antdad said:
Look chaps I generally kept my own council concerning BH. Many of us have ordered from him via but having spoke to him at length when I was after a brush he proceeded to tell me about his "strategy" for his business.
Well to be kind it was he who needed to convince himself and I told Hando as much.
Launching websites, shaving days opened by royalty, moving offices...well you can make you're own mind up about that but the site hasn't moved for weeks and just looks like a home job and according to you guys he is not answering his messages.
Just preceed with caution.
Hi Antdad,
I had a look at his site and saw that it was made with Joomla ( I recognize it as this is the same program we make our site in) But this thing about "Homemade". Yes, Joomla is written for those that want to start their webshop cost-effective. You won't easily get a flashy site (not with limited knowledge about the software anyway) or a site where your purchasing and paying is handled in the most sophisticated way but everything works and it's for free! Do you have an idea how many jars , soaps, bricks, razors, blades or whatever you have to sell, before you can pay some guy who's copying his previous project to your shaving project?
I see some very nice sites where everything moves and turns and the pictures are great, but when I then look at the prices, I know where the money has to go. Ofcourse I don't know about BritishHall, but seeing that he was also on Joomla, I assume that he was also trying to be not too expensive.
It's strange that this "Homemade" thing is actually something most here would be looking for in the real world (homemade soaps, little old shops that carry those old razors, hard to find creams that noone seems to sell anymore), but when it's the Internet, it has to be fast, big and smooth!
Well, I think that the only shops to survive in times as these, are those that have used free software and do it all themselves, including administration, weighing, splitting up cakes for customers and taking the packages to the post-office themselves. As a matter of fact, I think that those that think that they can start out by paying big time for their site, for the software, for the provider and for someone who does the administration and for the bank and for the chamber of commerce etc. etc., will soon see that it just doesn't work like that. Unless ofcourse you can ask € 8,95 for the Proraso 150 ml tub.
So to all those that think that these homemade shops can't be for real: I don't think that's true.
FWIW,
Eric