Hi guys,

For the past few months we’ve been redesigning the Prezzybox.com website and we’re now in a position to soft launch it. You can see the new site design by clicking here and I’ve also included a screen grab of it below.

This compares to our old site - see below.

We hope to go live with the new site by the end of August, but if all goes to plan it could be as early as next week!

You like?

We’ve been working with neuro linguistic programmers 7 Billion People and have made a number of changes to the current site which we hope (fingers firmly crossed) will have a positive effect on our conversion rate. Obviously this will be good for all of our affiliate buddies too

I’d be really keen to know your thoughts on the new site - be they good, bad or indifferent so please feel free to comment below or drop me an email on zak @ prezzybox.com.

Toodle pip.

TBW

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Prezzybox.com is looking to employ a junior member for their technical team.

You interested?

Based in a Farm House in the rural Midlands (junction 11 M42), the award winning online gift retailer is looking to recruit a highly motivated candidate to be part of their forward thinking - yet fun and personal – team.

Role: Junior Web Developer

Mandatory Skills Required

• Programming experience
• ASP.NET with VB.NET 
• An understanding of general programming algorithms such as Sequence, Selection, Iteration, and Recursion 
• An understanding of HTML 
•  Trouble Shooting in Windows XP/Vista and Microsoft Office

Desired Skills

• PHP
• Understanding of XML
• Classic ASP and/or VBScript would be useful 
• SQL would be useful 
• JavaScript would be useful 
• Familiarity with Dream Weaver and Visual Studio are an advantage. As is an understanding of Flash. 
• Web design skills are NOT required  
• Management of peripheral devices such as printers and external storage devices
• Basic networking skills including network card configuration IP addresses, subnet masks, routers

The Role

Because of the small, yet dynamic nature of the company the role will be incredibly varied. It will encompass a range of tasks including;

• Development, deployment and maintenance of web applications in VB.NET. Includes anything from producing new features for the website through to formulating reports and queries and actually developing new sites for our portfolio
• Wordpress website management and installation, Integration with 3rd party e-commerce websites such as Amazon and Play.com
• Desktop Application Development of custom tools, for example an automated Web page generator
• Assistance in Server maintenance
• Security and office software management
• Basic hardware diagnostics and repair
• Basic network configuration

This hands-on I.T. role will go to a candidate who is happy to work hard, but is keen to get involved in exciting new projects and become a member of a fun and dedicated team in a fast growing company in the online gift sector.

Anything else?

• Flexible Working Hours
• Attractive Holiday (22 days a year plus bank holidays including a 10/11 day break every Christmas)
• Good Career Prospects in a small yet fast growing team in a dynamic and fast paced market sector
• Delightful working environment in a farm house in the middle of the Warwickshire countryside

Interested?

If so please feel free to email Zak Edwards on jobs@prezzybox.com with your CV or call 0844 2495 007 for an informal chat. Alternatively write to: Zak Edwards, Prezzybox.com, Hollybank Farm House, No Mans Heath Lane, Austrey, Warks, CV9 3EW.

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Unless you’ve been walking round with a slanket draped over your bonce, you’ll no doubt have had numerous conversations about Alistair Darlings ‘VAT announcement’ and how retailers are going to proceed.

Personally I’ve spoken to lots of merchants over the last 3/4 days and very few of them have a firm idea of how they are going to progress. But why is this causing so much trouble? Surely it’s just a case of taking 2.5% off your retail price. Well it’s not that simple. Why? I’ll tell you…

1) Normally we have prices at nice price points (for example £9.95). If we have to take the 2.5% VAT off then we’ll lose all of our nice price points and have weird price points like £9.71. This will look messy.

2) Prices may have already been rounded down anyway. Historically when we’ve been setting the retail price at Prezzybox we’ve ensured that we meet these nice price points. For example - when calculating the retail price of a product our calculations might say it should be £10.23. However as this is not a nice price point we’ll round the price down to £9.95. So if we take a further 2.5% off this we’re getting hit even harder.

3) RRP. Ordinarily if a product has an RRP of £X then we very often sell the product at less than £X because market forces dictate that we need to.

4) The strength of the pound. Recently the pound has been taking a hammering - especially against the dollar/euro. Consequently a lot of our suppliers have put our cost prices up. Because we’ve tried to maintain the nice price points (eg £9.95) we’ve actually been making less margin than we normally would.

5) Technical Issues. Changing the prices isn’t a problem for us at Prezzybox as it just means writing a simple script to change the prices. However, some merchants don’t have these capabilities and it will mean changing the prices manually. Not much fun if you’ve got 1000’s of products.

6) Point of Sale Material. Merchants who have high street presence will also have POS printed and possibly catalogues/brochures. What do these merchant do? Replicate everything at cost to themselves?

You see what I mean? It’s not just a matter of taking 2.5% off your retail price - there’s much more to consider. As of yet (and I know we’re not the only merchants in this scenario) I’ve no idea what we’re going to do here at Prezzybox. Part of me thinks we should deduct 2.5% from every retail price as this is the fair thing to do and is what the public will expect, whilst another part of me thinks we should just keep our retail prices as they are and reduce the VAT accordingly and thus in effect make an extra 2.5% on every order.

Answers on a post card folks!!!

Toodle pip.

Zak.

9 Comments »

Hello folks,

Bear with me on this one… It is going somewhere.  

One of my functions at PB.HQ is to merchandise our product categories. Without going into too much detail I basically have to ensure that all of our best selling, newest, most popular and most heavily stocked products are well represented on the website.

Alongside this we also have to consider seasonal peaks and troughs (personalised calendars sell better in November and December for obvious reasons), as well as promoting aspirational products - such as this £27k king kong climbing frame. Finally Supplier sweeteners… erm… I mean… incentives are taken into consideration when positioning products in our site.

Now, this may sound easy, but it is actually massively time consuming and involves all sorts of considerations, algorithms, reports and statistics.

Anyhoo here’s my point, or moreover my question. After ploughing through and positioning endless products - from mini winnies to croquet sets - it dawned on me…

What is Prezzybox.com? And are we any good?

The simple answer I normally sprout out when people ask is that we are a gift retailer selling a veritable array of gifts and goodies ranging from tiny r.c. helicopters, through to rocking horses and racing car days.

But is that all we are?

Others - including some of my colleagues - feel that because of the breadth of our product range - we are an online department store.

But then are we guilty of trying to be all things to all men? Is this to our detriment?

In some ways I think it’s great that we’ve got stacks of product categories as we can ordinarily cater for any body’s gift buying needs be it a gift for their granny or their half cousins, brothers mother. It also means we can populate most searches on our now legendary gift wizard. But part of me does envy the likes of Firebox who it would appear have a distinct demographic customer base and thus a clear idea as to the types of products that will fit well and be adored by their loyal followers, as not only does this assist the buyers in what sort of products to offer, but it also makes it easier to do marketing, write product copy, find promotional partners inter Alia.  For us, it’s a little difficult. Like most websites we sort of “fell into” our current offering as in the early days we literally bought from the few companies who were prepared to supply us and categorised them accordingly. Consequently this has shaped the website and our product offering as we are today.

So, my final question is…

Should we continue to offer as wide a product range as we do or should we have a mass clear out of products, narrow our range and focus on specific customer demographics?

It’s a ‘tuffy!’ Answers on a postcard please.

TBW.

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