When we first set up the Support Wealden website, we had envisaged it being a short term project. Something to help businesses let customers know their new opening hours, and for the local community to find out how they could help. Supporting a business on social media, or just keeping in touch, meant a lot.
Now what?
Well, with the lockdown continuing, many businesses have changed the way they work. Some are offering Click and Collect services, some have gone completely online. While others have decided they just need to close and ride it out until they can re-open. But everyone is adapting. We are busy updating their listings on the website, as soon as we get new information.
We have created additional features on the site – logos and images with the listings, some featured listings and a Special Love section. This is for businesses to share offers just with other businesses listed on the site. A social media campaign will start in February and all of our monthly newsletters can now be downloaded from the News page.
Once we can all start meeting again, we will have a get together in the gardens of Pickhams. Until then we are going to start an online event, interviewing one business owner and featuring some music, with a Question and Answer section so viewers can contribute too.
Keep an eye on the website for full details and sign up for the Newsletter.
Like many business we have had to re-invent ourselves over the past few weeks. After an initial ‘Lance Corporal Jones’ moment (“Don’t panic!”) and a period of shock, we talked to our franchise operators and were offered an opportunity we couldn’t refuse. To become a Nettl partner, enabling us to deliver better designed and more responsive websites.
Franchise?
You have in the past known us as Hailsham Creative @ Printing.com – printing.com is the franchise that we bought into several years ago, run by Grafenia PLC. This enabled us to offer, alongside our design services, competitively priced, good quality print from printing.com’s main hub while at the same time being able to shop around local suppliers to ensure we got the best price and product for our customers. Brilliant.
So who is Nettl?
Nettl is another arm of Grafenia PLC. It came into being as Grafenia’s response to the changes in the world of print. An increase in the use of websites and in viewing those sites on mobile devices has meant a great change in the design and coding process. Pretty much every business, large or small, that needs printing, also needs a website and, more often than not, signage. Now Nettl can offer it all.
Doesn’t it take years to learn coding and SEO? Don’t you have to keep up to date with fast moving technology?
Yes and yes and the beauty of Nettl is that we are part of a much larger team that includes the ‘Geeks’ – these brain boxes have all of those skills and knowledge and have their fingers firmly on the pulse of the technology world. And they are ours! This leaves us free to do the designing and building of the websites using the latest Nettl software with a wealth of expert support behind us.
So, having made use of the quiet lockdown weeks by doing online training courses, video seminars, test projects and sample sites, we have now gone from offering the very simplest, basic starter websites to being able to offer the best website solution for pretty much any project, with added functionality and integrations, totally responsive for viewing on any platform. See, we’ve even started to talk ‘website’.
Here are some examples of sites created using the Nettl system
inspireplus.org.uk
supportwealden.co.uk
pickhams.com
So where does Accomplice Ltd fit in all of this?
Accomplice Ltd is the name we registered when we became a limited company way back in 2004, having been trading simply as Accomplice before then. When we moved to offices in Hailsham we started the trading name of Hailsham Creative as that better explained what we offered… and where. When we joined printing.com we added that to the name. We now work from a home office in Wilmington, East Sussex and still have close connections with Hailsham so, rather than change name once again when we left Hailsham, we kept the Hailsham Creative name as we’d grown fond of it and our branding was pretty well known. Now we’ve swapped the added printing.com to Nettl and we are offering exactly the same service as before but with with added website ‘wow’.
In a nutshell, we’ve evolved and are pretty excited about it!
So next time you see the name Hailsham Creative or Nettl of Eastbourne North, you’ll know that we are the ones for web… and whatever other design, print and signage needs you may have.
Our dreams of running our own festival started to come true when we were successful in a bid for lottery funding in 2017. Summer Trifle was born. A 2 week mini arts festival in our own grounds in Wilmington, East Sussex, which we repeated in August 2018.
Part of the bid was for publicity, something we know to be a major part of any event, having been involved in the Hailsham Festival of Arts and Culture for many years. To attract sufficient numbers of visitors, you need to get the word out about your event. We designed and printed fliers, posters, leaflets, maps and programmes and created advertisements for various printed and digital publications and social media campaigns. Having learned lessons about our audience (here comes that word…) demographic in 2017, we were able to target our advertising more effectively. By far the most successful piece of the advertising campaign was the printed programme.
Our festival programmes (folded leaflets) are distributed widely to all sorts of different venues: galleries, shops, music venues, pubs, Tourist Information Centres, libraries, campsites, local attractions, hotels, cafes, waiting rooms and fast food outlets. They either go on display on tables or in leaflet dispensers, often alongside many other brochures and leaflets, so the important elements need to be eye catching and visible.
Tips:
One third A4 size is a good standard size which fits into most dispensers and doesn’t slip down behind other leaflets. Ours are A3 double sided, folded to 1/3 A4.
A really distinctive cover image draws the eye and increases the chance of your leaflet being picked up.
Consistency in colour and style in all of your publicity helps to build your brand, making your event easily recognisable and memorable.
In October 2016 we decided to leave our offices in Hailsham High Street and work from a home office. One year on and we are still very much in evidence on the High Street. You can’t turn a corner in the town without seeing something that we have designed or printed.
Once again we were very happy to be on the committee for the annual Hailsham Festival of Arts & Culture and were involved with several of the events. The pop-up-shop in the middle of the High Street had posters, banners, leaflets and programmes, many of which were designed by us. We promoted the Dicker Players productions at Hailsham Pavilion (OK, yes, we performed too!) and helped to organise the 3 Minute Flix movie competition, again at the Hailsham Pavilion.
Some of our local clients include Highcroft Veterinary Group, Hailsham Jewellers, Hailsham Town Council, CMA Karate, What’s On in Hailsham, ESAB, Smythe and Barrie, Ross & Co, Quinnel House, Marlow Ropes, MFC Supplies, Hook & Sons, Hailsham FM, Howdens Joinery, Millies, Firefly Tattoo Company, Experience Holidays, Rare Repro and the Arlington Bluebell Walk, amongst many other small and large businesses, local and national.
So, even though we are working in a small studio surrounded by the trees of Arlington, we are still very much in evidence in the town of Hailsham.
