Press release - Ideas Factory
23 November 2007
IDEAS
FACTORY WINNERS ANNOUNCED AT BUSINESS NORTH WEST
Two
budding entrepreneurs have won £30,000 worth of start-up
services through the Ideas Factory – a business idea competition
run by BEX (Business Enterprise Xchange)... Carole
Fossey picked up an award for her e-commerce site
www.justaboutbags.com,
which launches next month.
The
competition was part of Business North West, the region’s premier
business-to-business exhibition and conference, which attracted over
5,000 visitors to Manchester Central this week. The lucky winners
will receive valuable business services such as office space and
training to help get their new ideas off the ground.
Winning on day two of the show, Carole Fossey has developed a handbag
website, offering exclusive bags that are only otherwise available
in-store at Harrods. She is also developing two other websites,
offering shoes and jewellery.
Self-confessed
shoe-aholic, Carole says, “I am delighted to have won this
competition. Even though I have a history in business, I feel that by
winning I will be able to learn in areas that I need to improve upon,
such as supply chain management and international trade.”
“It’s
great to be able to help businesses in the North West take off,
supported by the prizes awarded as part of Ideas Factory,” says
Marcie Incarico, CEO of Out There Events organisers of the BEX
conference. “As winners from last year’s event testified, getting
a new idea off the ground is only the first step and we’re
delighted to be able to help Carole and Tracey turn their ideas into
profitable businesses.”
Both
winners of the competition received essential business services such
as a year’s free office space in Manchester, a year’s free
book-keeping, a strategic review from chartered accounts Baker Tilly,
a year’s free IoD membership benefits and training in lateral
thinking by The Edward de Bono Foundation.
Press Release the Christie Bag Oct 09
Manchester
designer bag company, justaboutbags.com, is helping raise awareness
of cancer among young women.
Having
seen three close relatives get cancer, Carole Fossey of Justaboutbags
has long been a supporter of the Christie and its work. But when she
met Christie Chief Executive Caroline Shaw they came up with a whole
new way of raising the hospital’s profile.
Carole
said: “I was invited to a supporter evening and sat next to
Caroline Shaw. We got talking and I felt strongly as a Director
of the Chamber that perhaps the two Manchester brands could work more
closely together for the benefit of both and so we arranged to meet
up at the Chamber offices the following week.
I
arranged for the Chamber’s Communications Director, Sheena
Henthorne, to be there and we had a fruitful discussion at the end of
which Caroline asked me if I could help her through Justaboutbags.com
She
told me she had commissioned market research which showed that women
in their 20s to 40s did not know or want to know about the Christie
and cancer issues and she wanted a more innovative way of making the
Christie known to this demographic in a fun way.”
The
original plan of creating a bag especially for the Christie has been
delayed due to budget restrictions caused by the credit crunch. In
the meantime, Justaboutbags.com has decided to dedicate one bag in
its range every season as “the Christie Bag”. The Christie will
get 15% of the price of the bag and also a percentage of any bags
sold in its Amishi Range. Amishi has a mini celebrity following
and is only available in the UK at Harrods.
Justaboutbags.com
is part of the JustAbout brand. The aim of JustAbout is to provide
women with unique products that they can’t easily buy in the High
Street, with a particular emphasis on discovering new and emerging
designers such as Amishi, Mayaa and Kashvi.
What
is the point of Handbag Hangers?
Imagine
you are in your favourite restaurant. You need to go to the ladies
room. Girls – where do you put your bag when you go to the toilet?
On the toilet floor? If there is no hook on the back of the door –
which must happen in at least 50% of toilets – the floor or the
sanitary bin is the only choice!
Then
where does your bag go when you go back to your table? Possibly on
the table – or if not maybe on the floor? And when you get back to
your desk at work – do you put it on your desk? And when you get
home – do you put it on the kitchen counter? Of course – most
people do! Happens a lot!
It's
not always the 'restaurant food' that causes stomach upsets.
Sometimes 'what you don't know will
hurt
you'!
Read
on.............
My
Mum used to go mad when guests came in the door and plopped their
handbags down on the counter where she was cooking or on the dining
room table. She always said that handbags are really dirty, because
of where they have been.
It's
something just about every woman carries with them. While we may know
what's inside our handbags, do you have any idea what's on the
outside? Women carry handbags everywhere; from the office to public
toilets to the floor of the car. Most women won't be caught without
their handbags, but did you ever stop to think about where your
handbag goes during the day.
'I
drive a school bus, so my handbag has been on the floor of the bus a
lot,' says one woman. 'On the floor of my car, and in toilets.'
'I
put my handbag in grocery shopping trolleys and on the
floor
of the toilet,' says another woman 'and then it goes on the counter
in the kitchen when I get home.'
There
has been research done at some micro biology labs in the USA – I
heard it was Nelson Labs in Salt Lake City (which are real – I’ve
googled them!). It turns out handbags are so surprisingly dirty, even
the microbiologist
who tested them was shocked.
Apparently,
nearly all of the handbags tested were not only high in bacteria,
but high in harmful kinds of bacteria. Pseudomonas can cause eye
infections, staphylococcus aurous can cause serious skin infections,
and salmonella and e-coli found on the handbags could make people
very sick.
In
one sampling, four of five handbags tested positive for salmonella,
and that's not the worst of it. There was faecal contamination on
some of the handbags. Leather or vinyl handbags tended to be cleaner
than cloth handbags, and lifestyle seemed to play a role. People with
kids tended to have dirtier handbags than those without, with one
exception.
The
handbag of one single woman who frequented nightclubs had one of the
worst contaminations of all traces of faeces, and vomit.
So
the moral of this story is that your handbag probably won't kill you,
but it does have the potential to make you very sick if you keep it
on places where you eat. Use Handbag Hangers to hang your handbag at home and in toilets, and don't put it on your
desk, a restaurant table, or on your kitchen countertop.
Experts
say you should think of your handbag the same way you would a pair of
shoes. If you think about putting a pair of shoes on your
countertops, that's the same thing you're doing when you put your
handbag on the countertops.
Your
handbag has gone where individuals before you have walked, sat,
sneezed, coughed, spat, urinated, emptied bowels, thrown up etc!
Do
you really want to bring that home with you?
Cleaning
your handbag will help. Wash cloth handbags and use leather cleaner
to clean the bottom of leather handbags, wipe vinyl bags with antibacterial spray. And always use your Bag Hanger!
