Hello ,
Greetings from Sunny Spain, where I have spent the last few days with Rodrigo and Tomas from our marketing department.
We are working hard on a number of projects, not least the EU warehouse.
Last week I was telling you about my Ryanair trip from Slovakia to Malaga and some marketing lessons learned in the air. You can flyby that post here.
Europeans like British products, especially it seems, aromatherapy, bath bombs and soaps. The AW factory in UK is working full pelt to clear orders, night shifts included and lots of that production is shipped to France, Germany, Spain, Italy etc. For us the open EU market is a wonderful thing, it is for sure creating jobs in Sheffield. A hard Brexit - where our customers have to pay taxes at the point of import or have paperwork to complete will completely ruin that flow. It's too big a risk to sit and wait to see what happens.
So this is why we are establishing a new distribution point in Central Europe, with the added advantage that we can deliver next day to millions more people.
It's not just us that's setting up in Slovakia, seems there is a deluge of companies facing similar issues. Setting up Ancient Wisdom s.r.o has not been a totally smooth process, the Slovak end has been efficient and friendly, but the UK Foreign Office need to stamp papers to verify that AW is a real company as part of the process. This normally takes two or three days, but has taken weeks, with plenty of spanners thrown in the works. Seems that, this UK office is swamped and (naturally) they are not rushing to help.
In Slovakia, verification papers (proof of address etc) cannot be more than three months old, or you have to restart the process. Finally yesterday we got the required papers from the FO, OMG.. quickly DHL next day to Bratislava - hope it will arrive today because Monday cut off point. This is Tomas project and believe me he has no nails left.
Meanwhile a new website is born.. sort of "choose your distribution warehouse" website. AW.Gifts it's just work in progress as we play around with new branding ideas. Notice the new domain .Gifts rather than .com.. perfect for us don't you think :)
Maybe a good idea to register your gift trading brands with this domain extension before someone else does.
Meanwhile, the reason Rodrigo and his wife are living in my house in Spain is that they are effectively a refugees. From previous newsletters regular readers will know that Rodrigo (who is Brazilian and is married to an English girl) had his visa revoked, and was on track to be shipped forcibly back to Brazil and separated from his wife and family. They (the Home Office) would only return his passport when he was actually on the plane to Brazil. We ran a campaign that was only partially successful, in that they grudgingly allowed Rodrigo to move to Spain rather than Brazil. Here he was able to go through a process to reapply for a visa back to the UK. Rodrigo and his wife have jumped through more hoops than a troop of circus lions, and spent every last penny on outlandish fees, attended interviews in Malaga and Madrid and so on and..still no visa. But by the HO own guidelines today is the last day they can hold the passport, so Rodrigo also has no nails left. He should know today. Please pray.
I'll let you know the outcome to both these Brexit cliffhangers next week.
But I'm not getting stressed, because as I keep telling everyone, just do your best, keep a good heart and whatever happens with turn out good in the end. When everything seems to be going to pot, you cannot see it. But like a phoenix you will rise to a better day.
If you are reading this with problems besetting you take heart, all will be OK. You can read about the ancient history of Ancient Wisdom here: The Phoenix effect.
Tomorrow I'm travelling to the UK, so next weeks news is from AW HQ.
Have a great weekend.
David