| |
Dave Bradley -
Over the years, much like many other
people I have move from one day-time job to another,
but all the time I have been involved one way or
another in the entertainment side of the wedding
industry. I have progressed from being a overworked
and underpaid wedding DJ to be a well paid
professional DJ and compere and organiser of themed
wedding events. This became possible as I was taken
on board by one of Manchester's leading
entertainment agencies to arrange and run wedding
fayres and events for them as well as representing
their company at all of the wedding fayre that they
attended.
How the directory got
started...
The whole idea of To Have And To hold
as it is now grew by itself really, one of my
interests was the internet and learning how to build
my own personal website, which I duly did. After a
few incarnations of my website it began to get
better and better as I became more proficient at it.
As time passed others began to notice my website and
how well it was put together and worked, this lead
to them asking me to build similar sites for them.
It was about the same time I realised the there was
a huge world of really good internet domain names
out there that people hadn't got round to
registering. One of the one's I picked up on was "www.ToHaveAndToHold.co.uk",
it wasn't registered so along with a few others I
quickly signed it up. I new straight away that I
could do something really good with that, but at the
time wasn't sure what. Over a period of about ten
years I began to develop the idea that it could be
an agency or directory or if nothing came of it I
could always sell it on at a huge profit. Domain
names by this time had rocketed in value as the
availability diminished. Then just two years ago I
decided the time was right to try it out as a
wedding directory, calling on all my experience and
knowledge of wedding fayre, the wedding industry as
a whole and all the knowledge I had picked up as a
small time web-developer.
I shopped around for a few design
layouts and eventually picked out a ready built
platform that was being used as a Hotel finder
website in Blackpool, it seamed to suit my needs
perfectly. So after I had rebadged it and thrown a
bit of content at it, launched what looked like
pretty good site, simple and straightforward. This
layout of being a bare bones, un-jazzy site set gave
me the inspiration to keep it that way. In my trails
around the internet to find a layout that I liked I
came across site after site that bombarded the
browser with adverts, with sometimes more than
twenty adverts on one page, a page meant to sell
just one product. I found this very distracting and
annoying and was sure I didn't want mine to look
this way. With the success of airlines such as
Easyjet set up by entrepreneur Stelios, I began to
think this was a pretty good idea. OK it isn't an
airline but I thought I bet I could apply the same
principle to my idea and put a really good positive
spin on it that people would really like. By keeping
each individual listing as an individual listing and
not one that's shared with fifteen other companies
people would not only stay on the individual page
but would stay on the site longer.
From this day forward...
As To Have And To Hold brand begins
to grow I have made sure that I have secured the
T.H.A.T.H. Facebook presence, which is already a
very popular site keeping everyone up to speed with
the new additions and improvements to the directory.
In checking my branding possibilities I found that
the
www.tohaveandtoholdmagazine.co.uk domain hadn't
been registered and immediately set about securing
it. After a week of owning it decided that if I've
got it I might as well use it so I began to develop
a simple magazine style site fronted by an index
page. The type of index pages you would find in the
inside cover of a traditional printed magazine,
linking through to the features and articles that it
would eventually contain. During my continued
attendances at wedding fayre all over the North West
of England I found talking to other exhibitors that
they were thought some kind of wedding service forum
would be handy. A forum so wedding professionals
could talk to others and find out which are the best
wedding fayres to attend and what show trends are at
the moment. They suggested that I should add a forum
to the directory and I though that it would also be
really handy to have to attract other clients and
engaged couples to the directory. I took this idea
on board and set about adding said forum and
consequently made it open not just the wedding
professionals, but brides and groom as well. If the
magazine site proves to be popular enough it may get
legs and be a physical printed magazine too, but we
will have to wait and see what happens as the
publication market is swamped with similar products.
As with a lot of what I do, rather than force a
product to do or be something, I let it develop and
grow in it's own way. The one important thing I have
that other directories and magazines don't have that
allows me to do this is next to no overheads, as I
do nearly everything personally using services that
I already have. If there's one thing I lack, it's
time, as it needs and demands constant attention.
When the time comes I will take on some staff to
keep everything moving as everything gets busier and
busier. The truth of the matter at the moment is
that I feel that the business, although well
established and working well is still in it's
infancy. I have many ideas as to what I would like
to do with "To Have And To Hold" in the future but
I'm gonna let it get there first. If there is one
overall ideal I hold dear, it's value for money and
that's what I aim to give in everything I do.
Editor - Dave Bradley
|
