No-one really likes talking about themselves

But while I'm here I may as well...

Pizza. Sweets. Cakes. Curries.

I'll keep this short as it is the least useful part of most websites; usually just an exercise in filling up another page.
Following 15 years as head of marketing/marketing director roles in retail and QSR (in this case 2 pizza chains), I started working for myself in 2010.
Luckily I got a few clients quite quickly and one of them, Sleek MakeUP, asked me to project manage the building of their new e-commerce website. It turned out to be quite fortuitous for me and them, as the increase in online sales and being stocked by Superdrug meant that they were soon bought out by Boots. Not Superdrug.
The business areas I have worked in (and continue to do so) include freight forwarders, cosmetics, sweet shops, a cake shop, Indian restaurants, insolvency practitioners, solicitors, facilities management, construction, flooring, bathrooms, more pizza, leadership coaches, electric vehicle charging installers, normal accountants (not insolvency) and even a private GP!

Book editing

In recent years, my natural tendency to proof-read everything, whether I've been asked to or not, has led me to a place where I am actually now being asked to proof-read and edit books. It started with a New York-based, Aston Villa-supporting leadership coach, moved on to books by a cardiac specialist and now I have several edited novels under by belt. These range from time travel to serial killers to a novel about the insect world's secret service 'manned' purely by earwigs!


Building websites

Well everyone does these nowadays, but the trick is not the technical aspect of them but making them engaging, interesting, intuitive and, ultimately, 'sticky'.  In the case of the Mr Simms website (mrsimms.co) the biggest problem is having enough stock of the big sellers available online. The old Pareto Principle that, in retail, you get 80% of your sales from 20% of your products, has never been more true. Black Death Mega Sour anyone?

About me

Not a huge amount to say. One wife, 4 kids, no pets (apart from 2 ex-hamsters and 2 ex-goldfish), a love of sport, wine, coffee, (spicy) food, Led Zeppelin, Rachmaninov and Rush (guilty pleasure).


" My kids say ' you know what's funny dad?' and I hilariously, without fail, say 'goats in trees?' But that's because I still don't believe that goats can climb trees."

Simon Jarvis