/digital

OK. KMI is now officially blogging. We've started with half a dozen blogs at shave.com/blogs, including founder Will King's, which has been going for years already.

My job here at KMI is to reset the company's digital strategy and relaunch the company's ecommerce platform at shave.com/store. Blogs are a vital part of the package: a way to get the company talking to the outside world and thinking about new ways to communicate with all our different audiences: customers, partners, retailers, distributors and suppliers.

It's been much more difficult than I expected. Setting up your own blog may take about ten minutes but doing it for a business is a whole different story. Setting aside the IT resource for a Movable Type install (our chosen platform), sorting out permissions and access, the legal stuff (which you honestly mustn't skip), policies and design all takes ages.

Then there's the tricky bit (which we haven't actually finished yet): explaining blogging to a frankly sceptical internal audience of potential bloggers, many of whom had never even heard the word, let alone tried it. Still, we are now live and, over the next few weeks, you'll see a lot of action here.

(the pic is a little Moo notecard I made to distribute round the office: some encouragements and some basic rules).

Listening to the radio on the way to a meeting this morning I heard about half a of a beautiful piano piece by Janacek called 'Along an Overgrown Path'. When I arrived in the West End I nipped into the quite awesome Harold Moore's Records in Great Marlborough Street (next to Marks and Sparks's back door).

Harold Moore's is eccentric and, I reckon, a bit forbidding. You have to leave your bag at the door, for instance. When was the last time you left your bag at the door? Anyway, the assistant asked if I needed any help. I said something like: "I'm looking for a Janacek piece I heard on the radio this morning..." and he said: :"Solo piano? Overgrown Path? I've got a second-hand copy" and beetled off to find it. Blimey.

So, of course, it turned out that the second-hand copy had gone but he's going to phone me when he gets another one. Two weeks ago I heard a quite amazing symphony by a Russian composer I'd never heard of called Gliere on the Proms. Obviously, the next time I was in town I dashed into HMR and said "there was a symphony by Gliere on the Proms last night..." and the lad said "Number 3. It's over here..." It was: and it cost £4! ($8).

I suppose the question that arises from this experience is "how can we duplicate this retail perfection in an online store that sells skincare, haircare and shaving goods? Good question. I'll get back to you.

The pic is Janacek himself, taken in 1928.