SPARKLING!

A roomful of sparkling ladies attended the first LWMB meeting of the year which took place at Swarovski Crystallized on Thursday 20th January.

Julia Macmillan

The bubbly flowed, the food was delicious, the company was wonderful and our guest speaker, Julia Macmillan, gave a fantastic talk about her experience in setting up her internet business, Toyboy Warehouse. Of course, for those interested in learning how to find a toyboy, there was ample time for a chat with Julia after her talk!!

Julia is a former fashion designer and artist, and began Toyboy Warehouse following a successful art commission, having discovered that she couldn't find what she was looking for on "traditional" dating websites.  From starting the site with open source software, and a group of friends as her members, she has now grown the business to a point where she is talking to investors and is about to launch internationally.  The ideas that Julia used in growing her business can be readily applied to most businesses - find a unique name that gets people talking; in addition to contacting newspapers etc, build relationships with freelance journalists so that they call upon you as an "expert" in your field; ensure you have a targetted (not Adwords) Facebook campaign if you have a digital business; offer added value eg. Julia now has a VIP section, hosts member events and a dining society and is planning to launch an online game.

Thank you Julia for giving your time to share your experiences with us.

Drawing the raffle

Congratulations to those of you who won a raffle prize - we hope you enjoy making use of the gifts on offer which ranged from a £100 Jaeger voucher, a bottle of Bollinger Champagne, to a relaxing floatation session, a massage treatment and a £500 voucher to spend at a hair & beauty salon.  And a special thanks to Cory Cook who offered half a day of her services in time management or organising your life.  Your generous donations mean that we raised £110 pounds for the charity Childreach.

Thanks are also due to our photographer for the evening.  You may have noticed Claire Swindale clicking away in the room.  Claire is an experienced photographer who has worked with such brands as Revlon, and we were delighted to have her with us on the evening.  Her photos of the evening are now on our gallery, and there is a separate blogpost about Claire with further details of her work, her special offer to LWMB and an invitation to her "meet the artist" day at her exhibition in March.

And finally, a thank you to Carrie and all at Swarvoski Crystallized who were wonderful to work with.  Several women in the room disappeared downstairs to the shop during the evening returning with a Swarvoski Crystallized bagful of goodies.  And who can blame them, with a 70% sale, or the LWMB 15% discount on non-sale goods to take advantage of!!

Thank you to all of our guests who made the evening so successful.  We hope you enjoyed it and look forward to seeing you again soon.