I drove down to my parents in Lowestoft, Suffolk yesterday. Today, I walked with my partner into Lowestoft, to get some (brutally) fresh air - the Easterlies that blow into Lowestoft during the winter are real cobweb removers.
Walking through the High Street (which I remember well from the 1970's) it was immediately apparent A) just how little it had changed in 30 years and B) how many of the retail outlets are going to disappear over the next year or so.
Almost every other shop was boarded up, or had massive '50% off marked price' sale signs up. Woolworths was a retail carcass, little was left following the group's failure prior to Christmas, and it was clear that many 'rag, tag & bobtail' stores would soon be following suit. From Clinton Cards (looking hopelessly outdated) to Chadds (an old school department store, in business for 100 years) if the product they were selling was surplus to requirements, or under-priced elsewhere (for example, the 70% off greeting cards at Woolies must have been hurting Clintons) then surely the whole 'house of cards' (excuse the pun) was destined to collapse spectactularly.
Even Boots and Superdrug, with dozens of unsold Christmas fragrance & toiletries coffrets - beauitful product, attractively priced and certainly worth purchasing have been affected.
So, if you're a business owner, it's worth taking a look at YOUR business, and whether what it's selling will continue to be bought (and hopefully, if demand is strong, go out of stock, only briefly...!!!) or whether it's a business out of time.
Being in business is a living thing - if you don't constantly adapt to deal with and maximise change, like so many 'old fashioned' retailers, that are living in the past in the hope that the future won't catch up with them, then you run a very real risk of failure.
Over the coming months, I'll be blogging about WoRry - the process of Winning out of Recession, hopefully those of you who follow my blog will see a way forwards - for where there is great change, there is great chance of opportunity.
Well done to Benjamin Britten High School for taking advantage of some of Woolies' redundant fixtures, and also 'Wayne' who seemed to have snapped up pretty much all of their point of sale.
I also found it ironic that just as Don Lewin, Clinton Cards' founder writes his story, that Clinton is on a 50% off sale, and according to the Sunday Times, short term financing. I presented Clinton's with a great internet business opportunity a couple of years back, suffice to say 'the didn't understand it' and maybe this is symptomatic of their business.
Where King of Shaves is concerned, we were in the 'out of stock' position at Superdrug following a very successful promotion for our Azor, but thanks to Karen, she's promised to replenish the shelves PDQ.
Keep on shaving 'n' saving...
Will he, won't he keep the royal beard?.
Even prince's are allowed to have a little time off from shaving the royal stubble, and it seems that a good old fashioned press furore is building up over whether Prince Will will dare to keep the beard or not, for the Christmas festivities.
Personally I think beards suit Santa types, so Will, if you want to enjoy the King of Shaves with our new Azor pre-Christmas, be sure to have your guys talk to my guys.
Ho Ho Ho!
Those who follow my blog, will know I post daily. But rarely post within a matter of minutes.
Many of you will remember the great 1970's sitcom, The Good Life, featuring Felicity Kendal and Richard Briers. The laugh out loud TV show where disillusioned banker Tom Good quits his job, turns his suburban back garden into an allotment and eschews money for the 'Good Life'. The shock of his cash rich neighbours, who stick to their nine to five regime of him making the money, her spending it. And them laughing at Tom and Barbara.
This TV programme, so popular in the 1970's followed hot on the heels of the last global superbust, when oil prices skyrocketed and we had power cuts and mass unemployment.
How would this translate today? Well, you can firstly bet your bottom dollar (if Bernie hasn't Mad(e)off with it, that it'll be on a TV screen near you soon. But seriously, are we entering a world of what I'll term 'Micronomics' (it seems no one has coined this phrase yet via a cursory search on the Internet so I will).
Micronomics is where you make (or grow) what YOU need in an ecoptimised fashion (I've already invented this word - the economical, ecologically sensitive manufacture of stuff).
Imagine a world of Micronomists (not economists - they've largely got it wrong already). No, if you're a Micronomist, you grow your own. You bake your own. You sell your surplus locally to people who want what you have (and buy from them what you don't have). It's self sufficiency for the 21st Century.
Yes, of course, cars will still be needed (hopefully H2ONDA Clarity's) and infrastructure employment will still be there - after all, people aren't giving up their summer holidays, present giving or home improvement quite yet.
But, might money be turned inwards to 'you' rather than outwards to be invested by 'them'.
Think about it. DIY on a global scale, linked by the magic of the Internet where the amount you have doesn't become important, but what you do, and the enjoyment you have in doing it becomes paramount. One example is Sam Clark's Gastrohub, 'The Furrow' in Winchmore Hill, Amersham. But more on this another time.
A global good life anyone?
With the overnight unveiling of the US£50Bn fraud perpetrated by Bernie Madoff you have to seriously start wondering where all this is going to end?
After all, if this one individual has managed to hoodwink otherwise seriously smart, investors (apart from when cash creation clouds their judgement) and create what appeared to be superwealth through borrowing billions from Peter to pay Paul, unless you can physically look at a £1 coin with your own two eyes, you have to wonder where (and from whom) the UK's borrowing is going to be funded, let alone what America will have to do, borrow from. The US has to generate money somehow, but with companies like GM/Ford/Chrysler on the brink of bankruptcy, exactly where is the physical wealth creation going to come from?
Can it be that the superwealth enjoyed by the global middle class is not actually there at all? That it's a money mirage of some sorts? That, in fact, when you net out the savings against the debts, we are all little better off than someone with no money?
All I know is I make a King of Shaves product for X, the retailer typically sells it for approximately 2X+VAT, the product helps people solve a problem (beard growth) and I pay the person who's made it for me, pocketing the difference as fair profit.
"KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid" is what my first boss at Haymarket Publishing, Annie Swift told me.
I do Annie, I do.
So, Clarkson & Co. on Top Gear have probably done more to make the future of motoring cool and green by debuting the astonishing Honda Clarity HF car (Hydrogen Fuel Cell) car tonight.
Honda have a product development & marketing opportunity made in heaven with the Clarity, even previous advertising features a waterfall.
Surely one of the main initiatives Barack Obama can promote in the USA (and Gordon Brown can promote here) is the conversion of Petrol Filling stations to Hydrogen Filling stations, otherwise we'll have Honda Clarity's and nowhere to refuell them. Witness the decade it took Virgin Trains to get Network Rail to upgrade the West Coast Main Line to accomodate 125mph trains (these were first mooted when I was at primary school in the 1970's). This project, subsidised by Government investment, along with the Hydrogen production technology needed will be great global infrastructure projects.
So, dear leaders of the UK & USA, major investment in Hydrogen Filling stations coupled with making car manufacturers build Hydrogen Fuelcell cars MUST be the way forward.
As I emailed Ken Keir, the GM of Honda UK this evening, A) I'd buy one and B) Honda (or H2ONDA) have a product & marketing strategy bang on.
Finally, why not F1 powered by Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars - they can even get back into F1 then - imagine, a 200mph H2O Fuel Cell Formula 1 car (no noise though - it'll be eerily quiet - a bit like the spacecar race games on PSP).
More of this shortly. Until then.
Queen of Skeleton Shelley Rudman wins first World Cup race! Congratulations from King of Shaves. (original blog post)
Congratulations to Shelley on your first World Cup race win.
I know it will be the first of many, and here's looking forward to the Winter Olympics, Vancouver 2010. If you want to check out what it's like riding a virtual bobskeleton, check out our 11m player game, or visit our very own Queen of Skeleton here
The US car companies, which largely make outdated, outmoded, fuel-inefficient cars which no one really wants (witness the rise of Honda, Toyota, Nissan globally since the 1970's) should be left to fail.
They are inefficiently over-unionised, run by bosses who put their jet ahead of their peoples' jobs, have performed spectacularly badly over the past two decades and represent all that is bad in manufacturing Main Street USA. The igntiion must be turned off, the companies must go into administration, for the greater good.
Yes, this will mean their UK subsidiaries suffer. Yes, sadly, tragically in some cases, people will lose their job. But this is a process of renewal.
But we live in a closed system. There will be an (as yet unknown) equal and opposite reaction, where goods and brands people want will be created. Not yet (as Barack Obama continues to resolutely and sensibly point out - "there are no quick fixes" but there will be.
After all, people need cars. But they need less model choice, more fuel economy and importantly, cars that thrive on alternative power, such as electric & hydrogen.
California leads the way with planning for hydrogen cars, but at the moment, there is no refuelling infrastructure in place. Put the redundant workforce to work building a new charging infrastructure, and take the best of these companies R&D and start, in a year or two's time, making new, better, cleaner cars.
After all, like every product in the world, they wear out. Are scrapped, recycled. Demand for 'new and better' will build up. The corner will be turned, the ignition switch will be once again turned, but it won't be an ozone depleting, carbon making car powering into life, but one of a new breed. One for which the planning, so long in execution, can start once Barack Obama is in power.
And regarding the UK economy, IMHO Gordon Brown is right to keep momentum going in the UK economy, and David Cameron is wrong to say 'don't spend to support it'. The UK economy is a sophisticated, hybrid system of supply and demand. Products must be made to be bought, you simply must keep the fuel flowing through the UK's retail channels - and these red blood cells are human beings who 'make, sell & buy'.
Momentum, the product of mass and velocity of an object (the UK economy) must not be allowed to glide to a halt. Anyone who has tried to move a heavy object (imagine a boulder in a small hollow at the top of a hill) knows how hard it is, how long it takes, to rock the boulder slowly back and forth, building up momentum, until finally, eventually, it comes out of the hollow it can have rested in, and start rolling.
People - it's time to embrace 'Change as a Constant' and always be changing, evolving, innovating, improving, always restless witih 'Worry' that things can always be done better.
This is how King of Shaves has thrived, rather than survived, in the face of what people would see as impossibly difficult competition from Gillette & Schick-Wilkinson Sword.
When the going gets tought, the Tough get growing. Change. It's a good thing.
Well,
I have to agree with Campaign.
Link here!
Now
our Azor has launched, King of Shaves has got some serious sales going
from hardware and software, and for the first time in 14 years, we've
managed to secure a 'Hotspot' in Tesco.
With a strong offer (£1 off our Azor handle) and with our replacement blades costing approximately half those of Gillette Fusion, this is a Christmas offer not to be missed.
Available at most large Tesco stores, nation-wide until December 30th.
Go 'Shave & Save'!
