GOOD BUSINESS July 1999

ON-LINE PRICES & SOCIAL REVOLUTION

The new password protected Price List and Stock Quantity List should you plan your orders from 7 Wonders.   Both Price List and Stock Quantity List are in the form of spreadsheets, which you can copy onto your system and integrate quickly in your calculations.  We are using a password system to restrict this information to our trade customers.   E-mail us at info 'at'  wonderworld.co.uk, to receive the user name & password.

THE Internet is set to cause tremendous social upheaval.   High Street  retailers of goods or services that can be satisfactorily identified from pictures or descriptions will be decimated heavily discounted, highly sophisticated on-line competitors.  Wave goodbye to record shops, & bookshops, travel agents & estate agents, banks & building societies as we know them.   B & Q for a bag of cement - maybe, but not a Black & Decker.   Sainsbury's will have to sell a mountain of fresh ciabata to compensate for the tins of beans and boxes of Corn Flakes we get home delivered from Tesco's Online, in bulk - monthly.

IMAGINE the dilemma for retailers, serving as helpless curators to free exhibitions of the latest products, their erstwhile customers nipping  home with make & model details to browse the Net for the huge reductions which on-line operations will  offer because they don’t pay High Street costs.

THE Industrial Revolution took fifty years to turn the country on its head and convert the majority of the population from rural agricultural labourers to urban factory workers with all the concomitant effects - cultural, economic & political.   It is predicted that the Internet will have the similar impact on our society within ten years.

DOOM-MONGERS warn that tax revenues to nation states will be slashed as more transactions are made with hard to tax trans-national entities.     Optimists hope that the potential for inter-communication and inter-co-operation around the globe will enable us to use the Net to mitigate these problems and become individually more autonomous.  We can only wait and see.

IN SOME ways the individual character of our products and human scale of our shops will work for us.  People want to meet us.  They want to touch & feel   their selected items directly before they buy.   However there is no room for complacency.   Get a computer, get on line & think about how the Net will impact on your business and your lives.

JOURNEYS AHEAD

IN AUGUST David Turner will be visiting Rajasthan, India  and Kathmandu, Nepal.   It will  be a particularly important trip.   There will be the regular work of developing future product ranges and checking up on all aspects of our activities.      In addition David will be contacting Indian and Nepalese NGOS and laying the foundation for significant developments in the Fair Trade aspect of our business.     We have major restructuring and a relaunch of the business in the pipeline so watch out for more news in the coming twelve months.

IN Kathmandu David will be rebuilding some of the relationships which have fizzled out in the last couple of years due to an unsatisfactory relationship with our Nepalese buying agent.   He will also participate in a  workshop run by the Nepalese Centre for Business Development and Durham University Business School.   Research funded by the UK Department of International Development on enabling micro, small and medium Nepalese producers to get access to the UK market place will be will be presented to an audience of Nepalese business, Fair Trade producers, NGOs, and Government with extensive opportunity for discussion and networking.

AS usual we invite customers to let us know if they have any questions which David can take up during the trip.     He would also welcome orders for Ritual Cymbals, Singing Bowls, Prayer Flags and Tibetan Healing Incense, which he will be sourcing in Nepal.

HAND MADE PAPER

LOVELY hand made paper has arrived. Lighter weight floral paper in marigold, bougainvillaea, mixed blooms &, coriander - standard gift warp size.   Very competitively priced in comparison with similar Thai products exhibited at recent Trade shows - our samples are on the way.   Ring us on 0800 074 7219 if you seem to have missed out.

PC GREY BEARD

Dave Hogg,  veteran retailer,  stung by crooks once too often just recently,  ventilates for your benefit.

Beware thieves who specialise in exploiting your vulnerable back door!  Often left open, the thief nips in the rear and rips off stock, cash or valuables while an accomplice distracts your staff out front.

And another thing …beware the small print when offered free listings in prestigious looking business directories.   You can end up paying £ 1000s for non-appearances in publications not worth the paper they are never printed on.