Liz Jones is Credit Crunched in the end.....

lostinrates

fc123 wrote: »

I am shocked. £18K for a mattress? A Vested Interest mattress? :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

I am feeling a new book deal coming on. Poor woman has been crunched trying to save animals (including rats) and, so, has a new story to sell.

What's with the change of plan LIR? Are the sums too hit and miss?
We have similar issues. Do we return to indie retailing now rents have dropped? I am not so not sure. My head says 'no way' but my heart misses the freedom.

I'm still waiting woth baited breth about your last cliff hanger...will she won't she deal with the bad boys (I decided I would ).

No sums are fine, but other personal stuff.

Basically, life is short, and do I want to spend x % of the rest of mine applying for planning? I don't know. We looked at a big investment thing last week to, DH and my dad are keen, I really was, but life is short and {lir deletes the sort of stuff someone tapped her on the shoulder about with kind warning.} Things are fine, and perhaps I'm just having a wobble. If he conservatives got in and changed the planning the first day of term - and I doubt hats top of their agenda, I hope its not!- I'd go ahead, no doubt, because its something I really want, but I also just want to live.

hell, we might not buy a house at all! (chucky relax I think we will.)

vivatifosi

Based on fc's comments I picked up a Liz Jones article about life in the New Forest. I didn't realise until then that she bought Prada jodhpurs. I'm sure they are stylish, but who on earth goes riding in Prada jodhpurs? Very odd and very hard to feel either affinity to or sadness for. Still, thanks to fc to bringing her to my attention.

PasturesNew

fc, did you see the Tonight programme, er, tonight? They covered people building businesses from home, you don't need bricks and mortar to flog dresses :P

(I have such a way with words, don't I)

dopester

fc123 wrote: »

I am shocked. £18K for a mattress? A Vested Interest mattress? :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Looking at the Vi-mattress company last night, there was a find nearest retailer search-box. The closest store near me which stocks their gear was Arighi Bianchi. (Whom from my limited experience many home-owners enjoy not just buying luxury items from them, but also taking extra pleasure in having the neighbours see the AB van outside their homes making the delivery.) The Vi mattresses there I looked at went up to £15K.

Yet Kristian Digby tells of how he paid £18K for his.

I only allowed myself to go crazy on the two things that were most important to me,” he says — those being his sofa, which cost £6,000, and his Vi-Spring bed, which cost an indulgent £18,000.

Digby funded the build by taking £50,000 equity out of his old home on the site, raising an additional £100,000 by buying 20 properties at auction and flipping them. Sticking to ex-council properties, renovating some but not all, he sold them on in 2006 and 2007, making a profit of £5,000 or so with each sale.

“The market was moving so fast that sometimes I just put them straight back on the market without doing anything,” he says. “To be honest, it was just a paperwork exercise. I didn’t even see some of the flats I bought.”

http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/buying_and_selling/article6734064.ece

Note.. I now see Arighi Bianchi (August 2009) has had to make some cutbacks, with the curtain division hardest hit.


Job axe falls at Arighi Bianchi


'We were like one big family'

StiflersMom

Really horrible the way some people gloat at the misfortune of those who took a risk by doing something with their lives.

Still, it could be worse ... she could have been a STR moron

dopester

More from Liz Jones. Life is so unfair. :rolleyes:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1225842/LIZ-JONES-I-spend-money-hole-soul--Im-150-000-debt.html

carolt

What a strange woman.

Still, she gets paid loads for living like that and writing about it.

Jonbvn

Now I appreciate the reason the Victorians invented lobotomies. This sad woman (?) would be 1st in the queue......

fc123

PasturesNew wrote: »

fc, did you see the Tonight programme, er, tonight? They covered people building businesses from home, you don't need bricks and mortar to flog dresses :P

(I have such a way with words, don't I)

Gosh, Gosh..so many points.

I will googe this prog in the next couple of days. Sounds good. Our indie internet retailing feeds us and pays the CT X 2 houses for very little effort at the mo.

I am a bit spaced at the mo,

I left Brighton this am @ 7am and got back @ 10.30pm after spending a day retailing my product in Top of The Heap CorporateLand.

No, I didn't fizzle away as I worked into dust (a la circa 1953 Horror movie on werewolves or devil thingummies) but had to cover as son and OH (who does Sats) are away on a stag weekend and I really enjoyed myself. I have done the odd day before but today was heavy stuff.

You don't serve at all but people do spot 'the slightly older female' on the floor so assume you are a fountain of knowledge (which , of course, I am as I already researched where the exchange/refund desk has moved to, what new labels are in, where the loos are and other critical facts like
'How many things can you take to the changing room?'.
Of course, I can answer any Q about my own product in a blink but, in general, customers there only want to know 'have you got this on an 8?' and the price which is on the ticket.

It's Battery clothing retailing at it's finest and I love it for now.....maybe not forever tho'.
So different to what I have always done and the management team are superb.....really superb. I feel ashamed at being so scathing in the past about corporate employees as I love working with such enthusiastic, sharp people but thyey are ruthless to the core as there are targets and targets met, mean bonuses and they aim to manage the floor and all the individuals/companies trading on it to get 110% out of us.

OH did say the other day we should have done it a few years back when the opportunity arose but I turned it down , partly due to all the other stuff (work and family) and partly through some sense of Indie Worthiness....you know, revelling in being the anti corp Maverick type of thing.......but that doesn't pay the bills.

Back to lovely Liz.


I think I read her stuff cos I could have ended up like her...wizzy career, loads of money and wallowing in fashionyness except I met a working class lad and had a baby @ 24 and ended up living in a Nil by Mouth place. Couldn't work 24/7 if I wanted to be a decent wife and mum so had to find a compromise..........which meant doing as much as poss to get by but resulted in not being able to put in 100% to my work.

22 years later, I have more time but can't afford the fillers and botox to look as fresh as Liz as I still have one more child to get educated.....so, when I read about her pricey hobbies, I understand the gap they fill as I fillexd mine a long time ago.
No eating disorders, no pursuit of pointless luxuries and digging for sympathy for moi..oh no...fot the first time in my life I am quite content to actually be me and don't feel I've 'failed'.

Reading her columns just helps confirm the feeling.

Fashion is a shallow, trivial business on the surface but does underpin a core skill and can be very profitable for manufacturers......who are mainly off shore now.

Brain has just died now.......got to get a coffee...and I have to go back up to London tomo as no staff cover.

PaulW1965

£9 for a tube of toothpaste I ask you. I am not being funny but does anyone else agree she spent all that money and she's still.........well ugly and worse quite scary:eek::rotfl: