It’s lift-off for our Christmas launch

Friday, August 21, 2009 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Retail sector | Tags: business, entrepreneur, Ros Simmons, women in business, VIE at home, Virgin, Christmas, event, launch, events company, production company

Ros Simmons, CEO, VIE at home: I’m here at our Christmas launch , where we’re putting the finishing touches to the big day. I’m afraid that I am a control freak when it comes to running events such as these…

I approved scripts two weeks ago, saw a quick run-through with each presenter to ensure the content and slides work together, and checked that they were projecting their voice and emphasising the right words and statements. Fortunately, rehearsals have gone very well – our presenters could be on TV, they are such professionals.

For all our major events, VIE at home uses a production company and an events company. We have used both for a long time: WRG and also CMM, who know us inside out, and are part of the team.

And the whole team really does pull out all the stops.

With so much recognition to present – more than 400 different gifts, making sure the names are spelt correctly (and pronounced correctly) – part of putting on a successful event is making sure we look at all the finer details. Our attention to detail is something we are very proud of.

But, importantly, ensuring everyone who attends our events goes away with more knowledge, more enthusiasm and more passion to succeed is testimony to whether we have been successful on the day itself. I have every confidence having seen all the presentations that we will achieve this.

I’m off to have dinner now with some of our top promotional winners, who I know will be teasing information from me on what we have up our sleeves on the day itself. And all will indeed be revealed next week!

You can catch up on Ros’s previous posts from our Entrepreneur’s Diary series, in which we follow a male and a female CEO to discover what life is like behind the scenes of their business.