Pershore Plum Festival

Just back from delivering copies of the newly printed Mystery of the Missing Plum Tart to various outlets in Pershore. There is lots of publicity about them already and watch this space for more! In the meantime, check out these web links.....

http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/search/4458969.Plum_celebration_gives_taste_of_town/search4458969.print/search4458969.print/search4458969.print/

http://www.eveshamjournal.co.uk/search/4458969.Plum_celebration_gives_taste_of_town/

http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/search/4461704.Join_in_our_mystery_trail/

If anyone wants to write a story about the Mystery, then get in touch... meantime I wonder who dunnit :-).

Schools Sports Partnership

What fantastic weather we had at the weekend for the Bromsgrove Carnival and 10K run. Lots and lots of families were out in Sanders Park enjoying the entertainment and the sunshine and we gave away virtually all the leaflets we had with us! Sold lots of Trails too, although more on the Saturday than the Sunday. Made some good contacts including a lady from the School Sports Partnership who took the Kingsland Trail and an old Tenbury Wells Trail to show to her boss and colleagues with a view to getting something going for the local Bromsgrove Schools. She was very enthusiastic, so we will see.

Also met a lady who wants to organise a family get together for her uncle's 50th and thought a personalised set of Trails would make a perfect pressie for him.

And we met a guy who bought our Great Malvern Trail last year and gave it to someone as a gift and told us "it was the best present he had ever given someone, they really really enjoyed it". All very encouraging!

Bed and Breakfasts

This morning a bed and breakfast owner that we met way back in March phoned to ask for a stock of leaflets! Feels great to receive a call asking for stock, rather than constantly pushing from our end. Anyway, I have agreed to go and see them and talk about various options including writing a bespoke Trail for them, so am delighted with that.

Have also spent the morning looking for a camp site near Bromsgrove as we will be at the Bromsgrove Carnival this weekend and need somewhere to stay. Found one and its all booked and paid for, so fingers crossed for the weather!

Next item on the list is to plot a route which includes as many B and Bs as I can find in the Bromyard area and then go and pay them all a visit and talk about a possible sale or return deal so that we can continue to build AWARENESS of the product and service we provide.

The Three Counties Show

Wow, what a big show the Three Counties Show is! We had a great time there with a really nice pitch opposite the fire and rescue guys and between a jewellery stand and a crocs stand both manned / owned by great guys who were fun to be around. We spent some money and we made some money - always a good balance! The weather was fine and we only had one or two spots of rain on the Sunday although it was very windy on Friday and Saturday and our rather flimsy marquee held up very well......

We experimented with a couple of things including putting a poster up about the fact that the Trails are wheelchair and pushchair friendly and that worked well with getting people to stop and chat. Instead of putting all the Trails in the spinner in alphabetical order we tried putting them in their Trail types - ie all the Murder Mysteries together, all the Spy Trails together and all the Treasure Maps together and again I was happy with the result - people spent more time browsing the spinner and exclaiming when they saw certain towns, whereas when they were labelled up as Glos Trails or Worcs Trails for example, they only looked at those ones.

Highlights of the weekends was the phone call we received from the Evesham Journal who are doing a piece on our Mystery of the Missing Plum Tart and wanted a photo of us holding a plum pie! The other highlight was the one hours consultancy with a marketing expert (Hannah) from Business Link who brainstormed with us both at the stand on how we could drive Awareness of Treasure Trails because until we have driven Awareness we won't get the volume sales we are looking for. She had some great ideas and once we are over the next couple of very busy weeks, we can start working on a new marketing strategy!

Next stop Bromsgrove Carnival next week - come and see us there!

Garden Festival

We had a really lovely couple of days at the Garden Festival at Hellens Manor. The sun shone on both days and as we were under cover we stayed cool and didn't burn unlike some of the other stall holders. We had a steady stream of really nice people coming through and met a lady who is now considering taking on the Gloucestershire License; we also met a lady from the Wye Valley Life Magazine who may decide to do a feature on us;we met another couple who thought they would investigate taking the License for Kent and of course we sold some Trails! Some of the other stall holders were fun and we enjoyed especially meeting Clare and her Mum and Dad and friend Linda and wish her lots of luck with her Tea venture. We were very impressed with the Cafe Green's juicer and have plans to get one - maybe there will be some of sale at the Three Counties Show. Another stall holder near us will also be at The Three Counties, so we will renew acquaintance then.

This morning we've had the go ahead from Emma, for the Kingsland School Trail and so need to get down to the printers and deliver their order for 100 Trails. Feedback was that the Trail looked very professional!

The Garden Festival

Sun is shining and we're all ready for a great day of selling at The Garden Festival in Hellens Manor! Apparently, we are under cover near the composting people and food stalls - sounds like an ideal position. Hopefully lots of people will come and see the show and find our stand and BUY!

Preparing for the next few shows!

We have 10 show days coming up over the next four weekends and have put in a lots of work to prepare for them and made some investments! We've put in an order for another batch of Trails to be printed and so replenished stocks of our most popular Trails. We've ordered 2,000 of our new leaflets and we've also ordered a couple of t-shirts all of which should hopefully arrive in time for our biggest show - the Three Counties which is next weekend. This weekend we are at Much Marcle and the Garden Festival held in the grounds of Hellens Manor which we are looking forward to.

Have also finalised the Kingsland Trail so it is now ready for testing by our PTA contact, Emma and hopefully the weather will hold and she will get out to it this weekend.

Lots to do, and so little time!

Business Awards Part 2

Well, the three judges have just left.... we had Peter Hands, the Chairman of Visit Herefordshire, Viv Hudson, MD of the Hotelshop and Linda Smith from the Chamber of Commerce and they were with us for over an hour talking about Treasure Trails and offering their thoughts about how we could continue to expand the business. It was informal and fun and we really enjoyed the discussions. Whether we get to the next stage or not, who knows, we have to wait and see!

Also today we got a call from a gentleman wanting to buy our Bewdley Trail - he heard about the Trails on local BBC Hereford and Worcester Radio and so we've had a listen and I came across ok I think.... feedback from a friend was that I came across very professionally but fun and approachable as well. Now we have to work out how to capture it, as it is only available on line for another 3 days!

Business Awards

We heard this morning that we didn't get short listed for the most promising new business award, but we are assuming that is because we are on the short list of 3 for the award for excellence in leisure and tourism. We've been given the names of the judges who are coming on Monday and we know one of them and know that he is supportive of us and our product, so fingers crossed.

We have sent the proposal through for a bespoke Trail at Broadfield Court and will start the discussions/negotiations in a week or two with the manager there.

We are ready to have Kingsland independently tested and Emma has agreed to do it that for us. And we've completed the artwork for our new leaflet. On Monday, we have a big print order going through with the stock of 7 of our Trails needed to be replenished and the Mystery of the Missing Plum Tart - the bespoke Trail written for the Pershore Plum Festival also ready for printing - so its all go!!

Chores in the Sunshine!

I had three chores to do today and all they all involved being out and about in the sunshine! This life is really good especially when we call it work! I had to drop off some Trails to the shop in Hampton Court Castle - they are going to see how well they sell and then hopefully will order some more! I had to go to Tenbury Wells to sort out some Trail Trouble - the answer to clue number 2 was on a sign high up on the wall of a building, but the sign has come down, we think it was vandalised and so I had to take some photos of other signs nearby and rewrite clue 2. Finally, I had to make my way to Kingsland and test the Trail that David has written (all in rhyme) and make sure that the clues worked and the directions were clear. The Trail is a really nice one with lots of picture clues and I think the families of Kingsland will have a lot of fun with it.