Monthly Archives: August 2008

The 5 best restaurants for your perfect business event!

Leave a reply

Are you organising a dinner in London? Is it a business dinner?! Are you going to invite partners, clients or colleagues? In any case you need to find the most appropriate location. And the first things you need to decide (before the restaurant itself) are how many people you will invite and for what time of the day.

So here you are 5 tips for your perfect business meeting:

If you want to win over a small group of people (or a beautiful woman) the best place is The Sketch. Apart from the jaguar on the wall you can’t see anything from outside… it looks like a normal tea room but if you go with it you get to the hall you’ll find yourself akin to Alice in Wonderland. Strange pictures and sculptures and it has three different areas for different occasions. The ambience is as unique as the food and drinks! But if those are not enough: take a trip to the toilet, you’ll understand when you get there…

If you’re going for a big event you should check out the Skylon Restaurant. You can’t miss it, it’s inside the Royal Festival Hall, on the second floor of the Southbank Centre and it has an unparalleled view of the riverside. Here you can have three different kinds of meetings: a quiet lunch in a good brasserie, a smart dinner in a nice restaurant or a larger event in which you and your guests are the main stars.

If you are looking for a good lunch or dinner, in which the food will speak more than words, check out The Ivy. This restaurant offers a rich menu perfect for every taste and every season: good food for good people. Now The Ivy is a member of a larger group that includes Urban Caprice, the J Sheekey, the BamBoo and Scott’s.

If you want to surprise your guests, you should try the Hakkasan, it’s a dimly lit but smart Chinese restaurant hidden away just two minutes from Tottenham Court Road. It’s one of only two Michelin-starred Chinese restaurants in London and it offers gorgeous selection of dishes and tastey wines served with charm in a low-lit atmosphere.

If you are organising a fun and busy night the right place for you is the garden of the Victoria and Albert Museum. It may be a museum but it hides a lovely garden where you can host your guests, offering a canape dinner, live music and other surprises.

Would you like more suggestions? Would you like to be updated on offers and restaurants?! Use Top Table website and you won’t be disappointed. Let us know how you get on.

Postal procedure: all you have to know

Leave a reply

So you’ve signed up for a mail forwarding account with us and now you’re curious as to how exactly we handle your mail. Here you go:

  • Your mail arrives at one of our two available addresses, 145-157 St John Street, or 26 York Street (both in London).
  • Our dedicated post team then sort through the mail, separating it depending on size and weight.
  • All the mail is then sorted again and each piece of mail is stamped with the relevant 4-digit account number.
  • The mail is then placed in pigeonholes where it is ordered numerically. This is done to ensure that all your mail is sent out together rather than in multiple batches, saving on your postage costs.
  • Once ordered it is posted using our up-to-date database to your requested forwarding address, anywhere in the world. Once this is done we send you an email letting you know how many letters you are due to receive.

Remember, posting your mail isn’t the only thing we can do with it. If you are in the London area you can come and collect it (as long as notice is given to us) at our 145-157 St John Street address anytime between 9 and 5.30 Monday to Friday. If you choose this option we will email you letting you know that mail is ready to be collected. You can also have your mail scanned to your email address before we either post it on or you collect it. Finally, if you are not expecting a great deal of mail we can send it out to you once a week, also saving on the cost of postage. If in doubt, then browse the site or just email us at [email protected]. Ciao for now.

Time runs faster on a London watch

Leave a reply

Good morning and welcome back to your office and the London Presence Blog. The long weekend is over and here you are with some fresh news and information from London. With the Olympics now passed and the weather turning for the worse you couldn’t be blamed for thinking the summer’s over, however British Summer Time doesn’t end until 26th October when the clocks go back. Whilst you may gain an hour then, a busy week around here might feel like you’ve lost ten times as many. Having said that, the day after a bank holiday always drags like a ball and chain.

In London being in time often means beating the clock – but without persuing too many cliches about how ‘clocks run faster in London’ we can nevertheless outline that our city became a thriving community for clock-making at one time. The story of the London clock is old and obscure, and though it derives from a period as far back as the 16th century, it was primarily a French industry, developing in Soho at that time. Since then this tradition flourished in the 18th century when watchmakers operated in Clerkenwell, the home of your virtual office!

Of course this is the city of the great Big Ben clock, whose minute hand has pulled and pushed us in every direction since its completion in 1870. Peter Debaufre, Christopher Pinchbeck, Francis Perigal and James Short are just some of the most famous members of the Clockmakers’ Company. This industry also brought a number of inventions and improvements to the established design and mechanics of time-pieces.

To know more about the English clock story here an interesting link to its British history. In the mean time we will keep updating you on all areas surrounding your virtual office and London life, new and old. We don’t waste time at London Presence so keep checking our daily tidbits, don’t waste a second.

Bank Holidays in UK 2008 – 2009: take note of your days off!

Leave a reply

Are you ready for the long weekend? Maybe you’ve forgotten but next Monday is the last Monday in August… so it’s a Bank Holiday! Bank holidays are special public holidays that have been recognised since 1871 as days when banks were closed and that means no trading and no working in banks or offices. However, most museums and other public attractions remain open to profit from these holidays.

But remember, since your virtual office is in England your business will also abide by these dates as holidays regardless of where your post, calls and emails are forwarded to.

Here are the dates for the remaining holidays in 2008 and 2009: update your calendar now!

HOLIDAY DATE
Summer Bank Holiday 25th August 2008
Christmas Day 25th December 2008
Boxing Day 26th December 2008
New Year’s Day 1st January 2009
Good Friday 10th April 2009
Easter Monday 13th April 2009
Early May Bank Holiday 4th May 2009
Spring Bank Holiday 25th May 2009
Summer Bank Holiday 31st August 2009
Christmas Day 25th December 2009
Christmas Bank Holiday 28th December 2009

And now that you know we won’t be answering the phone on Monday, have a browse through some websites to get excursion ideas: for London go to visitlondon.com or if you are feeling more adventurous go to lastminute.com!

Enjoy! and see you next week!

Hail to the mail!

Leave a reply

9am on a Monday and the Royal Mail bags come down. Not the most exciting occurrence you may think but these large grey sacks maybe, just maybe contain the hopes and dreams of a brand new company. A weekend’s worth of mail ready to be sorted and sent on to the rightful owner. It’s quite a responsibility.

Perhaps it was the business card given out at the conference last week, the pen left behind after a meeting, maybe even the website. Who knows? But somehow, someone has got hold of the business address and the company is now “live”, dealing in the currency of hard mail.

Now working in any postal department may not be the most glamorous job in the world (it did after all give birth to the phrase “going postal ”) but to see a company grow can give a real level of satisfaction. Once that business address is out there the floodgates are open and watching that trickle of mail turn into a torrent, feeding the company opportunities gives almost a sense of duty. If the mail is the lifeblood of a company we are the veins.

Okay, enough of the whimsy. The truth remains though that mail remains an integral part of any business so the importance of every piece of mail must never be underestimated. One man’s junk mail is another man’s unique business opportunity and with email accounts being clogged up with more spam than Tesco, operations are reclaiming direct mail as a tool to get across their product, engage their customers and make all new business connections.

So the moral of the story? Don’t underestimate the power of your mail, sending or receiving!

Reports on a fraudulent company…

Leave a reply

It has been brought to our attention that SOS Master Tickets, a company that subscribed to our mail forwarding service are fraudulent, as reported on BBC.com earlier today.

As soon as were made aware of the situation we terminated their service with us and have offered our full cooperation to Islington Council’s Trading Standards.

London Presence acts as an agent for the companies that use our services and is not responsible for any activities of our clients. We pride ourselves in assisting new companies and so abhor any company of this ilk and would like to stress that we do everything we can to ensure all companies dealing with us are fully legitimate. Any company contradicting this will have their services stopped immediately and details handed over to the authorities.

This particular case (SOS claimed to be selling music festival tickets) resonates throughout our office as music is a passion shared amongst us all at London Presence.

If you are made aware of any company operating fraudulently, please do not hesitate to contact Trading Standards.

Welcome to Clerkenwell

Leave a reply

If you were to find yourself strolling in Clerkenwell there are some lovely sites and historic areas surrounding your virtual office in the Borough of Islington. Clerkenwell is an area of rich history: it first became an area of notoriety in the Middle Ages when the parish clerks performed mystery plays, particular theatre shows based on biblical themes. Though the name derives from that period, it is also known as Little Italy, because – as the name suggests – it was a settling area in London for Italian immigrants for almost a century from the 1850s to the 1960s.

Located in the epicentre of four tube stations (Farringdon, Barbican, Chancery Lane, Holborn) and two rail stations (Farringdon and Barbican), Clerkenwell has very quick and easy connections to all parts of the city. Though it is primarily an area of business, you can find plenty of deli/sandwich shops, restaurants and bars, as well as one of the superclubs of London – Fabric on Charterhouse St.

The area is famous for the old village in its heart, between St. James’ Church and Clerkenwell Green – a park without grass for over 300 years, where Four Weddings and a Funeral and Shakespeare in Love have been filmed and Oliver Twist learned to pickpocket! The Eagle on Farringdon Road was the first gastropub in London and opened in 1991 to start the trend. The Clerkenwell is an excellent restaurant and also worth visiting for good food – a great place for a business lunch! Clerkenwell is the perfect place to live and work – Daniel Defoe knew this in the 1700s, as does Zaha Hadid knows it very well right now. There is a significant political past to the area surrounding Clerkenwell Green as noted by Wikipedia. Here’s an excerpt from the page:

“Clerkenwell Green has historically been associated with radicalism, from the Lollards in the 16th century, the Chartists in the 19th century and communists in the early 20th century.[1] In 1902, Vladimir Lenin moved the publication of the Iskra (Spark) to the British Social Democratic Federation at 37a Clerkenwell Green, and issues 22 to 38 were indeed edited there. At that time Lenin resided on Percy Circus, less than half a mile north of Clerkenwell Green. In 1903 the newspaper was moved to Geneva. It is said that Lenin and a young Stalin met in the Crown and Anchor pub (now known as The Crown Tavern) on the Green when the latter was visiting London in 1903. In the 1920s and 1930s, 37a Clerkenwell Green was a venue for Communist Party meetings, and the Marx Memorial Library was founded on the same site in 1933. Clerkenwell’s tradition of left-leaning publication continues today, with The Guardian and The Observer having their headquarters a short walk away – although both papers will move to Kings Cross in 2008.”

London Presence however is not affiliated with any radicalist party today (!)

For more information on the area go to the Wikipedia page here.

From London to Beijing and back

Leave a reply

Monday 18th of August 2008: only 4 days until the end of the Olympics in Beijing. Only 4 days to win the last medals. China is still at the top of the medal tally with 37 golds, 14 silvers and 14 bronzes – an insurmountable task now for any other nation to equal. Following USA, Great Britain have 12 golds, 7 silver and 8 bronzes, placing us on the third step of the podium, all the while studying how China is managing the Games and how the Chinese economy will be and is already growing on the Olympic wave. But the question is will the crest be as equally insurmountable for Great Britain when we are thrown in the deep end?

Some have marked this as the Asian Century – the Chinese power has grown and will continue to grow, followed by India and the countries of the Gulf. Though the Western powers are fast being overshadowed by the growth of the economies in the Orient, one way in which this has been marked is in the Occidental interest in Asian shares. Even if the market is volatile, Asiatic opportunities are new. And new spells potential for investors.

Open your eyes, be updated about new events and politics. The Times explored similar ideas in a recent article entitled ‘how to invest in China‘. We want to underline the importance of the Games and the broad importance of the next Games in London for London as well as for the Europe. Unfortunately we do not have enough column inches in our blog to go into the necessary detail appertaining to how your business will benefit from the Olympics come 2012. But take it from us, you do not want to miss out on not only being the host nation but the host city. Make damn sure your business is active from London and be ready for it!

For more information on the upcoming Olympics, here is the place to go: www.london2012.com. We’re going to be ready for it, make sure you are too.

August in London: is business on holiday?!

Leave a reply

Far be it from us to discuss the weather at every possible moment, however when it’s sunny here in London we may indulge ourselves from time to time. Like now. August’s a slow month for most businesses and with the Bank Holiday approaching, it’s a tough time to be thinking about work for everyone. Of course we will be here throughout the holiday and sporadically sunny period and you can rest assured that we will be looking after your business if you’re sunning yourself in tropical climes. If you’re not as lucky as some and are unhappily restricted to the urban confines of Londinium, then heed our advice and go along to one of this weekend’s many festivals of the summer:

Beautiful Days – Escot Park – music event

Who’s playing? Squeeze, Supergrass, Levellers, Alabama 3, Nouvelle Vague, Turin Brakes, Stiff Little…

Bloodstock Open Air – Catton Hall – music event

Who’s playing? As I Lay Dying, Communic, Alestorm, Cloudscape, Evile, At The Gates, Crowning Glory…

V Festival Chelmsford – Hylands Park Chelmsford – music event

Who’s playing? Muse, The Verve, Stereophonics, The Kooks, Maxïmo Park, Alanis Morissette, The Zutons…

Shoreditch Festival 2008 – Hackney – music and performances

From 16 to 24 August 2008, cultural and physical activities in a wonderful programme to chill out in Shoreditch Park

CREATE08 – Olympic Boroughs –  music for carnivals and community street parties, but also art galleries, theatres and exhibitions to enjoy ’til you drop.

Watching the Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing and waiting for the Olympic Games 2012 in London, CREATE08 hosts several events to enjoy and relax to get ready for the Autumn.

Tesco: an example of British success

Leave a reply

Hello! Welcome back to our business blog. Do you need to do your food shopping? Here in London you can choose from supermarkets such as Sainsbury’s, Somerfield, Waitrose, Marks & Spencer and Tesco: there are stores everywhere, open everyday (also 24 hours per day). From getting to know London, it’s easy to understand that Britain’s largest supermarket chain is Tesco and why it has been able to spread abroad.

In fact, the UK company will open its first site in Mumbai by the end of 2009, investing millions to be able to open in Delhi, Bangalore and the surrounding areas as soon as possible. This news represents a new direction in the expansion of british businesses into Eastern economies.

Next to the big licensed chains, London also has Indian, Pakistan, Chinese and Thai shops to offer, and in the same way in few years the biggest Indian cities will host several british shops. So, European companies start to export their brand to developing countries. In our evermore globalised economy, these countries are rich markets into which new business can expand; Sir Terry Leahy, chief executive of Tesco, said: “This is another exciting development for Tesco. It complements our entries into China and the United States, giving us access to another of the most important economies in the world.”