Most people know by now that we are relocating to Cornwall, St Tudy to be precise, and although we are looking forward to living in such a beautiful place, we will be sad to leave our friends behind.

This month has been particularly busy at Gorgeous HQ.  We are providing our partner companies with a more direct way of marketing themselves to the media but without breaking the bank – something we all have to think about in these current climes. 

We are about to launch a new virtual catalogue and have secured a deal with the software company involved to become agents for them.  This way we can offer the same discounted deals to our partner companies.  Not only that but they can share this good fortune with friends and family if they wish. 

We were delighted to share in the ‘My Weekly’ 100th Birthday Celebrations and a myriad of our partner companies’ products were published so congratulations to everyone concerned.My Weekly May 2010

We are also excited to be taking part in a competition for July’s Edition of ‘Your Home’ Magazine as well as having a product feature in ‘Perfect Wedding’ Magazine which shows Gabs Buckingham’s fabulous hand painted wedding hearts.  These can be personalised and make great gifts for special guests as well as a gift for the bride and groom.  Gabs can provide smaller hearts to use as wedding favours. 

Personalised Wedding Heart £11.95

Wedding Heart Favours £5 each

In July we are delighted to be taking part in a competition feature for ‘Hello’ Magazine!!  The theme on this occasion is ‘Babies & Children’ and the following partner companies are taking part: F & P, Snoozetunes, Snoozeshade, The Flower Stork, and UpsonDowns in association with Mark Whitmore who is our official Gift Wrapped & Gorgeous photographer.  The prizes will be a baby shower for 50 guests from F & P, a product gift from The Flower Stork, Beautiful, haunting piano music melodies specially composed for your new baby and placed on a cd from Snoozetunes, a fabulous Snoozeshade from Snoozeshade and a 1m by 1m photographic art image with a mobile photo studio session from Upsondowns and Mark Whitmore.  All in all it is a fantastic prize worth £2000!!!  The coverage space alone is worth £16, 500 so we are very lucky to be given this opportunity.  Thank you to everyone who put their products forward for this competition and as we hope to run a similar one soon, we hope to be able to include everyone at some point.

Our Christmas Brochure is now being planned.  We can hardly believe we are talking about Christmas in May but the early bird catches the worm and all that!!

Our new virtual catalogue will be launched any day now and will be sent out to our database of customers who will be able to view our partner companies products, and take advantage of special discount codes.  It is very user friendly and attractive with lots of features which we can take advantage of such as video, music and narrative.  Thus it makes for a more interactive experience between ourselves and our customers.

As a fledgling ecommerce company we find it as hard as anyone to climb up that old google search ladder.  This is why we are constantly looking for new ways to optimise the website including negotiating some subsidised rates for SEO and keyword copy for our partner companies if they struggle in this area.  We will also be sending out keyword lists to everyone for using in their virtual boutique. 

It’s hard to believe we only launched in January this year and already have 75 partner companies and are showcasing over 12oo products.  It has been a helluva few months with our own media coverage, meeting Mr Peter Jones of Dragons Den fame and more recently Ms Rachel Elnaugh whom Amanda took part in a radio interview with for BBC Radio Derby on the subject of Mumpreneurs.  Two of our talented designers Louise Housley and Mel Anderson also took part. 

Hand Felted Vessel Cover by 'Lambchop Designs'

Amanda attended a Business Start Up Workshop at Leicester University  run by Doug Richards, an ex Dragon, and who she was lucky enough to be able to meet and discuss her business with.

Printed Linen Floral Cushion by 'Red Design'

We are both thrilled and proud to be working with all our partner companies and would like to thank you all for your fantastic patience and for sharing your talents with us.  We promise to give you all the support we can to help you grow your fantastic businesses.

Amanda & Alison

PS Just have to show you a couple of our favourite products for this month!

Candy Heart Cup Cake Wedding Favour Candle by Cracking Creations

Hand Felted Luxury Merino Wool Cuff Bracelet With Vintage Brooch by Lambchop

Stars & Sweets Cupcakes - Yum!! £39 for pack of 12 delivered to your door

We have much to celebrate this month at Gorgeous HQ!   Any excuse for a party but especially so as we are now relocating to Cornwall in June and although we are sad to leave lovely Leicestershire, we are very excited about meeting new Cornish Designers.  After all, Cornwall is a hub for creative designer makers and we intend to try our hand at some new crafts ourselves.We will celebrate in style of course and the celebration must include cakes such as those beautiful and delicious cupcakes hand baked by our fabulous new designer FairlyFairyCakes which are ideal for all special occasions but expecially for weddings.

Fresh As A Daisy! hand baked & scrumptious cupcakes.

Pretty Blue Daisy Cupcakes are ideal for weddings and other special occasions or just because they co-ordinate with your parlour – well a girl has to dream!

More of a chocolate person rather than a cake person?  We have the solution with our mouthwatering hand made chocolates which come in bunches!  Yes, that’s right, you can order a bouquet of chocolates as a gift for someone special – not sure they will last as long as real flowers tho!

Now you can’t say we don’t cover all situations here at Gorgeous HQ because if you can’t choose between cake and chocolate then why not have both?                                  

Heart Shaped Slate by Heartwood, £14.99

Apple Cushion, £22.50 by Heartwood              

Citronella Multi Wick Candle, £22.00 by On A Wick & A Prayer      

Shabby Chic Cottage  Bunting by Mrs JellyBelly,approx 3m,£ 20.00          

Till next time…………Amanda & Alison xx

A Sale Less Ordinary…………..Most ecommerce companies focus directly on product sales.  We don’t.  Why?  Well, if you focus on product sales alone you have to divert your marketing budget for example to:

• Search Engine Optimisation
• Pay Per Click Campaigns
• E- newsletters
• Brochures
• Magazine Advertisements 

While all of the above are important to the success of ecommerce, they are not the only way to the bank as they take a long time to show you the benefits even if you throw £££thousands at them. 

At Gorgeous HQ we do take the sales figures of our partner companies very seriously but we don’t want to rely entirely on SEO or costly Pay Per Click Campaigns which would only focus on high priced items to be worthwhile doing and therefore can exclude the lower priced products made by our designers.  Although these methods of internet marketing have their place, we don’t think this is fair to everyone in Team Gorgeous. 

This is why we are taking a completely different approach to our marketing.  While we are certainly working on standard methods of emarketing, we are mainly concentrating on building relationships with the media.  We want the media to know that if they need high quality product photographs complete with ‘copy’, that they can gain access to quickly and easily then we are the company to come to.

We are our partner companies’ link to the media which does not cost an arm and a leg.  

So How Much Does It Normally Cost To Advertise Or Get A Feature In A Glossy Magazine? 

Most Lifestyle Magazines can cost anything from £150 per month for a small label sized advertisement with no image or details, just name, email address and phone number.  Even your local magazine with limited readership will cost on average £30 per month for a quarter page ad.

We have it from the horse’s mouth that the half page space we have secured in Hello Magazine is worth at least £16,000!!  How did we do it? Ah well that’s a trade secret. 

So why do we need sales?  Obviously our partner companies need to sell their products to earn a living.  We need sales to invest further in our company’s success and our success is our partner companies’ success.  Simple. 

What is the quickest and most successful way to gain sales?  We believe the answer to this is PR and advertising.  One or two high quality images placed in full view of journalists with all the information they need can prove to be very fruitful indeed and when published in a high quality national magazine or newspaper, will ultimately lead to a high level of sales. 

But why?  Because we are showcasing our partner companies products directly to the people who matter most – customers!!  And not just any old customer – we are pitching our partner companies products to their target market by placing them in magazines that their target market customers read and give credibility to.  Credibility is a massive sales tool and the key to great sales success. 

So Who Do We Think We Are?  We are a fledgling company who officially launched in January this year.  Already we have gained coverage in national magazines and newspapers.  This month we are sharing in the 100 year Birthday Celebrations of ‘My Weekly’ magazine which is showcasing several of our partner companies’ products.  We have features this summer in ‘Homes’ Magazine and ‘Hello’ Magazine and are already booked in for Christmas features.  

This success is all in the space of 4 months business and we are determined to build on this by the continuing investment of time and devotion to duty for our partner companies. 

So Why Do We Do It?  We love it, we are passionate about design, we love beautiful products and we love being entrepreneurs.  It’s that simple.  If you enjoy what you do you have much more chance of making a success of it.   We are already planning our Christmas Brochure and ideas for next year.  We want to grow Team Gorgeous but remain relatively small so that we can devote the time needed to nurture our designers and help them grow their businesses. 

So if you think your business is Gorgeous enough to join us, please get in touch!

Amanda & Alison