A Brush With The Police and The VAT Man in Belgium
Something of a Diary entry rather than a typically opinionated Positive Churn post but at the end of a busy seven days here is a run through what I have been up to:
Last Thursday @martynshiner (pictured) and I jumped in the 5series and drove to France with the help of the jolly nice, very efficient and quite reasonably priced people at Speed Ferries dot com. Speedy indeed. Sailing from the old Hover terminal in Dover and the little used ferry terminal in Boulogne Sur Mer its only 50 odd minutes across. The coffee on board ain't bad and on the return leg I strongly urge you to be early and factor in time for a swift meal at the Mirador Hotel, Restaurant, Bar and Hotel (The blue one across the port). Yes I know it looks a little shabby from the outside but it is one of those family run gems that you find all over France where hidden behind a nondescript facade is a restaurant providing food of a stupendous quality for a pittance.
No time to dally in France however swinging past Hem to pick up our man in those parts we were heading on to Ghent in Belgium for the Countryside 2008 consumer fair. The mission: Test drive the Sarah Smith brand of kookily British kitchen textiles from a cold standing start with the Belgian public. Not a bad result. We are always hunting for the niche appeal rather than a mass market stampede and after four days and reinforcements (Sarah and Alison from the UK team) we had chalked up value very similar to our first consumer fair forays in the UK. Given that three years on from its debut the UK sales of this brand generate a big chunk of our profits most months this is promising indeed!
In the middle of this @ms and I madly drove back to Blighty. He to pick his son up from a return flight from Hong Kong. Me to watch the Daughter play in a hockey match and to drop in on the celebratory 40th birthday bash of an old friend before charging back to Belgium to finish up. A small brush with the Belgian police (driving at the French speed limit once across the border is frowned upon!) not to mention Belgian VAT officials failing to put me off!
I said at the beginning of the year that breaking out of the UK was one of my 2008 missions. It hasn't always gone to plan but we are making progress and will push on harder next year via two big trade fairs way beyond these shores and by seeking to consolidate on the beachheads established this year in Japan, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France and now Belgium.
I long ago subscribed to the philosophy of If You Build It They Will Come so build we will in our small- not quite yet a global micro brand but working on it - kind of way in country after country after country because all evidence thus far confirms that we have a brand that travels.
We just need to buy it the plane tickets!
