Rivington Street Holdings – Bookstore Relaunch

I shall deal with bashing the Welsh later. Outsourcing can be good. It can also be bad (see UK Government and some of its dafter PFI contracts). Generally we have tried at RSH to do things in house but where you stray outside area of core expertise there can be dangers.

So our websites used to be managed by a software business we owned. That did not work and several years ago we sold that company on and last year outsourced all websites to a firm called Open Brackets (run by that couple who social services persecuted for allowing their kids to cycle to school). That has worked. Costs down – quality of service up.

I guess we have learned our lesson. And so we have taken this two steps further. A few weeks ago we bought the events management and design business Presentation Matters. And immediately transferred our own in-house designer (Gareth) to work for PM. It might seem like a superficial change but it is not. Gareth gets to work with similarly creative types, rather than financial geeks, so he should be happier and he gets to be managed by someone who knows his design onions so he should be more efficient. And of course with two designers to cope with peaks and troughs of workflow the whole process becomes more efficient. As an added bonus Gareth and Tony Othen are both Welsh males and so can sing songs about the Valleys and swap sheep porn together to their heart’s content.

As an aside, I have just been sent a very stern new RSH staff handbook which warns me that there are string of disciplinary offences to do with treating employees differently on grounds of sex, race, transgender orientation, etc. I am not kidding about the last part. I have demanded and been given a special exemption allowing me to be beastly about the Welsh (given my marital misfortune with that race, I need it for therapeutic reasons). It really is a pompous document but it is I am told something every PLC needs to have. Right… and we wonder why the UK is not quite at the cutting edge of the enterprise culture when this deemed a corporate priority. And there was I thinking that things like profits and cashflow generation were what business was about. Silly me.

Finally on the outsourcing theme we have canned our in-house bookstore and returned to getting a bookstore expert to run it on our behalf. As a result we – via economies of scale – can offer much lower prices which – we hope – will see increased turnover. And the fulfilment element is now taken away from t1ps staff. So we offer a better service so helping customers and we free up resource within t1ps to focus on core activities. It all makes sense. You can check out this week’s special offers and all the titles at the Square Mile Book Store

Check it out now.

Tom Winnifrith
www.t1psim.com
www.t1ps.com
www.RivingtonStreetHoldings.com
www.twitter.com/sharecrazy

More Blair Book Suggestions to Make You Feel Happier

I argued earlier today that there were 4 good reasons not to buy the War criminal Blair’s Book. You can read why here. But here is a 4 point plan to make you all happier today.

• Pop down to your local bookstore and pick up two copies of the vile tome.

• Walk around to the fiction section and leave 1 copy there on the shelves there.

• Walk around to the true crime section and leave the other copy on the shelves there.

• Leave the store. I promise that you will feel far happier

Tom Winnifrith
www.t1psim.com
www.t1ps.com
www.RivingtonStreetHoldings.com
www.twitter.com/sharecrazy

Don’t Buy the Blair Book and Make Him and the Wicked Witch Even Richer

Tony Blair has ( belatedly) said he will give profits from his book to charity. But what has also emerged is that in doing so he will (under a law that the war criminal himself introduced) gain a tax break with each pound so donated. So here are four reasons not to buy the book:

1. All the good bits about Brown being bonkers etc will be serialised in the Sunday papers.

2. The man is a proven serial liar so he will not fess up to all the bad things he did in power. There will be no chapters on “how I started an illegal war” or “What fun Alistair had making up dodgy dossiers” or “What Bernie Ecclestone and I discussed before he gave New labour £1m” or “What Lord Levy and I discussed on the fund raising front.” So the whole book is a pack of lies anyway.

3. Every book sold will flatter the ego of Both Blair and the wicked witch.

4. Every book sold will reduce the tax bill of Blair and the wicked witch.

‘Nuff said.

Tom Winnifrith
www.t1psim.com
www.t1ps.com
www.RivingtonStreetHoldings.com
www.twitter.com/sharecrazy

Five Stocks to Double by the End of the Year

Taking advantage of the long weekend, small caps expert James Faulkner has picked out five exciting small cap stocks with excellent growth potential. In this article, originally published on Saturday, he forecasts that by the time of the bank holiday (at Christmas), these five stocks will have doubled in value.