This is the continuation of Conference Pick N Mix the story of how I started a sweet shop

So had the first Think Visibility with Pick N Mix and it went down a treat, within seconds we had a massive queue of eager conference attendees waiting to get hopped up on sugary goodness.

Then I sort of left it for a bit, in between conferences we had a hack day (Leeds Hack) and we took some sweets there as well but I still had a lot of ‘proper’ work to do.

After the September conference, we had an enquiry to hire the Pick N Mix boxes, I looked into it and did some quick numbers but dismissed it as another ‘distraction’ then the following week we had two more enquiries and I started to look into it properly, I threw up a landing page for an events website Exciting Events and waited to see if it gained any traction.

Quite quickly, Exciting Events started to get some enquiries people were looking for the services we offered and so I put some packages together for Pick N Mix hire that would

• Beat the original prices I was quoted
• Be profitable for us (including van hire and staffing)
• Go beyond the usual sweet hire and make it special

So at this point I had a product, a price, a target market and some customers…. and that was nice but wasn’t exactly where I wanted to be.

Around the same time I started joking about opening a shop to Heather but they wern’t jokes really, they were just ways of gauging her reaction and it’s fair to say her reaction wasn’t what I was hoping for;

NO!, YOUR NOT OPENING A SWEET SHOP, YOU’VE GOT TOO MUCH TO DO ALREADY HOW ARE YOU GOING TO MANAGE A SHOP, YOUR NOT EVEN IN THE CITY MOST OF THE WEEK

So I had two options, I could work on convincing Heather and showing it was a good idea or I could do it anyway and surprise her

As usual with these things, the latter always appeals to me.

Heather is now afraid to leave the house for more than two days because I usually choose this time to get something delivered she has previously said no to (or where I think she might say no) for instance - A full metal dance mat from Norway, A Cardboard cut out of myself, Some barcode scanners, A new set of walkie talkies and of course 15 oversized Pick N Mix boxes.

So I started making enquiries and telephoning places in Leeds that I knew had a lot of empty space.

The Core was one such place and after trying to get hold of someone for two days, they gave me an offer of close to £5000 a month for a small kiosk area in the very empty shopping centre, I’ll be honest, I was a bit shocked at this price and soon came to the realisation that this was the reason for the empty space, I was looking for a small starter area somewhere in the region of £500 a month and tried to talk about a rolling 30 day contract and how we would attract people from the city into the shopping centre but they just were not interested.

So I sort of gave up…