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Bertinet's kitchen, making some real dough in a virtual world
A dozen local businesses got together for a bread making class followed by a seminar on Integrated ECommerce at The Bertinet Kitchen today.
The first 1½ hours or so consisted of the hands on experience of making some real dough and baking some bread. Then, over a buffet lunch, Philip Jones, Chartered Marketer and Richard Hill of E-CRM Solutions lead the participants in a seminar on Integrated ECommerce.
Bath 20th October 2006
Richard Hill a partner of E-CRM Solutions, a Bath based ECommerce and EMarketing agency said: “We arranged the seminar because ECommerce is growing so fast. Unfortunately, many SMEs and their advisers think that EBusiness is the preserve of larger companies and that it is difficult. The whole idea of the bread making was to show people that just a few simple ingredients (flour, salt, yeast and water) can be the basis of a whole range of very different and tasty dishes from bread to pizza and that, with the right guidance, you really can learn something entirely new very quickly”.
Ami Baker, managing director of IMA Enterprises based in Queens Square and who provide corporate finance assistance for SMEs said “It was great fun making the dough into bread, Richard Bertinet is a fine teacher who makes it all a good laugh but also gives you a real insight into why and how it all works. The same was true of the seminar arranged by E-CRM; I now feel I know more about how ECommerce can help SMEs”.
In 2005, 24 million consumers made online purchases spending on average £816 each. In the 10 week lead up to Christmas they spent £5billion with £208 being the average spend per person online. Christmas 2006 is forecast to see a further increase of 36% leading to sales of nearly £7 billion and this rate of growth in Internet sales is expected to continue for some time. In contrast, last year town centre shops took £767 million less through their tills than in 2004 – a 0.6 per cent fall and the first such drop in modern times. Verdict Research, the specialist retail analyst, expects like-for-like sales growth on the high street to be just 0.1 per cent a year over the next five years. Yet costs will rise by 3 to 4 per cent, largely because of higher rents and increases in the minimum wage.
Since December 2005 major high street names such as Unwins, MVC, Kookai and Morgan have called in either the administrators or the receivers. For SMEs such news is bound to cause careful consideration of the future.
With ever increasing - demands on their time, consumers are turning, more and more, to the internet. They do so to compare products and prices, place orders and avoid high street queues. They spend on all categories – from electricals to clothes, from food and wine to footwear. Combine this with the gloomy reports from the high street and many small and medium sized organizations (SME) are realizing that a good ECommerce site is where to invest capital and marketing budgets to capture consumer expenditure and to compete – as always – with the ‘big boys’.
Some SMEs dismiss ECommerce straight away, believing that it is expensive, time consuming or just a simply baffling proposition. It’s not and ECommerce isn’t just about ‘selling things’. ECommerce also covers membership-based organizations, charities, lead generation and supplier and client integration via intra and extranets. ECommerce is being used productively by businesses of all sizes.
Attendees:
Mrs Aileen Burnside Burnside Chartered Accountants
Ms Ami Baker IMA Enterprises Ltd
Mr Brian Newton Print Creative
Ms Laura Hampson Burton Sweet
Mr Hardy Andrew Holborn Asset Management Ltd
Ms Jo Francis-Pope Appoint Personnel Ltd
Mrs Margaret Hill Prior Park College
Mr Nick Sandy ST8 Ltd
Mr Philip Jones PJCM
Mr Richard Bertinet The Bertinet Kitchen
Mr Richard Hill E-CRM Solutions
Mr Charlie Thomson Bishop Fleming
Ms Wilks Tricia The Network Business Centre
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