Terrific Tasmania

I’m definitely rating Tasmania as a place to visit. In fact, I’m giving it a high eight out of ten (they only lost marks because of the weather… it’s freezing down here and it’s only the start of February. Give me land locked Hamilton every time). We've had to do some homework to discover the best bits, especially given our love of food and wine… they will always feature heavily in any of my breaks for work or pleasure. We have discovered some great restaurants, travelled to their wine regions and I have a new love... the Tasy Shiraz; big and full bodied and perfect for this weather. Global warming certainly hasn't made it to this island and the biggest bonus… I think this place will be perfect for an Annah Stretton store… maybe even two! Launceston and Hobart. Now I just need to find that amazing girl(s)… so if you are reading this and know her, you know where to send her… or perhaps you feel like a change… Now’s the time. I’m hoping to have some great opportunities available here so let’s hope this will get some sales superstar wanting to make the journey.
I’ve loaded some images so you can see the beauty of this place although I’m not sure re. the castle… this was a home that someone had built and was proudly living in just outside of Launceston… perhaps in celebration of the old Aussie movie classic? Who would know... Aussies aye??

Castle

The time away hasn't been without incident but then, I have come to expect that. The white boxer dog has had a fainting spell. Not great to hear when you are this far away and she's almost ten. I’ve had the 4.a.m skype call from India... “Mum, I’m sooooo sick”… yep he's finally caught Deli Belly so badly that he choose to stay behind in Goa for another day and let the team travel on to Mumbai. Not a great thing for a mother to hear. Here’s hoping he's on that flight now and back to join the group. It will be a good day for me when he flies home in late February.

So what will it be like to do business in these cities and yes. they are both cities. and just how do we go about selecting sites? Believe me, we have looked at a few. I guess we have developed some very good site EQ; if you can call it that. It’s simply about doing the hard yards… looking, walking, talking, driving, sitting, eating, shopping, getting a feel for the demographic and the area, assessing the fit to our brand, having conversations with women that look like a fit for the brand (i.e they would buy the clothes), talking to the existing database (gathered from consumer expos in these areas) and asking where do they see us fitting in their home cities and looking for areas that clone the successful areas at home (NZ). Hobart, unbelievably has a Pukekohe feel and, as this store works so well, so should one here. 

Population of Hobart is around 200k (Franklin 33k)… an easy size to build a brand and the population of Launceston 100k. If we put in two stores the brand gets a stronger presence and it is a lot faster and easier to get ourselves known than battling away in a 4 million population city as Sydney or Melbourne.

So logic and the discoveries of the visit, which has been over four days, would say we are heading in the right direction. We have visited and revisited each area we are considering and we have looked at all options. It’s about making a good decision… one based on outcomes - not costs!
Today is our last day in Hobart and there will be yet another day of site investigation and some decisions that need to be made. But it’s not all work as it will be punctuated by a visit to the wine region just outside of Hobart… enjoy your working Wednesday!