Greetings from Spain.

Last week I was telling you about the blooming flowers and busy busy resort of Whitby.. You can read it here.

It's almost the end of May, and it's almost the end of May :) - so hard for Mrs May, she was given the impossible mission, drank the poison chalice, never gave up when everyone else did. Finally, the rock and the hard place meet. 

Whatever you think of Brexit you have to give her credit for her grit and determination.

Regular readers will know we have a sister company in Spain, AW-Regalos, you will have read over the years tales of Carlos our business partner here and his talented team.

Dear friends, customers and readers. Take my earnest advice: If you want to put your trust in someone in business, for goodness sake ALSO get a contract drawn up.

Actually, I do a lot of business with a lot of people, mostly on a handshake and an exchange of emails. It mostly works because mostly my judgement of character is pretty good, but we all can make mistakes, or people can of course change.

I met Carlos at the wedding of good friends, a Chinese couple, they had invited us to China for their wedding, my first time in China. I was introduced to this charismatic good looking young Spanish guy, Carlos - and we immediately hit it off. He was in partnership with the Chinese couple, in a giftware wholesale business in Spain, in Malaga. To cut a long story short, the company wasn't doing so well, it was practically bankrupt, and I ended up helping out. We took a 66.6% stake, bailed it out - put in AW products and marketing systems and quickly turned it around. I would love going to Malaga (often with UK team members), our team working with the lovely Spain team, developing new ideas making things happen. I loved experiencing the different business cultures, getting involved in the products that work better here, eating sardines and enjoying relaxed Spanish live style. It made for many an interesting newsletter :)

So what happened? 

It started to go wrong (I think) at the point I gave Carlos shares to make him 50% owner and also sole administrator (like MD) in 2006 on trust with no contract...  By this time the company was pretty healthy, looking like it would soon pay back the capital invested by AW UK, and start to make a contribution to the greater good at AW. Of course, it didn't work out like that.. after 13 years of patiently waiting, asking nicely, requesting openness and honesty..  right now it is looking like the end of the road.. despite trying everything I can think of to build bridges, even extending extra credit.. and this being abused. Carlos took the credit and then stopped buying from AW and stopped paying AW 6 months ago. So it was bound to end in tears.

I really understand how Mrs May feels.. she is having a hell of a job making something happen and it's just not happening.

Maybe I will tell you more of the sad story next week..  I still hold out for a happy ending.

All you need to know for now is that the AW in AW-Regalos no longer stands for Ancient Wisdom.. at best a bloody.. Awful Waste..  

We have this week launched AWGifts.es (direct from UK) so that our Spanish customers can still have access to AW products, and even though it's still work in progress a veritable flood of customers are registering, and orders coming already. 

More information here.. looking for 

MOVING ON...

It's another Bank Holiday.. hopefully, it is going to be successful and sunny.. 

Spring Bank Holiday in the UK.. the official start of Summer I always feel.. 

Lots of stock in this week, including Soap Flowers back in stock.

More news next week.

take care

David