How do you stop a Christmas tree shedding needles?

I love this time of year... short days and thick jumpers mean it’s time to choose a Christmas tree.

It wasn’t always, childhood Christmases brought decorations down from the loft with an artificial tree; familiar and good, base wobbly but fine for another year.

With my wife, came real trees (people who chose this also bought…) and I love it (them).

Is there a way to stop needles falling off your Christmas tree?

While even in a Lapland forest needles are shed, there are ways to avoid a skeletal relic come Boxing Day.

Firstly store your tree outside until the last minute – the colder the better. You need a base that fills with water then, the minute you bring your beauty in, bathe her. Cut or potted Christmas trees need about a pint of water a day (no way?).

Yes way, the most important factor is water.

There are sprays on the market too, which coat needles in resin helping them hang on in there. But my advice is enjoy; like a rose losing petals, your Christmas tree is destined to slowly give her plentiful load... while not a creature is stirring (not even a mouse), enjoy her beautiful fragrance and magnificent silhouette.

Then, fire up a Gtech SW20 and break free. A wondrous 30-seconds, needles pepper the tray - a pine-fresh litre of swag a day. Drop ‘em I say, satisfaction like no other.

It’s not that I’m suggesting I designed the Gtech sweeper with Christmas in mind (It was Labrador hair actually), it just happens to be the gift that keeps on giving...

Merry Christmas!

When times are tough the smart move is usually the safe one. Trouble is to get Britain’s economy going we need some of its best performers with comfortable careers to step forward and start a new business.

Ironically, with 2 in 3 new businesses failing, having a crack at a new venture appeals most if you’ve just been made redundant, don’t like your co-workers or believe ‘only fools and horses work’.

Let’s be honest, the experienced and successful won’t be treated like an out-of-school amateur, won’t want to talk a young ‘bank manager’ through a business plan, fill in forms for advice or move to a poor part of the country for a rent subsidy.

With these potential pioneers safely scaling corporate ladders distanced from risk, are we missing a trick?

I applaud everyone who starts a business, it’s difficult to make any money at all, but what government needs is to prise the big guns out.

How about offering 100 start-up shells to encourage those with the best career and the most to lose? Include a proprietors tax credit up to current net salary, an interest free loan for prototypes, testing or science, a subsidised feeder office or lab in a block with comm’s and shared facilities right amongst the strongest growth areas where contacts are made and business done.

Put the right people in the right place with the right contacts and things happen.

‘Twas ever thus.

The budget, 5 steps to make Britain great

It's budget time and the big question is 'how do we grow Britain’s economy in a global recession?' Wonder no more, I have a plan. Simple visions are best and mine is for Britain to rule the design world, the way China rules manufacturing.

China are best at manufacturing. Their huge, well-educated workforce, with modern global communications manufacture everything for everyone. How did it happen? Financial incentives and time; when a China factory exports a product, their government pay them another 17% of the selling price. It’s like VAT in reverse so their businessmen rush around looking for ways to sell more to foreign customers. Their massive economy now grows another 10% each year and billionaires spring up like Himalayan Balsam. Money is rolling into China like giant tsunamis.

In case nobody noticed, British designers are the best in the world. Whether we are designing Spitfire airplanes to defend our land, building Formula 1 cars more advanced than spaceships or guiding super-brands like Apple, British designers are top dogs. Eccentric, individual and confident, we’re made for it.

It works too, take Gtech; we start with an idea and a clean sheet of paper and create new products to enrich people’s lives. Most of them are exported so it’s real growth and the advantages are legion; jobs are created, support industries grow and the government gets half of everything to run the country and support the needy.

So Mr. Chancellor, a simple strategy; set conditions to grow design, then leave them alone. Young designers will emerge confident, hungry and capable. Small companies are key, they drop like flies when the economy is bad, but are most creative and grow fastest when watered:
1. Reward export of British designed goods with cold cash – 10% of gross profit export rebate straight away, regardless of where they're made.
2. Grow before you harvest; reverse all the silly European tax increases.
3. Help the credit crunch, cap domestic payment terms to small business at 30 days.
4. Creatives hate bureaucracy and being told what to do, cut the red tape and forget about enterprise zones, they only line crony pockets.
5. R&D Tax credits work fine, don’t even dream of reducing them.

Secret Squirel - a day out in the Bull Ring

Every now and then the Gtech Design Team feels the urge to go see what's cool. Last Monday I went with them to the Bull Ring and Mailbox shopping centres in Birmingham.

At 0900 it turns out, only the Apple store is open. It was an education.

All their goodies were plugged in, ready to go and free to use; you can twiddle with an iPad, dock your iPod or watch Apple TV for as long as you want.
People did want to, it was packed.
Amongst the crowds, one lady was sitting listening to a music player, reading her book and the ‘Genius Bar’ were entertaining a group of summer-holiday kids colouring in pictures of iPods (the Genius's were doing most of the colouring).

It was amazing brand-interaction, as a budding brand you kneel before it.


Anyway the rest of the trip was much less inspiring, lots and lots of average appliances. We saw plenty of nice bits but very few products which showed dedicated attention to detail and quality. If our new product doesn't wipe the floor (I know, I know) with the lot of the household appliances we saw, I'll eat my hat.


One other thing arose worth mentioning. A store we visited had a customer in saying her Gtech was 'spitting out bits' when the tray wasn't full, they'd tried everything and swapped her product, but it was still doing it.
'Easy one that', says me, 'static build-up in a newish carpet'. The cure is to wipe down product and brush bar with a water solution with the tiniest drop of washing up liquid. An email this week confirmed all is now well.

I suppose blogs should be useful, so if any of you have questions or need hints or tips, feel free to ask.

I haven’t decided on a subject for next post yet, shocking.

GASP

The Gtech Annual Summer Party is always great fun but this year it doubled as our inaugural annual company meeting.

Lead item was that while Gtech staff have been content until now, serving a dedicated but modest following, we feel the time has come to spread the word further. We've recruited a top marketing manager, who'll assemble a team to let the general public into our secret - powerful floor-care doesn't mean hard work, let it be fun. I'm looking forwards to seeing what they can do.

Meanwhile New Product Design (including me) are working harder than ever. We have a 3 year plan to equip every home in the battle against grime. The first product, code-named 'Dirt Monster', is well under way. We need in-home testers soon, if you're in the Worcester area and want to go on the list, let us know.


Rounders and fun followed the meeting, but unfortunately, for the second year running my team lost. Despite catching up in the second innings, the loss could be attributable to my metronomic, generous bowling.

For the third year running Lauren, purchasing controller, rained supreme in the bull riding as various individual events ensued. I'll leave the pictures to tell the rest of the story, but a big thank you to all staff and their families for joining in.





I'll exit with a thank you and a question.

Thanks for your review of our Gtech SW02 Mellow Mummy Emma.

Gtech sweeper review here, opens new window
Give us an update in a month Ems if you get time, most people grow to like it even more, it picks up loads a Hoover can't.


The question is how to help the younger market discover our sweeper. Our testing shows excellent customer satisfaction in 25 to 40 year-olds, but not that many buy.

Is recommending a sweeper to your trendy friend like admitting you find large pants comfortable? Does the name 'sweeper' turn you off? Are we too compact and light-weight, no bigger than the manual sweepers of yester-year, for our own good?

OK several questions, but I promise a free Gtech SW02 to the best insight emailed to me at GtechOnline





Next post will be sooner and covers the Getch design team and I, day-tripping in the Bull Ring Shopping Centre, Birmingham searching for cool.

To Getch or not to Getch...

Isn't it nice to discover something you didn't know you had?

This week, a grand-mum, bought a Gtech SW02 sweeper by her daughter, called us for a replacement battery. Accidentally through to our marketing team, Gladys asked 'is that the Getch?'

Putting her through to Customer Services our marketing colleague mentioned the mistake. 'It's common' she was told, what's more Customer Servicers already call our loyal and affectionate users 'Getchers'. The more people like our products apparently, the more they want a name, our closest followers like Gladys call us 'The Getch'.

A rose by any other name of course, but maybe they choose to 'Getch' rather than adopt the sterile 'Gtech'. If so Getch.com could be our service site, attracting the most experienced 'Getcher' as well as 'Getchlings' registering their first warranty. We could sponsor 'Getch yourself into design' to nurture Britain's budding inventors.

Hopefully 'Getch yourself a better brand' isn't the underlying message and presumably we do nothing, 'Getch' doesn't exactly ring. But I feel flattered people want a name for our sweeper.

So adopt Getch, or let it lie? A new name for our flagship sweeper? - a free Gtech product of choice to any commented names we use!


With last weekend being the Gtech Annual Summer Party (G.A.S.P.), next post I'll tell who swept all before her again, riding a mechanical bull. Oh and the picture up top is what I woke up to in the morning.

All that fuss

Well my BBC2 moment came and went without mention of my name or Gtech. I'm unscathed and no longer a media virgin, whatever.

After the anticipation (mine, everyone else was bored silly), the anonymous TV debut was a light look at who gets paid what in Britain today.

The 'MoneyWatch' team is preparing us for the worst and though I reckoned I was to be the villain, they seemed genuinely pleased it had not gone badly for me.

With luck I might get another media chance to gain publicity for our little brand.

I won't dwell further, see it at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00t0zpg/How_to_Beat_Tough_Times_Money_Watch_Earning_It/ I'm the one in the pink shirt.

Talking websites I don't know if I've mentioned our own www.gtechonline.co.uk

Next up I'm revealing something unearthed, which has questioned the very basis of the Gtech brand... (Space-odyssey style drum-roll)