More ideas

The great thing about running a business like Slidetite is that almost everyone you talk to can come up with a couple of ideas about where the products could be used. Some of these ideas are wacky, some fun and some just downright weird :-)

BUT the point is you get this never ending stream of possibilities and the hard part is pulling out the ones which you can do and do well. For example, a couple of days ago I was in the car park of a local supermarket and watched as a young mother's trolley rolled away from her car whilst she was trying to get her young child into the car. Unfortunately I was too far away to do anything to help but it did set off a train of thought about trolleys and the annoying habit they have of rolling away from you when you least want them to. It is no ones fault - they just do it.

What was really odd about this situation is that our newest product - the Clipper - is designed to clip onto thin metal bar. It turns out - after a number of trips to various supermarkets and DIY stores - this is what most shopping trolleys are made from. Even better ... the Hook will hold onto the back of just about any vehicle without scratching the paintwork.

A quick bit of research around insurance company reports then showed that in the UK the average cost of repairing damage to vehicles bumped and scratched in car parks is £340 !!

So a potential new product / market is born.

All that from seeing one incident in a car park. The problem is that Anne is getting fed up with me coming up with ideas for new applications and is seriously considering not letting me talk to anyone :-) She has already banned me from inventing any more Slidetite products for a while so soon I'll have nothing to do ..............

So many ways to say the same thing

We've finally got the website for Slidetite switched over to the new database driven, multilingual version. It does work and to - be fair to the guys - is easy to use once you get your head around how to lay the words out. Its hard to not keep trying to read the different languages though. You have to just trust that the translators have done their job and that it says what it is supposed to.

Anyway we're very proud of it - sort of like a new puppy - we think it is soooooo clever and everyone else is probably rolling their eyes and wondering what all the fuss is about :-)

Also very exciting news ... we have just had the certificate through for the registered trademark Slidetite. We now own it for the next 10 years. Still other things to do in this area but the whole process was much easier than we were expecting and a lot of the credit for that has to go to the people at the UK Patent Office. They are a very helpful and knowledgable bunch of people - if you ever need to do anything in this area I can recommend talking to them. Also the website has masses of easy to read guides ... again recommended.

Now in the midst of sorting out packaging - it seems no matter what you do someone always wants something slightly different :-) Oh well ... keeps us busy and off the streets.