Ok, now i have the time ... here we go
Once upon a time a long time ago , well when i was 19 to be exact, so what thats erm 16 years ago I gave up a full time job as an assistant store manager for a large retail chain, having come from a stock control and epos background(electronic point of sale thats pricing, trading standards and systems in english)) to run my own funeral flowers business working from my mums house, slowly progressing into weddings and general stuff as my reputation grew in the local area, i gave that up when i gave birth to my eldest at the age of 21 in favour of becoming a full time mum.
The boredom soon set in and i ended up working night shifts in a factory, followed by a move to tescos distribution still on nights in the systems department (where you get to control all the forklifts and make them whizz about) then onto the transport and planning department before leaving to go on maternity leave with my youngest.
I lasted about 10 months as a full time mum that time before again starting to look around for something to occupy the grey matter and stop me going nappy blind !!
I then embarked on a host of part time work from home jobs all enjoyable and all based around pretty, shiny things like cosmetics and jewellery , you know they type of thing, parties and brochure dropping mainly avon which I'll admit i really enjoyed and earnt quite well out of.
We then decided in 2006 (well i did) that i wanted my children to grow up in the countryside and we headed north-ish to Lincolnshire which is where the opportunity to re-start my floristry business came from I set back up and it wasnt long before we were doing quite well and I decided it was time to be offering nationwide delivery as an independant florist.
Whilst looking for a way to get myself online i came across EKM and thats where i built my first site, and the learning curve began ....
For me thats where the e-commerce came into play I built my own store with the help of some very helpful forum members and ended up with a unique looking site i had managed to put together myself, I've always been into graphics so that side of it was easy. I also whilst punting around various floristry supplies and gift suppliers had come across some very useful suppliers that opened up the opportunity to retail some quite unique lines , so a fellow forum member offered to help me set up the domain and help me build a store that wasnt EKM based but was run on Joomla.
This is where i started to come unstuck.
After running both stores quite successfully for a while I decided that the prices EKM were charging for what i could do with it were a little over the top compared to what i could get elsewhere and i decided i wanted to move my store .... problem number one ... i couldnt get access to the database that held the details of over 1000 hand written products easily so that i could transfer it to another type of software neither could i export my customers details. On investigating further I found that the domain name wasn't registered to me either ... flummoxed !!!
Luckily or unluckily depending upon how you look at it my personal circumstances had started to change and i found that i was unable to continue with the floristry business. So the upshot was a closed shop and EKM still has that domain........
Whilst this was all happening traffic was building on the other store i had built with a friend..... so i still had an income stream until we fell out ...
Obviously whilst i had been building my store with ekm and been conversing with the forum members it had been noticed that i had a talent for graphics, people had asked me to produce things for them and of course i was only too happy to at first i was doing them free but there comes a point where you start to think that maybe just maybe there could be legs on this ... and Rainbow Studios was born, having become quite familiar with the software and the template system used it was easy enough to be able to change things for people , nothing too flashy mainly grahics and colour changes the odd menu change and split.
The 'friend' that had helped me to build my site and had encouraged me to do the graphics and learn started to get annoyed that people were asking me to produce them rather than himself, yes i was cheaper , but because i didnt have the technical knowledge he did there was room for us both in my opinion but thats not how he saw it, I sought my own hosting account and looked to move my site that he helped me build.
He refused to give me the domain, which was registered in his name and not mine so there i was again Flummoxed!! a site i couldnt move with its domain and the prospect of really having to start from scratch as i had no recourse on getting that domain back !!
This was when i decided that as Rainbow Studios was the only income stream i had left then thats where i would focus, that was in 2008, I landed in 'don't talk about fight club' and met Brainy Paul and Seamus (the Rainbows Team now) and many of the members here, my past experiences with hosts and domains and general pee-taking by people is what has made me so determined to do what it says on the tin if you like as theres nothing worse than being new to things and being taken for a ride !!!
I havent looked back really, but i have now started to build a couple of retail sites of my own as it seems the online retail bug really hasnt quite gone away .............
Apologies for the long post i think i ought now go refresh the coffee pot !
Rain
xxxx
edited cos my spelling really is carp **
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