VITAL STATISTICS...

Like every retailer, I keep a careful watch on the number of customers coming through the door.

The recent troubles on the High Street brought an immediate surge in numbers.

And a wet bank holiday is very good for internet retailers!

One area of our business is growing particularly fast.

Our overseas visitors have increased by 50% in the past year, and now place orders more readily.

We put this down to several factors.

Firstly, we do offer our goods world-wide - some retailers can't be bothered.

More countries are developing computer based retailing, and buyers are becoming more confident.

The UK currency means attractive prices...although we still think the euro is very much over-valued!

Always intrigued about some of the facts that arise.

Here's some that we find specially interesting.

On average, customers from Estonia stay longest in our webshops, and look at the most products...followed closely by Finland, Sweden and Denmark.

Norway, Ireland and Greece are next on the leader board.

At the other end...our only visitor from Tajikistan [ you can pick that out on the map I bet! ] looked at just 5 pages in 30 minutes!!! either a very slow reader, or he went to make a cup of tea...

The mention of which....

Do we have a shop?

Any thoughts of returning to a "bricks and mortar" outlet took a big backward step last week.

Hundreds of High Street shops and stores damaged, and some will close permanently.

Thousands more outlets lost vital trading days, and now will need to review their security and staffing levels.

Our visitor count doubled, and we had an excellent week, as shoppers stayed home and searched for products on the PC.

With one in seven UK shops empty, I wonder why landlords never reduce their rents?

That's the only way we could be tempted...

One Box, Add String...

In those far off days of the 1970s, when quite by chance I found myself selling bags, my first boss introduced me to the technical side.

What a bag is...a box with a piece of string attached.

Now, as I was not the most gifted in the sciences, this impressed me as an area in which I could flourish.

Indeed, for the next month, I happily explained to my customers that this was what they were buying.

And clutch bags, being all the rage, had the ADDED BONUS...there was NO STRING TO BREAK!

No wonder they were laughing when I left their shops.

I could cringe...but it was all part of growing up.

No-one taught me how to sell - I just had to pluck up courage [ and a very heavy pair of suitcases ] walk 200 yards from the car-park on a wet day, to find the owner of the shop had forgotten the appointment and gone fishing.

But if I hadn't cut my teeth on that, who knows?

When I decided to open a webshop in 2005, one of the technical team told me he'd done lots of webshops, and none of them had added up to anything.

He now uses our webshops to show new clients how it's done.

For those of you that have read this far, when I write the book about starting and running your own business, the simple truth is that you need to have abundant courage, and you never stop trying.

In fact trial and error is the best teacher there is?

As long as you want to learn!

Fings Aint Wot They Usetobe !

Spent a few days away last week with an old friend in the bag trade.

In the 1970s I used to visit regularly the factory run by Jack, his brothers and father in Hackney. In those days there were dozens of manufacturers making bags in the East End.

Not one remains.

Every item The Leather Briefcase Company sells is imported.

China, India, Colombia, Italy, Portugal, Morocco are our main sources now.

There are still a few manufacturers left in the UK, and they're able to compete by making top brand products on a shorter lead-time.

I'd like to feature "Made in England" in our webshops, as it's something I'm asked for often!

Anyone out there?