Up & Running

Next week will mark 1 month since we launched our website and LDHC became open to the public – where has the time gone!

Our first month has started well. For us at the moment, sales, while important are ultimately secondary to getting our name out there and developing a bit of brand recognition. I heard a great quote on the radio the other day which went “you could be the greatest company in the world, but if no one knows you exist, you don’t exist”.

This has really stuck with me since I heard it as I think gives me perspective on where our business is after the first month of trading. Our company ethos on ensuring the quality of the whole purchasing experience is what we hope will generate some repeat business as well as developing a word of mouth following. This undoubtedly takes time – and as I generally don’t do patience, this was a great learning experience for me!

We have used our first month as a test bed to iron out some kinks in our ordering/distribution processes. We’ve had a couple of family & friends order during this time which has turned out to be a bit of a god-send! Some aspects of our sales & ordering processes couldn’t be tested until we were live so without going into too much detail, let’s just say we’re glad our first order was a familiar face.

With us fully up and running now we decided it would be worthwhile to get out into the lakes to take some location shots of our hampers, building up our ever expanding “Social Media Photo’s” folder on our phones. This turned out to be a great success. Aided by the sleeping habits of our daughter, we were up and on location for 8:30am allowing us to get loads of great photos without having to disturb too many people!

The next day we went up Latrigg Fell as you can get some fantastic views over Keswick. Latrigg is an easy ascent which was definitely planned as I needed to see how it’d be heading up a fell with a hamper and a backpack fully of produce! Turns out it wasn’t too bad, although I was asked on a number of occasions if I was releasing pigeons out of the wicker basket when I got to the top. I thought it was the strangest thing when I was asked the first time. By the fourth I thought I must have been missing something!

We’ve a few exciting additions to bring to the website over the next month so make sure you keep your eyes peeled. We’re aiming to develop an offering that will be targeted at a slightly adjusted price point to hopefully increase our market share. Our exciting corporate hampers are also in development which we’re incredibly excited about. These will hopefully be good to go by mid-August.

Until then, I hope you enjoy any hampers you may’ve purchased. We love hearing customer feedback so if there’s anything you’d like to share we’d love to hear from you.

All the best

Richard