Welcome, and thanks for visiting What I Need

I started this site because I understand the challenges and costs involved in running a small to medium business especially when it comes to promotion and advertising. I know these things because I’ve been involved in and owned small businesses my whole life, literally.

My parents have owned and operated a small retail business for fifty years and as soon as I was old enough to crawl I spent many days becoming familiar with the floor of their shop as they sweated and toiled to make a life for us. In fact you could say that I grew up in the business. On school holidays I would even help out where I could, sweeping floors and doing other small jobs for a bit of pocket money.

After I finished school I ventured out into the wide world and worked in pubs for a while. As fun as that was I quickly grew tired of it and landed a job in another local family-owned retail business. This helped give me a different, albeit similar perspective on business to that of my parent’s. As a bonus I got the opportunity to transfer to another two stores in the same retail chain on the coast. Doing so gained me even more insight into some of the challenges small businesses dealt with on a daily basis.

After I had my fill of that I moved back home and rejoined the family business, this time in a senior role. In the years that followed I also started my own part-time entertainment business which was a lot of fun but ultimately a bit much to handle on top of my day job. So after a few years of that I gave it away, concentrated on the family business and have been there ever since.

But one thing that stuck with me was no matter which business I was involved with, the costs of running a business were massive, particularly when it came to advertising and promotion.

The other thing that has driven me to create this site was that even in a small town where everyone knows everyone we would get people walking into the store on a daily basis asking us if we knew where they could find a particular product or service. It often seemed to me that being a long standing, well known family business in a prominent position on the main street of town, people would see us as a sort of de facto information centre.

My parents, particularly my mother, were always keen to help people with their questions and she would even go so far as to taking the time out of her already busy day to sit down with people in front of the old “Yellow Pages” and searching (quite often unsuccessfully) for that elusive product or service.

It opened my eyes that even today, with all the information available through traditional advertising and online websites that people were STILL having trouble finding what they were looking for. So I decided to try and do something about it.

This website is a labour of love that I’ve decided to create in honour of the legacy of helpfulness that my parents showed complete strangers every day of their working lives and I hope that you find the site useful either as a customer, a business or both.

So again, welcome and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us and we’ll do our best to help get you going in the right direction, just like mum used to.

Cheers