.....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
entertainthekids.com
24 April 2006
06 April 2006
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
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
31 March 2006
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
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
27 March 2006
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
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
13 March 2006
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
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
10 March 2006
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.
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
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
03 March 2006
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
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
24 February 2006
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
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
17 February 2006
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
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
10 February 2006
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
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
Less than 4 weeks to go!
(written on Friday 3 Feb)
Oh heck, it’s February. The last month we aren’t yet live (is that English?)
We had the last three preview evenings this week, and again had a superb response. Some really good feedback, lots of ideas, some great contacts, and even an offer from an investor! - which we haven’t pursued by the way – yet!
We may have to rewrite the planned rollout programme, because it looks like we have identified some potentially great regional managers in regions we weren’t planning on launching yet. That was always a possibility, and ideally I’d rollout the local information to the whole of the UK immediately, but that would bring with it other challenges. Such as:
- Information systems. We need to know exactly how to keep the information current, where to get it from and how to be as efficient as possible when organising it and ourselves. We can’t offer up a near-perfect system to a new regional manager until we’ve experienced it ourselves, hands-on, in the Greater Manchester region at least. So that’s a work in progress, and can’t be rushed.
- Managing teams. If we have another 20 people on our team, we will need to ensure we have sorted all the training, motivational and operational issues. We’re not there yet, simply because it’s not been a priority so far, and is something that needs planning strategically. The regional managers are such a key part of our business that I want to make sure I get the right people, and that they absolutely love being a part of this. This isn’t trial and error, it’s got to be right first time.
- PR. To promote the site thoroughly around the media in each of our regions would be very time consuming. I’m realizing that just to manage the national publicity campaign and try to focus on Greater Manchester aswell is proving challenging. It’s taking up a large proportion of my time at the moment. So to attempt all regions at once would mean we wouldn’t achieve the best results for any region. You only launch a region once, so we need to make the most of it every time.
So today (Friday) I’m meeting with Lee to discuss the way forward. We’ve a lot of ideas from the preview evenings, and we need to see what’s possible from a technical and time perspective.
We’re no closer to deciding which show we are going to exhibit at in March. We have a preference now though, but it all comes down to cashflow. There’s potentially some extra cash coming our way (not from an investor!) and if that happens then we’ll be laughing. But we won’t know for another week or so yet. So the decision’s still on hold for the time being.
In terms of my big strategic idea I mentioned in the last diary entry, I have made some progress. My problem was that I wasn’t an expert in the area concerned, and I needed to get some advice from someone who was. So I’ve used my local contacts in Manchester at one of the world’s largest consultancy firms, to get to the right person in London, who in turn has directed me to a member of his team who specialises in this area. She’s now making some of her own enquiries, to see if there’s any mileage in my idea, and we should hear back from her next week. Having been a professional advisor myself, I’ve met many people who have suffered for not getting the right advice (not mine, I hasten to add!), and wherever possible you should always use people who are experts in their field. So hopefully we’ll get an answer either way quite soon, and we won’t be wasting our time ‘going around the houses’ if it’s a non-starter.
We’ve been looking for a ‘charity of the year’ to support. We particularly wanted to support a young carers charity to provide respite care for those children who can’t do normal kids’ things, because they have other responsibilities most of the time. Occasionally they get some respite, where someone else takes over their responsibilities for a while, so they can go and enjoy some leisure activities or a holiday, just like ‘normal’ kids do.
It’s something I feel quite passionate about. I’ve always done some sort of voluntary work, ever since I was 13. I think that whenever you have an opportunity to give something back, you should do so. I’m a firm believer in ‘What goes around, comes around!’ There’s a few ways we think we can help raise funds and we met a PR consultant for the Princess Royal Trust for Carers last week, and have now arranged to meet the trust themselves at their North West regional office. The meeting’s in mid-February, so hopefully we can pursue this quite quickly afterwards, because I’d love it to be all in place by launch. They specialise in supporting carers, and have many young carers projects around the country, so it seems an ideal match for us.
We’ve now started requesting information about family & children’s events/exhibitions/activities for March onwards, and have been added to quite a few PR company’s mailing lists if they have appropriate clients. This is by far the easiest and quickest way for us to keep our content updated, but not every venue has a PR company, so we’re going to still have to sort out our system for obtaining all the information and keeping it current. Finalising and refining our system for this is the subject of this weekend’s management meeting!
By the way, if you know any leisure venues/attractions etc, please also add me onto their mailing lists kirsty@entertainthekids.com
Wow – it’s picking up apace now!
I’m not sure this diary writing and reviewing events is therapeutic or if it’s just plain terrifying me!
Kirsty
Oh heck, it’s February. The last month we aren’t yet live (is that English?)
We had the last three preview evenings this week, and again had a superb response. Some really good feedback, lots of ideas, some great contacts, and even an offer from an investor! - which we haven’t pursued by the way – yet!
We may have to rewrite the planned rollout programme, because it looks like we have identified some potentially great regional managers in regions we weren’t planning on launching yet. That was always a possibility, and ideally I’d rollout the local information to the whole of the UK immediately, but that would bring with it other challenges. Such as:
- Information systems. We need to know exactly how to keep the information current, where to get it from and how to be as efficient as possible when organising it and ourselves. We can’t offer up a near-perfect system to a new regional manager until we’ve experienced it ourselves, hands-on, in the Greater Manchester region at least. So that’s a work in progress, and can’t be rushed.
- Managing teams. If we have another 20 people on our team, we will need to ensure we have sorted all the training, motivational and operational issues. We’re not there yet, simply because it’s not been a priority so far, and is something that needs planning strategically. The regional managers are such a key part of our business that I want to make sure I get the right people, and that they absolutely love being a part of this. This isn’t trial and error, it’s got to be right first time.
- PR. To promote the site thoroughly around the media in each of our regions would be very time consuming. I’m realizing that just to manage the national publicity campaign and try to focus on Greater Manchester aswell is proving challenging. It’s taking up a large proportion of my time at the moment. So to attempt all regions at once would mean we wouldn’t achieve the best results for any region. You only launch a region once, so we need to make the most of it every time.
So today (Friday) I’m meeting with Lee to discuss the way forward. We’ve a lot of ideas from the preview evenings, and we need to see what’s possible from a technical and time perspective.
We’re no closer to deciding which show we are going to exhibit at in March. We have a preference now though, but it all comes down to cashflow. There’s potentially some extra cash coming our way (not from an investor!) and if that happens then we’ll be laughing. But we won’t know for another week or so yet. So the decision’s still on hold for the time being.
In terms of my big strategic idea I mentioned in the last diary entry, I have made some progress. My problem was that I wasn’t an expert in the area concerned, and I needed to get some advice from someone who was. So I’ve used my local contacts in Manchester at one of the world’s largest consultancy firms, to get to the right person in London, who in turn has directed me to a member of his team who specialises in this area. She’s now making some of her own enquiries, to see if there’s any mileage in my idea, and we should hear back from her next week. Having been a professional advisor myself, I’ve met many people who have suffered for not getting the right advice (not mine, I hasten to add!), and wherever possible you should always use people who are experts in their field. So hopefully we’ll get an answer either way quite soon, and we won’t be wasting our time ‘going around the houses’ if it’s a non-starter.
We’ve been looking for a ‘charity of the year’ to support. We particularly wanted to support a young carers charity to provide respite care for those children who can’t do normal kids’ things, because they have other responsibilities most of the time. Occasionally they get some respite, where someone else takes over their responsibilities for a while, so they can go and enjoy some leisure activities or a holiday, just like ‘normal’ kids do.
It’s something I feel quite passionate about. I’ve always done some sort of voluntary work, ever since I was 13. I think that whenever you have an opportunity to give something back, you should do so. I’m a firm believer in ‘What goes around, comes around!’ There’s a few ways we think we can help raise funds and we met a PR consultant for the Princess Royal Trust for Carers last week, and have now arranged to meet the trust themselves at their North West regional office. The meeting’s in mid-February, so hopefully we can pursue this quite quickly afterwards, because I’d love it to be all in place by launch. They specialise in supporting carers, and have many young carers projects around the country, so it seems an ideal match for us.
We’ve now started requesting information about family & children’s events/exhibitions/activities for March onwards, and have been added to quite a few PR company’s mailing lists if they have appropriate clients. This is by far the easiest and quickest way for us to keep our content updated, but not every venue has a PR company, so we’re going to still have to sort out our system for obtaining all the information and keeping it current. Finalising and refining our system for this is the subject of this weekend’s management meeting!
By the way, if you know any leisure venues/attractions etc, please also add me onto their mailing lists kirsty@entertainthekids.com
Wow – it’s picking up apace now!
I’m not sure this diary writing and reviewing events is therapeutic or if it’s just plain terrifying me!
Kirsty
02 February 2006
entertainthekids.com sets parents a challenge!
PRESS RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION
entertainthekids.com is delighted to suggest a range of activities, for parents to entertain their children this half-term, no matter what the weather or the budget constraints. The challenge……to ensure no-one ever hears the strains of “I’m bored!”, or the endless beep of the X-box!
“There is a phenomenal range of activities and events available for children and parents this half term.” said Kirsty McGregor, co-founder of entertainthekids.com. “The hardest thing for parents is getting hold of this information, in a relevant form, from just one point of reference. There are so many places to find listings of events that it can take hours to actually find something useful for your child’s age, location and your budget. And not everyone can afford, or would choose, to visit a major theme park everyday”. entertainthekids.com is a new concept, as it will provide this one-stop-shop for parents, simply providing them with loads of inspiration. But until it actually launches in March, Kirsty has suggested some ideas from their website to make this half-term holiday a ‘walk in the park’!
Museums
Don’t just assume museums are dreary, dark and dusty places. Most have special workshops or tours for children in the school holidays. For example:
entertainthekids.com is delighted to suggest a range of activities, for parents to entertain their children this half-term, no matter what the weather or the budget constraints. The challenge……to ensure no-one ever hears the strains of “I’m bored!”, or the endless beep of the X-box!
“There is a phenomenal range of activities and events available for children and parents this half term.” said Kirsty McGregor, co-founder of entertainthekids.com. “The hardest thing for parents is getting hold of this information, in a relevant form, from just one point of reference. There are so many places to find listings of events that it can take hours to actually find something useful for your child’s age, location and your budget. And not everyone can afford, or would choose, to visit a major theme park everyday”. entertainthekids.com is a new concept, as it will provide this one-stop-shop for parents, simply providing them with loads of inspiration. But until it actually launches in March, Kirsty has suggested some ideas from their website to make this half-term holiday a ‘walk in the park’!
Museums
Don’t just assume museums are dreary, dark and dusty places. Most have special workshops or tours for children in the school holidays. For example:
- The Hat Works Museum in Stockport, Cheshire is providing a jewellery workshop for kids every day during half term, where for £3.00 boys and girls can design and make some ‘funky jewellery’ to take home.
- Children under 12 are admitted free to The Scottish Museum of Country Life (adults £4.00), 170 acres of a working farm and museum, situated between Glasgow and East Kilbride. Just like a normal farm, there’s something happening at all times of the year, and you can even take a ride on a tractor trailer up to the Georgian farmhouse.
- At the Pitt Rivers and the University Museum of Natural History in Oxford, every afternoon from 15 - 17 February, there’s magic in the air, looking at magic in the world around us, and magic that people create, plus activities about mythical creatures, witches and even charms that ‘Muggles’ will enjoy! Another free event for children.
The great outdoors
No matter what the weather, kids love getting outside and it’s guaranteed to wear them out! Don’t worry if it’s cold or rainy, dress everyone appropriately in woollies and wellies and get some fresh air away from the central heating. Combine it with a ‘nature walk’ or a ‘scavenger hunt’ or just a ‘silly walks day’, and the children will remember it long after they go back to school.
Inside the house
Tents and tunnels always create a sense of mystery and make-believe and before you know it, a few hours have whizzed past.
Dig out all those empty cardboard boxes left over from Christmas presents, or pop round to your local supermarket and ask them for some they’ve finished with. Open up both ends, and tape them together, crossing them over in places, and to make it even more fun, you could lie materials on the base (bubble wrap, carpets, towels) or hang things from the ‘roof’ such as ribbons, toy spiders, wet gloves and balloons.
Add a couple of chairs with a blanket or sheet thrown over, and you’ve got yourself a scene from a planet in outer space, a battle scene from medieval times, or a maze of secret underground tunnels in a fairytale castle!
Ends
23 January 2006
Notes for editors
entertainthekids.com launches in March 2006, and is a new concept in parenting websites, helping parents & carers find inspiration from the hundreds of ideas on the site, covering arts & crafts, days out (major attractions and very local), games, kids parties, gardening, outside 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 inspiration for seasonal activities relevant to the time of year, eg mother’s day crafts, things to do on a windy day, Easter activities etc. It also includes details of sports, children’s pre-school and after school membership organisations & clubs.
To request a complimentary media membership (to be issued end January 06), to review the site, or for further details, please contact Kirsty McGregor at kirsty@entertainthekids.com or telephone 07867 982561.
Kirsty is also offering to redraft the above press release for any regional publication that would prefer some more local events to be listed. Please contact her if this is appropriate.
Announcing our imminent arrival
Written on Friday 27 Jan
I’ve had a real sense this week that we’ve now started telling people that we exist, and what we’re going to be doing. And it’s actually quite nerve-racking.
The thought that, after all that planning, secrecy and decision-making, we are now opening ourselves up for scrutiny, announcing what we’re going to be doing, and then just holding our breath for the reaction.
We’ve had the second week of preview evenings (6 out of 9 now done), and those in themselves have made me feel quite exposed. I’m an experienced trainer, so the nerves don’t get to me because I’m presenting using the PC in front of a group of strangers. It’s more that I’m looking straight at people’s faces when I tell them about our ‘baby’, the thing we think is really fantastic, and I’m imagining they are (or maybe they really are) just sat there thinking “well go on then, show me what you think is so good, try to impress me!” You’ve got to appear really confident, when in actual fact underneath you’re quivering!
Thankfully, they’ve all been, without exception, just so worth our while. We’ve had amazingly positive feedback from all of them, but we’ve also acquired some very useful contacts. Not just for the marketing of our site, but also for the operational side aswell. Although the numbers have been a lot lower than we expected (I booked rooms with capacity of 50, and we’ve had much less than that), but they have been worth every penny of the cost. That’s even without the general profile raising and marketing from the mailings we’ve did with the invitations.
Still 3 more to go, so hopefully we’ll have more feedback and good comments from those too. I’ll report back next week.
Lots of ideas have been generated from the preview evenings, some good, some not really appropriate or not so good. However all have been welcome, and we will be making some changes to the site to reflect some of these comments.
However, the time this week I felt really vulnerable, was when I’d sent out a press release to the national media. It was meant to be introducing our brand, by offering ideas for parents about how to entertain their children in the half-term holiday - I'll post it on the next blog entry in case you want to read it. And after I’d sent it, it suddenly occurred to me that it made us quite exposed. We had told so many people, with hundreds of contacts themselves, what we were going to be doing. What if someone else decided to jump on the bandwagon and had a far larger marketing budget behind them than we did? What if they stole our ideas?
Then, I pulled myself together! After all, you can’t keep yourself and your ideas a secret for ever. And our idea has been done before anyway, in a different format (and obviously not as good!), so let’s tell the world I say!
We’ve been discussing our site changes with Fluid and progress is being made slowly but surely. I really want to instruct our beta-testers next week, and then shortly after we can issue the media packs. We’re reaching a critical time, and ideally we would have already done this by now.
Another piece of fantastic news is that we’ve appointed a Travel Editor. Wendy Sloane, a freelance journalist for many parenting, women’s and travel publications, is going to edit our Family Holidays pages for us. Whilst we aren’t providing a database of children’s holidays as such, it’s still an area we need to cover because so many people are asking us about it. We were thinking we’d leave it until after we’d launched, but the appointment of Wendy has allowed us to provide it from launch. So she’s currently commissioning various journalists to review some breaks over the half-term holiday, and we’ll have these articles in time for our launch in March. This should help us get some
We’ve also been considering exhibiting at some Baby Shows in March. There’s a large show in Harrogate (albeit an unknown quantity because it’s the first time it’s been run), and a couple of smaller shows in Cheshire and down at Kempton Racecourse. We’d like to be able to let people use our site, so the big logistical problem (and cost factor) is accessing the internet. We have a few alternatives, but none of them are particularly cheap. Cost is obviously a key concern for us, so we’re just holding fire on that decision for a couple of weeks.
So all in all, it’s been a great week, can’t quite believe we’ve crammed everything in that we have. Next week is the final run of Preview Evenings, and I’m currently investigating a few major strategic initiatives, so if they get anywhere, I’ll let you know about those too.
Kirsty
I’ve had a real sense this week that we’ve now started telling people that we exist, and what we’re going to be doing. And it’s actually quite nerve-racking.
The thought that, after all that planning, secrecy and decision-making, we are now opening ourselves up for scrutiny, announcing what we’re going to be doing, and then just holding our breath for the reaction.
We’ve had the second week of preview evenings (6 out of 9 now done), and those in themselves have made me feel quite exposed. I’m an experienced trainer, so the nerves don’t get to me because I’m presenting using the PC in front of a group of strangers. It’s more that I’m looking straight at people’s faces when I tell them about our ‘baby’, the thing we think is really fantastic, and I’m imagining they are (or maybe they really are) just sat there thinking “well go on then, show me what you think is so good, try to impress me!” You’ve got to appear really confident, when in actual fact underneath you’re quivering!
Thankfully, they’ve all been, without exception, just so worth our while. We’ve had amazingly positive feedback from all of them, but we’ve also acquired some very useful contacts. Not just for the marketing of our site, but also for the operational side aswell. Although the numbers have been a lot lower than we expected (I booked rooms with capacity of 50, and we’ve had much less than that), but they have been worth every penny of the cost. That’s even without the general profile raising and marketing from the mailings we’ve did with the invitations.
Still 3 more to go, so hopefully we’ll have more feedback and good comments from those too. I’ll report back next week.
Lots of ideas have been generated from the preview evenings, some good, some not really appropriate or not so good. However all have been welcome, and we will be making some changes to the site to reflect some of these comments.
However, the time this week I felt really vulnerable, was when I’d sent out a press release to the national media. It was meant to be introducing our brand, by offering ideas for parents about how to entertain their children in the half-term holiday - I'll post it on the next blog entry in case you want to read it. And after I’d sent it, it suddenly occurred to me that it made us quite exposed. We had told so many people, with hundreds of contacts themselves, what we were going to be doing. What if someone else decided to jump on the bandwagon and had a far larger marketing budget behind them than we did? What if they stole our ideas?
Then, I pulled myself together! After all, you can’t keep yourself and your ideas a secret for ever. And our idea has been done before anyway, in a different format (and obviously not as good!), so let’s tell the world I say!
We’ve been discussing our site changes with Fluid and progress is being made slowly but surely. I really want to instruct our beta-testers next week, and then shortly after we can issue the media packs. We’re reaching a critical time, and ideally we would have already done this by now.
Another piece of fantastic news is that we’ve appointed a Travel Editor. Wendy Sloane, a freelance journalist for many parenting, women’s and travel publications, is going to edit our Family Holidays pages for us. Whilst we aren’t providing a database of children’s holidays as such, it’s still an area we need to cover because so many people are asking us about it. We were thinking we’d leave it until after we’d launched, but the appointment of Wendy has allowed us to provide it from launch. So she’s currently commissioning various journalists to review some breaks over the half-term holiday, and we’ll have these articles in time for our launch in March. This should help us get some
We’ve also been considering exhibiting at some Baby Shows in March. There’s a large show in Harrogate (albeit an unknown quantity because it’s the first time it’s been run), and a couple of smaller shows in Cheshire and down at Kempton Racecourse. We’d like to be able to let people use our site, so the big logistical problem (and cost factor) is accessing the internet. We have a few alternatives, but none of them are particularly cheap. Cost is obviously a key concern for us, so we’re just holding fire on that decision for a couple of weeks.
So all in all, it’s been a great week, can’t quite believe we’ve crammed everything in that we have. Next week is the final run of Preview Evenings, and I’m currently investigating a few major strategic initiatives, so if they get anywhere, I’ll let you know about those too.
Kirsty
20 January 2006
A trip to Alton Towers?
No, unfortunately not, it just feels like we’ve been on a complete rollercoaster this week! But we’ve come through it and I’m sat here at some ungodly hour on Friday morning (rain woke me up, then mind starting racing, and then couldn’t sleep!) just reflecting on the events of the last few days.
If I can offer anyone some advice as a result of bitter experience, do not, under any circumstances, decide to make a major strategic change to your business, before a crucial event. Does that sound obvious? Of course it does! Let me explain.
We’d decide to change web designer, and hoped to move our site from our old supplier’s server to Fluid’s server by the first week in January. Which would have been in plenty of time for our first preview evening on Tuesday 17th January. In fact, the plan was that Fluid would even be able to make some minor improvements to the site within that timescale.
Well events just dragged on, and for one reason and another, with lots of emails, alleged blame by/from all parties and general stress, by 3pm on the afternoon of the first preview evening, we still didn’t even have a website to show the attendees, who were due to arrive at 6.30pm! The site had been taken off the old supplier’s servers, and hadn’t yet been built and uploaded onto Fluid’s servers. However, after some great work by Lee at Fluid, by 3.15pm we had our website back, and by 5.30pm we also had the ‘back-end’ content management system available to use, so we could enter a few activities into the database, which were of particular relevance for the town we were presenting in, during the few minutes we had spare before delegates starting arriving.
I can honestly say that was the most stressful day in my whole life. I had a pain like a stitch for about 3 days, and I’m sure it was all related, psychosomatic I think they call it. I can see how the human body can’t possibly cope with stress for long periods of time, because it seems to translate into physical pain aswell.
How had this managed to happen, when we’d tried to plan so meticulously for it? Some things are unfortunately completely out of your control, and you’ve got to allow so much more time than you ever think you will need. I was led to believe the site transfer would have happened very quickly, which in theory it should’ve done. But it wasn’t to be.
I think we made a mistake because when we first realised that things were going to take longer than expected, we should’ve just left the site where it was until after the preview evenings, instead of trying to accomplish too much. Of course, at the time, we didn’t think it was too much, and we thought we were being realistic, but as soon as things started to go wrong, we should’ve stopped moving in that direction, and just held fire for a bit longer. We were so close to not even having a site to show, and that would’ve been disastrous for our public relations. We had a backup plan (hastily made on Tuesday morning!), screen prints on powerpoint, but that would not have been ideal by any stretch of the imagination.
However, now back to the positives.
Fluid are currently looking at the site, firstly to ensure they are completely acquainted with the coding and structure. I’ve provided them with a workplan of my priorities, based on changes I’d like to be made before the site is offered to the beta testers to complete our research questionnaire (we have around 20 willing independent beta testers waiting to review the site), and before we allow various members of the media/press to access it.
However, Fluid may alter the priorities slightly, to allow them to work more efficiently, which makes perfect sense. So by mid next week, we should know where we stand in terms of timescale.
We’ve also had some fantastic feedback/emails, both from a press release I issued about our partnership with Fluid, and from requests for regional managers I mentioned in my last diary. In fact, I’m now considering amending the planned rollout we had, because we’ve uncovered some quality people, and it’d be a shame not to be able to use them. So even if you’re not based in one of the regions I mentioned last time, please get in touch if you’d like to become a regional manager with us, because we may well decide to alter the rollout programme. Thanks to those who have already contacted us, we’ll be in touch again shortly.
So back to the supposed focus of this week’s activities.
The preview evenings have been going well. We had 3 so far, and have another 6 planned over the next 2 weeks. We’ve not had massive groups, but that means they’ve been able to be quite interactive, which has given us a much better indication of how users will think, and we’ve also had some good ideas from the attendees, many of which we’ll try to incorporate into the site pre launch. So as focus groups they have been very useful, plus they have really worked well for promoting the site too.
It’s incredibly nerve-racking. I’m normally so confident, and have such a strong belief in the site. But just prior to the start time I got so nervous. Would anyone show up? What would they think of it? Would they tell us something that we hadn’t realised that would make the site useless, or certainly not as good an idea as we thought it was? Etc etc. Your self-confidence plummets, so you have to pull yourselves up by the bootstraps, smile, and wait to see what happens.
On the whole they have been very positive, although we had a real wobble at 6.30pm on Wednesday evening when no-one had arrived. Thankfully that wasn’t the case by 6.40pm. Attendance on that night was certainly down, probably not helped by the fact that Manchester United’s cup replay against Burton Albion was being shown on BBC1 - you just can’t plan for everything!
However that ended up being an excellent night in the end, albeit with a very low attendance, so all was not lost.
Next week brings 3 more preview evenings, and hopefully some progress with the site and a firm timescale for launch. Only 6 weeks to go!
Kirsty
If I can offer anyone some advice as a result of bitter experience, do not, under any circumstances, decide to make a major strategic change to your business, before a crucial event. Does that sound obvious? Of course it does! Let me explain.
We’d decide to change web designer, and hoped to move our site from our old supplier’s server to Fluid’s server by the first week in January. Which would have been in plenty of time for our first preview evening on Tuesday 17th January. In fact, the plan was that Fluid would even be able to make some minor improvements to the site within that timescale.
Well events just dragged on, and for one reason and another, with lots of emails, alleged blame by/from all parties and general stress, by 3pm on the afternoon of the first preview evening, we still didn’t even have a website to show the attendees, who were due to arrive at 6.30pm! The site had been taken off the old supplier’s servers, and hadn’t yet been built and uploaded onto Fluid’s servers. However, after some great work by Lee at Fluid, by 3.15pm we had our website back, and by 5.30pm we also had the ‘back-end’ content management system available to use, so we could enter a few activities into the database, which were of particular relevance for the town we were presenting in, during the few minutes we had spare before delegates starting arriving.
I can honestly say that was the most stressful day in my whole life. I had a pain like a stitch for about 3 days, and I’m sure it was all related, psychosomatic I think they call it. I can see how the human body can’t possibly cope with stress for long periods of time, because it seems to translate into physical pain aswell.
How had this managed to happen, when we’d tried to plan so meticulously for it? Some things are unfortunately completely out of your control, and you’ve got to allow so much more time than you ever think you will need. I was led to believe the site transfer would have happened very quickly, which in theory it should’ve done. But it wasn’t to be.
I think we made a mistake because when we first realised that things were going to take longer than expected, we should’ve just left the site where it was until after the preview evenings, instead of trying to accomplish too much. Of course, at the time, we didn’t think it was too much, and we thought we were being realistic, but as soon as things started to go wrong, we should’ve stopped moving in that direction, and just held fire for a bit longer. We were so close to not even having a site to show, and that would’ve been disastrous for our public relations. We had a backup plan (hastily made on Tuesday morning!), screen prints on powerpoint, but that would not have been ideal by any stretch of the imagination.
However, now back to the positives.
Fluid are currently looking at the site, firstly to ensure they are completely acquainted with the coding and structure. I’ve provided them with a workplan of my priorities, based on changes I’d like to be made before the site is offered to the beta testers to complete our research questionnaire (we have around 20 willing independent beta testers waiting to review the site), and before we allow various members of the media/press to access it.
However, Fluid may alter the priorities slightly, to allow them to work more efficiently, which makes perfect sense. So by mid next week, we should know where we stand in terms of timescale.
We’ve also had some fantastic feedback/emails, both from a press release I issued about our partnership with Fluid, and from requests for regional managers I mentioned in my last diary. In fact, I’m now considering amending the planned rollout we had, because we’ve uncovered some quality people, and it’d be a shame not to be able to use them. So even if you’re not based in one of the regions I mentioned last time, please get in touch if you’d like to become a regional manager with us, because we may well decide to alter the rollout programme. Thanks to those who have already contacted us, we’ll be in touch again shortly.
So back to the supposed focus of this week’s activities.
The preview evenings have been going well. We had 3 so far, and have another 6 planned over the next 2 weeks. We’ve not had massive groups, but that means they’ve been able to be quite interactive, which has given us a much better indication of how users will think, and we’ve also had some good ideas from the attendees, many of which we’ll try to incorporate into the site pre launch. So as focus groups they have been very useful, plus they have really worked well for promoting the site too.
It’s incredibly nerve-racking. I’m normally so confident, and have such a strong belief in the site. But just prior to the start time I got so nervous. Would anyone show up? What would they think of it? Would they tell us something that we hadn’t realised that would make the site useless, or certainly not as good an idea as we thought it was? Etc etc. Your self-confidence plummets, so you have to pull yourselves up by the bootstraps, smile, and wait to see what happens.
On the whole they have been very positive, although we had a real wobble at 6.30pm on Wednesday evening when no-one had arrived. Thankfully that wasn’t the case by 6.40pm. Attendance on that night was certainly down, probably not helped by the fact that Manchester United’s cup replay against Burton Albion was being shown on BBC1 - you just can’t plan for everything!
However that ended up being an excellent night in the end, albeit with a very low attendance, so all was not lost.
Next week brings 3 more preview evenings, and hopefully some progress with the site and a firm timescale for launch. Only 6 weeks to go!
Kirsty
16 January 2006
Time to move on
It’s been a real time of change in the business this week. In some cases it’s been quite hard to deal with, but upon reflection I think it’s all been for the best and I’m sure we now have a much stronger outlook, with a committed and capable team.
Firstly I had to deal with the change of our webdesigner from accsys, to our new supplier (& shareholder) Fluid Creativity. After many emails back and forth, I think we have resolved the issue now, and hopefully by the time you read this, Fluid will have control of the site on their servers. We, (Lee, Ross & I), are trying to draw up a hitlist of planned work, once they’ve had chance to review the site’s files and coding.
There are still a few things I want sorting before Tuesday’s preview evening (yes, that’s tomorrow!), so that we can show the site in the best light at that stage.
The timing of these preview evenings now work perfectly for us, because we can use them as focus groups and see what other changes users would like to see. Again, there are certain other things that need changing before we send the media packs out to the journalists for review, so we’re going to have to consider our workplan very carefully.
In the end it was obvious that accsys didn’t have the necessary setup for our requirements, and I think this is a positive move, although probably long overdue. Unfortunately it’s going to be more stressful now, due to the timing of this handover, but it wasn’t really something that could’ve been done before. Negotiations, meetings, reviewing legal documents, more meetings etc all take time, and it’s not surprising that, although Fluid and etk first starting discussing the possibility of this relationship in mid November, it’s taken two months for it to actually happen. Of course, the break at Christmas, which inevitably probably loses businesses about three weeks of effective working time, hasn’t helped with that timescale.
The second change this week has been the appointment of a new regional manager for Greater Manchester. It became obvious that our existing regional manager couldn’t provide us with the commitment we needed.
I understand that we are really asking a lot of anyone who comes on board with us, because the bulk of the work is always going to be up front (to get the regional content researched and entered), and yet the reward is always going to be longer term, as we are providing share incentives, instead of salary. Hopefully this will change when we start trading, and we’ll be able to use a more conventional method of remuneration, but at this stage it’s a big ask.
I’m also really aiming to get the team so enthusiastic about the possibilities of this business, and I want them to as excited as I am, a very big ask!
It’s therefore only suitable for certain people who have a lifestyle that can accommodate it. And it became apparent that our first choice of Regional Manager couldn’t commit to the hours we needed, especially at this crucial stage in the business when there’s an awful lot to do in a (now) short timescale. She’s now working a 40 hour week, plus has a home business herself, and has a little girl and house to look after.
It’s been quite traumatic dealing with this over recent days, and whilst we have both finally agreed to part ways on a business level, it hasn’t been without some heartache, as we have been good friends for years, and confrontation with a personal friend is not pleasant.
However, I think this is best solution for all of us. We’re out of her hair and we are one less commitment in her life, and we can find someone who has the time and energy available. Which I’m delighted to announce, we have done!
Pauline is actually someone I met whilst at ante-natal classes, and we’ve kept in touch ever since, so she has a 2 year old boy too. She helps in her husband’s business, but hasn’t a full time role, and has the time and energy to get stuck in. So, I’m going to temporarily take over the Greater Manchester role until we can get Pauline trained. But as she was so enthusiastic, she’s already received a lot of information on email to get her immersed in who we are, what we do, her role, and our future plans.
When I was training our other regional managers, I set up a pack of information, which I can just update as each new regional manager comes on board. So this was ideal because it meant I could get the information over to her quickly and quite succinctly. The power of having systems in place! It always seems a pain to set everything up at the beginning, but it always pays dividends later when it saves you reinventing the wheel every time. In our RM pack we have:
Mission statement, first year objectives & USPs
Regional structure & planned rollout programme
RM’s role & characteristics
Overview of task
Instructions for task
PR activities – successes & planned
Share subscription letter (the legal docs)
Company structure
Copy of latest team newsletter
Which brings me onto this, we are now looking for Regional Managers for our 3 planned October launches in Herts/Beds/Essex, West Midlands and North East England. So if anyone knows any potential regional managers (preferably a mum who lives in that area) please get in touch!!
I’ve also been busy preparing the media packs which we’re starting to send out in a couple of weeks, I’ve recorded an audio cd in a recording studio (quite surreal!) and I’ve been entering content as fast as possible! Luke is going to be in nursery for an extra day a week, and will also be at one or other of his grandparents for probably half a day a week aswell, so I can dedicate as much time as possible over the next few weeks to getting us over this crucial time.
By mid February things should start to calm down and we should (in theory!) just gracefully arrive at our launch. Ha! What do you reckon?
Had a comment posted to me about last week’s blog where I was lamenting about the lower than expected % uptake we got from our promotional work. It was very useful, from someone who says he is a successful website owner himself, and all his income is derived from advertising. He stated that £2,500 spend on ‘well targeted online advertising’ should reach about 100,000 people in a year, with at least 10,000 click throughs, and that should generate 7-10% of members. This was really useful information so I thank him for posting that, and we’ll certainly be considering online advertising when we do actually launch.
However, his final comment was really interesting. He said that a website business shouldn’t be advertising offline, as ‘almost no one who is not online already will become your customer’. Is that really the case? Would appreciate to know what other’s think about this aswell.
So our preview evenings start tomorrow evening….eek, lots more opinion no doubt. Marvellous!
Kirsty
Firstly I had to deal with the change of our webdesigner from accsys, to our new supplier (& shareholder) Fluid Creativity. After many emails back and forth, I think we have resolved the issue now, and hopefully by the time you read this, Fluid will have control of the site on their servers. We, (Lee, Ross & I), are trying to draw up a hitlist of planned work, once they’ve had chance to review the site’s files and coding.
There are still a few things I want sorting before Tuesday’s preview evening (yes, that’s tomorrow!), so that we can show the site in the best light at that stage.
The timing of these preview evenings now work perfectly for us, because we can use them as focus groups and see what other changes users would like to see. Again, there are certain other things that need changing before we send the media packs out to the journalists for review, so we’re going to have to consider our workplan very carefully.
In the end it was obvious that accsys didn’t have the necessary setup for our requirements, and I think this is a positive move, although probably long overdue. Unfortunately it’s going to be more stressful now, due to the timing of this handover, but it wasn’t really something that could’ve been done before. Negotiations, meetings, reviewing legal documents, more meetings etc all take time, and it’s not surprising that, although Fluid and etk first starting discussing the possibility of this relationship in mid November, it’s taken two months for it to actually happen. Of course, the break at Christmas, which inevitably probably loses businesses about three weeks of effective working time, hasn’t helped with that timescale.
The second change this week has been the appointment of a new regional manager for Greater Manchester. It became obvious that our existing regional manager couldn’t provide us with the commitment we needed.
I understand that we are really asking a lot of anyone who comes on board with us, because the bulk of the work is always going to be up front (to get the regional content researched and entered), and yet the reward is always going to be longer term, as we are providing share incentives, instead of salary. Hopefully this will change when we start trading, and we’ll be able to use a more conventional method of remuneration, but at this stage it’s a big ask.
I’m also really aiming to get the team so enthusiastic about the possibilities of this business, and I want them to as excited as I am, a very big ask!
It’s therefore only suitable for certain people who have a lifestyle that can accommodate it. And it became apparent that our first choice of Regional Manager couldn’t commit to the hours we needed, especially at this crucial stage in the business when there’s an awful lot to do in a (now) short timescale. She’s now working a 40 hour week, plus has a home business herself, and has a little girl and house to look after.
It’s been quite traumatic dealing with this over recent days, and whilst we have both finally agreed to part ways on a business level, it hasn’t been without some heartache, as we have been good friends for years, and confrontation with a personal friend is not pleasant.
However, I think this is best solution for all of us. We’re out of her hair and we are one less commitment in her life, and we can find someone who has the time and energy available. Which I’m delighted to announce, we have done!
Pauline is actually someone I met whilst at ante-natal classes, and we’ve kept in touch ever since, so she has a 2 year old boy too. She helps in her husband’s business, but hasn’t a full time role, and has the time and energy to get stuck in. So, I’m going to temporarily take over the Greater Manchester role until we can get Pauline trained. But as she was so enthusiastic, she’s already received a lot of information on email to get her immersed in who we are, what we do, her role, and our future plans.
When I was training our other regional managers, I set up a pack of information, which I can just update as each new regional manager comes on board. So this was ideal because it meant I could get the information over to her quickly and quite succinctly. The power of having systems in place! It always seems a pain to set everything up at the beginning, but it always pays dividends later when it saves you reinventing the wheel every time. In our RM pack we have:
Mission statement, first year objectives & USPs
Regional structure & planned rollout programme
RM’s role & characteristics
Overview of task
Instructions for task
PR activities – successes & planned
Share subscription letter (the legal docs)
Company structure
Copy of latest team newsletter
Which brings me onto this, we are now looking for Regional Managers for our 3 planned October launches in Herts/Beds/Essex, West Midlands and North East England. So if anyone knows any potential regional managers (preferably a mum who lives in that area) please get in touch!!
I’ve also been busy preparing the media packs which we’re starting to send out in a couple of weeks, I’ve recorded an audio cd in a recording studio (quite surreal!) and I’ve been entering content as fast as possible! Luke is going to be in nursery for an extra day a week, and will also be at one or other of his grandparents for probably half a day a week aswell, so I can dedicate as much time as possible over the next few weeks to getting us over this crucial time.
By mid February things should start to calm down and we should (in theory!) just gracefully arrive at our launch. Ha! What do you reckon?
Had a comment posted to me about last week’s blog where I was lamenting about the lower than expected % uptake we got from our promotional work. It was very useful, from someone who says he is a successful website owner himself, and all his income is derived from advertising. He stated that £2,500 spend on ‘well targeted online advertising’ should reach about 100,000 people in a year, with at least 10,000 click throughs, and that should generate 7-10% of members. This was really useful information so I thank him for posting that, and we’ll certainly be considering online advertising when we do actually launch.
However, his final comment was really interesting. He said that a website business shouldn’t be advertising offline, as ‘almost no one who is not online already will become your customer’. Is that really the case? Would appreciate to know what other’s think about this aswell.
So our preview evenings start tomorrow evening….eek, lots more opinion no doubt. Marvellous!
Kirsty
09 January 2006
Break, what break?
Happy New Year, and I hope you all had a relaxing time over Christmas. Although I think if you run your own business it’s so hard to stop working for such a long time. For us, it was very busy indeed.
After our promotional work outside the CBeebies concerts in Manchester, we then spent days on end collating address lists, stuffing envelopes, and sticking stamps to send out a 7,000 mailing which was finally finished last Friday. This mailing is to invite those who work with children (nurseries, kids clubs, childminders, football clubs, primary teachers, tutors etc) to our preview evenings which begin in mid January – which will be another massive milestone for us.
We also found out that we’d not won the MEN Venture Awards, but we have been asked to reapply next year when we have some trading under our belt, and we wrote our first newsletter which we distributed to the team. We’ve also been designing the media packs which we’ll be sending out to the press in the next couple of weeks too. So you see we’ve had quite a bit going on!
Some excellent news is that our proposed ‘mentor’ has agreed to work with us as a shareholder in our company. So here is his first introduction….Lee Turner, MD of Fluid Creativity (www.fluidcreativity.co.uk) who Ross and I have both known for some time, and is someone we have a great deal of respect for. So we are delighted that we effectively now have our own in-house new media company, which is going to provide us with massive strategic benefits. Can’t wait to get working with him over the next couple of weeks, to take the functionality, the look of the site, and the e-marketing onto another level. Now I’ve just got to sort out our incumbent web design company, hopefully without leaving any bitter taste. I’m sure they will understand that this was just too good an opportunity for us to miss, and their experience and skills just seem to far outweigh our current supplier.
Now, back to the promotional work at CBeebies…..
I think if any other business is going to benefit from what we have experienced, then we have to be brutally honest about what happened, because we were so frustrated, when we were initially discussing this event back in Sept/Oct, because we couldn’t get any answers to our questions, and felt we were completely floundering around in the dark. So I promised I would tell you the costs and what we actually achieved, so here goes.
First of all, the costs:
Crayons 1,098
(10,000 packs (min order) – although we probably only used 7,000)
Business cards detailing competition (7,500) 510
Promotional staff (6 staff x 4 hours x 2 days) 675
10 Bags (to put the crayons and cards in for the staff) 50
Total (excl VAT) £2,333
OK, so nearly £2,500 is a lot of money to us, so what results did we get?
Well we reckon we handed crayons/cards out to around 6,000 adults with children, so we hit our target market perfectly. We have raised our profile and begun to introduce the brand to our market. Now exactly how that translates into actual members, I can’t say. And this is where it is so difficult to establish how effective marketing is.
But in terms of how many email addresses we captured (we asked people to enter a competition to win a free membership, by going to our website and entering their email address so we can email them when we launch), well we just about had enough email addresses registered for the number of free memberships we were offering as prizes – 50! So virtually everyone who registered actually gets to join for free. Therefore in terms of potential paying members, we more or less got none. 50 email addresses as a percentage of 6,000 is only 0.83%, not even 1%, when I was expecting around 5% and hoping for 10% or more. We asked them to register over the Christmas period, so that could’ve had a bearing on it, as they may have forgotten or not had access to a PC, but I don’t know.
So would we have done this work if we’d known the numbers? No, probably not.
However, we are hoping that we are still going to benefit from this work because we are now offering those members the chance to attend a preview evening, and use the site immediately, as we want to use them for market research, almost as beta testers. If they were keen enough to register then they must be interested, so let’s use that to our advantage, and see they can help us improve the site, along with the others we’ve invited to the preview evenings.
And of course there’s still that elusive question of how many will join when we launch because they’ve already heard of us once before, from a pack of crayons they received at the CBeebies concert. I fear that no-one will ever be able to measure the success of ‘profile raising’ events. It’s purely guesswork.
Just one other lesson we learnt from the promotional work, is to make sure you have all the necessary permissions you need, from the various authorities. Our (ex) PR agency were frankly terrible with this advice or information, and the promotions agency just said it was our responsibility to sort out. And whilst we thought we had spoken to all the necessary organisations, and didn’t need a licence because we weren’t trading, in fact there were many more than we realised and it caused us undue stress on the day to try and resolve these issues. If you want to know more, read my blog of 24th December because I rant on about that in there.
However, it’s all done and the money’s been spent now, and now we move onto another exciting phase of our launch with the Fluid partnership and the preview evenings. This week I concentrate on the media packs and content (again, still, I’ll get there eventually!) and also plan the final bits of the preview evenings. This year has started off as hectic as the last one ended!
Kirsty
After our promotional work outside the CBeebies concerts in Manchester, we then spent days on end collating address lists, stuffing envelopes, and sticking stamps to send out a 7,000 mailing which was finally finished last Friday. This mailing is to invite those who work with children (nurseries, kids clubs, childminders, football clubs, primary teachers, tutors etc) to our preview evenings which begin in mid January – which will be another massive milestone for us.
We also found out that we’d not won the MEN Venture Awards, but we have been asked to reapply next year when we have some trading under our belt, and we wrote our first newsletter which we distributed to the team. We’ve also been designing the media packs which we’ll be sending out to the press in the next couple of weeks too. So you see we’ve had quite a bit going on!
Some excellent news is that our proposed ‘mentor’ has agreed to work with us as a shareholder in our company. So here is his first introduction….Lee Turner, MD of Fluid Creativity (www.fluidcreativity.co.uk) who Ross and I have both known for some time, and is someone we have a great deal of respect for. So we are delighted that we effectively now have our own in-house new media company, which is going to provide us with massive strategic benefits. Can’t wait to get working with him over the next couple of weeks, to take the functionality, the look of the site, and the e-marketing onto another level. Now I’ve just got to sort out our incumbent web design company, hopefully without leaving any bitter taste. I’m sure they will understand that this was just too good an opportunity for us to miss, and their experience and skills just seem to far outweigh our current supplier.
Now, back to the promotional work at CBeebies…..
I think if any other business is going to benefit from what we have experienced, then we have to be brutally honest about what happened, because we were so frustrated, when we were initially discussing this event back in Sept/Oct, because we couldn’t get any answers to our questions, and felt we were completely floundering around in the dark. So I promised I would tell you the costs and what we actually achieved, so here goes.
First of all, the costs:
Crayons 1,098
(10,000 packs (min order) – although we probably only used 7,000)
Business cards detailing competition (7,500) 510
Promotional staff (6 staff x 4 hours x 2 days) 675
10 Bags (to put the crayons and cards in for the staff) 50
Total (excl VAT) £2,333
OK, so nearly £2,500 is a lot of money to us, so what results did we get?
Well we reckon we handed crayons/cards out to around 6,000 adults with children, so we hit our target market perfectly. We have raised our profile and begun to introduce the brand to our market. Now exactly how that translates into actual members, I can’t say. And this is where it is so difficult to establish how effective marketing is.
But in terms of how many email addresses we captured (we asked people to enter a competition to win a free membership, by going to our website and entering their email address so we can email them when we launch), well we just about had enough email addresses registered for the number of free memberships we were offering as prizes – 50! So virtually everyone who registered actually gets to join for free. Therefore in terms of potential paying members, we more or less got none. 50 email addresses as a percentage of 6,000 is only 0.83%, not even 1%, when I was expecting around 5% and hoping for 10% or more. We asked them to register over the Christmas period, so that could’ve had a bearing on it, as they may have forgotten or not had access to a PC, but I don’t know.
So would we have done this work if we’d known the numbers? No, probably not.
However, we are hoping that we are still going to benefit from this work because we are now offering those members the chance to attend a preview evening, and use the site immediately, as we want to use them for market research, almost as beta testers. If they were keen enough to register then they must be interested, so let’s use that to our advantage, and see they can help us improve the site, along with the others we’ve invited to the preview evenings.
And of course there’s still that elusive question of how many will join when we launch because they’ve already heard of us once before, from a pack of crayons they received at the CBeebies concert. I fear that no-one will ever be able to measure the success of ‘profile raising’ events. It’s purely guesswork.
Just one other lesson we learnt from the promotional work, is to make sure you have all the necessary permissions you need, from the various authorities. Our (ex) PR agency were frankly terrible with this advice or information, and the promotions agency just said it was our responsibility to sort out. And whilst we thought we had spoken to all the necessary organisations, and didn’t need a licence because we weren’t trading, in fact there were many more than we realised and it caused us undue stress on the day to try and resolve these issues. If you want to know more, read my blog of 24th December because I rant on about that in there.
However, it’s all done and the money’s been spent now, and now we move onto another exciting phase of our launch with the Fluid partnership and the preview evenings. This week I concentrate on the media packs and content (again, still, I’ll get there eventually!) and also plan the final bits of the preview evenings. This year has started off as hectic as the last one ended!
Kirsty
24 December 2005
Phew, that was hard work!
Phew – that was hard work!
Just thought I’d write up the events of the last couple of days, before I forget!
I’m really pleased with how much we achieved, but it wasn’t all plain sailing.
The biggest issue was about permission from all the various authorities, which we thought we’d sorted weeks ago, but we were nowhere near sorted. There were so many organisations we didn’t even know were involved or that we had to contact!
Here are all the parties that have some authority in the area we were working (MEN Arena/Victoria station and surrounding areas):
MEN Arena incl their security/safety staff
Victoria Station management and Network Rail
Landlord of the building the Arena is in (SMG Europe) and their agent (DTZ)
Manchester City Council & Greater Manchester Police
NCP Car Parks (with direct access to the Arena)
CBeebies show promoter
BBC Children’s TV
I ask you! We had cleared things with some of them, but others just kept coming out of the woodwork! On the first day, (Thursday) we were refused permission from the landlord to stand in an area that was considered a fire exit, but were given permission on Friday morning to go inside the Arena foyer area itself (which is still their land), only after they’d cleared it with the Arena safety staff (who keep track of numbers of personnel in the building) for fire safety purposes.
Great news, eh! Well so it started, but then we were stopped from handing out crayons to the children going into the concert, because the Arena staff were worried that they would crayon all over the walls and furniture. I was completely dumbfounded but had to obey them and we were told to come back after the concert, and we could hand out to children/parents leaving the concert. This also applied to those other entrances from outside where we were handing out crayons. So we went back at the end, and carried on, taking care just to hand out to those leaving the first concert, and not those arriving for the next concert!
All going well, then we were told that our permission had been revoked. By this time I’d had enough, and wasn’t just going to obey them, I needed to know their reasons, and had to speak to the decision maker. After speaking to the Safety Manager at the Arena, I was told it was actually the promoter who was upset because he said we were taking business away from their merchandising stands. I countered by stating that as we were handing out to those exiting the Arena, they had already passed all the merchandising opportunities, so it wasn’t a valid argument. And then I got told that it was actually the BBC and the Head of Children’s Entertainment that wasn’t allowing us to do it, because the parents may think we have something to do with the BBC or have been recommended by them. What?!! Would parents think the same of all the traders selling cowboy hats and sparkly shiny things too? Because believe me, I’ve bought some of these things (at CBeebies Tweenies concert last year) and the quality is extremely suspect. Which certainly isn’t something you could say about our business. The crayons all have the necessary safety mark and the website certainly won’t cause anyone any harm.
Well at that point, I just gave up. I’d had enough of fighting, and to be honest we’d probably already managed to distribute 6,000 of the 7,500 cards we’d brought over the two days. Plus the fact it was absolutely torrential rain outside, and the girls were soaked.
I reckon we covered over 50% of those attending the 4 concerts in total. So that’s not bad. And it also proved to me that the figures of attendees that we were told by our PR company (before we parted company) weren’t correct.
When I’m reflecting on this, the thing that astonishes me about it all, is that no-one seems to know who you have to get permission from. I suppose if you are a large company and do this type of promotion all the time, then you know automatically what you need and from whom. But it was our first time, and as a small company, I had to do the legwork myself. Our PR company had no idea, it was obviously not something they’d done before for any of their clients – another reason why I’m glad they’re no longer acting for us, they just don’t have the specific experience we can benefit from. The promotions agency we hired the staff from, told us it was our responsibility to obtain all the necessary permissions. And I just got passed from pillar to post when trying to speak to these organisations. I think we were a bit of an anomaly for them. We weren’t trading/selling, or collecting donations. And we didn’t have a large fixed stand or were interviewing people. We must have had a bit of a novel idea!
However, on the positive side, we got a great response from parents and kids. They were delighted to be receiving packs of crayons and were quite happy to take the cards to see the details of the competition. One telltale sign is that over the 2 days, when I was circulating around the whole of the station, outside on the streets, the car park and in the Arena itself, I only picked up one card off the floor. All the rest had been taken home.
So hopefully the parents really appreciated the crayons, the kids made good use of them, thus allowing the parents to relax (“…..& now you can relax” is our strapline, and we included it on the crayon packs) and over the festive period they’ll remember/be bothered/have access to enter our competition.
Well, more news of that in the New Year when our web programmer can tell us how many people have registered their email address on our holding page. I'll also tell you then exactly how much it cost us to do this promotion, just so you know!
Next week is mega busy again. Got to get more content entered, as the final deadline is now mid Jan for media & editors. And we’ve got to prepare our promotional mailing to referrers. Lots more address/contacts research to do, sticky labels to print and envelopes to stuff! And this is twice over! Once for the jigsaw and once for the invitation that is being sent a couple of days later. The first mailing has to be ready to be posted on Tue 3 January, and second one on Thursday 5 January.
We also have to prepare the media packs and I want to do a newsletter for our team and other stakeholders, to update them on all recent events – which have been numerous! Not a very restful time planned then, but very very exciting, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!
Now I'm off to peel vegetables, wrap presents and write cards in time for 11 people descending on us tomorrow for Christmas dinner. By the way, Luke had a lovely birthday party yesterday - amazing how you can knock up a buffet for 20 people an hour after you've finished upsetting the BBC!
And I didn't mention how much Ross & I are both aching! Poor Ross, he had to go to work last night aswell! Our feet, legs, arms, shoulders and back are all sore. We can't say we haven't struggled for our cause! And if that's anything to go by, we deserve to be successful eventually.
Kirsty
Just thought I’d write up the events of the last couple of days, before I forget!
I’m really pleased with how much we achieved, but it wasn’t all plain sailing.
The biggest issue was about permission from all the various authorities, which we thought we’d sorted weeks ago, but we were nowhere near sorted. There were so many organisations we didn’t even know were involved or that we had to contact!
Here are all the parties that have some authority in the area we were working (MEN Arena/Victoria station and surrounding areas):
MEN Arena incl their security/safety staff
Victoria Station management and Network Rail
Landlord of the building the Arena is in (SMG Europe) and their agent (DTZ)
Manchester City Council & Greater Manchester Police
NCP Car Parks (with direct access to the Arena)
CBeebies show promoter
BBC Children’s TV
I ask you! We had cleared things with some of them, but others just kept coming out of the woodwork! On the first day, (Thursday) we were refused permission from the landlord to stand in an area that was considered a fire exit, but were given permission on Friday morning to go inside the Arena foyer area itself (which is still their land), only after they’d cleared it with the Arena safety staff (who keep track of numbers of personnel in the building) for fire safety purposes.
Great news, eh! Well so it started, but then we were stopped from handing out crayons to the children going into the concert, because the Arena staff were worried that they would crayon all over the walls and furniture. I was completely dumbfounded but had to obey them and we were told to come back after the concert, and we could hand out to children/parents leaving the concert. This also applied to those other entrances from outside where we were handing out crayons. So we went back at the end, and carried on, taking care just to hand out to those leaving the first concert, and not those arriving for the next concert!
All going well, then we were told that our permission had been revoked. By this time I’d had enough, and wasn’t just going to obey them, I needed to know their reasons, and had to speak to the decision maker. After speaking to the Safety Manager at the Arena, I was told it was actually the promoter who was upset because he said we were taking business away from their merchandising stands. I countered by stating that as we were handing out to those exiting the Arena, they had already passed all the merchandising opportunities, so it wasn’t a valid argument. And then I got told that it was actually the BBC and the Head of Children’s Entertainment that wasn’t allowing us to do it, because the parents may think we have something to do with the BBC or have been recommended by them. What?!! Would parents think the same of all the traders selling cowboy hats and sparkly shiny things too? Because believe me, I’ve bought some of these things (at CBeebies Tweenies concert last year) and the quality is extremely suspect. Which certainly isn’t something you could say about our business. The crayons all have the necessary safety mark and the website certainly won’t cause anyone any harm.
Well at that point, I just gave up. I’d had enough of fighting, and to be honest we’d probably already managed to distribute 6,000 of the 7,500 cards we’d brought over the two days. Plus the fact it was absolutely torrential rain outside, and the girls were soaked.
I reckon we covered over 50% of those attending the 4 concerts in total. So that’s not bad. And it also proved to me that the figures of attendees that we were told by our PR company (before we parted company) weren’t correct.
When I’m reflecting on this, the thing that astonishes me about it all, is that no-one seems to know who you have to get permission from. I suppose if you are a large company and do this type of promotion all the time, then you know automatically what you need and from whom. But it was our first time, and as a small company, I had to do the legwork myself. Our PR company had no idea, it was obviously not something they’d done before for any of their clients – another reason why I’m glad they’re no longer acting for us, they just don’t have the specific experience we can benefit from. The promotions agency we hired the staff from, told us it was our responsibility to obtain all the necessary permissions. And I just got passed from pillar to post when trying to speak to these organisations. I think we were a bit of an anomaly for them. We weren’t trading/selling, or collecting donations. And we didn’t have a large fixed stand or were interviewing people. We must have had a bit of a novel idea!
However, on the positive side, we got a great response from parents and kids. They were delighted to be receiving packs of crayons and were quite happy to take the cards to see the details of the competition. One telltale sign is that over the 2 days, when I was circulating around the whole of the station, outside on the streets, the car park and in the Arena itself, I only picked up one card off the floor. All the rest had been taken home.
So hopefully the parents really appreciated the crayons, the kids made good use of them, thus allowing the parents to relax (“…..& now you can relax” is our strapline, and we included it on the crayon packs) and over the festive period they’ll remember/be bothered/have access to enter our competition.
Well, more news of that in the New Year when our web programmer can tell us how many people have registered their email address on our holding page. I'll also tell you then exactly how much it cost us to do this promotion, just so you know!
Next week is mega busy again. Got to get more content entered, as the final deadline is now mid Jan for media & editors. And we’ve got to prepare our promotional mailing to referrers. Lots more address/contacts research to do, sticky labels to print and envelopes to stuff! And this is twice over! Once for the jigsaw and once for the invitation that is being sent a couple of days later. The first mailing has to be ready to be posted on Tue 3 January, and second one on Thursday 5 January.
We also have to prepare the media packs and I want to do a newsletter for our team and other stakeholders, to update them on all recent events – which have been numerous! Not a very restful time planned then, but very very exciting, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!
Now I'm off to peel vegetables, wrap presents and write cards in time for 11 people descending on us tomorrow for Christmas dinner. By the way, Luke had a lovely birthday party yesterday - amazing how you can knock up a buffet for 20 people an hour after you've finished upsetting the BBC!
And I didn't mention how much Ross & I are both aching! Poor Ross, he had to go to work last night aswell! Our feet, legs, arms, shoulders and back are all sore. We can't say we haven't struggled for our cause! And if that's anything to go by, we deserve to be successful eventually.
Kirsty
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