The month of May has been quiet for sales following the mania of March/April.  However we have officially sold our first double Flexzies via the ebay shop, which was very exciting for us, and particularly for Tom!  The relative calm has enabled us to crack on with development work and the Grabzi Switch (a grab bar operated switch, believe it or not – see photo), has progressed to an advanced stage of design.  This is a neat new product that looks similar to Grabzi but has a pivoting handle which operates two separate switches, one forwards, one back.  We have made a number of custom versions of this in the past, so we are confident that there is a need for it.   The other project that has progressed very rapidly, following our experience with Splatz, is the Splatz XL (see photo).  This is a button holder for the commonly used “Big Red™” buttons, the big brother (sister?) of Buddy Buttons™ and Jelly Beans™.  We made successful samples early in the month and have now made production tooling ready for launch at Kidz South in June.

In other developments we are waiting for samples of Zip Pulls from our manufacturing partner, but they appear to be having difficulties (much as our volunteer, Andy, did) with the moulding of it.  This has caused some delay, but they seem confident that they will find a solution very shortly.

It’s worth mentioning here, of course, that we all participated in the TravelChair launch which was a resounding success.  Tom wore a shirt and tie, never before seen at MERU, and yours truly was given the job of escorting our celebrity patron, Laurence Llewelyn Bowen (see photo) who was most taken with the corned beef sandwiches.  Tom also went to the European Business Aviation Convention and Exhibition in Geneva with the TravelChair team and had a challenging week explaining it to potential customers without an exhibition stand.  His excellent performance at this event was much commented upon.

Finally we learned with regret today that April will be leaving us this week due to circumstances beyond her control.  As a placement student most of her work has been on the TravelChair and graphics but for this department she set up and ran our ebay shop and was involved in the redesign of all our instruction manuals.  We would like to thank her for all her work and for making us laugh a great deal!  Good luck for the future, and stay in touch.

With the arrival of April we have finally entered a new financial year and our sales figures for 2011/2012 have been analysed.  We achieved a 40% increase on the previous year with sales of MERU products amounting to £47,440.  Considering what a challenging year it was for MERU as an organisation, and the global economic climate as a whole, we are feeling quite pleased with ourselves!  However, far from resting on our laurels, we are aiming to do much better this year. With our new website, new products, marketing initiatives and vaulting ambitions we think another 40% is well within reach (not including the TravelChair, of course).  To get things off to a flying start we have ordered tooling for our new zip pulls and will shortly have samples.  We will be able to offer this simple and highly effective product at a very competitive price due to outsourcing its manufacture.  It will be available in three colours, in various multipacks, and has the potential to be useful to a very wide range of people.  Look out for it in our webshop (opening soon).

The Workshop Team soldiers on, still attracting new members.  It’s being run by Vicky and Tom for three weeks while my regular babysitter takes a holiday in New Zealand (we must be paying her too much.  Oh, no, we don’t pay her at all!  Perhaps that’s why she’s gone to New Zealand).   In other developments, the “Splatz XL” mould is under construction (a super-sized Splatz for big buttons).  Hayley at Such and Such Design organised the machining for us at South Bank University.  [She’s getting married next weekend in France – looking forward to that!  Hayley started life as a student at MERU about 10 years ago, then worked for us for some years and finally left to start her own business.  Another MERU success story…].  We have also adjusted the design of the new Grabzi to accommodate a slightly different handle, and we’ve started work on the Grabzi Switch, a grab handle switching device which will join the Grabzi/Groovz range of products.  And orders continue to flow in with a notable increase in direct sales which we attribute to Vicky’s wonderful new website.  All in all a very positive outlook…

Ready Made Product Development, by Peter Swann

The financial year is drawing to a close and it’s time to look back and see what we have achieved and look forward and make new plans.  I don’t have all the figures yet, more of that next month, but it has certainly been our best year yet for sales of ready-made products (as they are now officially known!).  The merger of our distributor, QED, with Inclusive Technology seems to have been an important factor in our sales growth.  They are simply a much bigger company with an enormous client base.

Workshop Team has been a huge success, but I won’t go on about it here, except to say a big thank you to all concerned.  I have written a thorough review of its activities which will be in our April Friends Update.

March has been at least as busy as February but as it comes to an end I sense a slight easing of the pressure.  The end-of-year sales bulge seems to have been well managed by Inclusive who successfully spread it out over a couple of months.  We’ve had quite a good throughput of direct sales as well, though, culminating in a Bugzi for Richard Cloudesley School which was delivered this week.  They were also responsible for purchasing our first Groovz (new arm guide product) and Grabzi (grab handle).  That’s the power of the product demo! Tom, ever resourceful, managed to find time for yet another Flexzi invention (see photo. Launch date 1st April 2012 before midday :-)) 

Also keeping us busy throughout March has been the new website, now officially launched.  An immense amount of work has gone into this, leading to much anguish and tearing out of hair, but the result is superb and really shows MERU off at its best. The shop bit will be ready in a couple of weeks – it’s the most complicated part from a programming point of view.  It will showcase a number of new products and make them much, much easier to buy.

And finally, of course, by the time you read this we will officially be a part of the QEF family of charities. http://www.qef.org.uk/  Without QEF we would no longer be here.  Yes, really, it came that close.  We are delighted to be under their umbrella now and look forward to an era of greater stability and access to new resources.  MERU ready-mades are all set to go from strength to strength!

Update from the MERU New Products Team, by Peter Swann

February is supposed to be a short month but we have packed it with action in the factory.  We have a number of ongoing activity streams – new product development, documentation, co-operating with the website team and, of course, making products. 

This is the busiest time of year for sales because many of our customers are NHS departments and schools who are approaching the end of their financial year and leave it until Feb/March to spend any money left in their budgets on equipment. 

This time last year our sales were about 4 times the average monthly level, and this year is looking good too.  My sales estimate for 2011/12 will have to be revised upwards, always a good position to be in!

For the new website we have been writing copy for the products section and shop.  It also has an ever-changing appetite for photos so we have been photographing, and working with our photographer, Andy, to get pictures of the full range of products, including the new ones (see below). 

The redesign of the instruction leaflets is ongoing, but other new product development is slowed down by the volume of manufacturing we are doing at the moment.  More thanks to our wonderful volunteers who help keep us afloat in the factory, especially Mark who devoted an entire Wednesday to making switches last week, as well as turning up almost every Tuesday evening.