As we were promised Pay and Display went live this morning.

8.30a.m. Only one car parked on Pepper Street, he was just collecting a ticket, he thought it was wonderful as he has seldom been able to park there before, even at this time of the morning.

Henry Street, two thirds full.

Davies Way, 15% of spaces taken.

Can we all monitor the situation and let me have feedback to pass on to the Parish Council re the effect on trade, customer comments etc.

I am waiting for costings for the advertising push, will try to speed it up.

Not heard anything from Spar as yet. 

Just to prove it, the very first ticket from machine 2, an historic moment! 

Last Monday we had an emergency meeting to discuss the implementation of some marketing measures to ensure we fully take advantage of the opportunities the introduction of Pay and Display will hopefully present to us.

The attendance was superb, the input totally positive and the meeting was particularly fruitful with a pretty comprehensive strategy being decided. The direction of the advertising will be decided in the next few weeks as soon as we have had all the quotes in and have a ballpark figure for the contribution required from each business.

Minutes for the June meeting can be found here.

The next meeting will take place again in the upstairs room of the Spread Eagle (thanks to Pauline and Dave) on Wednesday 29th July 2009 prospective Agenda Here.

Spar supermarket woes have had a dramatic effect on footfall in the village centre, just as we seem to be tackling the parking problem another problem rears its head. The Parish Council are attempting to address the problem and I have also sent a letter outlining our concerns and offering customer feedback and inviting Spar to join the Lymm Traders group. Letter here.

My contacts do tell me though that Spar are aware of the problems, it is being dealt with at director level and if my information is correct there are moves afoot to change from Spar to EuroSpar which is their version of a supermarket, good news if correct, this is all from a very knowledgeable source.

Not sure how this will be greeted, but we shall see.

I feel very positive about the way things are going, my thanks to all.

Philip

ps Parish council minutes for June Here.

Hi All,

It is imperative that ALL retailers come along to the Spread Eagle, upstairs room at 6pm, next Monday 22nd June 2009 to thrash out a battle plan to win back the lost Lymm shoppers.

As you should all know by now Pay and Display will go ‘live’ Monday July 6th 2009 we must use this initiative to promote Lymm as a convenient, attractive, friendly and vibrant shopping experience.

We need to introduce promotions, advertising, involve the media and come up with an unforgettable tag line.

To enable this to happen we will all need to ‘chip’ in to create a fighting fund, we are not talking fortunes, but in the short term this should easily pay for itself as long as we get it right FIRST time, that’s why we ALL need to be part of the ‘think tank’.

This was emailed to me from Hilary, food for thought -

Now you come up with some ideas!

Put your ideas on the forum please click here

It has been difficult getting everybody to work together, now is the time for Lymm Traders to actually take the initiative and push all our businesses forward as one. Everybody will benefit so everybody should become involved.

See you all next Monday.

Regards

Philip

My Blogs are like buses, nothing for a month then two come along at once!

The final Pay and Display update (hopefully!)

[quote]

Dear all

Hopefully final update!

The pay & display machines are being installed on Thursday 2nd July along with all the associated signage. I have arranged to have the machines switched on Friday 3rd (they will be bagged over) with the intention of going live Monday 6th July 2009.

The signage around the village is on order and will be amended around the same time to guide people to Davies Way, Henry Street and to Pepper Street pay & display.

[/quote]

This should be a firm date, do we need a meeting to discuss the details of publicity, advertising and general drum beating, please respond by email or here.

Phil

As we all know the supermarket demise appears to be affecting footfall within the village, to try to effect some change we have attempted to contact the Spar area manager, as of yet we haven't had any response.

However I have just been informed that Peter Dodding, Retail Manager, James Hall Company will be going to the next Parish Council meeting to speak about the Spar Shop in Lymm. That should be interesting.

May Parish Council Minutes Here 

I will try to blog more when my little office refurb is completed! .

Philip

Welcome to the site

To get involved with the blog, quite simply click on the comment button at the bottom of each entry, and add your support, questions, concerns or disagreement with the article. Input is appreciated. Click on the stars, again at the bottom of the entry to rate the article 5 for excellent, 1 for rubbish!

To participate within the forum you first need to register,

First click on the Forums tab at the top of the homepage, then click on the link contact an administrator , an email will then be generated to sign you up. When you recieve notification you then follow the link to verify, and hey presto! you are forum enabled.

Email 

You can also subscribe by email, click on the link on the lefthand side of the page and you will receive an onscreen message similar to this link feedburner.docx (138.65 kb) follow the instructions and you will recieve an email whenever new content is posted.

RSS feed

Getting out of your comfort zone now! It's dead simple really, just click on subscribe to RSS Feed and you wil see a screen similar to this rss.docx (183.52 kb) , you can then choose how to subscribe, probably the easiest way is to click on view feed XML and thats it, it will keep you updated whenever the site is. I actually use the google link, this is updated directly on to the igoogle homepage, set igoogle as your homepage, log in, and any updates will appear whenever the site is updated.

As you can probably see, RSS is a great way to stay up to date with anything Lymm. 

This site is here for all to use, to encourage communication between Lymm traders, to exchange views and opinions and to enhance our working relationship.

Enjoy

So here we are, using the new medium of t'internet to communicate, so what’s the point you may ask, probably with good reason!

Well like it or not the Internet is the soap box of the 21st Century, it can reach a massive audience at breakneck speed. Where we used to find out information by word of mouth, quite often incorrectly relayed, we can now pass on news and important information based on facts, and in written form with less likelihood of the 'Chinese whispers' errors that crop up time and again in a small community like Lymm.We can use the forum to discuss all things business, all things Lymm, quickly and accurately.

I hope to encourage Lymm Parish Councillors to join in so we can all exchange points of view in a cordial, friendly and efficient manner.

However forums are open to abuse if strict control of membership is not applied, many of you will have witnessed the farcical exchanges that occur far too frequently on other local forums, 99% of the time deliberately provoked by people who use aliases who enjoy watching the ensuing 'train wreck'. To avoid this, registering for Lymm Traders forum will be by initial email, to register click on Forum tab on the homepage and click on send an email to an administrator at the top of the forum page, in the email please state your name and your business name and address with contact phone no., we will then send you a user name and password, the password can be changed when you log on to the forum and the user name will be based on your name and business.

We will update the blog regularly as soon as we have something new to add. Please feel free to comment, take it to the forum and discuss.

We hope to create interest further afield, hopefully getting some media interest in our aims, our mission to improve our village.

You never know, maybe even Warrington Borough Council will be made to take notice and actually listen to the collective ‘mooing of their little cash cow’ but lets not hold our breath!

Looking forward to the future.

Phil