The Little Dog Story
Chapter Eight – Belief in the bunny.
The Little Dog Story. What do you do when money is tight, businesses are going to the wall, people are losing their jobs and the media seems determined to worry the country into a double dip recession?
Answer… spend lots redesigning your trade stand, your website, change your company name and logo, invest lots of money in a rabbit, continue developing your other brands and keep everything crossed that the economy picks up before you run out of energy and pennies!
Our belief in Rufus Rabbit’s potential forced us to make some very costly choices starting with our trade stand.
The trade shows are our main platform to generate orders, showcase new products and meet potential customers. Our existing stand was only two years old and we had assumed it would last a good five years and therefore pay for its development. Wrong!
After much debate we decided to open up the whole stand area and put over three hundred card designs into portfolios. This allowed us to dedicate areas to each brand and Gavin to have his own bar area for handing out brochures and gin and tonics! (He has always hankered after running his own “Cheers” style bar)
We showcased our new look at the Birmingham Spring Fair and thankfully the buyers were happy to sit and browse through the portfolios, rumours ran the halls that the Little Dog was back on top form and our Really Likes ranges saw a massive boost in sales. Hoorah all round!
Next we tackled our website, again only two years old and certainly not due for a revamp but with all the new added products the whole site was very jumbled and confused.
We realised we needed a new company name to act as an umbrella for our three brands but felt it would be foolish and disloyal to stray too far from the humorous mutt who had got us this far so we finally agreed on a font change, new logo, shortening our name to The Little Dog and adding the tag line “One company, three nice brands! ”
Alongside all of the above we began putting our rabbit plans into action. Rufus was perfect to develop into a baby range and after millions of design hours, numerous disappointments, launch date set backs we think we might be onto a winner, hope you agree!
So apart from all that it has been a rather quiet year, no dramas, no illnesses, no sadness, just lots of development, improvements and positivity to carry us through into 2011 – the Chinese year of the rabbit ….”Come on Rabbit”!!!
