We’re currently looking for a PR Executive to handle all of the Company’s online and offline PR. Here’s the job spec. If you’re interested please email your CV to zak@prezzybox.com or call 0870 1221 007.

PR Executive Role

Would you like to come and work for one of the UK’s premier online gift companies?

Publisher’s Choice of Merchant 2007 Winners - Prezzybox.com  - are looking to add a fun and enthusiastic (yet hard working) member to their ever growing team to manage their PR.

The lucky candidate will be responsible for ALL of the company’s online and offline Public Relations and will therefore have a great opportunity to make a real name for themselves.

Based in a farmhouse in rural Warwickshire (2 minutes from Junction 11, M42) the candidates role will encompass a number of marketing disciplines but will focus predominantly on raising the company’s profile in regional, national and online press.

Functions

• Responsible for ALL online and offline PR
• Responsible for company’s social networking activities and viral marketing campaigns
• Publication of news stories
• Generation of ‘on site’ competitions
• Generation of Partner promotions/contra activity
• Work in close conjunction with the buying department
• Maintenance of PR Imagery
• Utilisation of list logix/image loft software
• Assistance with product video production 

Person

• Enthusiastic and bubbly person who is comfortable networking with new and existing contacts via phone, email and messenger
• Must be able to work as part of a team and cross departmentally in association with buying dept and rest of marketing dept
• Ideal first role for a graduate. Qualifications not essential although marketing/journalism qualifications an advantage
• Comfortable with all Microsoft Applications including Outlook
• Some design skills an advantage
• Relevant experience and a list of existing contacts is desirable although not essential
• Driving Licence a necessity because of location

Want to apply?

You interested? If so please email your CV to Zak Edwards on zak@prezzybox.com or call 0870 1221 007.

Hello folks,

Being the romantic that I am, I decided to make my missus a personalised Valentines Day card. Now, I could obviously have done this myself at home, but as this potentially would have involved cutting things up and sticking them to paper, coupled with the fact that I’m a clumsy left handed baffoon, I thought it best to stick to what I know and order one over the web - hence my visit to Moonpig.

I’ve never purchased from them before but after seeing one of their …erm… slightly annoying… adverts thought I’d give them a shot.

I have to say their site is fantastic. It’s easy to navigate, their range is splendid and the functionality is brilliant. You can design your card in real time and then see it come to life on the design in front of you. Where as I would normally fly through the purchasing process, I actually spent a lot of time designing and playing with their functionality and thoroughly enjoyed myself on the site.

Checkout was straight forward, delivery costs pretty competitive and it was an overall good customer experience. 

Likewise their service is excellent as well. Card was ordered on Tuesday and arrived the following day.

So, hats off to the chaps at Moonpig. They’ve got a very impressive business and it’s no wonder they are top of the hit (wise) parade.

Ten ten. Over and out.

Zak.

Hello folks,

It’s not often that I write about an item that we don’t actually sell, but I think this is something that can benefit everyone who (like me!!) gets a bad back.

Basically, we’ve been approached by a company called Postureminder who asked if our staff would trial their software which will “help with your posture and stop your staff getting bad backs“. Initially I was a little sceptical because of the “disruption” etc but they assured me there would be minimal fuss and it would not effect the speed/performance of our computers.

So, after running it by the staff I agreed to give the trial a go. They were happy coz it was a little gadget to play with and I was happy as it would mean no-one could have time off in the future with back pain - cunning I know.

Well, I have to say I’m converted. After a small amount of installation (about 5 minutes) the posture minder will take your photo (using the web cam provided) of you sitting your working position. Then it will tell you every time you’re sitting in a position that’s not good for your back. Not only that, it tells you when you have a break, and gives a video demonstration of exersizes you can do at your desk. It even tells you when to have a drink to ensure you keep hydrated. Then at the end of each day it gives you a posture score and tells you whether you’ve been sitting up straight and thus looking after your back! It’s weird - as 4.45pm approaches you actually get excited about beating yesterdays score!!!

In short - it’s defintely something we’ll be keeping on when the trial has finished, so if you get a bad back coz of sitting at your desk all day it might be worth having a look here and downloading the free trial here.

Over and out.

Zak.

Grrrrrr, I’m in a bad mood.

Prezzybox, like loads of other websites, gets a large number of people trying to place fraudulent orders on the site.

These people really make me sick and angry and if I wasn’t a peace loving hippy, I’d advocate beating them with a particularly big and sharp stick. With spikes on. Lots.

Basically it goes something like this….They tend to order gadget type products, the delivery address is different to the card holders address, the email address is something none-descript (yahoo, hotmail), and they tend to use a mobile phone number. It’s pretty easy to spot a fraudster.

The way we combat this (sorry scumbags) is that initially we use CV2/AVS checks, which basically ensure that the card number matches the senders address. If an order manages to get through this system, we write to the card holder address with a reference number and will not process the order until the card holder phones up and quotes the reference number to a member of our team. It therefore works pretty well.

However, this doesn’t stop chancers trying their luck. As you can guess, this has happened today. Normally we just delete the order (I’ll tell you why shortly) but this time - as the scumbag had tried to place 3 orders using 3 different identities for the same item - I thought “no, I’ll do the honourable and report it to the Police.

So why don’t we report every fraud and just delete the order? I’ll tell ya…

Basically, We are based in Warwickshire. The Fraudster, in this instance, lives in London and the card holder, lives in Aberdeen. So, I’ve reported the crime to our local police station and they tell me “the crime has been committed in London, as this is where the fraudster lives so you need to get a crime number from the London Met”. I then phone up the London Police station and they say “no, you need to report, it to your local police station as you are based in Warwickshire to get a crime number”.

Grrrr - it’s at this point that I’m starting to get a tad miffed.

Historically in a different case, I’ve even been told that I needed to phone up the Aberdeen Police Station because the victim (the card holder) is in Aberdeen. Aaaaaaarrrrgggggghhhhh

So, it’s no wonder that sooooo many fraudsters are turning to Internet fraud and identity theft. Basically, it’s chuffin easy, and the Police either aren’t bothered or don’t have the infrastructure in place to deal with it. Either way, the crims seem to be getting away with it scott free.

Fear not though bretherin. The Bearded Warrior pledges to fight on in a ‘Shaw Taylor-esq’ - one man battle against Internet Fraud. I’m off to find the details of my local MP and see if he fancies a chin wag…

I’ll keep you posted.

Ten ten. Over and out. Keep em peeled.

Valentines, the day of luurrvveee is nearly upon us and it’s a great time for gift retailers like ourselves as sales really pick up. In fact in our experience, it’s only Christmas which eclipses Valentines Day in terms of sales.

Consequently our buying dept are under strict instructions to find Valentines Day goodies that are sure to delight our customerbase and sell well for all of our lovely affiliates, and to be honest they’ve come up trumps. So, here’s some of my favourite newbies which I’m pretty sure will fly out in the next couple of weeks…

Carve your own Card - £7.95

With us all being environmentalists now, it’s no longer PC to find a big old Oak Tree in which to carve your affections for your loved one. However, the next best thing is to carve your own Card. Simple, yet brilliant!!

 USB Mix Tape - £19.95

Remember the days before digital music and MP3 players? Good old fashioned blank cassettes were all the rage and the romantics amongst us put together a mix tape for our loved ones… Well now this retro throw back allows you to store 60 minutes of your favourite tunes digitally on this USB mix tape. Just like the good old days you can add your own title, message and playlist. Sweet.

Personalised Romance Calendar - £14.95

The Personalised Calendar is one of our biggest selling products,  so it makes perfect sense to produce a romantic version of the same thing. Simply enter the name of the two love birds and we’ll do the rest, writing the names of the couple in a starlight November night or on the side of a big old Oak tree in April. Don’t worry - we can start the calendar from any month you require, making the ideal gift.

Hello folks,

Happy New Year to you all. I hope this year is a cracker for you!!

I’m going to make a concious effort this year to be a better blogger (famous last words). Part of the reason for my blogging demise towards the end of last year was that little event plonked towards the end of December - namely Christmas. So, I thought it would be nice to share some of our ramblings and give you a little insight into the typical day at Prezzybox.com during December and how much fun (!!!) it is…

5.45am - get up.

6.00am - Get to work (I live very close to work hence, the speed. Don’t worry, I won’t smell - I’ll have showered the night before).

6.05am - Start processing orders from the previous night. Historically we’d have processed all orders manually which was a very ssslllloooowwww process. In fact in the very old days, we used a PDQ machine (like the ones you get in shops) which used to take chuffin ages. Now, thanks to our super techies a lot of orders are auto-processed and ones that aren’t take seconds to process. We can therefore process 1000’s of orders a day.

7.30am - 8.30am - Staff start rolling in. Everybody is pretty much customer services focussed in December so its computers on, and then busily beavering away answering emails, quiries, doing refunds till we hear the dreaded ring of the phone starts at 9 bells…

 9.00am - Phones go on… Literally within a nano-second all of our lines light up with customers phoning up with such gems as “When is my order going to arrive”, “You’ve sent me a pole dancing kit instead of a pet plant”, “If I order now will it arrive before Christmas”. You get the idea…

 We also manufacture our own Personalised Calendars and Father Christmas Letters so we have to start the big old print machine running and print off the plethora of Calendars that have come in from the night before.

 9.00am-1pm - It’s just a matter of keeping on top of everything. This sounds easy, but it’s not, I assure you. Basically our orders increase by a factor of 15, which basically means we are 15 times busier in every single way - from customer emails, to stock orders coming into the warehouse, to phone calls, everything is multiplied by a factor of 15. This is compounded by the fact that 99.9% of your customers want their order for the same day. Yep - you’ve guessed it, the 25th. Consequently the nearer to Christmas it gets the more people start to panic that they are not going to get their goodies. So it’s our job to reassure them that everythings fine and not to worry as they’re order will be with them before Santa comes…

1pm - Time for lunch (ordinarily a take away pub lunch - we’re based in a farm house and thus don’t have such luxury as Maccy D’s), and also to have a meeting with our head of security - OK,  time to take Polly - the office retreiver and canine who sends out all of our emails - out for a walk and a 10 minute break from the computer.

1pm - 6pm. More of the same really… It really is mayhem. True, it’s not as bad as when we used to pack all of the orders ourselves - that was Pandemonium, but is still really hectic and pretty stressful. The constant ringing of the phone gives you a headache, whilst customer services staff members shouting across the office to see “when stock is going to arrive”, through to “don’t worry, I’ve sorted out that customer” adds to the tension. This combined with the buyers trying desperately trying to buy a few hundred more of this and that always add’s to the mix.

4pm - Royal Mail arrive at 4 (on the dot every day!!) to collect our sack-fulls of Calendars. It always puts a smile on my face to see a product that we’ve manufactured from scratch being sent out to a customer. 

 6pm-Close. At 6pm we turn the phones on to answer machine. Phew! In an ideal World we’d leave them on, but we always like to use this time to try and tie up a lot of loose ends.

8pm - Teatime (and beer time). Time to relax and then invariably time to fall asleep on the settee during Ramsey’s kitchen nightmares…

All of the above combined with various other traumas such as our servers going down, through to a number of our orders being sent out twice, all makes for a pretty stressful few weeks. And then as soon as its begun, it stops. 3 Weeks of madness and then it’s back to normality. It’s a real shock to the system.

And then it’s back to work in January… and the first meeting of the year… Christmas 2008 planning. Eeek!

Hello folks,

Just a quicke. We’ve been approached by our PSP - Payment Service Provider - who basically are the facility which allows us to take the money for our customers orders. They’ve set up a deal with Paypal, which in short means we can integrate Paypal into our checkout.

I can’t think of too many disadvantages and the advantage is that we can open ourselves up to customers who don’t necessarily have bank/credit cards or those who prefer to pay through Paypal.

As long as this tracks for our marketing partners and affiliates, and as long as the costs are not too prohibitive, then it sounds like a decent idea. However, I could be wrong…

What do you think? Your comments would be much appreciated.

Cheers,

Zak.

For those of us with little sprogletts, there’s nothing worse than the repetative jingle jangling of our young ‘angels’ favourite Nursery Rhyme CD. Admittedly things have got a little better with the introduction of the Personalised Childrens Music CD, but nothing comes close to the awesome ROCKABYE BABY LULLABYE CD’s!!!

The concept is oh so simple, yet oh sooooo brilliant. The CD’s featuring such greats as Nirvana, the Beatles, the Stones and Led Zep, are all remakes of the bands classic tracks. The clever part? The fact that all of the great tunes - from ‘Smells like teen spirit’ to Metallicas ‘Enter Sandman’ have all been re-recorded as lullabies on a plethora of timphony instruments. This is cherub rock for a new generation! 

 You really do have to listen to the CD’s to understand how simply brilliant the tracks actually are and you can do so on some of the soundbite links below. Enjoy.

• Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana)
• Paint in Black (Stones)
• Stairway to Heaven (Led Zep)
• Yellow (Cold Play)
• Here Comes the Sun (Beatles)
• Enter Sandman (Metallica)
• Sunday Bloody Sunday (U2)
• Paranoid Android (Radiohead)

You can find details of these great CD’s by visiting Prezzybox.com or clicking here.

Check out our fantastic new  Personalised Calendars. They’re proving to be a real hit and look set to be a biggest seller of the year.

The idea is really simple.You simply choose a name or message that you would like to appear and we cleverly integrate it into 12 fantastic themed photographs - whether it be written in the Clouds, on a Christmas Bauble, as Grafitti on a wall or spelt out in Fireworks on a cold November evening. Here’s some that we made earlier. So, make someones year - order them a personalised Calendar today. Simply click here to visit the product.

Hello folks,

I hope you are well.

Just a quickie really to shout about the merits of our “new to UK marketing” Vidiboxes.

For those of you who havn’t seen them, the Vidiboxes are Video Content Units placed in banners for our partners and Affiliates to use on their sites - pretty neat eh!! All the site owner need do is place a bit of html code onto your site, in the same way you would put on a standard banner, and voila! They’ll have a Video Banner for their website. For example check out this site. They’ve used our Vidiboxes and content units and (OK, I’m biased) but I really do think it helps to make the site look very professional and provides some nice interactivity for the user.

Here’s some details of the Vidboxes…

We’re really excited about these and are really keen for our partners and affiliates to use them on their own websites. We’ve now got Vidiboxes in the following sizes for a number of our best selling lines:

Conversion rate has gone up considerably on our site with the introduction of our own Video Clips, and we’re hopeful that it will do the same for our partners and affiliates. It is evident that video really helps to sell products as it gives the website user greater interactivity as well a professional product demonstration.

 We’ve got loads of product videos on the site, which we are planning to convert to Vidiboxes. You can see them all by clicking here.

We hope you like them.

Cheers all.

Zak.