Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Time ... what time?

I don't get it. You think "it was only yesterday I did that" and then you realise it was actually a month (or more) ago ! There never seems to be enough time to do anything. But at least you're never bored.

We've been setting up a new website www.slidetite.co.uk and trying to get photos, etc done. We've also been working on new promotional material and it all takes much longer than you first think. Take a simple example: a countertop box to put stock in. (1) You have to find someone who supplies them. We eventually found CardWorks and they are good, but it took ages to track them down. (2) Once you have the box how do you decorate it? Header card ... graphics on the sides ... stickers ... etc ...etc...? What you thought would be a couple of days turns into a week; then two. The up side - of course - is that once it is done you will have something which you can be proud of and that looks good.

Another important thing to do is get a good print shop who you can work well with ... we use Flying Colours. They are reasonably local to us but, more importantly, they are the sort of printer who isn't afraid to say to you "well that's OK but it would be better if you thought about this" and that is worth a lot.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Testing times

I think I've said before about how you are constantly learning stuff when you run your own business. Well I've been learning about testing the breaking point of elastic cords over the last couple of weeks and it is making my head hurt!

You would think its easy ... grab a bit of cord; put it in a machine; pull on it until it breaks; record the amount of pull. But no. The first thing that you realise is that as elastic cord stretches it also gets thinner. So the clamps in the machines loose their grip and it all goes wrong.

THEN ... the local company who does a lot of our testing Lifting and Crane, in Gloucester, get very short notice that they have to move. So the day I go to see them I find all the test equipment packed in boxes and half of it has already gone to the new site! So there will be a delay until they get themselves unpacked and settled.

In the meantime I need to find an answer to this getting thinner and letting go problem. My initial thought is to use Slidetite Binders and / or Plates. I may well test this for myself later in the week ... could be fun :-) Massive amounts of stress in an elastic cord until it breaks.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Covered in shame

Its been a long time since my last post and that's a shameful thing. No point in having a blog if I'm not going to keep it up to date :-(

So new resolution - update blog on a regular basis. The problem is - of course - that there are two conflicting drivers here:

Either ..(1) we are really, really busy and there's so much going on I don't get time to do everything so jobs like the blog get pushed down and down my todo list until they basically fall off the bottom.
Or ..(2) there's nothing interesting going on and I hate reading blogs where its just "got up", "had breakfast", etc, etc so I don't want to write like that either.