Nový Mlýn - green tech south bohemia

So, that’s Christmas over with.

I spent a large amount of time knitting. In order to apply for a stall at Moseley Farmers Market, I would need to fit into the ‘crafts’ section. As a result I’ve been averaging at producing a hat a day to stock a stall. I have been taking apart jumpers from second hand shops - items that are made of pure wool, cashmere, mohair etc - and recycling the wool into far nicer and more wearable items of clothing. The stall could really do with some heads to model the hats. What have we got lying round the house that would do as a substitute?

Anyway, the beauty of knitting is that you can sit about over the Christmas holidays watching films and still feel like you’re doing something slightly productive. We went down to London yesterday to sort out some paperwork for the Czech business & I did some hat checking - fashionable people are wearing six faced cap type things - I could do with a pattern. Also, hats with beads knitted in seem popular so I’ll have a go at that too.
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Argh! Yesterday was a disaster. Life imitating art, almost word for word from The Streets. If Id stayed in bed all day, I would have been £4 better off. As it was, Mike & I spent the whole day running a stall at the flea market. This wasn’t in the reception at the Custard Factory, unfortunately. Instead we were in a disused shop premises round the corner. There were no potential customers. We were positioned at the back with the hardcore 80’s vintage stalls, only visited by the early twenty something fashionista. And they certainly aren’t looking for something quite so practical as Onya Bags – and I suspect that they wouldn’t really buy enough food in one go to actually need a bag to put it in. The only sale I made was to an accompanying parent who had seen an article in the Guardian – probably the same one I’d seen about Onya Bags.

On the plus side, the organiser, Missy, was brilliant. Really helpful & professional. We were provided with mulled wine & mince pies, the other stall holders were really welcoming, and I had some clear time to write my Christmas cards (last posting day yesterday!). At least two sold on Ebay while I was huddled over my inappropriate stall. If only I’d been selling legwarmers instead.

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The journey to my temp job provides excellent thinking time, and the cycling is becoming almost second nature now… I definitely don’t ache as much as I did last month. Unfortunately, my front light broke, so I’ve been investigating battery free lighting alternatives - I found a product called pedalite - which looks fantastic.

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So, the Onya bags are sold out. Mostly to people who bought one, and then came back for more, which is very encouraging. I have amended the Ebay listing to give a 10 working day lead time as I’d hate people to think they could buy them for Christmas presents and then not be able to deliver them on time. I’ll alter the ad again once I’ve seen what happens to stock over the weekend… I’ve placed an additional order and will take them to the Saturday Flea market at the Custard Factory. A good thing about these kind of events is that I can use it to promote bog at the same time.

I also need to really formalise my procedures. Ebay seems quite clunky to work with - you have to click through several pages in order to make a simple amendment, and likewise you have to hunt around for the information you need such as a dispatch address for a customer. I’ve also been working out how to make packaging for the product from recycled products. At the moment I’m reusing jiffy bags, but only have a few left. The office in which I temp has a large build up of photocopy paper boxes so I’ve been thinking about a design which uses this material. It needs to be really quick to make. No point in spending half an hour making a box for a product that retails for £6.5. So, tonight, I’m going to think about packaging and do some mock ups of the web site design.

Well - today has been fun so far! Mike has been taking product shots of the Onya bags - using his new phone camera (which seems to work very well). The shots he did yesterday were much better than the ones I did earlier in the week. We used some bright fabrics bought from the Stratford Road as backing and it really let the colours of the Onya bags stand out. Anyway, we are still in our pyjamas and it is now nearly 12.30. It is so much nicer working independantly. If we were up first thing on a Sunday morning doing this for someone else it would feel completely different!

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So… by mid January we should have a prototype of the personalised reflective bag covers for cyclists made up by Stratford Workwear Ltd.

I’ve put a couple of products on Ebay to test the waters - no interest as yet on the eco shower head. I need to look again at how well the product is described - it makes such a difference - such as with Onya - the words ‘christmas present/gift’ and ‘eco friendly’ are important - and handbags are a popular category - there’s quite a lot of helpful info available with a service called EbayPop. Well, lots of learning done this week! It’s possible to look at what words are popular using a Yahoo service. Read the rest of this entry »

So, after talking to people about the idea last night - I’m attempting to make contact with an existing car share scheme. There’s two things I’m interested with this. Firstly to see if they’d let us do a franchise - specifically biodiesel & specifically Birmingham. The second intersting aspect is the techology they use for mileage - it looks like this could be adapted to act as an entry system for bog - as bike shed. Anyway, I need to speak to someone called James later today. Read the rest of this entry »

Last night Green Drinks met at a central Birmingham location.

Nicola from 500 Year Vision, Simon from the Carbon Trust, Biodiesel Steve, Travel Plan Helen, Neil from Centro, Cycling officer Will, Carl (who’s in modelling) from the council & Mike from Digital Egg.
It was nice to catch up with a few people & share ideas & progress in a positive environment. We discussed setting up a biodiesel car pool - the car park by the Custard Factory was generally thought to be a good base for this as there are probably many people who need a car occasionally for meetings - who drive to work for this reason - based at the Custard Factory.

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