Expect the unexpected
O2GO is now going out to 1.5 million people through the new Spicers 2007 catalogue, and it still feels amazing!
For the catalogue’s launch I got the opportunity to say something over the tannoy for the organisers, which went down a storm! Here’s the song, or a version of it:
‘02GO, it’s good for you, find it on page 102′
The great thing is that Spicers’ top 500 customers each have up to 50,000 customers, all now able to see and order our product! This will have such an impact on our marketing, and we’re going to make the most of it.
On Friday it all happened – on the way down to London for a family Christmas event, at 9am I got a call from Sainsburys telling me that O2GO was not after all going to be 167 stores as had been agreed. No, instead we were going to be displayed in 335 of their stores! I nearly wet myself with worry – we didn’t have the stock cover and would have to reorder and reorganise so much. I spent the whole of the journey to London, complete with tired, noisy children in the background, trying to frantically organise this with buyers and logistics companies (cue lots of last-minute changes, such as having to repack bigger boxes than planned which cost more and of course took time … ). It just shows that you can have everything planned and at the last minute the big players can make changes and you have to react.
But we did finally get a date for the Sainsburys launch, which is really good news. The 10th January is when O2GO will be appearing in stores – very frightening, only two weeks away, and we have to get the product to them for 3rd January to make it. A real double-edged sword! But we will make it - I’m not the best at detail but am quite good at seeing a problem and knowing which route to go down. You have to make these decisions to get things done.
Sometimes you need a helping hand …
We decided to get someone who fully understands retailing to help us. We now have the help of an experienced retail consultant who has sorted out all of our problems before Christmas – an amazing help. So now it’s full-steam ahead for 10th January. Let’s hope it all goes smoothly…
