Spaceships Are Launched In The UK !!!
An interview with an alien…nope, that’ll be a Spaceship!
This week, I (TG) caught up with a Celia, Sales and Marketing Manager of Spaceships (CS) for a few cold bevies. Talk covered the snow down here in Queenstown and what she’d been missing while gallivanting around the UK this last month! Well, what we really really wanted to know was how the launch of Spaceships UK went!
Flexbibility of a car with more features than a campervan!
TG: right….welcome back! So, you’re home….
CS: Yeah, after a whirlwind few weeks in the UK we’ve just made it back to good ol’ New Zild - very, very, excited.
TG: Why?
CS: Well, I, Neil Geddes (Director) and another Spaceships NZ crew member went to the UK in mid-June with the full-on task to launch our beloved Spaceships (the Swiss Army Knife of campers) into the UK market.
TG: That must have been a huge undertaking?!
CS: Well, our spirits were high (thanks to the friendly flight crew on the way over) and we were fully equipped with Space knowledge and material, but in reality we didn’t know what to expect.
TG: Was it wise to be launching in a new market in the middle of a recession and a swine flu epidemic?
CS: Thankfully we managed to arrive at the start of summer after a wave of media reports on ‘Brits holidaying at home’, ‘Camping is the new cool’, plus the new trend of ‘glamping’ (glamorous camping) – a Spaceship is definitely more glam than slumming it in a tent.
Freedom to camp off the beaten track!
TG: Ok, in case there are readers out there, that aren’t familiar with Spaceships, could you sum up what Spaceships are in one breath?
CS: Ahhh, the web site…check out our web site! In a nutshell though, Spaceships were created as the modern interpretation of a Kombi van – everything you need, in a vehicle that is great to drive.
TG: Cool, right…, back to the UK.. I heard from Neil that you applied a little bit of clever pre-marketing to your launch?
CS: Yeah, we’d had amazing feedback from our ex-customers (people who’d previously hired a Spaceship in New Zealand and/or Australia…), so we sought out a few of these British travellers and offered them the opportunity to have the same experience in their own backyard!
TG: And??
CS: Brilliant! You see, while we were there we stayed in Canterbury - a gorgeous town (with the famous cathedral) about half an hour from the office. It was here that we really got excited. Once we got to driving around the small one-way lanes in Canterbury and Kent we realised that there was so much amazing scenery and historic places to see but you definitely wouldn’t want a bigger vehicle! And this is the sort of feedback we received from our test drivers….That Spaceships were a perfect fit!
TG: This must have been a like a huge sigh of relief for you?
CS: Absolutely! Although, sitting in Kent at our new office we received phone calls from ex-Space Travellers welcoming us to the UK saying how excited they were we were here! (We found this a bit stalkerish but very cool too!).
Think 21st century Kombi van, the swiss army knife of campers!!
TG: So the great NZ and Australian backpacker doing their OE can now expect to enjoy what the British have been enjoying here?
CS: Yeah, but we made another important discovery; There were so many travellers there and not just Kiwis and Aussies but French, Belgians, Germans, and Scandi’s and they were all in our target market!
In our little Australasian bubble we spend so much time targeting customers to come to New Zealand and Australia for their holidays, we thought our main markets would be Kiwi and Aussies living in the UK who knew our brand and were used to camping. Now we realise how much potential there is (partly due to the recession) of targeting both UK and European travellers for Spaceships UK who are looking for a holiday closer to home.
TG: Celia, many thanks for the beer and the chat…As Rove would say, ‘what’s the plug’?
CS: Spaceships are now available for hire to travel through the UK and Europe from £29 a day! www.spaceshipsrentals.co.uk
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