So, here she is http://snurl.com/o39nc a whole bloomin’ year later. Now it’s very important you vote if that’s alright because it got mighty messy last year what with one thing or another. There’s a poll bottom right of this page so get click clicking and help justice to be served on a warm plate of cabbage or however the saying goes ;-)

Lots of love,

THE FOLKERS AT THE RANCH

Let me start at the beginning…Charlotte (studio director) always wanted an office goldfish…so we bought one. John (web development director) named him Tony Hadley…and after a month or so he developed a little fin disease (Tony, not John). There were some unnerving rumblings about “letting it go” and eventually we bought some fluid that sorted him out good and proper! (so THERE Ryan!) I went to the shop with John…I’d asked him what he’d like as a pet and he said he’d always fancied a Bearded Dragon. I’d met a few of THOSE in my time, but none that you could squeeze into a “viv”, so we had a look around Pet Care on Westgate in Grantham www.reptilemagic.co.uk and fell in love with a little fella that John quickly named The Ultimate Warrior (TUW). He soon grew, gulping down crickets and shedding skin like no-one’s business. (He can soon eat mice apparently).

Anyway (and I am getting to the point, honest) after Christmas, I opened a new Reseller Outpost in Bretby, Derbyshire and it had none of the 18 months worth of glamour of the Grantham Ranch, no deer’s head, pets, art on the walls and whatnot so, in my small way…I bought a little wooden budgie (Ron Burgundy) to sit on my keyboard.

Now, I know this probably sounds a bit juvenile to the more cynical, hard nose businessman crowd…but we had been experimenting with the pets through twitter…giving them their own identities…and they were driving legitimate traffic to our website…Tony the goldfish soon became the codfather of twitter (@tonykimeera) and just mused about castles with over 700 followers, whilst TUW (@warriorkimeera) mainly threw abuse at Tony with over 500 followers too. We all have twitter accounts and embed them into our website, which is essentially a blog, and we have had no end of clients commenting on how this both demonstrates the size of our ranch (now 14 folk) and how transparent we are as a company…

So, myself, Ryan (hybrid graphic design and website designer) and John were working late one night when one of them stole my Ron and then passionately blamed each other the next morning! That weekend I received my first poison pen letter at home, followed the next week with instructions that I had to raise £100 for Comic Relief or the Budgie got “combined” together with a sinister picture of Ron in front of a combine harvester…Obviously shaken, I realised that I had to do something for Comic Relief (which I had never done before) and, on the Sunday night, published a message on Facebook stating that I’d run 10k on Friday 13^th if people would help me raise the ransom money…

So, a friend of mine told me about www.sponsor-me.org which gave folk the opportunity to contribute online…I just pasted the link on Twitter (which also appears on our website) through Facebook, I messaged all my friends, some of them used their own friend list to promote the cause and, very quickly, the message exponentially grew. Getting into full swing I bought a digital red nose and changed all my pictures to permeate the Comic Relief brand, and I hit the target of £100 really quickly. Hopefully, by the time you read this, we will have blasted the now upgraded target of £200, my Ron will be safe back home, and I won’t have collapsed on the treadmill…

I think it just goes to show that if you use a little quirkiness, free social media and you don’t just expect to sit back and watch it happen, then you can really get your message out there without breaking the already flagging banks!!

Thanks to everyone that contributed! If you would like to sponsor the run then please click here, thankyou!

Scott Marson
MD & Founder Folker

So, I’d been in the new Bretby outpost for a couple of days. I’d raided a Tesco’s Extra for tea, coffee and whatnot and really pushed the boat out with proper coffee sugar and even a couple of Appletisers (how expensive are THEY??) for guests. I’d already got some decent glasses from Morrisons (hold on, just gotta check the spelling of Morrisons – Google, yep, only one s) and all I needed now were some mugs. Now, since we knocked ourselves out and bought the assassins attache case of Pantone books and been given 10 free mugs we had a bit of a surplus back at the Grantham Fortress so I didn’t want to go spending more company money on mugs (God, what has Eddie turned me into!!!??) but I also didn’t really want the ones from Grantham either because the surplus is stored under The Ultimate Warrior’s “Viv” and they would have ponged a bit and I never really liked them anyway…so…I thought, I’ll get some of my odd ones from home and, you know, throw an eclectic spin to the Corporate British Refreshments protocol – show we’re human at Bretby and all that…

So, there’s a tiny kitchen around the corner from my office, safe enough to store my gubbins without having to go creating my own messy island of drinks making facilities in the actual office. If I’m being honest, I wasn’t entirely sure whether I was happy risking my coffee sugar, proper coffee and nice new glasses – let alone my own personal mugs somewhere some bandit could nick ‘em but I thought, sod it. The people I had met so far seemed alright and not the clepto sort – but you never can tell eh?

The next day (and well done to anyone still reading this) I noticed that, in the fridge, everyone was marking their milk with their office number. I hadn’t got a marker to hand and that would mean a round trip for a marker, which just seemed too much trouble – so I put mine in a corner and sort of marked my territory. It’s also important to note I had my own shelf in the cabinet above the sink too so not to confuse anyone of who’s is who’s. ANYWAY – and this is where it gets REALLY exciting…I came over to get a coffee and I have this really small mug which I can make mega strong coffee like my Polish nan does and…it’s fricken GONE.

Yeah, Way! I couldn’t believe it either. I looked everywhere but thought, well, if it’s gone it’s gone…but I really loved that mug…and so forth. So then the paranoia REALLY went up a gear. I started looking at my milk – seems a bit low seein’ as it’s only ME who uses it…. Then when I went back again later there were bits of posh coffee sugar (don’t know how to spell Demerara – and i’m not googling again) all over the shelf – SO THEY’RE AFTER MY POSH SUGAR TOO ARE THEY!!!!!????? CLEPTO BAST*RDS!

Just as the mug rage was reaching an unhealthy level I remembered I had made a black tea for the broadband guy who keeps calling me Clive the day before and felt like a complete eejit and calmed down a bit. But then there was still the milk, and the sugar mess. So the story lives on and it just made me think when I was making my brew this morning (and still puzzling over the sugar mess) why I should give a monkeys – I mean really – I’m all “life’s too short” and all that and then I’m occupying precious thought on such banal rubbish. AND I judge people that get all Gorrillas in the Mist over their mugs at other offices (oh yes, thank you Google I did mean Gorillas) – what a hypocrite!

So, there you go – probably the most fascinating piece of writing you’ve ever experienced eh?

If you want to leave a quid on your way out to pay for the heating that’d be great…

Bye!…love you

Scott