So we started out like all the others, a tallyman selling to our customers from the back of a van and then knocking on your door every week to collect the payments. But as you already know over 10 years ago we stopped all the door to door collections and “went online” which has led us to where we are today. But it wasn’t easy, and seeing as it’s our 25th year anniversary I thought it would be apt to discuss how we came to be what we are today.
Before we had our vans (as they are today) we used to hire vans to accompany our Homestyle Shop, yes we used to have an actual shop before eventually getting our own “Mobile Shop” commonly known as the Homestyle Van. We actually changed the name of our mobile shops to Homestyle shopping vans because people kept messaging us asking if we sold mobile phones!! (no we don’t sell them in case you are still wondering)
And did you know… we have members still ordering with us that have been members from day one. One member remembers when we first started out in the vans selling not only toys but school uniforms and recollects how some of the team have seen all four of her children grow from bump to adults, and to this day she still shops with us.
We used to have catalogues and leaflets too
We then moved onto our next generation Homestyle Vans which went with our newly created website. We had a slogan Y Q we come 2 U and we even had our own little Homestyle character.
We’ve since changed our slogan over the year too from “y Q we come 2 u” to “The Easier Way ” which we are still using today.
In recent years our vans have gone through several make overs and we now have brand new silver ones, to celebrate our silver jubilee of course!
We used to have homes shopping parties at members homes, they could bring their friends and set up accounts for them. We gave little freebies to party hosts. And we used to attend fetes and show off our vans at school summer fairs. Both were great ways for us to gain members in our local communities and get recommendations from friends.
We have some awards under our belt too. In 2013 we became the winner of Trading Standard Buy With Confidence “Most Positive Feedback Award” and we won Best Customer Focus in 2017.
Social Media – our Facebook journey started back in June 2013 followed by twitter in 2014. Our popular Homestyle Personal Shopper Group was created back in 2015
I must not forget the Pens… wow how popular are these, in fact we have members who are collecting them, we find this amazing. We now give away sweets with our orders too which we hear keep the kids happy!!
So that’s a few interesting facts from the last 25 years, things that you may even remember. The past however is in the past, its the next 25 years we are now looking forward too.
We change year on year, always for the better. If you have any suggestions to help us improve please let us know, we are always happy to hear comments from our members and more often than not we use their ideas to create a better Homestyle for everyone. You can get in touch at https://www.homestyle247.com/contact