A 404 page is shown when you try to access a page that doesn’t exist. For example, if you typed in buyakilt.com/reallylongstringofrandomletters into your browser – you’ll most likely reach a 404 page because we don’t have a page at that URL!

Normally 404 pages are pretty dull, so I decided to spice ours up a bit by giving it a smile!

Check it out here: http://buyakilt.com/404.

When we sold our first product on eBay roughly 8 years ago, the idea of getting 10,000 positive feedbacks didn’t even enter my mind!

However, positive feedbacks are just half the story, negative ones are also important. I’m proud to say that in the last 12 months, we’ve received 3319 positive feedbacks, and only 2 negative feedbacks, and both of those were over 6 months ago! That’s a 99.94% positive feedback ratio, and it’s that, more than the quantity, that I’m particularly proud of.

As you can see in the photo above, we’ve also got a fancy new yellow shooting star! The shooting stars start at 10,000 feedbacks and above, so it’s our first one!

Next new star at 25,000 feedbacks. Yikes! Seems far away now, but I’m sure we’ll get there with your help.

Our 3 sites: buyakilt.com, buyahipflask.com and buyatankard.com recently became 4, with the addition of ootoogifts.com.

The 3 sites were vaguely linked in some sense, but the latest addition is much less connected to the other 3 in the range of products that it sells.

We felt that the best way to move forward with this is to separate the brands of each site a little bit more. So, we’ve created a new dedicated blog for each store along with separate twitter and facebook profiles for each store.

We feel that by offering more dedicated, targeted content to our customers, we’ll be able to talk about things which are more interesting to our readers.

You can find our new blogs and social networks below:

buyakilt.com

Blog Twitter Facebook YouTube Google+

buyahipflask.com

Blog Twitter Facebook YouTube Google+

buyatankard.com

Blog Twitter Facebook YouTube Google+

ootoogifts.com

Blog Twitter Facebook YouTube Google+

These are all hot off the press – just been created – so to get them off to a great start, we’ve put on some special offers. Check them out on your favourite social network and remember to follow/like us to stay up to date with special offers and news about each site individually.

We’ll continue to post updates on this blog and via our existing ‘macsporrans’ twitter and Facebook networks, but over time these will become more about our company as a whole rather than about each brand individually.

Valid until 6th January 2012, enter the code hamper5 at checkout to get 5% off your order.

During the 12 days of Christmas you’ll also benefit from a different offer each day up to and including 6th January.

For the latest offer check out our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Between 2pm and 4pm this Saturday (9th December 2011) join Macsporran Santa on Twitter and Facebook.

Macsporran Santa will be able to offer advice on gift ideas, dispatch times, last posting and has a bank of special offers for buyakilt.com, buyahipflask.com and buyatankard.com.

Don’t forget that all orders placed between now and December 16th will be entered into our prize draw to win a luxury Christmas hamper, worth over £80.

This will allow us to focus on providing a faster service, with quicker responses to queries  and more time to pack your orders to make sure they’re in the post in time for Christmas delivery. For details of our last posting dates please click here.

Don’t forget about our online chat facility. During these times a live member of staff is just a click away and ready to answer your questions.

There never seem to be enough shopping hours in the run up to Christmas, so relax and shop in the comfort of your home, knowing we’ll be on hand to look after your order.

As always you can contact us on Facebook and Twitter to let us know your views on our Christmas opening hours.

The Braw Wooer hamper provided by Scottish Hampers is a whisky lovers dream and includes, whisky, fudge and other Scottish treats.

It’s really simply to enter. All purchases made from buyakilt.com, buyatankard.com or buyahipflask.com between 1st December 2011 and 16th December 2011 will be entered into this prize draw.  For further details on this competition, click here.

Good Luck!

Want to let us and your friends know you’ve entered? Like it on Facebook or message us on Twitter.

We’ve had a number of customers from this island, it should be no surprise to see a kilt being worn there on St Andrew’s Day. From speaking to our customers, I have learnt how friendly and welcoming the people of Barbados are. Barbados will probably be celebrating St Andrew’s Day in the sunshine, as they get over 3000 hours of sunshine each year. Scotland will see roughly half of this! It’s easy to see why so many Scots have made this island their home.

So we share a saint’s day, but what other things do Scotland and Barbados have in common. To start with, both countries drive on the left hand side and we both have an Atlantic coast, albeit a lot colder in Scotland! Both are experts in making top quality alcohol, your hip flask would be full of rum in Barbados and whisky in Scotland. Our countries are both very patriotic and November 30th will see many celebrations of heritage and national pride taking place. For the very best updates on events in Scotland and for more information on St Andrew visit www.scotland.org.

It seems that the national dress of Barbados is not as well known, nor as widely recognised as Scotland’s kilt and highland dress. Whilst Bajan ladies wear bright colourful outfits, Bajan men don’t wear national dress. Maybe Barbados could adopt the kilt, and wear it proudly in a bright colour or even by registering a national tartan.

Happy St Andrew’s Day from all of us at Macdonald Sporrans.

Don’t forget to share you’re pictures of your St Andrew’s Day celebrations on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

It’s a difficult thing to describe because it’s more about culture or ethos than systems or practices. However, every now and again, I see a nice example of this, and wanted to share one with you today.

Paying Invoices

As the director of a small business, the responsibility of paying supplier invoices falls on me. In actual fact, quite a lot of things fall on my lap, and invoicing is just one of those, however, this post is not about my job!

Lots of business gurus, accountants, financial advisers, and almost anyone you ask, will tell you that you should pay invoices as late as possible. This is fairly common practice in industry, and there is some logic to it.

Why Pay Late?

If you buy £50,000 worth of products from Company X but tell them you’ll pay them in 4 weeks time, you’ve got 4 weeks to try and sell as many of those products as possible. If you sell half of them for £50,000 then you can pay your supplier, and you’ve still got a lot of products to sell! Essentially, the goods from the supplier are provided like a form of credit. They’re ‘lending’ you the money to buy the goods, and giving you 4 weeks to pay them back.

The business term for that is easing your cash flow. If you can have the cash flowing in (sales) before it flows out (paying suppliers), then it’s a lot easier to manage.

There are also some other related benefits, you might earn interest on the money while it’s sitting in your bank before you pay your supplier or you might be able to negotiate a better price if you buy more at once. There are a lot of good reasons why working this way is worthwhile.

Is That Normal?

Yes! As a rule of thumb, the bigger the business, the longer they take to pay their suppliers.

If you make a product, and Walmart comes along and decides to trial it in their stores, they could become your single biggest customer in an instant. When they know your business depends on them, they don’t negotiate terms, they dictate them. If you want to do business with them, then you do it the way they want to do it (disclaimer… Walmart is just an example of a big business, I don’t know if they actually work like that!).

Why Don’t We Do That?

I’ve never been comfortable borrowing anything, let alone borrowing money for business. That probably means I’ve missed opportunities that could have been lucrative, but it also means that our business has been built on its own back – we’ve never borrowed money and taken on the risk associated with that (I did invest £10 at the beginning, but got it back the next day).

In the first few years of the business, we paid for everything up front. So we bought 1 product, sold it for a profit, used the profit to buy 2 more products, sold them, used that profit to buy 5 more… etc.

Suppliers are Our Partners

When we opened our first credit account, it didn’t seem right to take the product without paying for it. Sure, I understood the benefits, but it didn’t seem fair to the supplier. That has stuck with me over the years. I see our suppliers not as banks, not to be taken advantage of, but as partners. If I look at them as partners, then it makes sense to want to treat them well.

As I already alluded to, the list of things for me to do is not small. I could be forgiven for forgetting about settling our supplier accounts. However, roughly once a fortnight, I spend some time paying virtually all of our outstanding invoices.

Today, I did a simple calculation of the number of days between the invoice date and our payment date across all the invoices we’ve received in 2011 so far. Someone commented to me that the average time to pay an invoice in our industry is around 45 days. Our average today was just 17.32 days. I was amazed when I read that figure. I knew I took this seriously, but I have never quantified it before.

I’m constantly looking for ways to measure the performance of various aspects of our business, and I’m going to use this figure over the coming months and years. I think it’s a nice indication of how we feel about our suppliers, and how we believe that we don’t just buy from them, we work with them. What’s good for them, is good for us.

Can You Make It Even Lower?

Yes, I think we can.

Although, it’s important to note that this is the difference between the date of the invoice, and the date of payment. We don’t always receive invoices on the date they’re issued, which means it’s impossible to bring this down to zero in some cases.

For example, some suppliers print out paper invoices, pop them in an envelope, miss that day’s post, then they arrive at us 2-3 days later (or after a weekend later), then we need to open the mail, process the invoice and then make payment. Improving how long each step takes is definitely possible, and we’ll certainly aim for a 0 day payment terms, but it may take us a while to get there!

ootoogifts.com is an online gift store which specialises in personalised gifts. We’re launching with nearly 3000 great products, the vast majority of which are personalised for you before being dispatched.

From things like personalised novels, to personalised chocolate to personalised baubles for your Christmas tree, we’ve got a gift to suit everyone this Christmas.

Of course, those are just 3 examples of the types of gifts we have, but hopefully it will give you an idea of the broad range of products on offer.

The best thing about all of our gifts is the super-fast delivery available on nearly all products. Most products ordered before 12 noon can be dispatched the same day and delivered to you the very next day!

Personalised gifts have been an important part of our business from the very beginning. We sold our first hip flask not long after we sold our first sporran, and our dedicated hip flask and tankard stores have grown to be leaders in their respective markets.

ootoogifts.com marks a new branch of this journey, with hundreds of new types of personalised gift, we’re able to offer a much more complete gift shopping experience and we look forward to helping you find the perfect gift this Christmas.