Swish News - February 2009

Hi everyone and welcome to 2009! We hope you had a lovely break over Christmas and that it has been a nice smooth transition into the New Year. We had a fantastic family holiday in Dunsborough to refresh and recharge after Christmas and it was lovely to get away and just relax for a whole week!

2008 was a really big year for Swish Design. Early in the year my part-timer Connor decided to move to the UK just as our workload really ramped up. This was a definite cause for concern for me as it had the potential to compromise our ability to deliver at the high standards our clients expect. Fortunately I was able to secure the services of my brother Rory and his arrival co-incided really well with a long awaited trip to Europe for me. For his part, Rory coped very admirably with being thrown in the deep end for a month! Towards the end of 2008 we experienced yet another jump in the sheer volume of work we were taking on and again it was time to look at taking on a new staff member. While it might seem that I only want to hire family members … it was more serendipitous than anything else that my sister Robyn became available AND she had all the skills I was looking for. For a small business such as ours, a known quantity with regard to staffing is a huge advantage and I jumped at the chance to add Robyn to the team.

With three staff members to accommodate, Swish Design had well and truly outgrown the space available to us in the Marketing Mix building and it was time to find a new home. Our current office in West Perth became available so it was perfect timing to be able to move everything to the new office on December 24th ready to re-open on January 5th.
Alas 2009 didn’t start too smoothly for us. Despite my best efforts to anticipate all potential problems, January 5th found us with no internet connection for the entire week. This was frustrating to say the least … but if it was going to happen, possibly that first working week in January was a good time. A big shout out to the champions at Leader Cabling Systems who identified the problem just when I was at my wits end, and then got us up and running two days later.

So we are definitely back into the full swing of things now and are nice and busy finalising projects from the end of last year. We know 2009 has the potential to be a difficult one for all businesses out there so this is a good opportunity to ensure that all of your promotional material is up to date and firing for you. Possibly the most important item in this regard is your website so check out the back page to see why you need a website (if you don’t have one) and if your website is working as hard as it can for you (if you do). You will also find some of our recent projects on the next page.
We hope you enjoy our February newsletter and if you want to keep up to date with all the “goings on” at Swish Design, check out our blog on a weekly basis as my personal New Year’s resolution is to update that much more regularly than I did last year!

Kelly