My name's Philip Price, I am 28 years old and my business is photography, wildlife photography and wildlife photography tourism experiences.
Basically it's a day out, anyone can do it, we provide all the equipment, all people have to do is turn up. We give them a camera for the day, we give them tuition of how to use the camera, then we take them out to a 22-acre woodland site on the banks of Loch Awe, we take people out and they spend four or five hours taking wildlife shots, come back into the studio, we download our pictures into the computer, they get to have a wee look at their pictures, see if they like them or not, how well they've done, then we do a 45-minute photoshop tutorial, after which they get a print out of the best shot of the day and a CD to take away with them.
I used to be an environmental consultant and I used to preach to companies how to make their businesses greener. What I really wanted to do was run a sustainable business myself. I love being outdoors, I absolutely love watching wildlife and the challenge for myself was to create a business that combined these two things together.
We also, I was very lucky that my parents moved up to the region and had a bit of land on the loch front and it was a combination of all these factors that came up with the Loch Visions Experience and that was the day out, taking people into the woodland, showing them wildlife, and also selfishly I get to spend the day in the woods watching wildlife as well, so that's really really inspirational.
And the reason we've gone for this idea is by using the woodland that is the resource that we're creating income from so technically speaking it's sustainable because that woodland isn't getting damaged in any way and it's always going to be there. So for future generations there'll still be woodland there with all its wildlife yet we still manage to make a living from it in the present.
We have a massive range of different customers, my youngest customers been eight years old, my oldest customer was eighty eight years old, it's been phenomenal, we've had customers that have had disabilities, we've had customers that are serious award winning photographers, we've had a full range of different customers.
Basically the customer is anyone that fancies a good day out watching wildlife and trying to learn a bit about photography. Anyone that fancies doing that is going to come along and have a great time.
First of all I had to become a very very good professional standard wildlife photographer, I take my hobby of wildlife photography on to the next level.
Once I'd done that, and my level of skill was high enough that I thought I could then pass that skills on to other people, I then researched the market to make sure that this location near Oban, with its great tourism market, had the right type of tourists and the right number of tourists and the right type of visitors to come to my business to make the business viable.
So once I'd researched that we also had to research the competition, see what people can do in the region, see what people can do in the country and see if there's anything like our business in the market.
It turned out there wasn't. We are in fact the only company as I am aware that runs this type of full package day out doing wildlife photography which is a real motivating factor that really helped us in the decision to do the business and go ahead with it.
In Argyll we're very lucky because we're supported by the Highlands and Islands Enterprise and they do a three day business course that gives you the basics of business so I entered that course and did the three day course, they do marketing, book keeping, etc. and that was brilliant to give me a base on how to then build what I needed.
First of all what I did was I wrote a business plan to get the idea really cemented and get it in a position where you could take it forward, I needed to write a business plan and I did this while I was still working.
I also contacted other agencies like PSYBT that offer funding and support, and it's really their support I found most useful. Yep, the money is great but the support is excellent because there are people there that you can ask for help and that's what I did.
Once you've got the business plan therefore cemented through all this other help that you can get you just then follow the business plan so I just literally did what I'd written down that I would want to do, and that included getting a website up and running, getting leaflets printed, various things to get - buying equipment, getting the funding for equipment, getting the equipment set up, planning the day, planning how the day would work, going over problems, getting insurance, all these different things and because it's in a plan it breaks it down in little manageable chunks and it becomes a lot easier to do.
The first customer was an interesting one because it wasn't with all this great marketing with my leaflets and website like I thought it would be. It was actually word of mouth.
There was a local B and B who had a customer arrive, fancied doing something for the day, it was actually before I'd launched the business, so we weren't ready to take him.
But, the opportunity came up so we did it and it was a great success and I think the key point there really is that yep, you've got a business plan, try and stick to the business plan but don't be that rigid. If things, opportunities arise, then go for it. And that's what we did, and it was a real success.
After that, trade came in through the normal avenues like my website, like the leaflets, but what I also did to try and encourage trade to be a little bit different from the competition in the area, was I ran a stall in Oban and that was selling photographic prints, cards, things like that.
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