Equestrian Blog

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Spot the Deliberate Mistake!

Well, it's early August and that can only mean one thing: our new Autumn Winter Catalogue is back from the printers. As I type, hundreds of thousands of copies are sat in various warehouses around the country waiting to be mailed or inserted into copies of magazines. It's usually the time of year when our catalogue production team take a deep breath and pat each other on the back for another job well done - and finished on time. And yet, this year there is a slight blemish on our record, an irritating imperfection that will always be there to taunt us. This year, we made a bit of a mistake. It's not a huge mistake in the scheme of things and it could have been avoided but it's enough to dent our pride a little and it falls to me to explain to you, dear reader, why we kept it in. When you receive your copy, turn to pages 2 and 3 and you'll see the same information repeated on both pages. Unfortunately, we had to make some minor alterations to the page at the last minute (which is why they're not identical) and somehow the amended version was saved as Page 3, not Page 2 as it should have been.  By the time we realised the error, the pages had been printed. We could have reprinted either the first section of the catalogue or the cover pages and we seriously considered it, even though the costs would have been quite high.  The reason we chose not to reprint was that there would not have been enough time to get more paper - and have the mailing sent out - in time for the End-of-Season Sale (the Sale Catalogue will be mailed with the Autumn/Winter).  As soon as the Sale deadline was threatened, we decided that we should accept a little egg on our faces if it means that every customer still has the chance to order anything they like from our Sale before it sells out. From my own point of view, I have mixed feelings.  Yes, it makes us look a bit daft and I feel that only a liar would say that they have no sense of pride or ego.  Also, the four or five products that were planned to appear on Page 3 will need to be offered some other way or we'll have too much stock - you'll know them when you see them because the picture they appear on was the one we used to make the silhouette on our front cover.  On the other hand, I had been really keen to completely re-write the stuff that used to appear on Page 3 of past catalogues.  It was all worthy stuff but I couldn't help thinking that it was getting a bit bland, a bit repetetive and too easy to ignore.  As I've said on our Facebook group, the size of our warehouse and the amount of stock it holds are the things that impress our visitors the most and I felt we needed to make that known to everyone.  At least now, the new page will be twice as hard to miss, however infamous the reason! Anyway, what's most important is that once again, we've provided you with the widest range, the keenest prices and the easiest way of ordering.  Our  levels of service are continuing to improve (see pages 2&3!) and I'll write more about that on a blog soon.  I hope you like the catalogue and I'm even happy for you to have a bit of a chuckle at our expense.  I'll be even happier if you see something you like in there as well!

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