Wednesday 20 January 2010

Happy New Year!!

Well it's hard to believe that 2010 is here as 2009 flew past so quickly.

Apologies for being a little quiet lately but this last month or so has been really hectic for us as we prepare for the next phase of growth of Dreamaid.

In May we will celebrate our first anniversary and perhaps time to review how we have been doing. A few highlights are:

  • Soft launch was successful - few bugs ironed out but no real issues found
  • Branding growing well - everyone we deal with loves the Dreamaid concept
  • Visitors from 125 countries in six months - wrong period in video below :)
  • Dreamers from 47 countries
  • Products from 23 countries

We recognised early confusion as to whether we were a charity or a business or both. As a result we split the Dreamaid Charity website from the Dreamaid business website to avoid any concerns the duality may cause. However, the business does strongly sponsor the charity and the charity gains from free promotion due to the business. This is critical to our socio-economic aspirations of bringing the developing world forward whilst building a reputable and successful business. We need to be strong to help people.

We built Craft Advice in order to deal with what we believe will be an increasing demand for learning amongst our Dreamers. This is a first of its kind in this domain and one we are excited about growing in the coming year.

Another unique feature was launched with our multi-currency capability which means you can list in Euros, Dollars or Sterling. We intend to widen the scope of this capability in response to market conditions and demand.

Our multi-lingual capacity has been demonstrated in English, Portuguese and Spanish so far and we intend to widen this during 2010.

We introduced a capability to search by price and are working hard to enhance this search capability to other areas to make buying simpler.

We received an amazing reception from both the business and media community and are about to be shown on a major UK TV channel. This is both exciting and daunting as we are still very new and growing. However, it does demonstrate that we are doing something very interesting and novel. We hope to build on this relationship with the media by having great stories to tell of our drive to help people whilst making a sustainable business for them and for us.

We have commenced working with several NGO's (Non Government Organisations - Charities typically) to help them. These are wonderful people that truly appreciate our efforts and we are delighted to be able to offer some level of support, albeit modest at the moment. However, we know this will grow quickly.

We are now very busy putting together plans to attract investment so we can really take Dreamaid to where it belongs - the world.

For those of you that have been with us during this inaugural year thank you for believing in us. It is not an easy trail we have set out upon and it will have its challenges but rest assured we truly value your joining us and supporting our cause.

We hope that this year brings you great happiness, good health and that your Dreams come true.

Best wishes,

Peter McAteer