We Are One
This weekend, when you are digesting your Sunday lunch, I will have to come in to the office to do the stock take, a mundane few hours of counting endless hearing aids, tubes, domes, packets of batteries, accessories –the list goes on, and on, and on! It is a necessary part of the running the business and so one mustn’t complain. However, I also have to come in to take down the decorations. Now before you good folk write in pointing out a gross breach of Twelve Night protocol, I will quickly point out that these are not Christmas decorations but Happy Birthday decorations. On the eve of 18th January, Joan decorated the office with balloons, stars, streamers and banners. On the 19th January she went on holiday, thereby neatly avoiding cleaning up! The birthday celebrations is not Joan’s or anyone of us who work at HearingDirect, it is the one year anniversary of turning the website on. There was obviously a lot of work done in advance of turning the site on, but January 19th is the day we went live – so Happy Birthday HearingDirect.
A quick review of the year, is called for.
The highlights have included the first sale which gave us the first concrete evidence that people were prepared to trust an unknown internet site, and to take advantage of the considerable benefits that it offers. The extension of the site to include the Geemarc brand with all its amplified phones, loud alarms and other accessories. Then shortly after that, the addition of Amplicom with its range of hearing aid compatible phones, alerting devices and loud alarms. Winning the unnecessary and pointless fight initiated by spiteful high street retailers who tried every trick to get us shut down. A quick note on the high street retailers – we recently had a referral from one of the smaller operations, recognising that in one particular case they couldn’t help but we could. How times have changed within one year. The recognition from unbiased industry of what we were doing with nominations and short listing for several awards. Our first employee, Natalie who joined us shortly before we were a one year old.
I would like to abuse the Blog and use it to say a personal thank you to my two colleagues without which this idea would have flickered and died long ago. Joan and Gary, you have been steadfastly brilliant through this first year.
However, the biggest highlight is the ongoing run of orders. Every day when your orders come into the site, it gives us the resolve to carry on and the confidence that what we are doing is right for us, right for the industry and right for the consumers. So one year on the biggest Thank You, is reserved for you our customers. If anyone could pop in on Sunday to help me take down the decorations I would be most grateful.
We are now just into our second year so bring on the Terrible Twos!!