We ran out of space, lost our blog, and took 6 months to plan our first TV advert

• We hired 50 people, and then ran out of space…
• We decided to launch a blog, then it died…
• We decided to get into TV advertising, 6 months ago…
• Why Hiring? We decided to completely redesign our website while all of the above was going on…

Growing a business is a bit like being stuck in a perpetual whirlwind of things that have to be done right now this very minute. Your head might be stacked full of nice to haves and most of your blog sentences start with “Well we could…” or “We should…” or “Wouldn’t it be great if….”

There are times you feel like you aren’t making any progress. Like you’ve just been marching up and down on the spot making as much noise as possible, but no actual movement. Suddenly, you look up and find you’re miles away from where you started.

Growth is an exciting time for any company. But like most things, it’s more exciting from the outside, and a bit more stressful from the inside. That’s why you don’t hear about it very often. Just we don’t have time to stand still, collect our thoughts and share them with you.

We’ve been off the radar for a little while, and we’re all too aware that people don’t often talk about their business disasters. So we thought we’d share.

We hired 50 people, and then ran out of space…

From HR to department managers to customer service staff. We feel like we must have employed half of Leeds by now!

Our new staff are settling in nicely, but it wasn’t long before we realised we didn’t actually have enough space for everyone! Cue the office remodel and reshuffle.

After a fun few games of “I claim this office” and a mammoth round of ordering office supplies we’ve got a bit more room to breathe and some more space to grow into.

We decided to launch a blog, then it died…

We came, saw, published, then we took it down.

Don’t let anyone ever tell you running a blog is easy! It’s almost like a mini business itself!

We thought it would be quite straightforward. Vintage got a blog up and running. We even posted some articles on it, but then we realised it needed a bit more love. Also, we took the blog down and went back to the blog drawing board.

Four months later and armed with more content than you can shake a stick at we’re here and publishing.

We decided to get into TV advertising, 6 months ago…

How many meetings does it take to create a TV advert? A lot is the answer. This is another one that we thought would be easy. Create a storyboard, hire a creative team, and get a finished advert.

Turns out that’s not always how it goes down.

Luckily for us, we got distracted during the process and ended up making a TV sponsorship deal instead. Very exciting! From mid-March onward we’ll be sponsoring a few programmes with great thematic links to our service. Points if you can guess what they are, but we can’t tell you just yet!

It’s taken 6 months to get here and we’ve worked with some very talented creatives along the way. Soon you’ll be able to see our very first sponsorship adverts. Now even more people will know there’s a way to cash in on their old stuff.

Intrigued to find out who we sponsored and what our adverts look like? Follow us on Facebook or Twitter where we’ll be announcing it on the 15th of March.

Why Hiring? We decided to completely redesign our website while all of the above was going on…

It has not been easy.

Much like the blog, we took a good honest look at our poor confused website and decided it needed a face-lift. We’ve learned so much in the last two years, so it was time to put it all into practice. New year, new you, everyone else does it right?!

If you printed out all the emails we’ve sent about this you’d probably feel like a small forest. But, there were no disasters, very few hold-ups, and our new website is very close to going live. Vintage love when a plan comes together.

Joking aside, every business has its challenges while it’s growing. For us, our customers make everything worthwhile.

When people tell you they love what you do every day, it’s impossible not to smile. When we see how important we are to people it drives us on, unites us as a team, and keeps us focused on delivering nothing less than a first-class service.

For more business updates like these, don't forget to sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of this page.