Making the news
All the press we got last week has meant an incredibly busy week for me!
What’s been so interesting is that we have gained possible new business from this coverage, so it’s really paying off to be in the news and get exposure. I’ve been phoned by three people who are thinking about getting involved with O2GO as they’ve seen it as a potentially beneficial product for their business to get involved with. A couple are big players too …
1) The MoD got in touch and are interested in getting our product into MoD ration packs;
2) A local water company, Frog, really share my passion for getting the public to drink more water. Vannesa Streeton at Frog believes that we have mutual interests especially with the launch of their new Pure Reflection brand. There will be a way we can work together to get the importance of hydration across to everyone, and it should be a good opportunity for raising the issue. I like using local business;
3) And the big one is Tesco. After about seven months of us trying to court them and receiving mixed responses, they actually contacted me to say that now they think I’m ready, could I supply them with a commercial proposition. I think it’s because of our successful roll-out in Sainsburys – everyone likes someone else to take the risk before going in themselves.
So I’m working hard on this new proposal now. Sainsburys was a learning curve and though it is proving to be really successful (the product is selling!) we learnt a lot from going through all the pain and errors and ‘greenness’ that comes with the first effort. We decided that the next one would be done properly, and it looks like it’s going to be Tesco – which is fantastic. I am going to be as professional as I can possibly be, and learn from my previous oversights and problems to make this work 100%.
We had Champagne Friday last week to celebrate our Sainsburys success, a glass to celebrate that we were getting sales (no numbers until next week, but I want facts!), as word from the store is that O2GO is selling well.
I can’t seem to get my head around to the idea of employing someone. To me it is such a massive issue fraught with problems. I don’t want to give myself headaches, but I want the pill to solve them, if you see what I mean! But I have a couple of university students assisting me and they’ll be helping out over Easter with tasks I would love to get around to but don’t have the time for, but would make the business more productive. So rather than hire a national account manager now, I first want to get people to help me clear up all the time consuming tasks, do them better, and leave me to run the core side of business.
We are constantly trying to maximise our marketing. We are in store now and need to have sell-through. So we have been talking to a PR company – Different PR in Harrogate – one person there having worked for Yorkshire Water for eight years, so he understands the water industry. My brief to them? Go and create some news based around O2GO and hydration! I can contact the Daily Mail for example, though, and give them a story (which I did yesterday – see Liverpool Council water story, I sent them an SOS relief pack). You need to pounce on news stories like this (remember Branson’s quote, ‘Concorde for sale? I’ll buy it for a quid!’). Even just a little bit of noise adds up in the end.
