Snapdragon's chat

To renew or not

The beginning of the financial year always throws up a whole load of questions - there it is all laid out in bald figures, the expenses v. the takings. 
The latter is always less than hoped for, the former always more than anticipated - or is that just my business?
So April has seen me taking a hard look at all expenses and trying to sort out which I carry on with, which are indulgences and which are just not pulling their weight.  The magazine subscriptions, the postings on web portals, the membership of business groups.  I have been spending alot of time with web stats, looking at which sites provide click through to me, looking at where they go, how long they stay, working out where media queries originate.

Which makes this a difficult post - as for the past three weeks I have been dithering about renewing my WIRE membership.  A particularly difficult one as I write a blog for them.  It isn't exactly expensive (£40 a year) but all these things mount up into a great mass of expense. 
In the end I have decided to renew, to spend more time posting on the membership boards etc. and to give it another year. 
The problem is that I live in Scotland - and like many national groups there just aren't enough Scottish members to form into a group, to attract discounts (like the Country Living Fair stalls  which are reduced for WIRE members in London but not Glasgow), or to form the basis of grant funded projects.  When I look at the number of WIRE networks in Yorkshire I am green with envy.
Of course the answer could be to start a group myself, but then I think that Euan might divorce me.  There are just too many other things that I am meant to be involved with that already get short changed.  There are not enough hours in my week.  Also, to be honest, there is already a local networking group here anyway and it would cause problems if I start treading on toes.

In the end I decided to remain a member of WIRE and to resign my membership of the RHS (for similar reasons, all RHS entry gardens in Scotland are National Trust for Scotland properties so I already get in free - I shall have to borrow the magazine from a friend).
And if there are any Scottish WIRE members (or ex members or people who are considering becoming members) out there do get in touch.
Jane
x

Customer service

Last week I had my car booked in to the Peugeot garage to get the back door handles repaired under warranty.
The car isn't very old and both back door handles had collapsed and were only usable from the inside.
If I were Peugeot I would be endeavoring to be very nice indeed as I would be embarrassed about the shoddy build.
Euan took the car in as he had a conference to attend in Glasgow and it was agreed he would pick it up in the afternoon - it wasn't ready so the girls and I had to drive in to pick him up.
No courtesy car was offered, not even a lift to the station.
That was last week - the car wasn't in fact ready 'till yesterday so I agreed a collection time and went in by train to collect it. I got to the service desk and  . . .it wasn't ready. In the end I waited 3/4 hour in a stuffy Peugeot show room.  No-one apologised, no-one offered me a cup of coffee, no-one said anything.
Mumping away last night about my wasted time, Euan said that it would be because as a warranty repair they wouldn't be making a profit.
This is so stupid - they may not get a profit from repairing my poorly made door handles but they may have got a profit in the future . . . if I came back for a service, or bought another car, or recommended them.  It amazes me when I see businesses who haven't grasped that customer service is the cheapest way of marketing - for the cost of a cup of coffee and a smile I may have brought them £1000s in business.
I won't now.

Pride comes before

This time last week I was feeling very pleased with myself - I had recovered from the stresses of getting the boxes and the living room was filled with neatly boxed pots of narcissi waiting to go off.
Well pride comes before a fall.
This time last week was also the time that the courier company I use fell out with the couriers they use to do the runs in areas they don't cover.
My courier decided to switch to a different company and in a fit of pique the original one trashed the track and trace programme and impounded some of my boxes.
On Sunday it became clear that some boxes had not been delivered - unfortunately as the track and trace was down I couldn't find out which ones.  It has also proved impossible to track down exactly where undelivered boxes actually are.
It has been a complete mess of stress and sleepless nights.  It would be bad enough for general parcels to go AWOL but living plants that were meant to be there for Mothers Day . . . This is so far from the service that I expect to be able to deliver.
The saving thing has been that customers have been great -I was fortunately able to contact most of them before they contacted me - I have not had anyone shouting at me (as would have been quite reasonable) and I have had some truly lovely e-mails.   I hope that we are well on the way to sorting out the mess, redelivering the gifts and putting it all down to experience.
I have decided to restrict deliveries to Scotland and the North East of England for the time being as we had no problems with any of those deliveries and I am talking to the courier company about how they handle issues with deliveries outside their areas.
This side of my blogging life just seems to be becoming a catalogue of stress.

A business lesson

Rather untypically, I have mused a lot about this post - at the beginning of the week it would have been a furious rant but I have now calmed down.  The last week has taught me a lot.
You may remember that back in January I was really buoyed up after meeting a packaging broker.  Packaging is one of the recurring nightmares of having a small business - If you are ordering less that 1000 of each sized box it is difficult to get anyone to speak to you, you are reliant on paying high prices to packaging retailers.  It isn't even a case of price, you are really restricted to buying off the shelf sizes of box, making  products to fit the boxes rather than the other way round.  There is also a problem of packaging firms suddenly discontinuing a size of box that you have used for years.  This has just happened to me with my herbal cushion boxes.
So, back in January the opportunity to use a broker seemed wonderful, he could use his clout to get my small orders made up by a variety of different suppliers - I could get custom boxes  to send out potted bulbs, for my crafts, for bouquets etc.  The up front costs would be high as you pay for making up the cutting tool but re-runs would be simple to organise and relatively cost effective.  Even if I could use a 1000 of a particular sized box I don't have storage here for that many.
That was the idea.  I decided to test the water with a custom box for my potted bulbs - it needs air holes for the plant to breathe, handles for the courier to carry it to and from the van, a perforated front so that the customer could get the pot out easily and a collar to hold the pot securely.  It was an obvious candidate for a customised design.  I put in the order with the broker at the beginning of January.
Almost immediately dates began to slip - the sample was 3 days late and didn't fit; the ball park figures (which I needed to be able to price up the finished pots) didn't arrive; the drawings went missing.  When I managed to track down the broker, there was always an excuse - his phoneline had been down as he moved office; the designer has been on sick leave etc. etc.  I was told that I was worrying about nothing - though he could see how I was concerned, this being my first order - boxes are quick to make, there was plenty of time.  He would cut them himself rather than miss the deadline - don't worry.
Well - I expect you can tell what happened - the final deadline of 20th February came and no boxes were delivered.  By now I knew which firm was doing the order so I called them and it was clear that the order had not been placed - the account had not been set up, the materials had not been ordered.  I persuaded the very efficient woman in the office to deal with me directly , got cash out of the bank and had it taken down to the factory so that they would order the materials. 
This was last Thursday, the materials were delivered to the factory on Monday, they were put through the cutting machine on Tuesday morning and the folding machine on Tuesday afternoon (or something like that). I collected them in my car at 4pm on Tuesday afternoon. Right up until 3pm on the Tuesday it was unclear whether my boxes would be ready that day.  I needed them to be able to dispatch Mothers Day presents on Wednesday morning.
Now it is over and I managed to get all the deliveries out, I can rationally look at the situation and work out what went wrong and how I can stop it from happening again. 
In hindsight I should have canceled the order and gone elsewhere sometime in January  as I did have misgivings - though with no knowledge and no contacts that would have been difficult.  I shall certainly have to look at another way of commissioning boxes for other things.
And the broker? I haven't heard from him despite sending him several e-mails asking what happened. This nearly turned into a name and shame rant - and if anyone wants to have details so that they can avoid him I'll e-mail you details.  What an incompetent shower he was, and a coward.
Friends, as usual were really supportive,  offering help in running about to collect things or making up boxes if need be on Tuesday night - at one point it looked like I would be buying off the shelf boxes from a removal firm and customising them - and I am very, very grateful to everyone.
And a big thank you to Rose Wilkie at DS Smith who got my order turned around so quickly and didn't seem to mind the constant stream of phonecalls too much.

The C word

Last week I saw friends who  co-ordinate a large trade show. This is their first year in charge and I think that the show was much better this year than it has been in the past (from a visitor's view anyway)but they have even more ambitious plans for next year.
One of the things that we were talking about was their feeling that there needs to be more "design led" content, so that a wider range of buyers would come. I asked about crafts - . . . .
It was very interesting for it appears that craft is a bit of a dodgy word -the fear was expressed that the trade fair would become cluttered up with "people painting seagulls onto pebbles".
I ignored this as a one off but then the next day I got an e-mail from a designer I admire who has been very flattering about my new embroidered pieces "Whatever you do - don't call it Craft".
Is this a general thing? - is all craft to be classed with the dodgy acrylic knits at the local coffee morning?  If it isn't commercially advisable to be a craft person then what are we?.
Design led?  Sounds a bit like a tail wagging a dog to me.
I am very aware that there are very high class craft collectors - a glossy magazine, a council - but is this antipathy to crafts a common thing?  When people hear "craft" do they think "hackneyed rubbish"?
The herbal cushions are now up on the website and all newsletter subscribers get a stonking deal on them until the end of the month.

Pricing problems as usual . . .

As anyone who reads this regularly will know, January has been a time of experimenting.  I have always run a craft/home accessories business alonside the cut flowers, partly to have something to sell in the season when the garden is just mud and partly so there is something to do when the weather is just too horrible to go outside.
For the past year I have been wanting to connect the craft side more tightly to the flowers side. I have never wanted to be a seamstress.  I have never wanted to run up copies of Cath Kidston, Caroline Zoob, or Angel Linens in different fabrics.  I wanted to be more original, more me, more passionate about it all.
This week I think that I have finally cracked it - I have been working with freehand machine embroidery - using the sewing machine needle like a pencil to translate my sketches of the garden, kitchen and animals into textiles. 
Embroidery has always been an interest - I spent my gap year studying embroidery and fabric making - and this is a great technique, creating something different without losing the immediacy of the original sketch.
However, moving from basic sewing to something more "arty" is throwing up a lot of business questions.  How do I market these pieces, they all differ slightly though there are obvious similarities within a set?  How do I set about pricing them? It is much more difficult to look at the market when there is nothing else quite like these out there.  I can't just see what other bags/doorstops/cushions sell for and work out whether it is worth my while to match the price!
I thought in my naivety that the hard work was going to be in developing this new range - now I see, as usual that the work is going to be in the marketing.
These are age old problems - and ones that I always seem to find difficult.
Are there any artist/craftspeople out there who can give advice?

Flipping the funnel

I am a big fan of business books - mainly because of the way that they encourage me to question the way that I am taking the business forward.
At the moment I am reading my way through the back catalogue of the marketing guru Seth Godin and I must admit that far from just questioning my tactics, I am radically changing them.
There are several threads that run through all of Godin's works but the one that I am obsessed with the moment is his idea of flipping the funnel. He explains that the traditional way to go about marketing is to have a funnel - you chuck in money and names at the top and people who are actually customers come out the bottom.  This is exactly the kind of marketing that a small business cannot afford. Godin's idea is that you flip the funnel, turn it into a megaphone and let your most fanatical customers do your advertising for you. For that to work you need to treat these customers really well (using some of your original marketing budget/time to create remarkable products for them).
It is a lot to think about but I have taken the first step to looking at how I get word out about my business and launch a Newsletter at the end of the week - it will be full of tips and ideas, tutorials, stories behind my products and special offers tailored to my subscribers.  You can subscribe here
The additional great thing about Godin is that lots of his writing is available from his website and blog free of charge.  The link to Flipping the Funnel is here.
Today we are trying to bring Spring forward - a photographer is here tomorrow for a magazine (fortunately not a gardening magazine) and it is meant to look like April.  At least the snow has gone from the hills.

Chicken in the desert

Towards the end of last year I bought a new sewing machine.  I rather untypically spent months researching what I wanted and comparing Internet reviews (aren't blogs wonderful?) As one of my aims this year is to finally have a go at quilting and freehand embroidery, I decided to plump for the Bernina 44 Quilter's Edition - only £600 over budget, oops - and give myself a fighting chance.

The main attraction was that the machine has a thing called BSR - a needle attachment with a sensor that can tell how fast you are moving the material in freehand sewing.  The beauty of this is that no matter how pathetically jerky you are, the stitches come out at the same length.

I am sure that this is regarded as a cheat by skilled freehand quilters.

I have been dying to have a go since I got the machine - but there was the Christmas rush and then the post Christmas sort out and I really couldn't clear any play time to just fiddle about.  And to be honest it was a bit daunting - there was a strong chance that it wouldn't be as straightforward as the American quilters said and I might have had to withdraw back to sewing straight lines with a very over specified machine.

Last night, fed up with packing boxes up in the garage, I got up courage and got the machine out and drew this - a very, very simple chicken (did I mention that I can't draw?) on a piece of cream wool flannel.  I began by thinking it would be a chicken in a meadow but due to the cactus like plants I have decided that he has strayed into a desert instead.  I am wanting to make big quilted curtains for our living room (most of our heat goes out our windows) with stripes and machine embroidered flannels, like an embroidered version of a shirt scrap quilt.  It sounds like one of those big projects that I start . . .

The new set of WIRE blogs has now started - it would be good to get more people reading these dispatches from the coal face of small rural businesses - please, please comment!!!!!!  Here

A new kind of mouse for Phoebe

Phoebe - our middle and most babyish cat- has a set routine.
She is Zoe's cat by temperament as she loves being carted around like an overgrown snuggly blanket.  Every day, when Zoe goes to school, Phoebe goes outside and catches her a mouse which she lays out with much meowing on the bedroom rug.  If I take the mouse away she will go and get another, ensuring that her tribute is there for Zoe's return.
Since last week's snow, Phoebe has decided it is too cold to go a mousing.  Today she has developed a new technique - she is "capturing" pieces of dog food from Jasmine's dish, chasing them round the kitchen and then, with much meowing, laying them out on Zoe's bedroom rug.

Lovely - I think I preferred the mice.

The photo is actually of Minou who is not put off by weather at all!

Paperwhite narcissi

I kept some of the paper-white narcissi back from Christmas and planted them up so that they are just coming into flower now.  Paper-whites are nice and easy to grow - plant them, keep the indoors and they go from bulb to flower in as little as 6 weeks.  They are bulbs which respond to heat, keep them cool - at fridge temperature - and they will stay in suspended animation.  Bring them into the warmth and they will open at once, pumping out waves of scent.

Some people do not like the scent at all - in fact I have a bag of paper-white bulbs which have been bred to be scentless.  I thought when I ordered them that it was a good idea for some people who like the flowers but don't like the smell. 

Somehow however I just haven't had the heart to plant them - they remain in their brown paper bag.

In the greenhouse, on a heated mat are crates of paper-whites, planted up for my mail order experiment - I shall pot on the bulbs into some beautiful aged pots that look as though they have been dug up from a renaissance chateau.
I hadn't realised till this year that you can keep paperwhite narcissi bulbs from year to year - I had thought that, as they are tender, they were wimpy things that wouldn't reflower.  In fact if you feed them after flowering and then wait until the leaves begin to wither you can dry off the bulbs (in the pot if you like) and then re-awaken them next spring by beginning to water them about Christmas time.  Just don't let them get waterlogged or frosted.

Today it is very frosty - like living in Narnia - very beautiful but very cold.