Wahanda goes stateside

I haven’t updated my blog in a while but its been a manic summer and I simply haven’t had a moment.  A big part of the reason for my silence was that we have been busy focused on the US launch of Wahanda.

Its only been 18 months since we first launched and 12 months since we went transactional so this first step outside the UK is a big step early in our history. The fact of the matter, however, is that the US is a huge unified market and we have strong ties back there through our investors and team.  Most of all, our suppliers and customers kept asking us when we were coming over.  They loved what we were doing in the UK and we hate to let our fans down!

Our launch coincided with our keynote presentation at the Spatec conference in Vegas which was really well received.  We launched with more than 3,000 US spas, salons and studios and more than than 8,000 worldwide.  That makes us the largest health, beauty and wellness website anywhere. Pretty cool.  Of course, we’re adding more all the time so watch this space.

We decided to launch the site without a spa voucher and a limited amount of spa day and spa break offerings but over the next few months those will build quickly.  Although we will continue to base our technology development out of the UK, the US is a core part of growth strategy and we will be building a strong team on that side of the pond.

The reality is that we simply don’t see other people doing and we keep getting a great response from suppliers and customers so we’ll keep pushing on.  If you see anything that can be improved on the US site please let me know.

Mary Gostelow and Wahanda

I recently had a chance to get to know Mary Gostelow at WOW Travel.  She is a legend in the travel industry and when you meet her you understand why — full of energy, enthusiasm and deeply knowledgeable of the industry.  She is exactly the kind of woman I really like… direct, too the point and really doesn’t fail to let you know where she stands.

Fortunately, the feelings are mutual and she shares a real enthusiasm for what we are building at Wahanda.  She recently published a great profile on Wahanda here.  We are going to following this up with a monthly spa feature in the WOW newsletter and she is going to write a monthly feature for Wahanda.

I get the feeling we will do lots of interesting things with us so watch this space.

Drilling verses renewables — No thanks.

For those of you who are linked to me on facebook you will have seen me post a couple of articles which highlight some of my frustration with the current energy debate in the U.S. My favourites are this one by Thomas Friedman and this one by Bob Herbert and both from the NYTs.

What I find so frustrating is that lawmakers are trying to make the debate about drilling binary — either drill or pursue renewable energy. Its not a binary decision and to structure an argument that way for political reasons is just appallingly bad leadership at a critical time.

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

I actually spent some time in northern Alaska, one of the places many would most like to drill. And overall, despite it being within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, I would be in favour of increased drilling to reduce dependency on foreign oil.

However, I know that increased drilling goes only a very small way towards reducing our dependency on imported oil and does nothing to reduce our dependency on oil as a whole. Therefore, I would only support it if it came with a long-term, binding and serious commitment from the federal government to reduce demand for oil and increase tax benefits for clean energies.

Many people will disagree with me that new drilling should be allowed at all in places like Alaska but in the context of concrete measures to reduce our dependency on oil, that would at least be a constructive discussion rather than what is happening today on Capital Hill.