Just a quick note to let you know that we are working on a face lift to the site which will be released in the next month.

We are also putting out some new marketing materials and widening our promotion.  We'll let you know nearer the time what the new approach is but we think you'll like it :)

Best wishes,

Peter McAteer

Festive news to share with you!

Just to let you know we have still been active and last week we ran a stall for the Friends For Street Children - the orphanage we are supporting in Ho Chi Minh, Saigon, Vietnam. We sold £130 of goods from the children and also sent a £500 donation from the Dreamaid Charity to support these lovely young people.

We wish you all a very Happy Festive Season and hope that next year is all you wish it to be.

Best wishes,

Peter McAteer and all at Dreamaid

Please see the lovely message we had in response to our support below:

Dear Mr. Peter McAteer,
Warm and peace greetings from FFSC staff and children to you and Dreamaid team.
How happy we receive your kind information, we would like to express our deep thanks for your kind concern, love and support for FFSC children. We hope Dreamaid increase your successful bussiness soon.
On this occasion, we would like to send our best wishes to Dreamaid team and their families on the Christmas and New Year comming. With your donation as a wonderful and lucky gift for FFSC children to have more conditions to study better in schools.
In addition, we will send you our dedailed budget to use your donation and also enclose FFSC receipt and thanksletter to you through email.
Thanks again and best regards.
Sr. Anna My Hien

Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year!!

It has been a momentous year for Dreamaid. Numerous press releases and appearances, articles in magazines, TV appearance on the BBC, but the best thing has been the growing community of like minded people.

For me the highlight of the year has been the launch of the Friends For Steet Children in Vietnam project. The original objective of Dreamaid was to help people and Dreamaid is for me a philanthropic and socio-economic business with an innovative model. To see that we are genuinely helping people already is a great boost in a difficult eonomic environment.

Two weeks ago we had our first Craft stall in Aberdeen at a school fair where we sold only the products made by the FFSC orphans. I believe we made £162 selling for these young people and in doing so were able to do some face to face promotion of the site. Given we only had one days notice to arrange this event I was delighted :)

I realise I am remiss at blogging, facebook and all the social media but it doesn't do my tennis elbow any good and I find it difficult to keep up with the volume of interchange. Please don't take my relative absence negatively but having tried everything bar surgery I try to minimise my time on the keyboard...

We have grown steadily which is the only sensible way in this arena and will continue to stick to our core ethical way forward. We are so grateful for your continued support and hope that together we can make a great success not only for our buyers and sellers but for those whose dreams are so humble and modest.

Have a wonderful festive season and may all your dreams come true in the coming year!

Best wishes,

Peter McAteer

Sales Brochure Going Out Next Week!

After much work on the styling, testing we are finally ready to send out our brochure!

Apologies for the delay but this turned out to be much more demanding than we had envisaged with various technical issues to resolve.

We would request that Dreamers update their shops ready for a significant increase in visitors.

Due to holiday leave we are a bit behind on some new releases but I am advised they are progressing well and will be ready for announcement soon.

Best wishes,

Peter McAteer

Contributions to Sales Brochure

Dear all,

We have an announcement on the Forum regarding our plans to have a monthly sales brochure and would be grateful for contributions to help us make this novel, interesting and inclusive.

Our sellers are all creative thinkers and it would be great to have you all on board as part of a team of sales people :)

Your ideas and thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

The document will be emailed to targeted buyers with lots of pictures of wonderful handmade products and a demonstration of our caring shopping experience...

We look forward to hearing from you!

Best wishes,

Peter McAteer

What a week that was!

This has been a very memorable week for Dreamaid. We were featured on the BBC documentary on the 18th of May which then went worldwide on BBC News on the following weekend to a potentially enormous audience. Pity we can’t get hold of figures to tell us just how large that international audience was but we do have the UK audience figures. I believe the UK viewing figures were somewhat disappointing but I am no expert in this field. We had been advised to expect up to 5 million viewers but in fact the actual viewing figures were less than 1 million. Apparently the series had received some negative press reviews in advance and presumably this affected viewing figures.

However, despite the low viewing figures we have received a fabulous response and have increased our number of products almost three-fold in the last couple of weeks and our sales have been increasing dramatically too. Due to the fact that we are seeking investors at the moment I have to be careful about how much information I give but suffice it to say that we are very pleased with progress.

We have been approached by people from as far and wide as Canada, Mexico, India, Thailand, UK, USA, Germany, Switzerland all wishing to help us to achieve our Vision. There have also been a number of parties expressing an interest in investing in Dreamaid which we are exploring.

I think the most rewarding part of this last week has been the number of new Dreamers expressing their support for what Dreamaid is doing. As the documentary demonstrated, starting a business of this nature in a global recession wasn’t easy but we are now coming out of that situation and the only way is up for all at Dreamaid.

When I first started as a Director in business in 1992 a fellow board member and senior Director of the company once told me ‘do the right things and the right results will come’. Dreamaid is doing the right thing and I am confident that with the support of our growing community the right things will happen. Not only for our buyers and sellers but also for those in need that we are supporting.

Thanking for your continued support,

Peter McAteer

BBC2 Programme Arrives at Last :)

The long awaited BBC2 documentary which features the first six weeks to five months of Dreamaid is due to be shown starting the 18th of May at 8pm UK time. It is called "Theo's Adventure Capitalists" and is made highly entertaining by the presentation style of the successful businessman and character Theo Paphitis.

The programme offers a great opportunity to our Dreamers to illustrate the wonderful products that they make to a huge audience. We are expecting around a million visitors to the site and as we are still very young we need to ensure we have enough quality products from around the world to sell. The programme is principally being shown in the UK but will be going global through BBC World.

The programme will follow a similar style to this one last week which was following three companies in Vietnam. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00scx8q

The documentary is business led and therefore may not cover the social project work we are undertaking in Brazil with photographers from the favela in Rio de Janeiro or with Talentos do Brasil to help around 2000 artisans.

We will also be followed by the Open University and used in educational programmes for business students. http://www.open2.net/theosadventure/index.html

It is also planned to use Dreamaid as an example of 'Sustainable Business' which is the whole point of the business and social strategy.

Exciting times even though I may have to hide behind the sofa on a few occasions!! However, I am delighted that Dreamaid is sufficiently interesting to have captured the imagination of so many influential people and now potentially will have a truly global audience :)

Early days in any business are a roller coaster so enjoy the programme and help us to keep this train on the tracks. This journey promises to be a wonderful one for so many people from so many wide and varied backgrounds. All sharing one Vision of a fairer world which recognises the value of handmade products, globally.

Have fun and thanks for sharing the dream.

Best wishes,

Peter McAteer