Let's get on with it!

Written on 9 December 2005
This week has definitely been much less traumatic than last, and looking back on it, I actually feel we have made some good progress.

Technology issues at the weekend. We really needed to upgrade our scanner as it just wasn’t performing well and was causing us some real inefficiencies. I roped in Ross, as his technical mind is far superior to mine. After a visit to PC World, we were exasperated! No-one there could tell us about the scanners’ functions, capabilities or what all the technical jargon meant.

They were busy, and, as always it’s a nightmare trying to find anyone to help. We were passed from pillar to post, from a salesman who knew nothing about scanners at all, to someone who was just responsible for demonstrating and flogging a 3 in 1 printer/fax/scanner, which was just too slow for our needs, and anyhow we only wanted a scanner. He then sent us to the business customers’ area, and of course there was no-one around. So we managed to find a manager who was supposedly directing staff to the required customers, so we waited, and waited and waited, and then walked out. One hour wasted and PC World have lost a sale.

Thankfully Ross knew of an independent company called Scan Computers, who luckily are based just down the road. So we went there instead. Should’ve gone their in the first place. We thought PC World would have a broader range and someone we could ask questions to, but obviously not. Scan helped us out, only had a few models in stock, but we found what we needed and came away much happier. I finally managed to install it on Thursday, as I’d just not had the time without Luke around, before then. It works great. Now I just need to get my memory on my computer upgraded, because it’s starting to plod.

Also had a great coup when we got an email from Denise Robertson, the agony aunt on This Morning. We’d written to her back in September to see if she liked the idea of our site, and she’s finally replied with some fantastic comments. So they’re going straight onto the holding page, along with Kym Marsh’s comments!

We’ve also managed to subscribe (courtesy of Venturepoint, the company organising the MEN Venture Awards), to ResponseSource.com which is an email notification system for journalists to contact PR companies with their requirements for features/case studies. I’ve already replied to 3 journalists, so you never know, we may be in print soon. Think we also have to find a cuttings service too, we can’t possibly keep track of all these publications ourselves, and we need to know when we make it into print, so we can track our marketing work.

Today’s major task is to go to the printers to see the design for our screen printing, choose the bags we require for our promotional staff to hold the branded crayons in, and get our fleeces printed with our logo. All with Luke in tow!

I really feel that we are beginning to make progress again with the PR/marketing, something that I really thought had become stagnant over the past few weeks, as we had mistakenly begun to expect the PR agency to fulfill this role. Oh well, you live and learn!

Next week we are meeting our ‘mentor’ to agree terms with him, but more about that later. And I’ve got nearly 2 full days to concentrate on finishing off the content for the site. Can’t wait! I’m under pressure from Ross now who’s now managed to enter over 1,000 items in the database. Let the contest begin!

Kirsty