Lucky Seven?

For those who are superstitious, seven is a very important number, and you may happily spend hours looking round the web at the various mythical, religious and astrological reasons for its significance.

This company started trading on the internet seven years ago. Perhaps we were lucky striking out early into fairly unknown territory. If you search the web you can find the wayback machine at www.web.archive.org to see a snapshot of what our original websites looked like in 2006.. It's good to be reminded of where the start was, and it underlines the years of change and endeavour since then.

It's essential to keep finding fresh products, and to improve the way they are presented.

The competition in leather business bags and leather luggage is still as great as ever. Although the traditional shops have been closing for years, the ones that remain are really very good at what they do - they have to be!

Also the department stores have upped their game markedly, although their prices must always reflect the cost of bricks and mortar trading. But then most of them work on the internet now, to get the benefit of both clicks and bricks.

Then we've got Amazon. Again sellers there are having to pay around 20% in fees and commission, so their prices aren't the most competitive.

So that's why The Leather Travel Bag Company and The Leather Briefcase Company keep the price as low as possible, and the quality as high as we can find.

Now we are heading for an eighth year. Eight is a very lucky number in China!

But as my much loved old boss said " Son, the harder you work, the luckier you get.

 www.theleatherbriefcase.co.uk

THE RETAIL JUNGLE

Survival of the fittest? absolutely.

T.J.Hughes, Dreams, Habitat, Faith Shoes, Officers Club and many more are names that either went bust or had to take drastic action in the recent past.

The fashionable scapegoat at present is the very swift rise of internet sales, but that is completely wrong.
Tescos and John Lewis and every other professional retailer has just added internet sales into their offer.

Why do retailers go bust? As one of my early bosses told me,
"There's one way to make money, and a thousand ways to lose it!"

The usual overheads are rent, rates, salaries, advertising, utilities.

It's the nasty unexpected things that can happen, like a bigger rival opening nearby, roadworks, flood, fire, theft by both staff and custmers, losing key staff, and again a long list of things you might never consider.

One things for sure, the past five years of really poor economic conditions have really sorted out the retail jungle, and anyone who's left will be looking forward to roaring away when the long awaited upturn turns up!