February 2012

Coffee Break Catch-up: Networking, new hire, news and views

Welcome to Customs Clearance’s February Coffee Break Catch-up. Here’s where we update you on our recent blog postings and offer up a little entertainment for your time-out time, in the shape of one of our popular Coffee Break Stories.

You can keep up-to-date as it happens by subscribing to our blog, Customs Clearance Talk. We post regularly with news, tips, advice and useful information, as well as update you on the goings-on at CCL. Here are the links to our most recent postings:

• A cautionary tale – We make the case for experts and specialists
• Simplifying EU cross-border VAT – It’s on the way and we’re all for it!
• Don’t get scammed – Keep in touch with HMRC’s phishing and scam alerts
• Enhanced EU sanctions on Syria – Latest update on trade sanctions
• Q&A – Importing equipment from China – What we need from you, to help us serve you best
• East meets West – Meet Neo, our man with his eye on the Asia Pacific region
• Networking in Miami – Our update from the Triangle Americas 2012 conference earlier this month

February’s Coffee Break Story: All Change for a Perfect World

One of our ‘old favourite’ Coffee Break Stories – in honour of our new team member, this little piece of fiction has a Far Eastern connection.

It’s usually an oasis of calm, my home-office. Clean, minimalist, not a thing out of place. Not that I’m obsessive compulsive or anything – no! But I like things the way I like them and I have an organised mind and a systematic approach. OK, OK, so I can be a bit fussy. That’s just how I am.

But this week, all is chaos. I’m trying to set up my new web site, and I can’t think through the noise. That’s to say nothing about the fine layer of plaster dust and wood shavings that seems to have blanketed the whole house. For the last couple of weeks (and it seems like a lifetime) I’ve had Bob the Builder and his young sidekick in (yes, he really is called Bob) (or so he says). And whilst I know they’re doing a good job, and I believe it will all look magnificent in the end, right now, it’s mayhem and noise almost beyond endurance. I know it wasn’t their fault but they even managed to take out a water pipe with an errant nail, which caused a minor tsunami in the hall and led to me having to clamber over piles of sopping wet pulled-up carpet for 3 days. That set us back a bit, in goodwill terms, you could say. So my blood pressure is through the roof and my concentration is shot to ribbons and I’m playing my relaxation CDs and staying off the caffeine – and supping just the odd bottle or three of vin rouge come the evening, to keep me sane.

But I was telling you about my web site, wasn’t I?

A couple of months ago I went on my holiday-of-a-lifetime, to China. I did the tour – Forbidden City, Great Wall, Terracotta Army – the lot. It was amazing - breathtaking. And I know you’re not supposed to sneak off by yourself, but I managed to meet up with this guy I’d found on the internet. No, it wasn’t that kind of meeting. It was business. He and his small-but-perfectly-formed hillside village assembly line manufacture the best, most amazing, customisable storage thingy for itty-bitty girlie stuff that I’d ever seen. I’d stumbled across it on the internet a few weeks earlier and I’d bought one for myself. I’d showed it to my girlfriends, who all got far more excited about it than anybody has a right to get over, well, a box. But then you know what us girls can be like, don’t you? And whilst it’s a box, it’s a box with a whole bunch of whistles and bells. Anyhow, Mr Ho and I had exchanged a few emails and I’d discovered that he was interested in selling through distributors. I was looking for something to complement my current locally made lines and this nicely made, infinitely reorganisable piece of rather clever storage appealed to my sense of order. I drafted a quick marketing plan and grabbed a spare hour to sit down with him in Beijing, and after that, it all came together pretty quickly.

So here I am a few weeks later, hardly able to see through the tension headache that has become an almost permanent fixture over the last few days, trying to sort out the finishing touches to the itty-bitty-box web site. Apart from fun and games with html, the marketing plan is working out, and there have been a couple of nice surprises. I’d invested a little in on-line advertising with a few web portals and one or two women’s magazines had picked up the threads, so I’ve even got a couple of feature spots coming up in the next month or two – that’ll be a big boost. I just need to have the web site up and running and that would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that - I admit - I’m being just a bit picky about how it’s put together and, yes, I know, I know, I have changed my mind once or twice about the look... and about the home page.... and the menu items... the text.... the pictures... and the graphics.... I expect my web designer silently curses me. I blame the builders.

But it’s nearly there, so next in my perfect world, comes the job of handling all those hundreds (or maybe thousands?) of orders that are bound to come bouncing in. Each order of course, will be slightly different from the last. That’s the thing about customisable products – no two the same. It’s what makes them great, and, from a distribution point of view, it’s also what makes them a bit of a pain. But there’s money in them there hills, so I’m exploring ways to make it happen, without these itty-bitty boxes taking over my otherwise calm and ordered life.

The sawing, banging, hammering and drilling continues, melding not very seamlessly with the dulcet tones of Heart FM – that’s Bob the Builder’s paint-stained transistor, deftly smothering my pan pipes and sounds of nature CDs. They didn’t have a hope really. But you do understand why it’s become so hard to make a decision and then stick to it, don’t you? I am trying to keep my perfectionist streak under control, really, I am.

I swallow another couple of Aspirin and check into Google. Warehousing, distribution, importing, customs... Lots of firms, but it seems, there’s nobody doing everything I need. Until I get to one - Customs Clearance Ltd. Yes, indeed, it seems Customs Clearance Ltd does what it says on the tin – and I certainly need help with the customs clearance side of things. But they also have links with air freighters worldwide, and they have a warehouse, and they do break-bulk so they can ship my itty-bitty-boxes from China right to the door of each and every customer, and I don’t have to be involved – I don’t even have to see the itty-bitty-boxes, let alone set aside a room at home to store and pack them. Now that’s amazing! I need these guys! I was so thrilled to find them, that when Bob the Builder finally put his head around the door to say “we’re off now”, I nearly hugged him. Nearly.

Peace at last, and I gave the guys at CCL a call. They gave me the heads-up on how to go about my shipments and it all seemed pretty reasonable. They filled in some considerable gaps in my knowledge about VAT and duty, which made me think again about pricing, and I must say, I was glad to have that kind of information to hand before go-live. Now I just need to brave one more call to my web designer... and once again, it’s one of those calls that begins with, “I’ve changed my mind about....”