Brain Food

Warehouse or Home?

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

We secured a great deal with Oxfam at the back end of 2010…wooooo!

Im telling you this because the order needs to be delivered this week and I thought it was quite funny how we actually packed the order up, compared to how we usually do it! I decided to give the packers a well earned rest over the coldest part of the year and do the order myself. Its actually quite nice to do something repetitive as you forget about everything else going on at the time!

Normal Order Process:

Right, so, a normal order would be packed up by some of our packers (thanks packers!!!) in our warehouse which is about 45 minutes drive from my house. They would take, on avarage, around 4 hours to pack up an order the size of Oxfam’s if they were really going for it. It would be palletised and shrink wrapped (biodegradable of course), then put in the Goods Out section to be picked up a day before the order would be due for delivery.

My Christmas Order Process:

My way of packing up was slightly less ‘slick’ but has achieved the same outcome! I brought home the required stock from the Warehouse to my home just after Christmas. I then spent 3 days over the holiday period unpacking boxes for the order, making new boxes up and repacking the items into boxes. All in front of the television and the fire! I know its not the most cost effective way of packing up an order but it was a great deal better than asking the packers to come in over the holiday to the cold warehouse and pack up the order!

Anyway, it was good to get back to the roots of the business, even if it was in my living room and the order is now ready to go to Oxfam stores across the UK.


New Year…EcoCharlie New Years Resolutions

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

Well, thats that then. 2010 is over and now we are starting all over again in 2011!

This is just a quick post to let you know what we intend to do this year. Just so you all have a heads up!

EcoCharlie’s New Years Resolutions:

1. Increase the amount of products we stock online. (sounds easy, but with our tough eco-credentials, its harder than it seems)

2. Find a good cause we can support with every sale of every product online. (yes thats right, we want to find a great cause that we can donate to for every sale that goes through our site)! If you have any ideas, then let us know!

3. Make our website much more user friendly (by adding help pages and tutorials so you get the most out of the site).

4. Have as many special offers and discounts as humanly possible (everyone loves a deal  and we like to offer them as well).

5. Decrease our delivery lead times and our delivery carbon footprint! (this is going to be tricky but we have some big changes happening behind the scenes to make this possible).

If you want to suggest anything to do with the points above, we would love to know! Hopefully by this time next year we can all look back at this post and tick all five points off, then have a nice cup of tea!


Snow…Fun?

Monday, December 20th, 2010

We all know the snow is here, Right?

Just before I start this post, I must say this. We have been working hard to get the orders out before Christmas and have currently got everything out to everyone, fingers crossed for the last few pre-Xmas orders going out today!

Now that’s done…

I thought it would be great to use the down time over the weekend to have some fun with my friends in the snow. I would advise all of you to do the same when you get the chance. I know the snow has caused real problems to travel, work and countless personal plans, but I think the snow can be great fun too.

So, on Saturday my friend came over and we went out with two body-boards to find a nice hill to slide down. After all, I run EcoCharlie but I am still only 20 years old and hope to be going and playing in the snow when I am 80 years old! We found a nice big hill and ended up making a rather large jump to fling ourselves off of. After a few hours of throwing ourselves down the hill we thought it was time for a break. We came back and got warmed up with some homemade soup and then set about traveling to my other mates house to go to a larger hill for the next day to play on some snowboards!

On Sunday we woke up and got straight up to a hill in Surrey called Newlands Corner. It is the place to go when is snows in my area! Like Saturday, we built a nice ramp to jump off of and even a rail (a plank of wood) to grind along on the snowboards.What a great day!!

Overall, my idea of getting out and enjoying the snow (rather than mumbling on about how awful it is and giving up on plans) worked a treat, I had had two great adventurous days messing about in the white stuff! It shows, even business people can work aand play around this countries eccentric weather! Now, back to getting everything ready for next year online! I can’t wait for 2011 now!


Video Time

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

Okay.

So its a bit of a shame that I have only just started a blog. We have been going for 2 years now and I really want to go back and tell you about everything that’s happened in the past two years (its all in the About Us section but I want to tell you again).

I think I will start from the start of this week. On Tuesday I went to The Garden Centre Group’s HQ (previously called Wyevale, the biggest garden centre group in the UK) to do a QVC style video shoot! It was for the staff of the group. They are producing a DVD for all the staff to give them a heads up on all the new products they are offering next year, which I think is a really good idea, as it means the staff can be helpful to customers. Each company was given a slot of 30 minutes to produce 2 minutes of film.

After about a million takes of me trying to say ‘Gold Medal Winning product at Chelsea Flower Show’, I nailed my section and cannot wait to see a copy of the DVD. It only took me 1 and a half hours to get 2 minutes filmed! I felt quite bad for the queue of company directors waiting outside for their go…oops!

However, it was was interesting seeing how professionals shoot these videos and how they like to work.

Anyway, I was back in the office today getting everything ready for Spring 2011! More on that next time!


My First Blog

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

Hello,

I am Callum, founder of EcoCharlie Ltd. I started this blog to let you into the world of EcoCharlie and what goes on here!

I will be blogging about day to day things to do with EcoCharlie, things I have seen and like, basically anything I class as good blogging material. It is NOT going to be about gardening and gardening only! I don’t like to take myself too seriously, so this blog is not going to be serious either, I think its better that way. I hope you like it.

oh, I called it Brain Food because that’s exactly what it is…food for your brain!!

Right, lets get to it…