress at this time of year. So you’ve got to plan that into your timetables when you’re trying to sort something.

In case you’ve not noticed, the World Cup has started! As I’m writing this England have won their first match 1-0 so I hope they keep up with that form for the rest of the championships! And we’ve provided a bit of themed content too on our site. We’ve added colouring printables of the flags of not only England, but also Scotland, Ireland & Wales too (didn’t want to upset our non-English members!) and I’ve also uploaded a colouring printable of the world cup.

So if you fancy making your own World Cup (on the extreme off-chance that England don’t win, or of course if you’re not English!) then you’ll find it on our ‘Games & Colouring’ section! Bit of tin foil and back it onto cardboard and you’d never know the difference!

Good luck Oliver by the way – Oliver Milman, the Web Editor of startups.co.uk, has just left on a charity trek (& so he’s missing the World Cup!) to Thailand & Burma to raise money for Cancer Research UK - & you can sponsor him on www.justgiving.com/jungleexpedition - go on, you can spare £5 can’t you for such a great cause and such a sacrifice?!!

Come on England!!

Kirsty

Making the most of Exhibitions

We’ve just got back from the largest show we’ve ever done – The Baby Show at NEC in Birmingham, and I’m still buzzing! Which also explains why this diary is late – you can write off at least 2 weeks if you’re doing a large exhibition. The week before is just so concentrated on getting ready for it, and the week after is following up and then recovering!

I know I’ve mentioned exhibitions before, and we aren’t experts by any stretch of the imagination, but I think we’re getting a lot right when it comes to making the most of them. And looking around, it’s obvious that some others don’t really maximize the show’s potential. Maybe they have a different reason for being there, but for us the key aim is to get our brand out to as many people as possible, and convert them (either at the show or afterwards) into paying members.

I thought it was worth talking about shows again, just to share our experiences, in case you’re thinking of doing one yourself and haven’t a clue what to expect.

We’ve ‘exhibited’ (I use the term loosely in some cases!) at several different types and sizes of shows. In our market (parenting/consumer) we have:

- the local church hall type of show
- the slightly larger leisure centre/town hall venue which may last from a couple of hours to a whole day
- then you have the major shows which are usually held at exhibition centres and last at least 2 days.

At the smaller shows you generally buy a table space – you’re given a table to exhibit from and sometimes chairs are provided as well! Anything else you need, you have to provide yourself. We’ve always managed to request a table close to a power socket, because we need to plug in the projector and laptop. But of course we’re not going to get a broadband connection, or even use of a telephone line at these venues, so we’ve had to connect to the internet using our mobiles!

Sometimes you can stick posters on the wall, but not often. So if you want to display anything above your table, think about buying the concertina-type boards or use cabinets, rails, moveable shelving etc. But you also have to think about how you’re going to transport all this to the venue! We have the large screen as our main backdrop, showing the website, and we’ve constructed a nifty (& very cheap) way of hanging posters either side of the screen by using a bamboo cane frame.

For these small/medium sized shows, the cost of exhibiting can range from £25 to £250. If it’s the first time the event has run, you take a bit of a chance with their estimates of visitor numbers. Our fingers were burnt a bit last time we did a fairly large show in March, because it was a first time event and just didn’t achieve the numbers of visitors that they were expecting.

When you’re doing deciding whether to exhibit & doing the research for your budget, you need to know whether it’s going to be worthwhile for you, and so visitor numbers are key to that assessment. But you can only take a view at the planning stage about the ability and dedication of the organiser, the amount of promotion work they’ve done, and who the other exhibitors are, in order to attract the visitor numbers they have suggested. Once a show has already been run by that organiser before, and in the same venue, then you’ve a little more certainty that they are going achieve their predictions. But things can always affect that, such as the weather, a large football game, or some other local event that’s competing for the same audience.

I’ve done an enormous amount of research about shows in our market, expected visitor numbers, price of exhibiting etc and I’ve got all sorts of ratios that I now work to. The cost of exhibiting per expected visitor, the likely sales we’ll get on the day (as a % of the visitor numbers), the cost per member etc. As a result of this I’ve turned some shows down flat, because the cost per expected visitor is just ludicrously high.

You’ll see with the larger shows that the cost per visitor is much lower than for the larger shows, even though the actual £s are usually substantially more. But remember, for the very large shows, not all the visitors will pass your stand. At The Baby Show, they had about 25,000 visitors. Over the weekend, we collected over 1,000 email addresses (data collection, I’ll mention more later), and I think that was probably one in 10 people who passed our stand, so we actually only benefited from 10,000 of those visitors.

Most large shows will provide you with an Exhibitors Manual, which contains all the key information you need to know, including ‘Build-up times’, ‘Show Open times’ and ‘Breakdown times’, also contact details of any contractors you need to contact for any furniture, electrical work and telephony/communications etc. In some cases you have to use the contractor they specify (eg for electrical connections, telephony/internet & construction of the stands) but in other cases you can choose who you use (eg furniture suppliers)

You can usually choose a ‘shell stand’ or ‘space’ and you generally pay by square metre. Sometimes they’ll negotiate rates with you, especially if they are trying to sell their last few stands, but sometimes they won’t. The organisers of The Baby Show don’t negotiate for shell stands at all, because they have taken the decision that they don’t want exhibitors finding out they’ve paid different rates when they get to the show, which may also cause problems when they’re trying to persuade you to rebook for the show the following year.

You’ve got to use all the space you’ve got, and ensure your stand show’s what you do very quickly. You can use special show offers to entice the bargain hunters, and samples/giveaways if they’re not going to cost you too much. You also want to consider whether you can also use the show for data collection, by running a competition where you collect customer details. We did this at The Baby Show, having a range of prizes on offer, and approached people passing our stand to enter, just by writing down their name & email address on our pre-printed sheets (on clipboards). We found this much quicker than asking for full address details etc, & visitors appreciated it too because they were generally sick of filling in these details over and over at the show.

The sheet made it obvious that they were signing up for our newsletter, but we were clear that we weren’t going to ‘share’ their email address with 3rd parties, weren’t going to ‘spam’ them and were only going to email them once a month with our newsletter – which they can choose to opt of receiving after they’ve received the first one anyway. It’s interesting how times have changed, because I think only about 10% either didn’t have an email address, or couldn’t remember it. Three years ago that would’ve been much much higher.

I was delighted that we collected 1,100 email addresses. But we certainly worked hard for it! We had a system – a standard thing for all of us to say (short & catchy) and made sure we asked almost everyone who passed our stand. If they said ‘no’, we followed up with a card (we have business card sized handouts), because we reckon very few people will say ‘no’ twice! We raised our voices so people could hear us (over the public address system/music) and walked over to people on the other side of the aisle. There were a minimum of 2 of us most of the time, and sometimes 3.

When someone showed a lot of interest in the website when they were signing up to the competition, then we offered to show them how it worked. And we converted 3 in every 4 of those we showed the site to. However we were never going to make a ‘profit’ at the show just by selling memberships whilst we were there. Many of the visitors were pregnant, and so not actually ready to use our site yet, and most didn’t want to spend the time sitting down with us. So we used our time much better by collecting the email addresses, as we can now use those over the coming months and hopefully convert a lot more of them.

If you have a chance to pick your own stand (usually only at the larger shows) try to aim for a position where there’s going to be lots of traffic:

· On a wide aisle
· Facing ‘inwards’ to the show (rather than with the back of your stand nearer the centre of the room)
· On an aisle where there will be lots of visitors walking eg – near the restaurant, stage, main/popular exhibitor, toilets etc
· On a corner stand if you can afford the extra cost so you get 2 aisles

Personally I don’t think those stands immediately next to the entrance are any better, because most visitors start off by browsing once they first arrive and won’t be in ‘buying mode’ until they’ve settled down a bit. And when they’re leaving, they’re usually so tired they can’t be bothered to spend any more!

But once you are at the show, don’t complain about your position, the lack of visitors passing or admin problems with the organisers. There’s nothing you can do about it once you’re there, but work hard to make the most of the visitors who do pass your stand. I thought that some exhibitors around us just didn’t appear to use their space well. If you have paid for a corner stand (which at the larger shows are usually more expensive), then use your space well – make sure you work both aisles! Don’t just expect people to come up to you to show an interest. They are usually so overwhelmed by the number of stands that you have to make them notice you somehow before they will stop. Besides approaching people for the competition, we had brightly coloured buckets & spades as our ‘giveaways’ for members who joined at the stand stacked up on the table and hung from the ceiling grid (along with a ‘15 months for the price of 12’ offer) – so these often caught people’s eye because many thought they were for sale! We also had a small activity table with colouring sheets & crayons to occupy any children – who’s parents then felt obliged to have a look at our website!

Be happy, laugh and smile all day (very tiring!). Imagine every person you see is the first visitor you’ve seen that day. Because it’s the first time they’ve seen you, and first impressions count for so much. Don’t allow your team to chat amongst themselves, it looks liked they’re bored, not interested in customer service, and very few potential customers will be bothered to interrupt them to enquire – they’re not usually so desperate to buy.

I could go on for ages and I’m sure I’ve not covered everything here. I’ve not even touched on the look/feel of the stand and trying to make it multi-sensory, or the Health & Safety & insurance requirements. But if you were wondering about exhibiting, hopefully you’ve picked up a few ideas here. If you have any comments or questions, drop me a line! kirsty@entertainthekids.com

Kirsty

Making marketing pay

Thanks to Ross for ably standing in for me last week. I was actually back from Butlins when Ross wrote it, but as you’ll see, we’ve been mad busy this week, so it was just easier for Ross to write last week’s diary entry. But a pleasant change for you I suppose! So maybe we’ll have other guest writers as the weeks go on. Get ready, Lee! I’m calling on you next!!

So what have we been up to? I’m beginning to find that marketing a website has many more facets to it than just marketing an offline product.

We’re on a quest to improve our conversion rates, that is, the number of new members who actually sign up after coming to the site for the first time. This is a tricky number to establish in itself, because of the structure of our site, with it’s members pages and non-members pages. But we think it’s about 1 in 10 at the moment, which I’m led to believe is pretty good! But when we set our 1st year targets, I wanted a 1 in 4 conversion rate by the end of the year. So after some discussion, we’ve made some key changes.

Firstly, we’ve changed the look of the home page. A great design by Lee & his team now means that on the front page there are 3 activity ‘tasters’. There were always free ‘tasters’ on the site (and still are) for each activity category, but you have to click on each category icon to see them, and then they’re not displayed in quite the same way as the rest of our resources. So now there are also some on the home page itself, along with the graphics we use for each category, and now they will be seen by a new visitor straight away and should be quite eye-catching.

We’ve also opened up all the content in the ‘gold bar’ menu items. So the sports, organisations, holiday reviews etc can now all be viewed by non-members as well. We’re quite proud of these pages, and we realise that members aren’t joining up just for these pages. Instead our members are joining to use the thousands of activities we have on our database. So we’ve opened these other pages up as public pages to show off what we do!

Hopefully the combination of these 2 changes will prove our quality sufficiently to persuade more potential new members to join up.

Our email newsletter has also been redesigned, so it’s now more in keeping with the look of the website, and that’s due to go out today. So perhaps that will also return a better conversion than the previous newsletters we’ve sent, which I think have been too dry.

I guess this is just a continual thing, reviewing your product, tweaking what you do and trying to find lots of little things to improve your business. I watched a business training video last week, that I’ve seen many times in the past (I used to present it myself to our business owner clients), called ‘Making Your Business Really Fly’ – also known as the ‘Wally’ video! But it’s the first time I’ve seen it as a business owner myself, and I got quite a lot from it by watching it from a new angle.

One of the key messages in it, is that you probably won’t find one major thing that’s going to make your business take off. But it’s the culmination of lots of small things that make the biggest difference, and so instead you should spend your time improving 100 little things by 1% each. The biggest downfall for most businesses is that they have lots of ideas, but ‘fail to implement’ them (‘FTI’ the video calls it). I’m not sure that’s so true for us, as I think most new businesses are continually looking for new ideas and trying out new things. But I think as many businesses become more established, it’s easy for them to become more complacent, and they don’t spend time as often looking at new marketing methods etc.

Talking of marketing, we’re still doing lots of things. We’re trying a combination of editorial and advertising in some very focused, local, publications at the moment. This works out quite cheap, but it’s frustrating that most of them won’t be in print for a couple of months yet, and just because it’s cheap, doesn’t mean it’s effective. The combination of 10 small adverts still mounts up, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens.

Plus we’re now looking at more online advertising as well. The difficulty is knowing where to advertise, how much to spend (when you don’t have a lot at all!), the percentage return you should expect (so you can establish whether it will be worth it) etc. There’s an awful lot of choice out there, from advertising on emails, banner adverts, listing on databases, and so on. We’ve narrowed it down to a couple of alternatives, but we’re holding back from making a decision until cashflow improves a bit more.

We’re exhibiting at The Practical Parenting Baby Show at NEC in Birmingham this weekend. So early this week I’m putting together the final checks for the stand design, the admin tasks and the lists (again!) of things we need to take.

Other developments this week, is that we’re about to launch our ESCAPE! Programme for our members. This is something we thought we’d have to wait ages to do, but I’ve found a way of doing it slightly differently than how I originally planned, so we can launch it much earlier than expected. Whippee!!

So we’re now offering ESCAPE! days out to major attractions, at exclusive rates. We’ve agreed 4 dates so far. Three in the summer holidays to Chester Zoo, Eureka! And Camelot Theme Park. Plus one just before the summer holiday, when we’re running a Teddy Bears’ Picnic for babies, toddlers & pre-schoolers. I’ve centred them on Northern England for now, because the majority of our members are based there. But I’m about to arrange 2 more for the Midlands (hopefully this will be apt after the NEC show) and 1 or 2 for Southern England. Our members in the South are scattered far and wide, so it’s more difficult to find somewhere that suits a lot of them. We’re hoping this scheme will encourage recommendations to friends a bit more, so clusters will develop making it easier to plan future ESCAPE! days.

This should be up on the site by the end of the week, including a new ESCAPE! logo and downloadable booking forms for our members. We’re not attempting to deal with the booking & payments through Worldpay at the moment, because (as usual!) I’ve not left Lee’s team with enough time. So downloadable booking forms and cheques in the post will have to do for now!

So back the grind. My ‘to do’ list is so full I’ve split it into tasks for each half day this week! Kate from Sticky Bobs told me about a great time management tool last week. You calculate a ‘priority quotient’ by grading each of your tasks from 1-3 (one is the lowest!) for their urgency and importance – 2 separate figures. Then you multiply the 2 figures together and then rank your tasks according to their priority. What a great idea - when I have time I’ll do it.

Oh dear, that’s not quite the right attitude is it!

Kirsty

Bob the Builder

Kirsty was away on a press trip last week, with Luke my nephew, her friend Pauline and Ben, Pauline’s son, also 2. They all went to Butlins at Skegness to meet Bob the Builder and Wendy, Bob’s friend! And a very enjoyable time was had by all, from the comments I heard when they all arrived home safely.

So I am stepping into the breach and writing this week, Ross McGregor, Chief Information Officer for entertainthekids.com and Kirsty’s brother, as you’ve probably already guessed if you have been reading previous postings.

Kirsty kept her mobile switched on for the week and we needed it, as between us we must have spent quite a bit of time talking about forthcoming PR activities and dealing with various queries and minor problems that cropped up. And Kirsty thought she was going to get some downtime with her son!

Meanwhile, I was entering Days Out content into the administration back end of the site including some newly released circus dates.

At the same time I was also thinking I must go running or go to the gym, as I am taking part in the BUPA Great Manchester 10K run on the 21st May and the date is rapidly approaching when I will be running past Old Trafford and through the streets of Manchester. So in between entering content and dealing with phonecalls I managed to pound the tarmac for an hour or so three times during the week.

I was also confirming some prizes for our NEC Baby show stand where we have a superb competition running. This always helps to attract visitors to your stand, and hopefully it will encourage them to sign up to our monthly enewsletter or even join there and then.

There was a bit of a disappointment this week. We hoped we were going to be featured in the Sunday Times magazine as a case study, but unfortunately, right at the last minute, they backed out as they’d found another case study, who lived much closer to London and therefore they were easier and cheaper to interview. Such are the joys of living in the North! Don’t let anyone tell you the North-South divide doesn’t exist! The media are keeping it that way just by themselves.

As far as the company’s progress is going, I think we are in a really good position right now, and I am pleased with the growth we have achieved. Slow but steady is the way I would describe it so far. I think that has been a blessing as it has meant we can grow with the business, and learn along the way, without any unnecessary added pressure.

When we launched in March we had realistic predictions that the company would grow organically and not be an overnight success. The longer term ideal of steady growth allows us to readjust to the gradual changes required. This is necessary in terms of management controls, (such as board meetings, responsibilities/job specs, recruitment methods, team management), advertising (knowing where to advertise, how much to spend and what really works) and getting the best deals from suppliers. If you grew too fast, you’d probably be rushed into making the wrong decisions, wasting money and time and getting too stressed out about it. Who am I kidding? I’m sure I could cope if I had my yacht in the Med waiting for me at weekends!!

But when we look back at what we have achieved so far, I am very proud and it’s something we were only dreaming about this time last year.

I’ll hand back over to Kirsty next week, but this probably won’t be the last you’ve heard from me!

ross@entertainthekids.com

Determined persistence!

Back on top again this week. Last week was a bit of a downer, but now I’m firing on all cylinders again.

I guess this happens to everyone now and again, but you’ve just got to dig your heels in through the times when everything seems to be going wrong, and keep going until you turn that corner, and the world seems to be with you again!

How do you do that? How do you keep going and not give up or get yourself deep into the doldrums? There’s a few ways I’ve realised that work for me. I’m generally quite a positive, optimistic, happy person. So my dark days never last for long. But I’m also pretty good at giving myself a kick and making myself get back to that ‘half full glass’ type of person.

Reading autobiographies, business books or just ‘good reads’ usually works well for me. I get so many ideas when I read business or marketing books, and make lists (again!) of things to do in our business, or I summarise the key points in my notebook.

So reading either makes me a bit more positive generally, or else I feel so inadequate and humbled when I read something like Ellen MacArthur’s autobiographies, that I just wake up to the reality that my issues are so inconsequential.

‘Pressing the flesh’ is I think what the politicians and celebrities call it, when you go out and meet the public. As an internet business, we don’t usually see our customers, but by going out and doing baby shows, we get to speak to ‘real people’, introduce our product, and we get a real buzz from hearing again all the positive comments about the site. You forget these feel-good comments when you’re sat alone in your home office or you’re not working in large offices with lots of team members, who usually tend to keep each other ‘up’.

Taking time out, spending time with your family, especially children, getting some fresh air, and just not being so hard on yourself is something that a lot of business owners find difficult. But I’m getting better! My big thing is driving to the coast (at least 2.5 hours away for me!) so I can see the sea, hear it and smell it. I think it’s another good way of getting things in perspective. Plus you get constant reminders afterwards, because the sand always stays in your shoes for days afterwards doesn’t it?!!

Remembering where you’ve been and what you’ve already achieved is another thing we should force ourselves to do a bit more often. Ross bought me the most fantastic birthday present last month. He made up an A1 frame with images showing the website’s development. The first home page we had, then the current one (which is about to be re-jigged again by the way!), the early promotional materials we used, and the more recent cards for the launch. Plus a picture of both the earlier logo and our present one.

It all looks fantastic and just shows me in a snapshot how far we’ve come. You could turn all ‘Blue Peter’ and make a ‘memory board’ yourself, which is just as simple and quicker, using a cork noticeboard, and print offs or cuttings. Going back further, I’ve still got the rough notes we made when we brainstormed the site concept in January 2005, so I must dig that out too and mount it up on the wall so I can see it regularly.

It also reminds you why you got into this business in the first place. What was it that made you so passionate about what you were doing? Do you still think it? If you’re product or business is good, you still will believe it. If you’re floundering, look at what you’re offering, and see if you can tweak it a bit. It’s usually just lots of small changes that make the biggest impact.

Besides looking back over what you’ve achieved, I know lots of people use images to show where they want to be, as a motivational tool. Pictures of their dream car, house or holiday. Ross tends to use these ideas, but I still regularly think back to my ‘Vivid Description’ which is a summary of a day in the future. You have to imagine then write down where you will be, what you will be doing, what you’re wearing, what the room is like or what or who is surrounding you.

Smells, sights, sounds – all the senses have to be used to do this. And it’s really powerful. Ross and I wrote our own back in October, depicting a day in March 2009. We used it at the time for goal setting, but I still regularly remember mine, and it’s a great motivational tool.

So what’s been going on this week then? Well thanks to a lorry fire on the M62, I spent about 3 hours stuck in traffic as they shut the motorway. So I didn’t even make it to the baby show near Hull! Really naffed off, but nothing you can do about it, so we had to just forget it. We did a baby show in Salisbury at the weekend, which was great and gave us those ‘press the flesh’ opportunities. Once again some good contacts made, and it was a good day out – albeit a long 18 hour one!

And here’s some baby show news for you – we’ve decided to exhibit at The Baby Show at NEC on 19/21 May (stand M15 if you’re going – come and see us!). They’re expecting over 25,000 visitors, so it’s going to be a hard few days, but hopefully worthwhile.

This is also a longer term marketing strategy for us, because, although we do get new members joining up at the show and immediately afterwards, a lot of the visitors are pregnant. So we’re introducing the brand and site to them before they may actually need it. Over the next 12 months we hope they’ll remember us, probably when they see the brand again somewhere, and then join up. I guess that’s the strategy of most of the larger brands at these baby shows, because most aren’t products for pregnant women themselves, they’re investing their marketing costs for the future.

Meeting with fluid provided some excellent news. Lee’s looked at the website, especially the home page and has suggested some changes which will make it snappier and more appealing to the first time visitor. Can’t wait for those changes to be put on the site.

Plus a different format & layout for our monthly newsletter which I was really unhappy with before.

Spoke to Kay about the ‘search engine optimisation’ (SEO) work she’s been doing too, and that sounds fantastic. Whilst we don’t think the majority of our members will find us by just browsing on the web, using google, yahoo, msn search engines etc., it all helps!

I’m on a press trip to Butlins this next week. So Luke can meet Bob the Builder!

We have to make the draw for our April competition of a luxury spa break weekend and we have announced our new competition for May – a family holiday at the amazing Sparkles Hotel in Blackpool. A themed children’s hotel like you’ve never seen before! Have a look at my review of it ‘Blackpool Bliss’ if you haven’t seen it yet.

So let’s hope for sun in Skegness this week, and a good mobile network so I can still pick up emails and take phone calls whilst I’m away from my desk!

Kirsty

The honeymoon’s over…

.....well and truly over!

We’ve come down to earth with a bump over this Easter period. I think as the euphoria of the launch has worn off and we’re into the hard slog of actually running a start-up.

There have been a couple of incidents of clashes of opinion, as we’ve been putting our points across and trying to make sure we’re on the same wavelength. I think the worst is over for now, as we’ve cleared the air on a few things. Hopefully things will run a bit smoother.

These problems wouldn’t occur if you didn’t have just a few people trying to do many different things, some of which they don’t actually enjoy and aren’t skilled in either. If you could afford to hire staff to be responsible for their own little bit of the business, it seems like it would be a lot easier. But that’s just not realistic with a start-up, and I guess we’d have other problems then anyway trying to manage more personalities! So it’s just a case of heads down, plough on and keep going until we’re in a position to recruit. Even the founder of Amazon packed his own boxes during the early days!

The TV documentary thing didn’t quite happen last week. We were only going to be a ‘bit part’ almost a ‘walk-on’ really! But we were hoping we’d get the business mentioned and along with it, some profile. A hotel we were going to review (Sparkles in Blackpool) is being featured in ‘The Hotel Inspector’ a sort of docu-soap to turn hotels around and solve whatever issues they had. There’s only been one series of it before, and it’s on Channel 5, so if you didn’t see it, if you think of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, you’d been along the right lines. However the film crew had finished their filming earlier than expected and so we missed them.

We did know that before we showed up, but went along anyway because I really wanted to have the chance to review this hotel. Normally there’s no chance of a press trip because the hotel will be fully booked straight through to September now, but she was closed for renovations just before Easter (as a result of the work Channel 5 had suggested) and so I got to have a good peep at all the bedrooms – and what an experience! Have a read of my review “Blackpool Bliss” and you’ll see what I mean, it was like walking into a film set. The great news is that we’ve got a family holiday from Sparkles Hotel to give away in May in our monthly members’ competition. So not a bad deal after all!

By the way, talking of press trips, we want to review accommodation in Isle of Wight, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, and Spain/France/Italy if anyone has any contacts who may like us review them in June – so we can get it on the site before the summer holidays. Just pass on my email address (kirsty@entertainthekids.com) if you know anyone who may be interested.

The company acquisition we’d been bidding for a few months ago raised it’s head again last week. The original purchasers had pulled out, after dragging their feet all this time, and so it was effectively back on the market again. We put in a (much lower) offer, because our big concern about the business was that it was in a specialist market and we didn’t have anyone to run it for us, as the former directors had decided they didn’t want to be involved in it at all any more. I’m not prepared to take my focus away from entertainthekids.com to start learning a new business sector. We weren’t successful, and the winning offer was nearly twice our bid. But that was fine with us because the timing’s just wrong for us to risk anything else at the moment.

We’ve been flattered in a sad kind of way! Our PR agency has found that many regional/local newspapers don’t want to feature us because they say we’re a threat to what they do already in their newspaper or on their website. This can really only be relating to the Days Out section, and it’s ridiculous in my opinion – but I guess I would say that. And if their websites do try to cover local days out, they’ve usually only got about 6 things on there! We’ve got well over 2,000 on our website. This even applies to my own local paper. So this week I’m going to pick up the phone to the editor myself and see if I can sort it out somehow. There’s got to be a way around this one.

More baby shows attended and booked. Most of them are very small, very local and not costing much at all. But very worth attending because I’m picking up all sorts of knowledge of one kind or another, even if we’re not getting much in the way of members joining at some of them, we’re not losing anything by attending.

This week starts with a catch-up after Easter, today. I’ve sent loads of emails for various things that haven’t been answered because many people were still on holiday last week. Followed by an extremely busy day on Tuesday with meetings with Fluid, Crush, a baby show near Hull (yes on a Tuesday – it will be interesting to see the turnout!) followed by a meeting in Leeds. Nothing fixed has been planned for the rest of the week, but that could change quickly, and it usually does!

Kirsty

We’re attacking on all fronts

It’s been about marketing from all angles this week.

Last Saturday I attended another Baby Show, but this time we didn’t have a full stand because we found out about it too late to book a space. And what a massive difference it made – not a single member has joined, and I can guarantee that 99% of them received a card and a pack of crayons in their hands (from me, stood near the exit all day!)

So that proves something for us, that we’re going to have to exhibit properly in future, and show our website, to get the same reaction we had at Bambinos, the first baby show we attended. Of course, it may be that it’s a slow burn, but like for like, we’ve just not made the same impression. We’re still getting new members from Bambinos now, but we also had lots on the days we actually exhibited and in the few days immediately after. An interesting experiment, and very useful information. Thankfully it didn’t cost us much to find this out!

One of the best things about the day was meeting up with other business owners, swapping contacts and bouncing ideas off each other. In particular Lara from Babytastic (antenatal classes for pregnant couples in Hertfordshire) and I, spent most of the day talking because we were stood opposite each other. There was a lot of banter and it was great to see that we could both help each other out because we’d had experience of different things. There’s sometimes a lot of hesitation when business owners talk about their strategies, ideas and plans. When there’s no commercial risk (ie you’re not talking directly to a competitor), I can’t see what the problem is and the secrecy often does more harm than good. And let’s face it, if I was nervous about giving away private commercial information, I wouldn’t be writing this and broadcasting it to the world, would I?

I’m regularly emailed by an anonymous website business owner, who is generally criticising my approach or strategy. Not enough information to be helpful, just critical. It’s a shame that he doesn’t feel he can be open enough to disclose his email address directly to me so that I can actually reply to his emails, and then maybe something constructive will come out of this.

We finally got ourselves a mention in Alison Cork’s Really Useful Column in the Evening Standard on Wednesday evening, after us expecting it for the last couple of weeks. A cracking review, and she’s finished it by calling us ‘Pure Genius!’ Well we can’t ask for more than that, but I was really surprised to find that the number of members joining, stating the ES as their ‘heard from’ reason, was really low. It’s only Thursday evening as I write this, so maybe they’ll trickle in, but still…

We’re still waiting for our feature in the local paper, and I’m expecting quite a lot of interest from that, we shall see!

Crush Communications have been sending out our press releases this week, giving details of our competition - a luxury spa weekend courtesy of spabreak (see our website for full details!). I'm expecting some feedback tomorrow about how successful they've been with that.

Plus we’ve been busily printing, sticking and posting in our direct mail campaign. Very targeted and over quite a small area, but this is proving quite successful already. Maybe there’s a message here for us. Of course, the advantage with getting editorial press coverage is that it doesn’t cost anything, apart from a lot of time (assuming you don’t have a PR agent charging you for their service), and the costs of a direct mail campaign can be significant. But we’ve managed our costs really carefully, so this one should pay off. However I’m certainly looking forward to the day when we can afford to pay administrative staff to do our mailshots! You wouldn’t believe how much of a workout you get stuffing envelopes and sticking labels and stamps all day!


Wendy has been busy arranging the family travel reviews for the holiday pages. We’ve got 6 reviews to be posted in April, 4 lined up for May and 3 already in place for June. So those pages are going to be quite impressive soon, and quite varied. But it’s going to get more difficult to get any agreement for press trips in July/August as all the best family resorts are fully booked anyway, so I guess it will go pretty quiet after that until September.

We’re also now working on going further a-field for some European holidays, but we needed to wait until the pages were more substantial before we approached companies for these more expensive press trips. Let’s see how we get on, I expect many will have to be booked well in advance and we won’t be offered any reviews until 2007 – something that didn’t occur to me to do last year before we launched! That would have been impressive planning ahead! We need to tackle various modes of transport too – travelling with kids on a plane, boat/ferry, train and by car will all have different elements for the feature. We’ve got to provide as many useful tips as we can!

I’m looking at getting some partnerships for some of the other content too, more about those later if I get anywhere. And contact me if you have any ideas!

Talking of ideas, I’ve had a brilliant one from another business owner, Louise Parr who makes handmade wedding stationery - www.somethingbeautiful.biz, she suggested we should offer a gift option for anyone who wants to purchase a membership for someone else, she said it’d make a novel gift for a new mum in particular. What a fabulous idea and why didn’t I think of it before? Anyway, it’s in the pipeline now, so I’m very grateful to Louise (who received a complimentary membership for her sister-in-law as a thank you from us!) for telling us this. Aren’t there some nice people around?

There’s a possibility that we may be featured on a TV documentary on channel 5, for which I’m being interviewed next week. Not sure if it will go ahead, but a nice opportunity and one that I’m not going to turn down!

So more about that next week too!

Kirsty

And we’re off!

The fundraising has been put on hold for the moment, simply because I’ve not had chance to complete our new business plan. Most of my time is taken up with PR and marketing – I reckon about 80% at the moment.

Of course it’s all worthwhile, and especially now we’ve had confirmation that several articles about us are going to be published in print (incl the Evening Standard’s Home & Property supplement, in the Really Useful Column on Wednesday 3rd April), on websites, and I’ve got various groups distributing our cards. And it’s all making an impact and we’re getting results from it.

However we began to recognise that this can’t carry on for much longer, because it’s taking my time away from the strategic planning which is crucial to the development of the business as well.

So we’ve taken the plunge……we’ve employed a PR agency (again!).

I met Caroline from Crush Communications at a networking event a couple of weeks ago, and I was very impressed with her. Not least because, one of her client’s was also there (a fashion designer and image consultant), and she was singing her praises. She assures me she wasn’t paid to attend the event by Caroline!

Caroline contacted me after the event, which led me to discuss a potential project we were planning and which we would like help with – an Easter competition, primarily with the objective of getting media coverage and attracting new members.

So Ross & I met Caroline and her partner, Vanessa, at their offices in Manchester yesterday. After a productive meeting we’re now working together! Partly due to our previous experiences with PR firms, we didn’t want to tie ourselves in to a long-term arrangement, until we’d seen the results they could get. And because of the structure of the fee arrangement we agreed, which is much riskier than a normal assignment for them (but I wasn’t prepared to work on any other basis than the one we’ve agreed), they are happy too to work on this short-term assignment as a test for them as well.

So both sides are happy!

Now I’m just confirming the prize – a luxury spa weekend for 2! Which ties in nicely with our strapline (…& now you can relax) and putting together the information for the press releases, which will be issued by Crush on Monday afternoon. Perfect! So far, so good.

If things work out well, then I’m sure we’ll consider working with them on a longer term basis, because we’ve been impressed so far, and we do seem to get along well.

From the website content side, things are especially ramping up on the travel reviews. We’ve got a fantastic range of holidays planned in for the next 8 weeks, which will make those pages really diverse.

The Easter activities are being continually uploaded as we speak, and I’ve got another 30 songs to input, and we’ve got another 10 or so arts & crafts activities to upload.

Looks like we have been joined by a celebrity too! Lizi Botham is from CBeebies’ SMarteenies, and she’s just started a children’s arts/crafts party business called ‘Bizi Lizi’. Co-incidentally she’s from the same town as me, so we’ve been in touch and she’s going to provide some activities for the arts & crafts pages too, in return for us using her logo next to them on the site.

I presented a training course (still paying the bills just!) to a group of young accountants last night, about the benefits of networking and building contacts. And I used quite a few examples from the website where I’d met someone, or got in touch with someone, because there was an opportunity for both of us to benefit from some arrangement – usually linked with PR for one side or both. It’s all about contacts! Seeing the opportunities and having the guts to do something about it.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that easy. Simply because you’ve got to be on top of everything you’re trying to do, you have to be mega organised to keep track of who you’ve contacted, then follow them up. I’m sure I’ve missed quite a few things where I’ve not followed them up. Must trawl back through my ‘sent items’ box and make a list of things to follow up. Yes, another list!

We met Lee on Tuesday and started to look at our statistics – hits, page impressions, exit and entry points, conversion rates etc. It’s not very helpful at the moment because the figures are skewed by people just being nosey, and also a lot of PR companies who are wanting to see if their client is listed on our site. I guess when they find out they have to pay to get that information, many don’t.

We’ve had a good click-through from my diary – so thank you for having a look! But I’d love your feedback if you did go and look at the home page. Did you join? If not, why not?

- Was it the price (£3.50 for a single month or £12 for a year)
- Was it too fussy and you got bored?
- Did the copy not grab you enough?
- Or did it just not apply to you as you don’t have kids and you were just looking because you read this?

Please let me know – it all helps!
kirsty@entertainthekids.com or www.entertainthekids.com

Another baby show tomorrow, this time in St Albans but we’re not exhibiting with a full stand, so we won’t get the same impact we had at Bambinos. I really must look at the full list of baby shows and decide which we’re going to do. Otherwise they’ll be full and we’ll have missed the boat.

Next week will show us what impact we’ve got from the press/media coverage. It will be very interesting to see the results. We’re also going to combine it with a targeted direct mail campaign to potential introducers (mainly nurseries & kids clubs) with another competition for them – the highest number of members referred by one introducer will also win a luxury spa weekend! One day I’ll get to go on one of these myself! So I’m off to the stationers now to buy more envelopes and cartridge ink to start printing all those labels again!

Kirsty

2 weeks in!

Is it really 2 weeks since we went live? It has absolutely flown by and I think I’m just catching my breath. I don’t know where to start!

At the end of our first week we exhibited at Bambinos, a baby & toddler exhibition in Harrogate. It was an ideal opportunity to meet the public, promote the brand and see whether, after all our market research, we were right about people being willing to pay a membership fee to use the site.

Were we right? YES! Fantastic, problem 1 sorted! We received such a favourable response, and even pregnant mums were buying an annual membership (£12). So we’ve overcome that issue. Now we have many more issues to deal with:

- promote, promote, promote the brand
- overcome apathy and actually get people to logon and have a look
- review our stats to understand our ‘numbers’ – response rates, conversion rates & later on, renewal percentages, so we can plan a bit better
- keep the content up to date and expand it
- and promote a bit more – efficiently though!

Although the visitor numbers at Bambinos weren’t as high as expected, and therefore it wasn’t as cost efficient as it should’ve been, we realised that this form of marketing was very effective for us. We have a very visual stand, with the website being projected onto a big screen. I was very proud of our stand. It looked good, and we had plenty to draw people in – a kiddies colouring table and some cool water for all those pregnant mums! We also started off with some helium and lots of branded balloons, but unbelievably, half way through the first day, we ran out of helium!

So I’ve now done some research into the other baby shows around the UK. There’s the big one, The Baby Show, sponsored by Practical Parenting, which is now in 4 locations during the year. The advantage to exhibiting at this is that it’s very well established and gets massive visitor numbers, 20,000+. The disadvantage is cost, although on a cost per visitor basis, it’s probably the best value. However, cashflow is extremely tight, but more about that later!

There are several other smaller shows, usually much shorter in length, but some also running for the first time (like Bambino) so you take a risk on visitor numbers. However, sometimes the cost is so low that it’s worth taking the risk. So I’m in contact with the organizers of these now, and over the next couple of weeks we’ll decide which other shows we are exhibiting at.

I’ve also been investigating advertising costs. There are some ideal places for us to advertise offline, and I’m looking at the relative costs of all of these at the moment. The online advertising is still up for discussion and review. Of course we’re doing all the ‘search engine optimisation’ (seo) work with Lee and it’s on the agenda to be discussed at tomorrow morning’s management meeting. But I think we need some more information about online advertising before we take it any further.

We have been interviewed by some local newspapers, and I’ve been distributing the advertising/business cards around various groups. So the public relations (PR) is still gradually building up, and hopefully that will show results soon.

We’re now looking at the next phase of our funding requirements. The funding we had to date was mainly to get us to the current stage, and now we have 2 options. We can either have minimal expenditure, and wait for the business to grow by word of mouth and PR, before we spend any more on advertising etc. Or we can go for another phase of fundraising, this time for a much larger sum, and get the budget to really go for marketing & advertising in a big way.

To a funder, we are at the stage where we have a product, it has been proven, and we have met all our deadlines, so to some extent the management team is also proven. Therefore any risk will be reduced.

However, we still don’t have adequate proof of our membership assumptions. We have quite a unique offering and so we can’t carry out research to compare our sales projections with any other business. On the positive side, my target for new members in March has nearly been reached, and that was supposed to be for a full month when we didn’t start trading until 13th of the month.

The other negative is that we don’t have any security to offer a funder, therefore we’ll have to either use the DTI Small firms loan guarantee scheme (SFLGS), or we’ll have to sell equity shares to a business angel or venture capitalist.

So guess what? I’m writing yet another version of the business plan! It has to be completely updated now that we’ve launched, and that’s on my task list for Tuesday when Luke is in nursery. Talking of which, he has been a bit unwell for the last few days, and so it a bit more clingy than normal, which is making it more difficult for me to spend as long at the computer. It’s amazing where you can pull the hours from if you need to though, and it’s certainly one advantage of working from home. This is what they really mean by ‘flexible working’!

Kirsty

We're LIVE!

Good grief, I really wish I hadn't decided to give up alcohol for Lent. I could really really do with a strong drink now!

Because I am very proud to announce that about 2 hours ago, we went live as www.entertainthekids.com!

Finally, after all this planning - and then of course, as always seems to happen, there was a heart stopping moment when I thought we had a big problem.....but then I looked again, and it isn't as big a problem as I thought, and certainly won't stop us trading. We've just missed something that could look a tiny bit better - but I'm not telling you what it is, you'll have to go and find it!!

So I've spent the last 2 hours (in between going stone cold with fright about what I thought I'd found!) sorting out the complimentary media logins that have been requested by the press. And there's some quite distinguished names on there, so I hope they like it!

I've checked, and checked again that their logins work, that there's no broken links, and I'm just keeping my fingers crossed now that I haven't missed anything.

This weekend has been exhausting. It's just been constant work and working against the clock. You know that feeling when sometimes you wish you could turn back time to get a few more hours, and yet at the same time you wish it was just all over? I'm pleased with the quality of the content now, and I think it is fabulous value for money for anyone joining it.

I just wanted to make sure of that before we launched, because you only have one chance to impress someone. And although they'd have already joined up, it could still be disastrous if they're not impressed because of the impact of negative word of mouth. So I was desperate to make sure that whoever joined the site was delighted with it, from day 1. Only time will tell, eh?

Then today has been much of a waiting game, just waiting for the final amends to be made, and checking them and then towards the end it got a bit frantic until we gave the go ahead to go live.

And then 15 minutes of peace, whilst they uploaded the site onto the server. During which time by the way I went to pick up my son from a friend who'd had him for a couple of hours for me!
My mobile phone text has been red hot too. It's the quickest way to get a message out to lots of people at once (including our team members), and we've had some lovely replies. I must keep them for posterity!

So here we are, waiting for our first 'real' member to join!

The launch email to those who had registered their email address on our holding page is being sent out in the morning. It's amazing how many people are on that list now. It's really started to grow to quite a number over the last few weeks.

I think I'll be in bed by 9pm. I've sent Gregg out with Luke to the takeaway - there was no way I was cooking tonight! And I'm sure that as soon as the adrenaline wears off, I'll just collapse!

I'll be back later in the week with an update about our first week of trading - and no doubt there'll be more ups and downs before we're done!

Kirsty

New website to ease the stress of being a parent!

EMBARGOED INFORMATION
PRESS RELEASE NOT FOR PUBLICATION BEFORE 13 MARCH 2006 00:01

entertainthekids.com has launched today, finally allowing parents to relax a bit more! Developed by a mum, former scout leader and kids’ club leader, Kirsty McGregor has hit the nail on the head and answered every busy parent’s wishes. You can now find hundreds of ideas to entertain, amuse and delight your children - all in one place.

The site provides ideas for kids’ parties, days out, arts and crafts, music, games, gardening, outdoor activities and lots more. It has seasonal themed inspiration for every holiday you can think of, including Mother's Day and Easter, plus has fantastic ideas to keep the kids happy during every half-term break, over the long, hot summer months, and even when it rains. There are lists of sports and children’s membership organisations, colouring pages to keep them busy when you're busy, and hands-on reviews of family holidays, edited by Woman’s Own former deputy editor, Wendy Sloane.

Can’t think of what to do on another rainy Sunday? Have a look for indoor games or get them settled with our colouring pages and some crayons. Nice day outside? Go to the 'days out' pages to find inspiration, or look in the outdoors section. There are loads of ways to occupy the kids in the garden or at the park.

The days out pages are amazing, allowing you to search by age group, location, distance you are prepared to travel from home, and also by date, for those special events that you always just seem to miss! There’s even a link to a map for each venue, so that you can get exact directions. In fact, more than 2,500 days out across the whole of the UK are already listed on the site.

Lee Turner, the site’s Chief Technology Officer and Managing Director of Fluid Creativity has designed the site. "I thought this website was a fantastic idea, and the potential is there for this brand to become really strong. We designed the site so it is quick, very simple to use, stylish and has some strong functional elements to it, such as the ‘all-singing, all-dancing’ search engine. Fluid has won many awards in the past, and I’ll certainly be entering this site for a few more!"
The 10-strong editorial team is spread right across the UK, and has never all met up in one place. So they have found a novel place for their launch party. "We decided to exhibit at Bambino 2006 at the Yorkshire Event Centre on 18 & 19 March, where we’ll be showing our site to the thousands of parents attending the show. All members of the team are coming along at some point over the weekend, so we decided it would be an ideal place to have a party. But I’m not sure we’ll be doing it ‘kids style’ with pass the parcel and face painting! Maybe we’ll stretch to ‘Pin the Tail on the Tech-y’ though, using Lee as our donkey!" laughed Kirsty.

ends
13 March 2006

Notes for editors
entertainthekids.com is a new concept in parenting websites, helping parents and carers find inspiration from the hundreds of ideas on the site, covering arts and crafts, days out (major attractions and very local), games, kids’ parties, gardening, outdoor activities, music and lots more. The site will also provide regular reviews of family holidays and suggested activities when travelling with children.

Parents are able to search for exciting activities based upon their child’s age (birth to 11 years old) and their location. The site will also provide lots of ideas for seasonal activities relevant to the time of year, eg mother’s day crafts, things to do on a windy day, Easter events etc. It also includes details of sports, children’s pre-school and after-school membership organisations and clubs.

For further details, or for a complimentary media membership to review the site, please contact Kirsty McGregor at kirsty@entertainthekids.com or telephone 07867 982561.
entertainthekids.com is offering regional publications a reader offer of 15 months for the price of 12, if they are willing to feature a regular column provided by entertainthekids.com, covering activities for kids in their local area.

The clock’s ticking!

It’s currently Friday morning and there’s no time to panic now. Just focus focus focus. The only thing I’m panicking about is that I have been writing lists everywhere, just to get things down on paper whilst I remember them, and I really should’ve been keeping them altogether – in my big red book! So hope I don’t slip up and miss something.

I really wanted to write this last night because so much was going round in my head that it would have been useful to spill it out onto here, but by 10pm my head was ‘mashed’ and I just didn’t have the energy. One good thing is that I’m sleeping well! And so’s Luke, which is a good job because I need to be full of beans every morning at the moment to plough on (you know, in between bathing Luke, washing up pots and sorting his breakfast, boring daily things that are just getting in the way at the moment. I’ve got to say though, he has been a treasure. And I couldn’t have managed without grandparents and friends (& Gregg when he’s not working – deadline’s for him too at the moment, marvelous timing!) who have been looking after him for a few hours to give me complete concentration. But at the moment he’s eating his breakfast and watching Noddy so I’ve got an hour or so I think before he’ll need some attention. And the library books are due back today, so I’ll take an hour out to go there.

It’s really like that at the moment, counting every hour and using the time as efficiently as I can. Today is going to be really key, because we need the admin suite (the ‘back-end’ where we enter content for the site) back as soon as possible so we can check it all works as we need it to. One of the web design team can’t work tomorrow (Saturday) and I’m not sure if he’s contactable on Sunday. So it could be a very late night tonight, going back and forth with them, giving feedback. I’m taking my laptop and mobile connection with me everywhere today, in case they need me to check something. An hour wasted at this point is going to be crucial.

On the plus side it looks fantastic! So much better than the last version, with a more stylish design, expanded features (like the RSS feed and news items) and it is still very easy and quick to use.

We had a slight hiccup yesterday with the charity we wanted to support. They couldn’t get all their various committees to act quickly enough, and our contact there said realistically it was going to be at least 3 months before they’d be ready. The bureaucracy surrounding the charity rules can be ridiculous sometimes, they’ve already had about 3 months. They are missing out on possible donations, but I understand their viewpoint, and our contacts are extremely disappointed.

So potentially I was going to have to go ‘cap in hand’ to Steve at Fluid to change the site again. The design had been set to account for potential charity donations from members on the joining page, and at that stage it was highly unlikely that we’d have a charity to donate to. But then the PR contact we had for the charity, told us she is also a committee member for a much smaller charity, Holidays with Help. They are a fantastic group of ex British Red Cross volunteers, who take around 300 disabled children to Pontins twice a year. They rely totally on donations, and it fits in really well with our site, so the decision was made pretty quickly! They don’t have the committee structures that most charities do, and so they granted us their permission within about 2 hours! Phew, that was a close call. But actually it’s turned out so well. By supporting something as small as this, hopefully we can really make a difference.

I wrote the press release for the launch yesterday and sent it out (initially by email) to various publications, websites and press agencies, a much more thorough mailing list than we’ve had for any press releases we’ve sent in the past. I'll post it on here on the next post. It’s already had some attention and I’ve had journalists contacting me asking for complimentary media membership (which we offer so they can review the site). I’ve also suggested to publications that we can give them a reader offer of 15 months for the price of 12, if they agree to give us a regular featured column. We’re trying to uild these up a bit more now, we already have quite a few publications taking monthly contributions from us, but we’d like lots more.

I think I need to keep a control of this a bit more though, as the numbers grow I need to schedule the articles in a bit better so that we always hit our deadlines. Something else for the list! I have been doing a couple more things to try and get more organised, mainly categorising my ‘in box’ a bit more. We are receiving emails for lots of different things now. Journalists who want media memberships, publications who want to feature us, attractions who want us to feature them on the site, etc, so I’ve split my folders up into ‘To Deal with’, ‘Press release responses’, ‘New events’, ‘Old events and other’ (!) ‘Bambino’ and ‘Beta testers’. This is making it a lot easier to focus on the ‘To Deal with’ items, although worryingly they seem to be getting longer too.

Talking of Bambino, things have picked up apace on that too. I’ve sorted the event insurance out, bought the PPL licence (for broadcasting music – we’re going to have a CD playing background music, nursery rhymes probably!), bought extra fleeces and jackets for the rest of the team. Can you believe there are actually 10 of us now! And they all needed some branding clothing for the Bambino show as they will all be there at some point over the weekend. I now need to take them to the man who embroiders our logo (on Bury market!) and go to the card and party warehouse I joined so I can buy the helium cylinder to blow up the balloons on the day. Still to do – health & safety policy and training document for the team, buy party hats (we decided to have our launch party on the stand!) , buy tablecloths, waste bins, spare lamp for the projector, clipboards, print off joining forms, design the posters etc etc. The list goes on. Ross has quite a few jobs for this too. He’s designing the stand layout, incl planning cables, power sockets etc, and buying the mounting card and Velcro to put the posters up.

Our promotional posters and cards arrived, along with a bill for £1,000! Apparently they look great, but I haven’t seen them yet because Ross picked them up yesterday. We also asked the printer to print a couple of images from the site on A3 card, so we can hang them from the ceiling grids at the show. And Ross says they look great.

It’s hard trying to visualize how everything will look, but I’m just trying to make sure we appeal to all the senses (hence the background music) and use all the space well, without it being too cramped. We have a 4m x 2m stand, so we have plenty of space – I think!

I’ve been trying to find a water dispenser, those that dispense cool water into plastic beakers, but I can’t find a supplier who will hire it for just a few days. They’re all on contract for months at a time, and whilst it would be lovely to have one of those in my kitchen, it’s a bit of a luxury I can’t afford unfortunately! So please get in touch if you know anyone. Even the exhibition furniture specialists don’t seem to stock them. I’ll keep looking. Stop press! Found someone! Aquapoint, they’ve fantastic customer service too. That’s why I was getting to frustrated, I’d left messages and filled in online enquiry forms and just hadn’t heard back from anyone.

But I’ve just done another quick google search specifying ‘water coolers Yorkshire’, and came up with Aquapoint. Job sorted, the order’s being faxed over to me. And I wasn’t cracking up, the sales manager did say that most companies don’t offer this service. So if visitors (& their children) can have a drink of water whilst they look at the site, they may stay a bit longer, well that’s the thinking anyway. We came up with this idea because I remembered back to when I attended a similar show when Luke was a baby, and you always get so overladen with things, you’re hot and quite thirsty. But you don’t always want to sit down at the café. Pregnant mums will probably be grateful for a (free) cup of cool water too.

I’ve drafted the email to everyone who’s registered on the holding page, and Lee’s going to design that, and then send it out on Monday. These people qualify for 15 months for the price of 12 aswell, if they’ve registered their email address on entertainthekids.com before we launch.

I met Rebecca Baron last Tuesday (sorry, seem to be jumping all over the place!), our new ‘editorial assistant’, and she’s been given her first task. We’ve made her responsible for liaising with the regional publications in Greater Manchester, to try and increase our profile in our local area.

I’ve also rewritten the copy for all the website pages – again! Made it much punchier, less wordy and focused. When you’ve been looking at something for so long, it’s really hard to stand back and try and see it as a user would for the first time. But the feedback from the preview evenings really helped here, plus some comments we’ve had from our beta testers. It’ll need refreshing every so often anyway, so I’m sure it won’t stay the same for long.

Tons more to do. Content to prepare for when we get the admin suite back, then content to actually enter over the weekend. Media packs to complete and issue, mailing to prepare for potential referral sources, and so it goes on. Good job I’ve got childcare sorted for the full weekend. But first, the library!

Kirsty

Plodding along

We went away last weekend, and it was just what I needed. By the end of Sunday I was so chilled out. I had hardly looked my mobile all weekend, let alone took any calls. But I’ve needed a rocket up me this week to get me going again!

It’s been a steady kind of week. The boring stuff is taking precedence now. We’re just concentrating on getting as much into the database as we can, before we have to freeze the database to upload the new site. Then it will be chaotic trying to enter information that we can’t do until some new functionality is added.

Oh my Lord – we launch a week on Monday!! Where has the time gone? At the moment I’m swinging from sheer panic to complete denial! I think it’s just the nerves that after all the hype and build-up, will people actually like it enough to buy into it? Everything we’ve done in our planning and research suggests it’s going to be huge success, but I still can’t help being apprehensive, and in one way I wish the launch wasn’t actually here yet! If we don’t press the button we can live in blissful ignorance for a bit longer. Although maybe not, ignorance whilst living in poverty is not such a good idea!

If I’m objective, on the whole, things are progressing quite well. And as usual I’ve got lists by the armful.

A list for each team member so I know what they’re currently concentrating on, and a list of work still to be done which I need to share out when they’ve finished. I’m balancing the work for our journalist students, so that they are each getting a bit of ‘glory’ by doing something to increase their profile, but in return they each have to do a bit of legwork and the boring stuff like data entry. I think that’s a fair exchange of time and opportunity.

Then there’s the list for the Bambinos exhibition. The planning’s going okay, but we need to step it up a notch now. We’re discussing this again on Saturday (which has turned into our usual management meeting day) when Ross will have designed the stand layout.

Then we need to go shopping next week. We need something to mount the posters on, Velcro to attach the posters to, and we’ve a hundred other sundry things to collect, including waste bins, paper cups, membership forms to design and print, fleeces to buy and print for the team, H&S policy to write, and so it goes on and on!

Hopefully we’ll be able to deal with most of this whilst we can’t enter information into the database.

There’s been a slight technical glitch with the programming on the site, which can be resolved easily enough, but which means the team have lost some time. So they’re going to be on the last minute finishing the site – but let’s face it, is it ever any other way?

We met up at fluid’s offices this week and spent a while with Steve discussing the functionality. After an email from someone reading this diary (hello out there!), we’ve decided to add an RSS feed onto our site for the news items. A great idea, which means that other websites can hold some content from our site and it’s automatically updated for them every time we update it.

My next big job is to rewrite the copy, bearing in mind the keywords we want the search engines to recognize. This will be about the fourth time I’ve attempted the copy, and although I think I improve it each time I’m confident that now I’ve got some extra hints from Steve and Lee, it’ll be on the mark. They have a really good track record with this type of thing. The first time I attempted it, it was awful – not written for web at all, more like a novel!

We’ve also approved the print work for the launch. We’ve decided on A5 single sided posters which can double up as leaflets if required, and some business card sized handouts. The print costs seemed much higher than last time we did a print run for our earlier promotional work. Apparently, the cost of paper has gone up! Does that mean we need to start speculating on commodity prices too? I ask you. It has made quite a big difference to the price overall, but it’s the best price available so we’ve had to go with it. Whippee dee!

But on the plus side, Andy at Fluid has done a fantastic design for us. They’ll certainly get attention! So we’ll have these for the end of next week, and then we can send them out to various organisations that may be able to refer members to us, plus we can use them at Bambinos.

We’re looking at our advertising again at the moment. I think we’re going to go down the route of doing some very targeted, and fairly low cost, adverts initially. Once we’ve launched and start to generate some income, we also need to look at our online advertising. So any tips welcomed!

Without doubt, next week is going to be extremely hectic, and I think I’ll have to sort some extra childcare out so I can really focus. Me and Gregg (& Ross aswell) have given up alcohol for Lent, maybe not the best timing eh? How many days left until Easter, oh only 36…..ha! Do you think Shloer would have the same effect?...

Luke’s currently emptying my briefcase so he can use it as a car - think I’d better go and rescue it!

Kirsty

Cutting your cloth

I can spill the beans about this great big strategic idea of mine now, because we’ve decided to abandon it, after realising that we really had to focus on our core product offering and the launch of the site.

We’d found out that there was a company for sale in a related field to ours, selling software to childcare organisations. It had gone into liquidation, so obviously wasn’t in a good state. However the software itself really appealed to us, plus the skills and contacts of the former directors, who may have been willing to be involved with the handover.

I felt that the pricing of the software, and the business strategy in general, was completely wrong. The former directors had their hands tied a bit due to having to recoup their overheads and costs of development, so if we could start with a clean slate, I was sure we’d be able to use this software, and the customer base, to develop our own company aswell.

The synergies were fantastic, and in theory it would have made an ideal acquisition for us. However, after spending the last few weeks on this, I think it’s still going to take quite a bit of time investment from us, which is all time away from developing the site and our existing business, so we’ve decided to walk away.

The timing of this was just awful for us. The bank are bound to be nervous that we haven’t even started trading yet, so are going to be reluctant to lend us further funds to purchase any further assets, and whilst there are potentially other ways to finance the deal, at the end of the day you’ve got to admit that the bank have every right to be nervous. And much as it pains me in a way, I’ve got to walk away from this one.

My background is corporate finance, and I’ve assisted countless companies to buy businesses, so the process itself doesn’t worry me at all, in fact it’s quite exciting! It’s generally accepted that there’s always a higher risk of acquisitive growth than organic growth. ie buying a company to grow your business quickly, rather than just waiting for the natural, but usually much slower, growth of your own businesses. However as long as you do thorough due diligence, investigating all the risks, financial, commercial, operational, legal etc, then you can make a judgment about whether you are willing to take those risks. But you need to be able to make an informed judgment with as much knowledge as you can get.

Our risks were mainly operational & commercial. I was fairly confident that my financial projections were achievable, based on the existing customer base, and my (albeit limited) research of their market and reputation. The legal due diligence would have been taken care of by Nick (our lawyer), and if we couldn’t prove title, trademarks etc, then the deal would never have happened anyway. So that didn’t concern me either. Our biggest worry and risk was the investment of management time, both during the acquisition process itself and after we’d bought the assets. The knowledge gap was considerable, and we’d have needed my time, Ross’s time and Lee’s time to understand the software/technology and the market and customers. This market, whilst it still has huge potential for growth, is governed by legislation and public policy that I’ve never had to get to grips with before. So these would all be key areas for us to spend time on.

After tracking down the liquidator, we made the initial approach, and found that they had appointed a sales agent, who duly forwarded the information pack. After a few questions back and forth, we then took part in a conference call two weeks ago with the liquidators, the sales agent and one of the former directors, and were generally quite happy at that point. So we put together a business plan and made a conditional offer.

Our conditions were the usual ones, subject to raising sufficient finance and satisfactory completion of all due diligence. However we added in one more condition, which concerned the involvement of the former directors. They had said they were willing to be involved on a consultancy basis to assist with handover, however I was insistent that if the acquisition went ahead, it had to be as part of some sort of partnership with the former directors. I didn’t want them to be involved as a temporary measure.

In my view, we needed them on board permanently, taking responsibility for running and developing that division, reporting in to the main board. I’d hoped they would be keen, as they wouldn’t have to walk away from something they’d spend years of their lives developing, and yet wouldn’t have the full responsibility of running a business. This was the only way we would have reduced the largest risk that we’d identified.

I’d based our offer on just one year’s worth of earnings (ie profits). Businesses are normally valued on a multiple of earnings, so if you offer 4 times earnings, you are effectively saying you are prepared to wait for 4 years before you get your investment back. Because of the risk associated with the insolvency, and therefore the potential damage to the brand with both its existing customers and the wider market, I wasn’t prepared to wait any longer than 12 months. Also, due to both the technological nature of the product, and the legislative nature of the sector, I didn’t want to assume that we’d be able to use this product in its current state for longer than one year either. Ideally we wanted to bring it online, linked to our website, but after Lee had a conference call with the company’s IT contractor, it became obvious that this wasn’t going to be a simple process. We’d have to invest further considerable time and money to develop this product for the web, so it then becomes another investment decision.

The sales agent informed us that our offer was ‘sound and not unreasonable’, however the deadline for accepting offers was extended several times, as he was waiting for a further offer, from a ‘late entrant’. This meant that it was getting closer and closer to our planned launch date, and it began to concern me that the process itself was just going to drag on and so distract us from other things we could be doing to develop and promote our own business.

Plus the fact, the directors did not appear to want to be involved in any form of partnership or permanent position, and whilst we may have managed to negotiate something that suited everyone, it wasn’t going to be a quick process. We certainly needed to meet with them face to face to discuss this, and that meeting didn’t appear to be being progressed by the sales agent. I guess he was waiting to see whether our offer was the strongest before trying to organise that, and instead he wanted us to clarify what role we wanted the directors to undertake, so he could try and negotiate between us and the directors, and therefore assess the strength of our offer.

This just wasn’t something I was prepared to do by email, it needs to be a round-table discussion. I think things can be explained much better face to face, and you can more understand someone’s viewpoint, emotions and wishes if you can see their face, body language and generally start to build a relationship with them. Email is fantastic for many things, but negotiating an emotive deal which is based upon personal issues, is not one of them. So we found ourselves in a ‘catch 22’ situation.

After a few hours of mulling this over, I rang Ross and we agreed we’d withdraw our offer. So I sent the email to the sales agent on Tuesday, and haven’t heard anything since! Perhaps the offer from the other interested party arrived and was better than ours, so we’d have had to walk away anyhow. That’s fine, because I was very sure of what I was prepared to pay for this, and I wasn’t going to be persuaded to pay anymore. Good luck to someone if their business model shows they can pay more. I wasn’t prepared to risk it.

Maybe we’ll hear next week, because we’ve offered a much lower amount for just one of the software products, that we can easily use on our site. If the sales agent doesn’t sell all the assets to one purchaser, he said he would sell them individually, so we may still be in the running for this one.

So, back to our own business. What’s happened this week then? Well lots of planning for the exhibition in March. Ross and I had a meeting on Saturday and now I feel much happier that we are organised. We’ve got to things I hadn’t even thought about initially, such as writing a health & safety policy for the stand and training our team, obtaining public liability insurance, getting all our equipment PAT tested for electrical safety etc etc. Ross is planning the layout and design of the stand. And I’m doing the admin stuff. Plus we had a trip over on Sunday to check out some hotels, and find the venue itself.

Looks like most of our team will be there on at least one of the days. So it’ll be great for everyone to meet each other. Everyone’s met me, some have met Ross, but that’s it! So it’ll be an ideal opportunity to get together. Plus, we have a new Regional Manager for Liverpool & North Wales (which includes Chester and Warrington too). She’s called Mel, and she’s got a 19 month old son and lives near Warrington. She came along to one of our preview evenings, and liked what she saw so much, that she said she may like to be involved. Perfect! So I trained her yesterday, and now she’s ready to start!

After our meeting with Lee’s designers last week, we met at their offices on Tuesday morning to have a look at their concept, with a mock-up of the home page. I have to say it’s fab! We discussed a few things on it, made the odd change, but now we’re there! I was insistent that it still had to be a calm site, ie not too busy or difficult to navigate. And they’ve managed to do that, whilst making the look much more modern and eye-catching. Have a look at our new logo on www.entertainthekids.com . It’s just a bit brighter and bolder than the earlier one. They’re now working on the programming itself, so hopefully we’ll have some parts of the new site to look at next week.

Our two journalist students have both written their first articles for us, and are now doing a bit of research for us.

And that’s about it! It’s certainly never dull around here!

Kirsty

The thing I’ve been dreading

Remember last week how I said that we were going to launch with version 1, and gradually rebuild the site? Well, it’s amazing how much can change in a week!

It was ‘cards on the table’ time yesterday, when Lee told us we really need to rebuild it now. And I agree it’s ridiculous trying to manage with something that is just causing his team too many inefficiencies to develop, it’s just a complete waste of time. And so we’ve bitten the bullet, and yesterday we decided we’d overhaul the site before we launch, and yes, you’ve guessed it, the launch date is no longer 1 March!

However, it’s absolutely, definitely, without a doubt, going to be Monday 13 March, so we’ve only slipped a few days. I’d always said ‘March’ launch date, but was hoping it would be very early March. Partly because I suppose I was kind of expecting something to happen, and wanted to give us plenty of leeway just in case. I’ve seen it so many times with businesses, whether they’re technological or not, that planned timetables nearly always end up moving a bit. But I’m having nightmares about “Boo!” Do you remember that fashion retail website that was so hyped up in the early dot com days, apparently the launch date got moved so many times and it was months and months late by the time they’d launched. However, their budget of £ms is hardly the same situation that we’re in now, but still it does keep cropping up in the back of my mind.

We have set a March 13th deadline, which is going to be very tight now, because that’s the start of the TOAST awareness week that we’re supporting and also the week of the Harrogate Bambinos exhibition. So there’s no way at all that we can’t be live by then!

It does give us a couple more weeks of time to enter more fantastic content though, so that’s an advantage. And we’ve secured the services of a couple of journalist students to help us with this. They’re going to be doing a mix of researching, entering content and writing press releases. So it’s excellent experience and exposure for them too.

Our beta testers are now testing the site and completing our questionnaires. They’re coming back with some really useful comments, lots and lots of positive things too, which really keeps our spirits up. I think they’re going to be so useful to us, to road-test the site as we continue to develop it.

We had a great meeting with the Princess Royal Trust for Carers this week at their Northern office, and it looks all positive for a charity partnership with them. It will work in their favour too, that we have delayed launch for a couple of days, because it will give them more time to get the proposal through their internal structures. If they could be on board with us right from launch, it would be excellent.

My big strategic idea (see diaries end Jan/early Feb) is still rumbling along…and it took a very interesting turn for the better this week, but that’s still not resolved one way or the other, so I’m not spilling the beans just yet! Hopefully more news about this next week. I think its time for me to write a new team newsletter too. The team has changed so much since the last one at New Year, amazingly only about 7 weeks ago, because a massive amount has happened in between. As we’ve lots of new team members it’d just be useful to start communicating with them a bit more effectively, and the newsletter is one way of doing it in a lighthearted but thorough way, making sure you get all the information out to everyone. It’d be good to issue one just before launch (ie now!), and then one just after we launch. Another thing for my task list.

But for now, it’s Friday morning and Luke has been great occupying himself for the last couple of hours, so I’m off to give him a bit of attention. Then probably a quick trip to the shops is called for, or I’m in danger of becoming Old Mother Hubbard!

Kirsty

Oh heck - we need a complete redesign!

Not exactly the news you want to hear from your webdesigner (& Chief Technology Officer), just weeks away from the launch of your website.

I think I just laughed!

We met Lee yesterday for an update, and he explained the situation…

One member of his team has spent the last 3 weeks trying to make the last few amends on the site before we launch, pretty much working full time. This work has taken ages because they didn’t design the site in the first place, and there’s certain approaches they use to build websites, design the coding and generally just lay things out, that haven’t been followed by the previous designer/ programmer.

So it’s causing them no end of headache to even make small changes on the site.

There’s nothing else for it, but to completely rebuild the site from scratch. In the long run, this will make much more sense, as we’ll be able to add functions and content to it much easier and quicker in the future.

However, there’s no way I’m delaying the launch now. We’ve done too much, have a great site from a member’s point of view (albeit a bit of a nightmare to work with for our programmers), and we’ll gain nothing by delaying the launch for another month. Plus the fact we’ve got too many promotional events lined up for March now, which will be completely wasted if we’re not live.

So we’re going ahead with the current site, as version 1. And we’ll just rebuild and redesign the ‘back-end’ much quicker than we originally thought we would need to. It will also give us the opportunity to ask our members what else they’d like to see in version 2.

The focus groups thought the site looked great, had superb content and was unbelieveably good value, so I want to get it out there as soon as possible. I had a comment from a reader of my diary the other day that said “The site is everything that a mother will need. I am sure that you know that”. She’s from Luton, and so now we’re talking to her about becoming our Regional Manager for Herts/Beds/Essex – I like enthusiastic people! We also had an email just wishing us luck, from someone who has recently set up their own business, so good luck to Payroll Excel too!

So now over the next day I need to go through the changes that have been made, and check for any bugs/misunderstandings etc.

I finally got to meet up with Wendy, our Travel Editor on Monday evening in London. Had a lovely evening, and I think we’ve really got some good ideas to progress in the next few weeks. She’s sorted out quite a few holidays for her team to review over the next couple of months. We’re trying to get a good spread, in the South, the North and Scotland, Wales and Ireland aswell. Also a mix of hotels, leisure parks, city breaks and seaside holidays.

We finally made a decision about which baby show we are going exhibit at. And we went with the larger one, Bambinos in Harrogate, North Yorkshire on 18/19 March. It’s going to attract over 5,000 visitors, so should be a great opportunity to meet customers face to face! (www.ottimoevents.com)

So now we’re into the realm of planning the stand, and I’ve approached a local college to see if any graphic design students want to design some posters for us as work experience. Another completely new area for me!

We are having a prize draw competition for anyone who becomes a member over the weekend. And so far we’ve already got offers of prizes from DIG (a new attraction in York), some books/DVDs from Magic Wanda, and we’re hoping to get a family holiday and some baby toys aswell! Any offers, please email!!

Also met the Charity Director of TOAST this week, and have agreed that we are going to support their National Obesity Awareness Week in March, to encourage parents to get their kids more active, and away from the TV/computer/games console. There’s a real lack of practical advice out there, and our site can just provide tons of ideas for parents. Hopefully our joint approach will mean we’ll get some extra publicity. We’re also going to be featured on their website every month. We’re collecting a few publications now where we are going to provide regular columns.

OK, off to the library now with Luke to take his books back! Could really do with him having another day in nursery (he’s back to just 2 days a week) because I’ve got so much to do at the moment. But I’m just going to have to organise myself a bit better (and work every evening possible when Gregg’s home!) because he’s getting a bit clingy and I think he needs me around a bit more. Now where are those books.....?

Kirsty