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.

1. Be the first to hear about new products and special offers.

We update Facebook daily and as soon as new items are listed on our sites we’ll let you know straight away. You’ll get updates as we launch sales and also when we release discount codes.

2. Read or add reviews.

It’s quick and simple to add reviews to our Facebook page. We have a dedicated page for this on Facebook. Please feel free to browse our reviews and we would of course welcome you to add your own.

3. See customer pictures.

It’s easy to upload and share pictures on Facebook. We love to see our customers wearing and using the products we supply. You’ll find many pictures on our Facebook page where our customers have “tagged” themselves. Take a look around to see our products being worn around the world and by various customers including a “Sean Connery” lookalike. If you have a picture of yourself with a Macdonald Sporrans product please tag us “macsporrans” to share with our Facebook community.

4. Join the conversation.

We don’t just talk kilts, although we’re more than happy to speak to you endlessly about them. You’ll find the conversation on Facebook includes updates on sport, music, things we find interesting, and generally giving our own, and typically Scottish view on almost anything. We love it when people reply to our posts as we get to hear your views. If you need advice on making a purchase or want to give us your view on anything, Facebook is a great place to start the conversation. We monitor it daily so you’re never far from a response.

5. Get an exclusive discount code.

All of our followers on Facebook get 10% off every order. To access this code simply like our page on Facebook. As a thank you for liking our page you’ll be given an exclusive code which can be used on all of our sites.

I’m not sure how much you know about road cycling (I certainly didn’t know that much until this morning), but Mark was backed up by a team of another 7 British riders. He was able to win the race because his team supported him throughout the 266km and then made space for him to go on and sprint to the finish line.

When I heard that, I was immediately interested into how it happened, and how that team dynamic works. I was further surprised to hear that some of the team members didn’t have to be there as they’re under no contract to complete the race, had raced very recently so were fatigued and essentially, don’t get the winner’s medal. It’s easy to ask why they bothered turning up!

It turns out that the strategy for this race was decided 3 years ago when the course was announced. They knew 3 years ago that they would be strong in this course and they knew that Mark would be their winner. They share the glory amongst themselves and they all get their place in history as being part of the team that brought home the victory.

It’s very interesting to watch how important the team is when you see the finish of the race. The team acts almost like an American football team in the way they move around and shelter their primary rider. You can see during the video that some members of another team effectively block Mark and push him back down the line – all part of their team strategy. Even if you’re not into cycling, it’s a great video and great to see how the final stages play out.

For me, this is a great example of team-work. How 8 guys can come together with a clear goal and work together to achieve that. There may only be one official winner, but I bet that the other 7 guys all feel the same pride and satisfaction. If they didn’t – would they have turned up?

It also makes me think of our own team and how each of us puts in something different to achieve our goals of providing great products and delivering great service. By spending time working out what our strengths are allows us to bring our best assets to the table, and we create some synergy and end up achieving far more than we could individually. I don’t think we’re ready to win the world championships yet, so we’ll stick to doing what we do best for the moment!

Hope you enjoyed the video as much as I did, and great to see the title brought back to Britain again.