She has no plans to return to her previous job as office manager in a
She has no plans to return to her previous job as office manager in a national newspaper. But she has decided that running a shop takes more than she is able to give: now she has two young children, she wants her Christmases and evenings back.”Seventy-five per cent of the reason I’m selling is that I’ve got children; the rest because of difficult trading,” she says.Without a burning idea of her own, Ms Frazer and a business partner decided to try for a franchise They were accepted. As their first preference for a location had been earmarked by an existing franchisee, they opted for an inner-city location.Initially, in spite of the long hours and a bank loan of pounds 100,000 with a pounds 50,000 overdraft facility, everything was rosy: the business hit its sales targets and the partners opened another small shop for “economies of scale”.”It’s like being on a rollercoaster: once you get on, you don’t think it’s possible not to make it,” says Ms Frazer.But, then problems started. The franchisor opened a company-owned shop in a new out-of-town shopping centre. “We were down by the exactly the percentage they were taking,” she says. To boot, as they were making staff redundant because of appaling Christmas sales (this period normally accounts for 40 per cent of annual turnover), she unexpectedly fell pregnant. She and her partner struggled on, working constantly, until Ms Frazer became pregnant again in November 1994.
“The cost of going out to work was increasingly large,” she says, and put the shop up for sale.Ms Frazer is optimistic she’s now found a buyer who will be able to raise the requisite pounds 200,000 for the franchise and also meet the franchisor’s approval. “Perhaps I’ll try again at some other stage,” she says.Useful information: Running a Shop by Gary Jones, NatWest Business Handbooks/Pitman Publishing, pounds 11.99; NatWest Bank, among others, runs a Small Business Unit to provide help with start-ups and business plans; most towns have a Chamber of Trade which can provide information on the local market place.DOS AND DON’TSDo:- think hard: why do you want to be self employed?- take a course in financial management.- research your market carefully. Who are your customers? Is the market likely to change?- draw up a realistic business plan; remember that profit is what you’re left with after paying for everything.- shop around to raise your cash. Interest rates vary widely.Don’t:- rush into it- borrow money to buy all the latest technology before you know it’ll work.- rush into a property Ask yourself why the other person is selling.. The Beatles carried it off, and so did the Jackson 5.
If the test of a great pop group is how appealing they would look as cartoons, then Blur surely are the best new band in Britain. In the animated tales of Blur, singer Damon Albarn would be the chirpy, pretty boy who picks fights with Oasis, but always manages to scarper in time Bespectacled guitarist Graham Coxon would look puzzled. Whenever they were in a scrape, ginger drummer, and licensed pilot, Dave Rowntree would rescue everyone in his plane. Bassist Alex James would swig from a bottle of Dom Perignon without taking the fag out of his mouth. It’s not a far-fetched project: Blur are officially the nation’s sweethearts. Having won a record four awards at last year’s “Brits”, their album Parklife has still not left the top ten, and a new album, The Great Escape, went straight in at number one. They beat off arch rivals Oasis to have their first chart-topping single with “Country House” They’ve even had their own comic strip history in the Star.
The Adventures of Blur is bound to happen sooner or later.
In 1991, Blur were just another second-rate indie band with daft haircuts. After scoring their first top ten hit with the melodious “There’s No Other Way”, their debut album, Leisure, was something of a lumpen disappointment By 1992, Blur had been written off. Their descent was accelerated by a benefit gig they played for Shelter: having been upstaged by support band Suede, a drunken Albarn told the audience, “You might as well go home now, because we’re going to be crap.”And that’s where it should have ended. Second album Modern Life is Rubbish flopped, despite the band’s new Mod image, a revitalised capacity to write tunes and Albarn’s sharp, “Diary of a Nobody” style lyrics. Why then was Parklife – basically Modern Life part 2 – such a monster hit? If Modern Life is Rubbish was ahead of its time, then Parklife caught the post-grunge mood perfectly. Up until then, if a band wasn’t, as Albarn put it, “Nirvana, or Nirvana lite”, it had no chance of making it. By the time Parklife came out, teenagers had had enough of being miserable.
They looked at their big brothers’ Madness and Jam records and decided they wanted to have fun. Albarn became their figurehead and single-handedly made it glamorous to be British again.With The Great Escape, Blur have shed the laddish, “Britpop” tag, to become something altogether darker. Graham Coxon’s frenetic, discordant guitar work calls to mind not Paul Weller, but Syd Barrett. Damon Albarn’s lyrics are stronger, and certainly more sympathetic. “When the days seem to fall through you, just let them go”, runs “The Universal”. Thatcherite casualties litter the album, such as the protagonist of “Globe Alone”: “Because he wants it, needs it, almost loves it/He’s here on his own, on Globe Alone”. Blur, in their current incarnation, seem more humanitarian, more truthful, than any group around.
