Excuses excuses...

You may have noticed that this blog entry has taken a while to appear, I know the Boss has certainly made a note! So, what better way to fill this space than with my excuses for this tardy performance? What on earth has been filling my time for the past two or three weeks?

Well, let’s start with our new branch in Leeds, there have been a million and one things to organise, from business cards and flag poles, to branded clothing and building signage. Then there’s the staff training and ongoing phone support….and the IT support….and and and. However, everything seems to have happened in time for their first marketing event at York Racecourse this weekend. There’s plenty more to do though.

And then we have the Fellali* saga. If you haven’t heard about our Fellali Launch Party on the 30th then you aren’t on our mailing list….and that’s no good so click here to put it right and get an invite to the party. Anyway, Fellali….make lovely cars….but they don’t do any good for our blood pressure when they’re new, here’s why.

Imagine having waited years for the delivery of your brand spanking new Fellali, your boyhood dream. The big day is within touching distance, and you can almost smell the immaculate new leather, the dream is almost reality and its fair to say you’re practically wetting yourself with excitement. The day before the due date you get a call to say “it’s delayed at the factory, it’ll be another week". Next week it get’s delayed again because “it just missed the last delivery truck, the next one’s in a week”, and so on.

You get the idea, the highs and lows can really mess you up! Imagine that trauma times 150 and then you can start to understand what it’s like for us when we're feeling the same thing on behalf of every one of our members. Throw in a very big party that’s already organised and paid for, and the fact that your star guest might be delayed one too many times, and all of a sudden you suspect you might need to change your boxers. As you can imagine, that took a fair bit of time to deal with, but it’s looking like its all coming together now. Roll on the 30th, it will go down in e25 history one way or another.

Next we have the early planning stages of the 4th edition of e25 Magazine. This required the creation of themes for the features, ideal car combinations, and of course, captivating feature titles. Dreaming up captivating feature titles is not something that can be done on cue, we creative types need to find ‘the zone’. Yes that’s right, my creative genius needs time to find its stride Boss.

Then I needed to arrange transport for our car rotation with the Northern Ireland branch. Dates to work out, quotes to get, order to place, loading and unloading to arrange, and payment to organise.

In the background I am bug testing the new version of our backend system, it looks after everything to do with the booking of cars, scheduling of servicing, member accounts and so on. It has just become infinitely more complex with the addition of multiple branches into the mix. There’s quite a few buttons to click there Boss, it’s taken me a while.

Finally, it looks like I’ve managed to knock together a very nice deal with a well known sports car manufacturer. I can’t say too much right now but all will be revealed very soon hopefully…

Obviously everything above is on top of all the usual day to day issues and emails I have to deal with.....and then I had to write a blog! There’s never a dull day although you'll notice there isn't any mention of having driven the very things that drew me to this job. Note to friends, my job really isn't like you imagine!

So in summary, forgive my tardiness Boss, the next blog entry will be along soon.


*Any likeness of the word Fellali to any real car manufacturer is purely coincidental.