Reduced UK VAT

At the time of writing, the reduction in UK VAT is still just speculation, but if the expected cut in the rate does happen, we've already geared up to implement the reduced prices immediately. As we don't know for sure how much the VAT may be cut by, or the exact date of implementation, we're going to have to wait and see what happens. What we are doing now is making sure we're ready to lower prices across the websites as soon as physically possible.
Obviously we've no idea at this time how long the reduced VAT will last, but it's great news for our customers with lower prices all round.

That time of year again!

Strange as it may sound, but "that time of year" (November/December) for us is time for Amanda and myself to take a short sunshine break and recharge the batteries ready for the upcoming bridal season. We're heading away on December 3rd this year for just a week, and will be back December 10th. Our little break will probably add a few days on to delivery times for most website orders over this period, but as always we'll have the estimated delivery date posted on the website, and give plenty of notice before we leave.
We'll do our best to keep answering emails, and this year we should have the free phone support line staffed most afternoons, unfortunately although we'll be able to take telephone orders they won't be processed until we return.
I'm sure I'll repeat this in a later post, but I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank all those customers and friends who have supported us through the year, 2008 although difficult in trading terms, has been one of the most enjoyable we've had since starting Bridal Gems all those years ago. We're thoroughly looking forward to another great year in 2009 and even through all the economic doom and gloom being spread by the press, we know we're going to help thousands of brides have their dream wedding no matter what wedding budget they're on.

Nigel

Credit Crunch

For all businesses an economic recession is certainly a scary time, and every responsible company should be looking at how their business is run and make sure it's in a sound financial position to with stand any potential down turn. Here at Bridal Gems we're no exception and thankfully we have not yet experienced a reduction in business, if fact October 2008 was our busiest October ever, having said that we're not taking things for granted, we have allot of plans for the 2009 season and hope to introduce several new products. We're also looking at ways of reducing our prices even further and have already cut the price of several of our most popular lines. With so many people struggling it these difficult times we're doing all we can to help our customers have the wedding they deserve.
As always we welcome suggestions on how we can improve our service, so please feel free to comment.

Website Problems

We've a few problems with the server to-day (Wednesday 1st October 2008), and the bridalgems.co.uk site has been down intermittently over the past few hours. We hope to be back up to full service in the next few hours.

New Look Website

With the summer (if you can call it a summer) over we're at that time of year again when things get a little quieter and we've time to put our minds to website improvment matters. During the summer we upgraded our whole website back end and moved to a UK based server. The move has technically been a huge success, although there's not been much change to the look of the site, the performance has improved greatly. Over the next few weeks we'll be rolling out a new look for the front end of the site and users should see many improvments with the new look due to be completed by about mid October. Feel free to post comments or suggestions either here or on our forum http://www.bridalgems.info/forum

Site updates and server move

This weekend commencing Friday 4th July, we'll be moving the bridalgems.co.uk site to a new home. Up until now our site has been hosted on servers in Atlanta, Georgia in the US, as part of our on going efforts to improve the speed and quality of the site, we're moving to UK based servers. We've fully updated our back end software to support the latest server specifications, which is faster to load and more secure. We don't expect any major down time during the move, and have planned carefully to ensure as little disruption as possible over the weekend.
In the unlikely even that we do run into problems, we will keep the blog live and have a full roll back option should we need it.

Wedding Forum

Ever since the old "UK Wedding Forum" closed down we've been working on a new improved forum and we've finally got to that, ready to launch stage. The biggest difference this time round is we're branding the forum as part of the new Bridal Gems information portal and it's hosted on the bridalgems.info domain. We'll also be heavily promoting the forum to customers on bridalgems.co.uk and to start the ball rolling a 25% discount promotion code will be available for all newly registered members.

Bridalgems.co.uk Site Updates

Over the past couple of weeks we've been doing some major work on the the Bridal Gems website, hopefully we've not caused too much disruption and as most of the work is on the back end of the site it shouldn't be too noticeable. For anyone who's interested, the main bridal gems shopping site runs on a heavily modified Oscommerce shopping cart. The cart has been constantly updated and modified since it was first installed way back in 2003, the latest updates are designed to make it compatible with the newest versions of PHP and mySql, which is the software which keep the site going. The next couple of weeks will see us move the entire site to a new faster server, located here in the UK which should considerably improve the performance of the entire site. The plan is to serve the site from our UK server and keep a mirror back up on the US server we currently run from. This will give us a good solid back-up plan should anything ever go wrong with the main server, and because of the big geographical difference between the two servers it's unlikely that any network problems which might affect one could affect the other.
The new server will also host several of our other website too, but as they're not all live yet I won't post details here, but as soon as they're up and running I'll let the world know. It's been a really busy time on the technical side of things, and we've loads of new plans and features coming along over the next 6 months, with new products, and some great website features and deals. As soon as we get the server move out of the way we'll be working flat out to get them all rolled out.

Bridal Gems Auctions

We've been selling on ebay for the past 4 years and usually have 80-100 items available at any one time. Over the past few months ebay have been making changes, which quite honestly are making it almost impossible to successfully sell on their site. Because of this we've now started to list on the UK's fastest growing auction site www.ebid.co.uk. Ebid have a much fairer auction system which costs us a fraction of what it costs to list on ebay. As our fees are much smaller on ebid we can pass the savings on to the bidders, and on average our ebid prices are between 10%-15% cheaper than ebay.
Currently we have almost 300 items listed on ebid, a figure we could never match on ebay. If you want to have a look at our current auctions our ebid shop is at the link below.

Bridal Gems Ebid Shop

New Information Website

We're currently working on our new information site www.bridalgems.info once complete, the site will contain constantly updated news about all the websites in the bridal gems group. We'll also be doing a bit of blogging over there, but I'm sure we'll still find time to pop along here every now and again.

Belmore Street Office

We're now almost fully moved into our new office in Belmore Street, Enniskillen. All orders are dispatched from here and we have a small display area open to the public. We haven't put sings up yet to show were we are, but anyone who wants to pop in and see us is more than welcome. Our address is 39a Belmore Street, and we're located on the first floor below Curves Gym. Due to the nature of our business, our office hours have to be rather flexible, and if you're planning on visiting us, it might be a good idea to give us a call on 0800 043 4850 to make sure we'll be there.
All returns are still processed through our old address, however over the next couple of months this too will move to Belmore Street. The final stage of the move should be complete early in the summer.

Easter Sale

EASTER SALE

Our Easter sale is due to start next week, we'll be giving a 15% discount off all orders over £30. The discount code for the sale will be EAS33, the code is due to be advertised on the website from Monday 17th March 2008, but as a blog reader you can start using the code right now. It'll remain valid until Tuesday 25th March 2008 and can be used as many times in this period as you want. To get the discount simply enter the code in the "coupon code" box during checkout on the website.

www.bridalgems.co.uk

Wedding Journal Show

Kings Hall, Belfast

Just a quick thank you to all who visited us on our stand at the Wedding Journal Show in the Kings Hall, Belfast over the weekend 22-24th Feb. 2008

We had several thousand visitors over the three days, and it really was a pleasure meeting you all. We're currently processing all the orders and requests and should have all done by Tuesday 26th.

We had a small glitch with the discount vouchers we handed out on the day, we've fixed it and they should work fine now.

New Offices and Warehouse

During this month (February) we'll be moving our offices and warehouse operations to new premises. The new facility in Belmore Street, Enniskillen will be open to the public towards the end of February, however all packing and dispatch operations are due to move over the weekend commencing 1st February and should be completed by Monday 4th February. We don't expect any disruption to our normal service and all orders should be processed as normal.

The new facility will have a small showroom giving customers the opportunity to view some of the available products. With several thousand different items available on our website, we won't be able to display them all, however we should be able to get hold of any item if there's something someone needs to see.

Further details of the new premises will be posted closer to opening time.

VAT and non EU buyers

Just a quick note about VAT (Value Added Tax) all our prices include VAT @ 17.5% however if you're located outside the EU you won't be charged the VAT and it'll be deducted automatically during checkout.
I've added this information to the terms and conditions page just so everyone's clear.

Discount/Coupon Codes

We've finally got the discount coupon code system working again, the problem arose when we changed our prices to include VAT. The system had a previously unseen bug which caused the order total calculations to be wrong. The error only appeared after the change in the VAT status of the products. No orders were affected and we manually deducted any coupons entered with orders before they were processed.

Just a quick reminder that all blog readers can get a 10% discount by entering the code BL31 during checkout, the discount applies regardless of order size, and we've extended the validity period for another 3 months.