mid 2011 was my last post, apparently. how time flies! almost 2 years, and how one's life and perspectives can change within such a relatively short space of time.

it's obviously not a short space of time, it's 2 years, nigh on, but what's fascinating is how my own views have changed. they've matured considerably. i've lost religion, or the last vestiges of it. i've tried, and failed, and am now trying again to put my efforts into the local business community. i've crashed, horribly, personally. and i've found my own self-belief again. with the help of anne.

there's an awful lot i could write and to that end it's very difficult to decide precicely what to start with, but i'll try to summarise just "where i'm at" at the end of april 2013.

i'm passionate. i always have been but often i've been able to hide it. now i realise that, when tempered with the wisdom of 40-ness, it's a power to be used. i'm aware and yet wary: aware of a whole lot more and how this complicated world inter-twines, yet wary of pinning my beliefs to one cause.

as i've learnt, there is no black or white, just an infinite number of shades of grey (thankfully not just 50). margaret thatcher wasn't right or wrong. valdimir putin is wrong. kim jong un is wrong. barack obama isn't right or wrong. the dalai lama is probably right (but he's religious, so i have to temper that). it's a complicated world.

what is right is that we should look out for one another more than we do. we have fractured communities made up of people who are more interested in what is right for them selfishly than what is right for the whole community. we have the internet to guide us, rightly or wrongly. we have polititicians who seem more hell-bent than ever to divide us.

yet, everywhere i go and with everyone i talk, there are more good conversations than bad. whether some or many of them are bullshit, i don't know but at least they happen.

i'll try and tackle some of the real world issues over the next few weeks and give my perspective as an agnostic, naive believer in the good of mankind... yet with the the understanding that most people couldn't actually give a shit, think i'm some kind of nutjob and wonder just what's in it for me when i try and do something generous. yup, that's what you get for trying to be a reasonable person.

in the meantime, don't buy cheap clothing, in fact, don't buy cheap anything:someone, somewhere has had to make a sacrifice to achieve that and you can be damned sure it wasn't the person running the company.

The future of the Highstreet looks bright!

i've read so many articles and comments recently about the imminent demise of the high street, that if i hadn't got the wit and the gumption, i'd chuck it all in and go back to being a corporate slave. my word, there are some negative people out there.

well, i don't believe it. in fact, i can see a much brighter future for britain's high streets and it's good for communities, good for shoppers, good for business and good for the country's dire economic status. in fact it's so good that the CEO of a global managed services corporation agrees with me and says it could lead to an economic and social revolution in the UK!

unfortunately, i can't name this CEO as he's currently in discussion with my highstreet heros, Totally Locally but here's the gist of it.

there is no doubt that internet shopping and increasingly, mobile shopping, are taking channel share from the highstreet. big and small chains are folding alike and we've certainly got a retail recession on our hands too. however, in the midst of that, Funky Rascal is growing. both in-store and online. How?

Because we're different and because we care. The attention we pay to our customers and their children in the shop means they feel special. When was the last time you felt special in Tesco?

Secondly, because we don't try to compete with Tesco or Primark or any other big box retailer. We're different, we have quality clothes, designed by people who care to be sold by people who care too. And this gets to the nub of the optimism.

It's not independent retailers who should be afraid of the rise of the supermarkets. It's the highstreet chains who aren't moving at lightening speed to adopt the behaviours and characteristics of their more nimble, independent counterparts.

And there will be more and more who fail as the big box retailers expand their soulless carparks on the edges of towns. And here's the optimism. Through schemes like Totally Locally, local people are rediscovering the hidden gems in their neighbourhoods. They're thinking more about what matters and they're beginning to appreciate that not everything you can buy at supermarkets is necessarily what you really want.

The highstreets will be repopulated with shops that deliver different products and fabulous customers service. They'll begin to mutate away from the generic set of shops we've come to know over the past 2 or 3 decades to something last seen probably 30 or more years ago. 

That CEO of the multi-billion dollar corporation believes it and when I heard that, I realised that was what I'd envisaged for our little business and how I see a town like Cupar evolving.

Putting the rose-tinted spectacles away, it'll not happen tomorrow and it'll take a phenomenal amount of work. But both those phrases could apply if I was working for NCR and how much satisfaction would that give me, compared to doing it for myself, my family, my community and for the greater good overall? No competition, is there?

The future's bright, the future's independent...

was it sysiphus?...

it's not that bad but you do need the patience of job to start your own retail business.

i received a job offer this week and i'll tell you, i was quite tempted. ok, the salary was rubbish but rubbish is better than nothing. however, a salary is now, to us, worse than the continual struggle of making every decision ourselves. just... ;-)

i'd post more often but there's not that much to say. we work hard from week to week, we share childcare, willy nilly, we try to tidy our house as much as we can when we're mentally and physically exhausted. life goes on...

i do begin to wonder quite what madness had overtaken me when i handed in my resignation (but, oh, was that a sweet, sweet moment), however, those moments pass and we get on with it. that doesn't mean the temptation of a comfortable salary doesn't tempt me but that would mean the end of what we're doing. simple as...

it reminds me of Camus (harking back to those halcyon days of simple education) and his existential philosophy. your life is generally humdrum, boring, everyday but it is defined by the highs and lows which break the humdrum - essentially. that's fairly simplistic but the highs and lows of what we do seem more colourful, more accentuated, more potent. and it's those highs and lows which i love.

watching lord sugar's "the apprentice" this season has touched a nerve for anne and i. put simply, an entrepreneur doesn't define themsleves as such; they are or they aren't. seeing that i'm on my 3rd go at this, i think i'm just addicted to it and as such, "i am". what i've seen from anne in the last 8 months, she is too.


you have to be prepared to be beaten, bullied, roughed up, have your dreams shattered (again and again) and still come out fighting. local people have told us that they'd heard we're shutting down!! you need elephant hide to do this. but we're now so far in and we're getting more and more support, it would be crazy to chuck it in.

and that's what this post is all about. we're up against it and we get in there each day with the one single, simple view: keep attacking. we know what we're doing and we know that more and more people love it every day. we're keeping the faith and more than that, we are the brand. funky rascal - because childhood's too short for pastel shades!

bring some colour into your life :-)

in with the big boys...

i posted on facebook a couple of days ago that i was pondering selling on amazon and most people seemed to think we'd be mad not to. well, i certainly felt quite privileged when i got the phone call from them. how flattering! imagine amazon asking little funky rascal to sell on their huge store.


but i was wary too. having worked for 2 big global corporations, i know they don't have an altruistic bone in their corporate cores when it comes to business, so what was in it for them? sure, we pay them £25 a month for maintenance, etc, 15% of every sale and they transfer revenue generated to us every 14 days. but there must be more?

of course there is and a quick search revealed why i was perhaps right to be wary. imagine amazon as a huge shopping centre where the majority of shops are amazon. but obviously in their virtual shopping centre there's always room to lease a bit more space to a retailer who carries products they don't. the small guy gets all the millions of customers coming through the doors every week and amazon rents the space and takes a cut of everything the small guy sells. fair enough.

however, you have to use amazon's "EPOS" system, ie they know exactly what you're selling and not selling and they've not become known for their "customers who bought this also bought this..." emarketing database brilliance for nothing. they are emarketers par excellence, right up there ahead of even tesco. so, they know exactly how well your shop is doing... and if it's doing really well then perhaps it makes sense for them to stock the same products but because of their enormous buying power, they'll get them at a reduced cost and because of the scale of their operations, they'll be able to sell them at a much lower margin than tiny little funky rascal.

hey presto, what seemed like a great little earner for us turns into a potential disaster. they've used us as a profitable testbed for a range of products or a new market segment and when we've proven it one way or the other, they make their decision and become the largest retailer of children's didriksons clothing in the uk instead of us.

it might not happen. they might see it as a bit too niche and just continue to cream 15% off our sales. but it might happen, so are we going to do it? of course we are!!

it's a fantastic opportunity to get our products in front of millions of people. people who we can then develop a personal relationship with. who we can introduce to the world of funky rascal. who we can offer discounts and loyalty promotions to exclusively. who we can pull over to buying directly from our own site and who will tell their friends. so whether our amazon venture lasts 6 months or 6 years, we'd be foolish not to do it.


now there's another angle on this and it's one i learnt again at the big boys - commoditisation of the market. i'm sure you're all smart enough to be ahead of me here but it goes, quite simply, like this.

we have incredible success and then amazon start stocking our products and selling them at a lower price. we then have to respond, selling the same products at a lower price and margin. now, i big competitive markets this ends up with everyone selling at a loss and trying to work out just how to make any money. don't believe me? i saw it in the ATM business in emerging/ evolving markets like india, thailand, indonsesia. markets where it is very difficult to differentiate on added value, USPs, etc. the bottom-line price is king and that's that.

fortunately, we're not in a market like that and we're not selling products like that. but i know that certain market segments and geographies for ncr were incredibly painful to do business in. i don't see this getting to that stage. we do sell premium quality products (not saying ncr's ATMs were rubbish) but the sector of that market that crashed was the most basic cash dispense only ATM.

so i'm making a call on this one, knowing what could happen but not expecting it to be anything like as bad as i've seen. and it may never happen, let's face it. however, as a wise man once said, he who sups with the devil should have a long spoon. i'm going to make sure ours is bargepole-long ;-)

tight as a gnat's...

business is picking up but NOT ENOUGH!!!


ok, i'll pipe down, but it's a tough time. we've gone into overload on offers. 10% off here, 15% off there, now a prize draw, next a loyalty card... but that's retail life. what i'm realising is that there is a reason certain 3 and 4 letter high street brands can offer these prices all the time: because their inital prices are so pumped up.

those 3-letter and 4-letter clothing retailers, pump up their prices, so they can appear to offer great deals. we won't do that (i'd say we can't but we could... however, we won't!). but we also have far better clothing, so the gloves are off... we had a member of staff of the 4-letter retailer in the shop in mid-winter who said that their own winter jacket was rubbish, so she came to us. we didn't see her for months until she came back this week to buy some more of our outdoor clothing. that, hopefully, speaks volumes. brill!!

and that's what we're about. good quality, practical clothing that's fun, funky, cool and brilliant value for money. i'll not shy away, didriksons and maxomorra offer outstanding value for money. no, they're not the cheapest but then you can buy cheap and buy twice or buy what we've hand-picked and hand it on to the next child/ cousin/ friend... and the next... and...

we don't just believe in our clothing, we love it. pass it on, they'll thank you ;-) www.funkyrascal.co.uk

motivation

a little over 6 months ago, i thoroughly resented my working day stretching to 12 hours, sometimes more. today, i got into the shop at 9.15am and left at a little after 8.30pm and walked home feeling overjoyed. why?

in fact, i was thinking about work from the moment i woke and i'm still doing so now. i'll continue to think about it, make notes (mental or otherwise), read about it and make decisions until i got to bed at around midnight. and do you know what? i'm STILL not getting paid ;-) well, we're not getting paid but that's not the point.

the point is that despite the almost incessent requirement to think about our business in one regard or another, i'm happy to do so. and the reason is that i can see what that will bring. not a lot, financially, in the short-term but in the mid- and long-term i can really see where this "project" is going. it will bring us financial "comfort" but much more than that, it will bring us far greater happiness as 4 people and a cat :-)

it's more than just a project, obviously. this is our future. however, we're trying something new and we're priviledged to be able to do so, i realise that. i now take liam to nursery school in the morning on his scooter. we talk about the plants, flowers, slugs, birds.... that we see on the way. i didn't get that when i drove furiously to work 20 miles away (ok, i enjoyed the cross country drive in my little car). however, i can now enjoy my commute in a way that i think most people simply can't imagine. if liam wants to stop and look at a caterpillar, we do it. if we want to look at all the new azalea blossoms in someone's garden, we do. and then i get to work...

how can you fail to arrive at work enlivened when that has been your commute? we'll take a salary one day soon but in the meantime, i take my recompense in being able to live my life in, i think, the way i'd always wanted to. and that means a lot.

we've made it!!!

it's been quite a tough few weeks but we've finally got all our stock and this morning, our webstore has gone live - http://www.funkyrascal.co.uk/.

even up until tuesday this week, it was a daily rollercoaster of emotion as we received first good, then bad news about our online merchant account and payment gateway. despite allowing plenty of time for the relevant security details to be checked and whatever else it is they do, it still came down to a narrow squeak as to whether we would be able to launch the site today.

however, it all worked out in the end and we even received our major everyday clothing line, maxomorra, yesterday lunchtime. which didn't really help to be honest! something like 2500 items of clothing needing sorted, counted, cross-checked, scanned, inventoried and hung in the shop when all we want to do is get the webstore up. however, since it's critical to the site, it's a good thing it did arrive.

so we're a multi-channel business now. better go and read some more of my new bible, "eMarketing eXcellence", and get on with the next phase...