Book 'em Danno

It seems that we have hit upon a problem. The idea was to only add one book to see what the new pages looked like. But I got a little carried away. 4 departments and 6 books later I stopped to review my progress. And I am glad that I did, because only the first 3 books were showing on the website. This means that if you go onto the website and click on one of the "New Items" shown in the left, you will get an error message. They are there, but I don't know where.

No problem I think. I will just contact my hosting company and they will fix it for me. But this is where I hit upon another problem. They seem to go awol every now and again. You can email and email and you get no reply. Then suddenly a month later they will reply to everything. I suppose that you get what you pay for, and my hosts are certainly the cheapest out there. Sigh... I have about another dozen books to add now and then 100 or so to add over the coming months so I need this to be resolved. I will have to try phoning them and see if they can answer me that way.

Keep posted and get ready for lots of new books... I hope!!!

Hits and Books

Excitement ensues in the KFC household. Suddenly my hits have doubled in a week. No, this isn't a reference to the battering received from a disgruntled wife, rather the number of people who have looked at the web site. But what brought this sudden wave of interest? It seems that a link to my site has been added to modestclothes.com. I now have a new mission (dives into the nearest phone-box twirls around a few times and emerges wearing a spandex super mission man suit). We have to go where no other KFC website has been before. To scour the net in search for other link possibilities.

Other amazing developments are in the pipeline. We have a new addition to the family just around the corner. In a quest to use every letter of the alphabet we are proud to introduce KFB - Kosher For Books. All we need now is to sell Apples or Ants and we would be KFA, KFB and KFC. Hmm, thinks D, E F...

I have just come back from a cold meeting with Rabbi Singer. That is temperature cold, not lacking emotion. There is no heating in his storage room where the books are currently kept. We are merging KFC with Aleph Books to put their catalogue on-line. Initially it will be a department within our site. So you can buy your skirts along side a cookery book (Jewish Holiday Cooking anyone?). Don't let anyone say that we are not a leader of fashion. If you can buy books with a cuppa then why not books with a t-shirt?

New Year - New Sale + random musings

Dear bloggers and blog readers one and all.

It's time to embrace the New Year with renewed vigour and excitement. We have a new sale on at Kosher For Clothes.
"But how does that differ from the last sale?" you might ask.
Well, we have added more items to this sale and reduced prices even further that before! Having been snowed in for the last day I spent a good hour and a half tidying up the stock from our spare room. I would have spent longer tidying up, but, well, the Wii called for most of the morning and, well, the snow man was calling for most of lunch and early afternoon. It is amazing how quickly a small boy can create a huge snowball. Within 15 minutes it was bigger than he was! I was at friends, hence the little boy, and was meant to be going to my father inlaw for lunch, but the pull of a snow man was too much for me to resist. The picture on the right is not of the snowman as I didn't have my camera at the time, but of our back garden at 7:30 yesterday morning.

The post is still working here. The postman turned up at about 11am with snow balancing on his head. We offered him a warm drink but all he wanted was a coke! Hey ho, there is no accounting for what will keep people going nowadays in the cold. Not that we had any coke as we don't do fizzy drinks in the house any more. We had a purge a few years ago after reading the ingredients in a bit more detail and looking up what some of the items actually were! I actually drink tap water now. I tried it the other day and decided that it's not as bad as people make out. A nice cold glass of vintage Manchester tap water is actually quite refreshing (takes a sip just to prove the point - ahhhh lovely). It's also free!!! (well, almost free, but what is completely free nowadays?)

Actually, talking of what is free, just a quick plug (after all this is meant to be a Kosher For Clothes blog). Delivery is free if you live in the North Manchester area. This includes Broughton Park, Prestwich, Whitefield, Cheatham Hill and any other area near by.

Now that I am embarrassed by the shameless plug I will take my exit. Have fun in the snow.
Martin

More Advertising!

I have just been contacted by The Jewish News and they have offered me a special on a colour advert in their Simcha section. I need to twiddle with my advertising format as the size is smaller than any ad I have placed before. But then that is the sort of thing that I like doing. Twiddling that is.

It will appear in their paper and on-line version. I will be interested to see what the response will be.

Meanwhile, sales are still extremely slow. Surely someone wants a good Chanukah present for someone. Modest Neck covers and Sleeve Extensions are the ideal top up pressie ;-) No but really they are...

Martin

Chanukah Advertising

Time for a bit of advertising again. It is my last free advert in the London Jewish Shopper. Not had much response so far, but who knows. One last try huh? I certainly won't be using them again if I don't get any response this time. Time for a first. I will be advertising in Kosher Pages, Kosher Brochure. It is an on-line free ad's pamphlet so fingers crossed it brings in some interest as things are really, really slow at the moment.

We are off to Leicester to visit my mum, Rod and Grandma. It is Grandma's birthday so we are all looking forward to that. On my return it will be time to push the wholesale side of KFC as I have some interested parties.

Hopefully more news soon...

Web Site Re-Jig + Dissapointment

I have given the website a spring clean. Make-up is gone. If you would like to purchase any then please contact me direct as we can still get hold of it to order. I have split the departments into sale and non-sale to make searching a bit clearer. It also makes the departments a bit smaller. Some of the non selling non stocked items have now gone. The Childrens and Babies section will go soon as well. I give it one more week, as despite people asking for kids clothes, I have only made 2 sales from that category, both to the same person!!! I have got some nice things for Tashi though, so it hasn't all been bad :-)

What can I do to get people interested in this blog? Despite sending out email-shots and adding it to my facebook group, nobody has joined this blog except my wife and my mum. That's quite sad really!!!

What can I do to sell anything? Recent adverts in EdgwereK, previously a good earner, resulted in 1 sale. An advert in ManchesterK, slightly less tried and tested, so far resulted in 50 views on my website, which is quite good, but no inquiries and no sales. An advert in London Jewish Shopper the other week, a subscription email advertiser, resulted in 2 sales, 1 of which asked for a refund.

I might put the website on hold for the winter and come out all guns a-blazing in the spring. A shame really as I have purchased in bulk when placing orders with my wholesalers and now have stock of everything. Perfect timing just as everyone stopped buying things!!!

Martin

Necks, Sales, Make-up and Adverts

The Modest Neck Covers are now back in stock. We have loads now ready to send out. I am still looking for wholesale customers so if you know a local shop who might want to sell these, let me know.

The sale continues, but not quite at the pace that I had hoped. We really do need the space. Lisa is 20 weeks pregnant and I need to move the stock out of the spare room!!! So please buy something lol ;-)

The Make-Up is not selling as well as we had hoped. It's a shame, as the products are a really good quality. Lisa uses them all the time and she only uses the good stuff so I know that it's worth selling! If we don't get any take-up soon then I might have to removed them from the site to make room for more lovely goodies. Talking of which, I might have a tidy up of the site to remove some of the low sellers. Make things a bit clearer for all to see. What are your thoughts on this? Would you rather see lots of stuff on the site, even if nobody ever buys them, or would you prefer a cleaner list of only the good stuff?

We have a new advert placed in ManchesterK. It's worth signing up to see what's going on in the Jewish Manchester area. The response has been good from EdgwareK adverts and I am hoping for the same from ManchesterK. Especially as I am happy to delivery the orders myself, thus making delivery costs free to customers in this area.

That's it for now. Speak soon
Martin