Rain Rain Go Away

Can't believe its still raining. Luckily this week we are selling Trails from the South Chapel of All Saints Church in Hereford High Town and are under cover - its not that warm, but at least its dry!

Sold a few yesterday and picked up an order for a Personalised Trail - someone's hen do in three weeks time, so we need to get cracking on making it just right for them. They are going to plant some of the clues and use some of the established Hereford Murder Mystery clues, so it should end up as a really nice mix of clues and challenges for the six girls that are going to work out who murdered Dr Love!

The new leaflets are working well and we've decided to blow the budget on a new banner as well - which hopefully will arrive in time for the Pershore Plum Festival event on 31st August. The Mystery of the Missing Plum Tart - the Trail we wrote especially for the Pershore Plum Fair - is selling well and we are starting to get answers into the prize draw. The prize is an evening meal for two at the Angel Inn in Pershore High Street - lucky winner!

This weekend we are at the Herefordshire Country Fair - so do drop by and say hi! In fact, if you come and see us as a result of this blog and quote the web address, then we'll give you an exceptional deal on a Trail of your choice from the Worcestershire and Herefordshire catalogue.

The Prince's Trust Super Hero Challenge

Met up with our man from the Prince's Trust today and agreed the theme for the event due to happen on Sunday, 1st November in Worcester. Theme is Super Heroes - so we are calling the event, The Prince's Trust Super Heroes Challenge! Website is set up now - have a look www.treasuretrails.co.uk/trails/worcestershire/theprincestrust/ and we are working on getting the artwork sorted out for the leaflets, the registration form and of course the Challenge Booklet itself.

Its all very exciting and we are so pleased to be involved in driving it through to a successful conclusion. 10,000 leaflets will be printed publicising the event and to enable people to register to be part of the event, they have to go to our website and give us their email address - more people to send our newsletters to!

We have another meeting on 8th August and hope to have the artwork ready by then and at least one of the activity zones finalised and looking like the finished product.

Got to keep in mind of course we are holding the event in November and it just might rain on it..... but there again, if we were doing it in July we'd have to bear the weather in mind too!!!

Brides and Hen Parties

Normally I am not great at following through on stuff and quite often don't finish things - but have managed to use my time today to create and finish (!!) a newsletter for brides and organisers of hen parties. If you want a copy of it, let me know and I'll add your email address to the master list! Have put some pics in it too of hen parties we've got involved in recently. Would share them with the blog but can't remember how to upload pictures - will have to check with my IT expert!

White Lilies & Sally Kingston

I met a very sweet lady yesterday who has just set up in business as a wedding planner. She can provide help with organising a wedding maybe just for consultation or management of the wedding day itself, not necesarily organising the full wedding. If you know of anyone who needs such a service, then get in touch with her via her blog : http://whiteliliesevents.blogspot.com/

I also met a lady called Sally who makes the most fantastic headdresses and corsages - she is waiting to hear from you too! Her website is www.sallykingston.com.

Probably my only venture into wedding fairs this year!

Wedding Fair

Just got home after spending the day at a wedding fair in Great Malvern. It was a trial for us to see if we could sell the hen party trails and if it would be worth exhibiting at wedding fairs. The jury is out - but had a really nice day meeting all sorts of nice people both stall holders and punters and sold some trails too!

Congratulations

Congratulations to Poston Mill Park who won the Award for Excellence in Leisure and Tourism. We look forward to selling them some of our Trails for their guests and visitors!

Retail Orders

Just pulled together two Retail Orders that came in at the end of last week. One is for Harvington Hall; a beautiful moated medieval and Elizabethan manor-house south-east of Kidderminster. They want to stock our Trails in their visitor's shop and their initial order is for 28 Trails. The other is for the Treasure Trails Shop which is opening for 8 weeks for the summer period on a holiday park near St Austell in Cornwall. We are giving them 20 Trails to sell on our behalf. Feels good that we are getting volume orders out.

Princes Trust

Very exciting day today (and yesterday had some excitement too). Met Mr Marley this morning in the Little Chef just off the Junction 5 of the M5 and talked through his ideas of running a Treasure Hunt in November in Worcester and he has asked us if we'd like to collaborate with him which we would! Will be lots of work, but also potentially lots and lots of publicity which is brilliant. More on this as time goes on.

Meantime, today we are up on the front page of two websites -> http://www.herefordshirehealthyschools.org.uk/resources/parents.html
and
http://www.threelittlepigsgiftshop.co.uk/ where you have to scroll down and click on the Mystery of the Missing Plum Tart

Yesterday, we set up a deal with a B&B on a sale or return basis - their target market are the 50+ and the young exec couples, so our Trails should do well there. Thanks Somerville House!

School Fairs

We attended two different school fairs at the weekend. Both very enjoyable and completely different! The first one was inside a very upmarket marquee and we shared the space with Smallprint as well as people selling handbags and jewellery and the usual craft stuff. As always Treasure Trails was a little bit different. We had a lovely pitch right next to the cake stand! Always a winner!

The second school we went to we were outside next to the band in our own marquee which as requested, we decorated with the American flags as it was 4th July and the fair had an American theme. We didnt' do quite so well there in terms of one to one sales but we did meet the owner of The Christmas Shop in Bewdley who bought our Bewdley Trail with a view to stocking in her shop. Fingers crossed her partner agrees to stock.

No shows now until the end of July as we concentrate on contacting B&Bs and asking them to stock Trails and/or leaflets for their holiday visitors.

Newsletter

We are starting work on our summer holiday newsletter to remind our customers that we exist and doing one of our Trails is a great way to spend time with family and friends and won't break the bank either! We really hope we get people to log onto www.treasuretrails.co.uk to make their selection, but of course, they can always phone us instead and we'll post them out.. Treasure Trails Ltd sends out a newsletter about 4 times a year. The one we are sending out over the next few days will contain a quiz as well as news and is celebrating our first birthday as a business as we have been trading now for 12 months!

Look out for it in your email and if you would like a copy and don't think you are on our customer database, then let us know.

Feedback

"I bought the Great Malvern Trail last year and gave it to some friends for Christmas. They did the Trail recently and told me they really enjoyed it and it was the best Christmas present they received!" - John from Malvern gave us this feedback when we met him at the Bromsgrove Carnival in June 2009