our return back home to auckland was always the end goal, but it was simply not feasible to make the move until we got our range of lever espresso machines bedded in
once that was achieved we were able to return to auckland, new zealand
whilst it is a major undertaking to relocate and re-establish ourselves, some good does come out of it
there are many tasks that never get done when it is business as usual, because as always the urgent trumps the important
but when you have the disruption of putting your life into metal containers and shipped to the opposite side of the globe & unplug the roasting part of the business for a few months whilst you locate suitable premises and then setup, it provides a welcome pause to reflect upon what we are doing well and where we need to improve our performance
one of the major changes to our offering that i have decided to implement is to offer our green beans for resale. my initial reaction to the rise of the home roaster was that they were a comptetive threat, but i no longer hold this view, in the same way that i dont see nespresso as a threat to our business – yes, the word coffee is mentioned in both of them, but they are very different niches
with that in mind i think we need to reach out to home roasters and give them the opportunity to access our range of green beans which are of a high quality already and are going to go higher as time goes on, until we get to the absolute pinnacle of single origin espresso beans, regardless of price
the green beans will obviously only be shipped to new zealand addresses as sending them internationally is likely to cause issues as raw coffee beans are viewed by a number of countries as a potential threast to their agricultural industry and therefore there is a risk that it would not make it through customs (we are not going to get dragged into providing agriculture export documentation for 1Kg of raw beans!)
the other major thing i want to do is improve our website. there is now a need to add multiple couriers and there is significant resistance in new zealand to shopping on a website where the currency is not in NZD, which is understandable to an extent, but the feeling is much stronger than i anticipated, certainly much stronger than Europe
so the solution will be to allow you to set our website to your local currency when you land on the site. all prices on the site will the appear in your local currency so you are easily able to gauge prices. on the checkout page the prices will still appear in the local currency you have selected, but then the last line will have the total in the local currency you have selected and then it will say the transaction will be charged in pounds sterling (GBP)
so what that means in a nutshell is we are happy to display our prices in local currency, but the transactional currency will remain as GBP. the reason for this is we are simply too small to allow everyone to transact in their local currency and then convert it all into GBP – it produces a significant accounting overhead on the back end and i left my profession to escape the drudgery of forensic accounting and have no intention of giving to complex and administratively brudensome accounting practices. quite the opposite in fact – we are looking to simplify our structure
finally, within a fortnight we will have an L1, L2, & L3 all on display in our Auckland workshop, all ready for you to come and play with. feel free to bring you own coffee and grinder so you can see for yourself how much better it tastes on a LONDINIUM lever espresso machine
i have never ‘sold’ a machine to anyone in my life – so please dont think you will be under any obligation to buy anything – we are a product led company as i am terrible at sales & marketing, so i put all my efforts into making the best products i can and letting them speak for themselves. as a result i can provide absolute assurance that i will never talk you into buying anything, ever!
if you need technical support for any lever machine in new zealand, either restoration, or wrestling to get a great shot from a La Pavoni, then throw it all in the car and drive on over – all i ask is you ring in advance so you have my undivided attention when you arrive
anyway, you can look forward to some improvements to be delivered from us before 2014 is done!
if you have any requests, please feel free to contact us