What's New?
2006
Danny's Blog
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New for September
Yesterday, I officially started working for Clean Image full time. Until now I have only been working here on a part time basis but now I am officially part of the furniture. Allready I have found myself getting dragged into the business of answering the phones and dealing with customers - of course, being a web stig and internet geek, it's not something I'm good at. Dealing with people is something that the wife is much better at, and she is now working for Clean Image too, although in an all new and separate part of the business.
Yes, it's official, we are now going ahead with the web shop that we have been promising for the last three years. We are busy setting up ebay, paypal and credit card accounts so we can sell on that well know online auction while the shop is being built. I say "we", but actually this is a completely separate business to Clean Image. All enquiries about the shop stuff have to be kept separate to the main business here or else there would be total chaos! So Anna will be handling all enquiries.
Anna is going to start by selling the stuff that you cannot find elsewhere, such as the aftercare for paint sealants and special professional products that you can't get in Halfords or your local motor accessory shop.
This new car care shop will be found at www.valetshop.co.uk, but don't forget to look at Anna's own website ar www.carcareadvice.co.uk.
We are now famous 5th September 2006
Has it really been two months since I updated this? Time flies when you are busy! We are especially busy right now as we have just been featured in Autocar's "This Week's Essentials". This means their weekly circulation has shot up -- mainly because my mum has bought loads of copies for the family! It also means our phones have been ringing off the hook. The article involved us sorting out the key scratches on the features editor's car which you can read about in one of our latest articles.
It's that time again! 1st July 2006
Yes, it's the time of year when we get a visit from salesmen from Yellow Pages and Thompson Directory... I am so used to being able to do whatever I want with our web based advertising, the I find papery adverts a real chore. Especially the size limitations! We have so much to offer - how can we fit it in just a few colum inches?
I admit it! I was in a flippant mood when I started on the new adverts.
I started off saying "Whatever you want - I bet we do it!".
But then Gary pointed out that this isn't strictly true... we are not a 'quick wash and wax' type operation. People phoning for a £5 hand wash will be disapointed.
"So why not just say that?" I thought.
So I did! "Don't phone us..." and "We are the most expensive by far" were the main headlines.
The original advert was far harsher than the one shown right. I actually started a bit of a rant... "If you don't visit our website, then your mother is a hamster and your father smells of elderberries!".
In advertising, they call this 'brain storming', but in my case it probably has more to do with working in a office with no windows - its about 90° in here.
Having printed out the ad, and stepped back to look at it, I realized it may be a little harsh.
I then underwent one of those mood swings that us web stigs go through.
I thought, "Oh no! What if people really don't phone us!". I would be so disappointed.. we love our customers!
"You're my best mate you are!"
I'm afraid that my next ad (shown right) turned out a bit warm and fluffy.
As I was popping a valium, Gary walked in and saw the two ads side-by-side. After he stopped laughing. He said, "Great, the two work well together - phone them up and ask if it's too late to run both ads!".
So that's the story of why we are now running two ads showing our nasty and our nice side. It's not a cleaver marketing trick... it just reflects the mood swings of a designer on the edge.
Barnacle Juice (working title!)
In a joint project with Allbrite Europe, and their UK distributor, AutoBright, we visited DS Developments manufacturers of Neptune comms and proud sponsor of a Honda Formula 4 Stroke - 150 class racing boat.
We were contacted a little while back by Kevin who asked us if we knew of a super slippery water repellent coating which he could use on the bottom of a boat to make it go faster... we thought the best thing to do was to ask Willy 'The buffmeister' Winterfalk and J.J. Jhaveri of Allbrite who set about inventing a special coating for the task. We haven't got a name for this stuff yet, but we have at least applied it to the Neptune boat.
We also applied it to a 225 class boat, many of you will be familiar with the bottom of this boat as we recently saw it from underneath as it went over a waterfall in the Honda - Impossible Dreams advert.
We will hopefully be following the progress of these boats over the coming season as well as other events. H4 - Neptune will be appearing at the Lowestoft Boat Show on the 13th and 14th of May 2006, it will be giving trips with the proceeds going to Waveney Sailability and the East Coast Child Appeal. (sponsored by DS Neptune Ltd and Lings Honda of Lowestoft).
Click here to see the article.
Car Care Advice
Clean Image is proud to announce that it will be sponsoring a new website called carcareadvice.co.uk.
The site will be written by Anna who came to us with the idea after helping us with our website on a couple of occasions. There are already many pages on the web about car care, but these are usually written by enthusiasts who tend to go over the top, or they are written by journalists who are just repeating what they have been told (We don't think much of some of these well known sites). So there is a gap in the market for quality impartial advice written for average everyday people.
As Anna is related to a number of people within the professional car care industry, she is in a unique position to get honest, accurate answers to all the questions that people ask us all the time.
We feel that car care is important and if we can promote a culture of car care in this country it will benefit
our industry - so we are proud to sponsor the site to help get it up and running.
Anna will begin writing the site after Easter (when the kids go back to school) and we look forward to her first entries. Please visit the site and check back for regular updates.
www.carcareadvice.co.uk
Willy teaches new employee Edward how to use a wool pad on the bonnet of a Bentley. |
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Buffing Training from Allbrite (Europe).
Willy Winterfalk from Allbrite has been doing the rounds again and we were lucky enough to have him visit us for training on Thursday.
Willy has been working on a training scheme for buffing and chose us to be the first to try it out. Although some of our employees have been buffing, and buffing with the Allpad system for quite a while, he took Mark, Sean and Edward through the basics - training them from scratch.
Slow start!
As it's February, it's probably a little late to wish everybody a new year!
2006 started off with computer problems (especially e-mail) and was followed by a bout of sickness which has meant that I have spent more time off work than on. My apologies to everybody who has had to wait for answers to e-mails, and if you sent us an e-mail and didn't get a reply, please re-send it as we did have a few disappear into cyberspace. So I am a little behind with my work at the moment as the time I have spent has mostly been on our Lease Guide. However, as usual I have lots of interesting stuff in the pipeline, all designed to inform and to answer the questions that our customers actually ask us.
Despite the slow start, I'm pretty certain that this is going to be an amazing year for Clean Image!
Site Updates
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Gallery: Lease Return - Recharge Examples
As part of our Rease Return Guide, we have now completed a gallery of actual photos from a lease inspector showing the damage and listing the cost of the penalty recharge incured. It's not as fun as some of the other parts of the site, but useful information none the less! I have thousands of photos (yes, thousands) and I'm thinking of doing a more general gallery of our work and other interesting stuff... I'll see if I can find the time!
Article: Joint Project - special coatings for Honda formula 4-stroke racing power boats.  6/05/06
We don't normally get asked to get involved with boats as we are not mobie and not very close to the sea. But when we were contacted by DS Developments we accepted the challenge....
Guest Article: Microfibre - A revolution in cleaning 24/04/06
We love them, the wife loves them, they are amazing - so we asked Marc Brady of Microfibre UK to tell us exactly how they work without all the fluff (forgive the pun).
Guest Article: Chrome wheels advice 11/03/06
Although I have been too busy on other projects to write any articles, we have been able twist the arms of a few people to write articles for us (see below). The latest of which is about chrome wheels.
Product Review: Park Smart/Bump Buster 08/02/06
Proving that the best ideas are usually simple, these products protect your car from the dangers of the garage.
Guide: Lease Car Guide 10/01/06
To help you avoid unexpected costs we have produced this guide to help you care for your lease car. There is loads of great stuff on this guide, and more to come!
Guest articles
Our articles have proved very popular over the last year, so we have decided to expand the subject matter to other subjects which may be of interest to our customers. We find that many of our customers are bringing cars to us which they are going to sell or have just bought, or leased - so for them valeting, smart repair and general car care are just part of the process of buying, selling or leasing. So we will be inviting some industry insiders to write articles for us to help you get the most for your money and avoid the pitfalls.
Guest Article: Should I buy or lease my next car? jan 2006
Terrence Jumbe of Vehicle consulting has written a simple 5 step guide on entering into a lease. Hopefully we can persuade Terrence to expand on this advice and give us some more articles in the future.
News Archive
News 2005
News 2006 |
