About
history, philosophy, propaganda...
"At Clarity, our cups are neither half full
nor half empty. The cup has twice the required capacity."
To be on the Safe Side... This page is
written as a personal opinion article by JD - The founder and still
to this day the Supreme Dictator. If you find any of this offensive
or unprofessional, well gee - that really is a tough break. You're
free to close the window at any time.
Tea Break Alert! A refreshing drink
might be called for while you read this lot...
 For all our posturing
and jolly statements about how much we love your cash, and how you
should be begging us to let you buy
our wares,
there's a very real little business behind the light-hearted facade.
If we're to succeed in our plans to take over the world and enjoy
a comfortably wealthy retirement, it's going to need an army of
happy customers. So we need you to be happy with the whole Clarity
experience. We need you to tell your friends and associates our
website address, and we need you to feel that we're worthy enough
for you to recommend. Most importantly, we need you to come
back to us in the future and buy
from us again.
We've got lots of really great customers these days, many of whom
can now be counted as actual friends. It's honestly very warming
when people thank us for good products, excellent services, or just
for making them chuckle.
And when somebody says "A friend told me about you guys and
said you were good, so here I am" - Stuff like that makes it
worth getting out of bed in the morning. Oh, and the money. 
Whether you're already a client or not (yet!) - if you've got a
couple of spare minutes, let us know what you think of our website,
our presentation, even our broken links or mistakes. Praise or Whinge,
all are welcomed and read by the Hierarchy. Just a regular old email
is perfect, none of this filling-in-a-form-on-a-web-page nonsense.
(I'm sure I'm not alone in my contempt
for those pesky web "contact" forms - half the time they
don't work {which you only find out AFTER you've type a page of
stuff into it}, half the time they never get answered, and yet another
half the time it's a bloody annoyance that you don't get any record
of what you've mailed - obviously designed by boffins who can't
grasp the concept of User Experience...)
We get asked about the website fairly often, so here's
the site credits if you're really nosey. Bottom line, it's a
simple home-job, but it does the trick. Fast loading, no crappy
Flash Intro's (Does this mean anything to you too? "Skip Intro!
Skip Intro! just show me the ****ing site dammit!") 
In the beginning...
Want some history? Clarity coalesced from the ether back in 1998.
In its original incarnation, it was given form by a disillusioned
employee of DX Communications who felt the moral and professional
standards of his co-workers were often a little lacking, (what kind
of "impartial advice" depends on which network is paying
the highest commissions for that month...?), who found himself working
surrounded by thieves (provable and documented should anyone feel
like chancing a lawsuit, hehe!) and who reckoned he could do the
same thing on his own but with better products, prices, personality,
and of course some actual honesty and decent moral values.
Right from the outset, Corporate Bollocks has been forbidden here.
No redefining our paradigms to leverage synergistically focussed
values in a solution driven, dynamically evolving arena for us,
no sir! For a small time-out read at some truly classic Corporate
Bollocks, peruse this.
Clarity is a small business borne of fun and personal interests.
It exists, and always has, purely as an enjoyable way for those
whom it pays to earn a living, and that's how it will stay unless
it's bought out by some bigger company, providing an instant comfortable
retirement for all involved.
IF we were established
in the 1950's we'd be able to show you a library photograph
of founder and Chairman Emeritus, Doctor Clarence Touche illustrating
the underlying purpose, mission and philosophy behind the Clarity
organisation.
If we did, and if such a person ever existed, that picture would
probably look like a lot like this. |
Evolving
The offhand style of much of this site is itself an evolution
from people's ongoing reactions to it. We're well aware that the
odd person might think it unprofessional, but to be blunt, sod them.
You hear me?
The sheer volume of pleasant and complimentary mails and comments
we get illustrating how people like dealing with our style and atitude
is more than enough to prove it's a Good Thing. You can't please
all of the people all of the time, They say. Well, so be it. So
we choose to please the people who can have a smile. For those people,
we'll go several extra miles. For the rest - well,
we'll manage to get by without their money,and we hope the door
doesn't hit their arses on their way out of this site. 
Sticking with "evolution," the last couple of years saw
a giant shift in the core mail-order business of this website, away
from mobiles, which sadly were becoming ever more tedious and ever
less profitable. You can thank Asda and Cellnet for that if you
recall your cellular phone market history... On a hunch, we dabbled
with selling some parts and equipment used by our own telecom/network
installer partners in the field, and the take-up on broadband internet
gear was surprisingly encouraging so we moved things fairly quickly
in that direction ourselves. What really triggered the final complete
direction change was our landmark acquisition of BT's ADSL adaptor
in early 2002 - until then it was a bespoke BT part never made available
for sale publicly and only ever supplied within BT's own private
internal logistics machine to BT's own engineers for installing
ADSL. Yep, it was us, thanks to Clarity and Clarity alone, you can
now buy what was an impossible-to-get product. I'm so proud of that
little chestnut!
Beards were specially grown so that they could be stroked in contemplation.
The BT corporate equipment supply channel was duly snooped, researched,
and finally found out - then the actual manufacturing company who
had the BT contract to make them was plead with and begged to allow
us to sell them. Things have come along nicely since then, but there's
also been frustrations too, for a small operation lacking vast corporate
capital to throw at manufacturers. See HERE
for a humourous and enlightening read about that - beware, there's
swearwords and bitterness...
This wasn't the first time an additional kind of product has been
successfully dabbled with over the years, although not to the same
degree or with the same powerful results as ADSL installation hardware;
A couple of years ago, it was noticed that the vast majority of
the people who bought from us were professionals, techies, or student
types, and that the whole Sense Of Humour thing seemed to be a common
bond. Good humour, creative minds, disposable income... hmm... In
short, people of a like mind. We started to dabble in some products
which we got a feeling would be compatible with a significant proportion
of the clientel we attracted, and sure enough products like the
Driving "aids" and our BB guns have done alarmingly well.
Not so much with the girls strangely... We'll have to see what we
can do about that then...
Honesty, Integrity, and Other Buzzwords...
For all that we like to try new things that might appeal to the
kind of people who trade with us, we only sell products which we
actually believe are good. If it's on this website, that's as good
an indication as any that it's not crap. And if there's ever an
item we feel is still worth carrying but which isn't top-class,
we're not afraid to say so either. Neither do we let profit come
before good advice. Honest, guvnor. Hey, it might sound corny, but
real world experience has definitely convinced us that if we lose
out on a sale because we gave the correct advice which excluded
our own products, the punter remembers that honesty and help, and
we'll see them again some time in the future. And probably some
of their friends too.
Marketing
A vast chunk of our business comes from existing customers, and
people to whom they've recommended us. In our first whole year of
trading, we used no advertising whatsoever, and still use very,
very little. Yet still the business is stable and growing. Surely
that's good.
So word-of-mouth and referrals from customer to customer provide
most of our new recruits to the Clarity Legions. The great thing
about that kind of business is that the advertising is free, and
the new customer is more confident and relaxed with us in the knowledge
that their friends have already tried us out and liked us. We want
every customer to recommend us to their friends, family, and colleagues.
At this point, let me just remind you of the snappy website address
again - it's www.clarity.it.
Perhaps you'd write it on the back of your hand so you remember
to mention it to all and sundry? Thanks.
We despise spam e-mail (the Scourge Of The Net) and if you're ordering
from us you'll notice the absence of a "we may pass your details
to trusted companies who may have goods or services of interest
to you" tickbox - because you're OURS, and OURS alone. I would
further elaborate thusly; "They'll have to wrench my customer
database from my cold, dead hands!"
Indeed, there's a thing on the ordering page that asks for permission
to keep your e-mail address on file so we can e-mail you about any
wonderous new developments, and it also says such mails will be
few and far between. It's true, there hasn't been one in over six
months. You'll only hear from us if it's significantly worth mentioning.
Clarity's Guru Wullie processes a letter containing negative
comments via the "Whinge-Gone 9000" Customer Feedback
Analyzer. This customer can be sure their feedback has been
given the attention it deserved. |
We listen to everybody.
Feedback is always welcome, whether as comments during ordering,
or direct emails. We don't ask for comments because it's "the
done thing" like so many others do - every last comment is
read by the people who need to read them, not a
processing droid. Most will also get a human reply. The proof has
already been in the eating of the pudding so to speak, because Clarity's
current business form has evolved over the years based on client
comments and suggestions as well as our own formidably brilliant
creativity. And not being a huge faceless corporate, you can be
sure that all comments are read by the Hierarchy, usually to the
accompaniment of coffees and cakes in the War Room.
Real Customer Service
We practice Real Customer Service. We're thinking about registering
a trademark for that. Real Customer Service means common sense,
respectful, realistic business and total fairness for everyone,
including us. If a client has a problem, we're more than happy to
help as best we can, and usually manage to go well beyond expectations.
But the door swings both ways around here. We've been known to decline
to trade with stroppy, arrogant or rude people, because we CAN.
If somebody obviously breaks something and tries to claim it was
faulty, they can sing for it. We're nobody's fool. Just because
you can get away with it elsewhere, don't expect it here. Every
penny comes out of somebody's pocket in a business this size, and
it's probably going to be mine.
Business Practices
Every business should consider using operational practices which
make sure that people are held accountable for their individual
failures when they happen, to see that the individual responsible
is told what a clown they are right to their face for shaming their
company in the eyes of the customer, and to see that the said errant
employee is made to buy the Round Of Shame at the pub or similar.
Why, just last week I was appointed Coffee Bitch for the remainder
of the week, (circumventing the traditional squabbles over Who's
Turn It Is) as a tangible penalty for a miserable Faux Pas of mine
that resulted in a guy's package not being sent out as promised.
Anyway, enough about us...
Don't be so damned lazy
Talk to us! Email your
comments now!
E-mail addresses are here.
Flattery and praise are revelled in, criticism and insults cause
pouty lips and frowns, but are nonetheless digested to see if we
couldn't maybe change something to stop it from happening again.
And don't worry, we won't publish your writings anywhere, although
we DO reserve the right to print out your email privately, scrunch
it into a ball and play some kind of Throwing A Ball Of Paper Around
game with it.
Written as a personal opion article by JD
- The real founder and still the Supreme Dictator. If you find any
of the above offensive or unprofessional, that really is a tough
break. You're free to close the window at any time.
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