Guinness World Record – official DJ relay world record attempt 27th May – Ministry of Sound – #mixinlondon

Posted on April 27, 2012 by sourcingteam

OneLife is a charity that focuses on youth development and mentorship, providing emotional and practical support to vulnerable young people in order to help them realise their potential. Working directly with local community agencies, established in 2009 and currently running nine regular workshops, the organisation’s ambition is to create another fifty-seven – giving two workshops in each of the thirty-three London boroughs. “What we do changes lives!

A sponsorship opportunity not to be missed! Great for targeting 18 to 45 year olds in London who love music and to club! A fantastic awareness opportunity to break a Guinness World Record – creating one long continuous DJ club mix, with each tune being mixed by a different DJ. Tunes to be perfectly beat matched – without musical clangs! The current record holder is BBC Radio 1Xtra.

The event, to be known as #mixinlondon, is to be held on the 27th May at the Ministry of Sound, where in the main room the official DJ relay world record attempt will take place, looking to smash Radio 1Xtra with a huge line up of top DJs. All sponsorship packages are in association with Guinness World Records (GWR) and give the opportunity for joint campaigns to boost sales, deepen customer relationships and capture a new audience. There are four exciting sponsorship packages to choose from, ranging from £500 to £10,000, with a global reach, live streaming from the event, marketing videos to run throughout the event and evening, Ministry of Sound and in their newsletters and mailers, 40,000 plus event flyers, local poster signage, coverage on five major billboards across London, VIP room on the night, complimentary tickets and so much more!

Don’t miss out – get involved!” Contact: Wayne Eldridge, Chief ExecutiveTel.: 07838 216 153. E-mail: wayne@danceaid.tv. or for tickets visit www.danceaid.tv

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The Sourcing Team Ltd…..Working towards sustainability, ethical working practices, environmental good practice, diversity and inclusion.

Posted on April 27, 2012 by sourcingteam

Here at The Sourcing Team we have a culture of continual improvement and development, involving our staff, our clients and our suppliers. We continually review our policies and procedures to ensure they are up to date and relevant to an ever changing world.

Environmental/Sustainability – As Silver members of The Mayor of London Green Procurement Code and ISO14001, we take our commitments very seriously. We look to purchase sustainably whenever possible and have annual targets for key environmental areas to ensure continued improvement.

Ethical Working – We work to the principles of the ETI Base Code and are members of Sedex. We ask all our core suppliers to sign up to our code of conduct and ensure overseas factories are audited on a regular basis.

Diversity and Inclusion- Our policies are robust and meet the needs of our diverse workforce. We encourage employment and continued development of all our staff regardless of colour, race, nationality, age, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation (including gender reassignment), marital status, disability or pregnancy. As a minority (female owned) company ourselves,we positively welcome enquiries from companies with a diverse workforce/ownership who wish to be considered for inclusion on our supplier list.

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The importance of ethical & environmental premium sourcing

Posted on March 20, 2012 by sourcingteam

I and my FD have attended some really interesting events over the last few weeks reminding us of the importance of our ethical and environmental premium sourcing. I think a big message for us is that we all have a big responsibility to take action within our own lives and businesses NOW! It reinforced our own supply chain management processes which whilst we believe are already robust – constantly need to be reviewed and updated in order to do the best we can in this area.

We heard some really inspirational and exciting stories about effective closed loop environmental practices and cradle to grave producer responsibility. Some exciting (whilst you would also say “about time”) positive action from the big players!

There are big challenges in helping us, businesses, consumers change our actions at home and at work to benefit the environment – prevent incineration and focus on recycling & reuse and reducing landfill. This takes collaboration (private & public sector) and education – mind-sets need to change and fast for the benefit of generations to come.

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Some recent general research uncovered some fairly useless but interesting little facts!

Posted on January 13, 2012 by sourcingteam

During various bits of research this week I have come across a few facts which I thought I’d share …

• Did you know apples are more effective at waking you up in the morning than coffee ?
• 1 recycled tin can would save enough energy to power a television for 3 hours.
• If you piled all the Cadbury’s Creme Eggs made in a year on top of each other, it would be ten times higher than Mount Everest!
• 80% of office workers now claim they find out more about what’s going on at work over a cup of tea than in any other way.
• During the Olympics up to 25,000 people could be transported to and from Stratford International Station each hour on the Javelin® train from St Pancras International station, in less than seven minutes.
• Tiny spiders have such huge brains for their body sizes that the organs can spill into the animals’ body cavities.

Mostly useless info but interesting all the same – The Crème Egg research was an essential tool for the smooth running of the office….!!

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bpma Winning Distributor Catalogue Cover of the Year 2011

Posted on December 22, 2011 by sourcingteam

The Sourcing Team were absolutely delighted to pick up the Catalogue cover of the year at the bpma Xmas lunch on Friday the 16th December. Gill Thorpe – MD stated “this has been our year of rebrand and the catalogue design was part of our agency brief! We loved it along with all the other fantastic work Darren & Leo did for us from the Engineroom – it’s great to see that others in the industry appreciated the simple but innovative approach, including the mid brochure case study tip in! Thank you for all those who voted for us!”

Speaking as president of the bpma the Xmas lunch was another fantastic event the team at the secretariat did an amazing job and it was brilliant to raise over £4000 for the the charity Get Kid’s Going – we have a very kind and generous industry and I am proud to be part of it! Merry Christmas all.

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Seasons Greetings from all at The Sourcing Team

Posted on December 15, 2011 by sourcingteam

Seasons Greetings from The Sourcing Team

 

 

 
Well can you believe we are nearly into the festive season!

So first of all a couple of dates for the diary – The Sourcing Team will be closing on the 23rd December and re-open on the 3rd January 2012.

If you need us to help you with your budget or, campaign planning for 2012 please do call +44 (0)208 288 8277 – the team will be delighted to help you.

Please also note that Chinese New Year (subject to the specific factory) is from the 20th January to 20th February – again, if you require any assistance with your Far East projects do contact us urgently.

This year our key charity has been Macmillan Cancer Support and again, thank you to all of you who have assisted with raising money for this throughout 2011.

Finally, thank you for your on-going support – we really appreciate your continued business and we sincerely look forward to working with you throughout what should be an extremely exciting 2012!

Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year!

 

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Our environmental achievements in 2011

Posted on December 15, 2011 by sourcingteam

The Sourcing Team are constantly striving to improve our environmental credentials – here are just a few of this year’s achievements:

Achieving Silver level on the Mayor of London’s Green Procurement Code

Switched to a ‘greener’ electricity plan which offsets 100% of the carbon emissions produced by our electricity consumption.

Continued to promote our environmentally friendly range which continues to grow both in number and choice

100% recycled white paper now used throughout the company for everyday printing.

Exceeded our ISO14000 targets for recycling – new targets set to ensure ongoing improvement

Regular staff meetings to promote awareness and knowledge of sustainable procurement and environmental issues.

Implementation of travel policy to promote wider use of public transport.

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A busy 2011 for The Sourcing Team – committed to our CSR

Posted on December 15, 2011 by sourcingteam

2011 has been a busy year here at The Sourcing Team  – however we take our CSR very seriously and here are just some of the highlights!

As you know, South London was in the news headlines for all the wrong reasons during August so we were thrilled to be able to  continue our support of One Life who do such great work across the South East working with young and old and helping bring communities together in a positive way.

We also contributed to the React Initiative which raises awareness in young people of drug and knife crime and other issues relating to public safety. Distributed to schools and support groups by the emergency services, this booklet is a really useful tool in keeping young people safer.

We have attended various charity dinners/events in aid of a variety of causes and will continue to support as many of these as we are able to next year.

Finally, we held our ‘alternative coffee morning’ in September and thanks to the generosity of clients, suppliers, staff and friends we raised a massive £2,227 ! This smashed our target figure and we would like to thank again, everyone who helped make this such a fun day and raise such a great total!

Next year we see the Diamond Jubilee and Olympic and Paralympic games on home soil – what a year to be part of such a vibrant, diverse community!

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“Every little helps!”

Posted on November 25, 2011 by sourcingteam

Having recently come ‘out of contract’ on our gas and electricity tariffs and as part of our commitment to sustainable purchasing we decided this time round to look for greener options. Although the scope for greener gas tariffs is somewhat limited there is potential for SMEs and larger companies to improve their green credentials when purchasing electricity. A useful tool can be found at http://www.greenenergyscheme.org/ , which is an independently verified site where you can compare tariffs. This is a certification scheme in association with Ofgem. It ensures you are buying energy from a renewable source and that the supplier is doing more than their regulatory obligations. We chose Easygreen from E.On which is certified as offsetting 100% of the carbon emissions produced by your electricity consumption. We are, of course also using this as an opportunity to reiterate to staff the importance of using less electricity by printing less, switching off computers, lights, printers etc and generally thinking more carefully about the electricity we are using. To quote a well-known grocery chain….”every little helps!”

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Reforms to EU public procurement laws to help SME’s!

Posted on November 16, 2011 by sourcingteam

Following a report by German green MEP Heide Rὕhle claiming that small & medium sized companies (SME’s) are disadvantaged when completing public procurement tenders, the Commissioner said that “simplification is the first priority” and / he would end the requirement to supply endless documents during the bidding phase – thank goodness! In place the bidders will have to produce a “solemn declaration” with only the successful bidder required to produce the documentation. It was interesting that he highlighted (presumably, across Europe?) that only 5% of contracts were awarded electronically and that steps were in place to increase e-procurement.

In addition, the “lowest price” criterion by which contracts are automatically awarded should be ended and “the most advantageous contract in terms of economic, social and environmental benefits” the recommended replacement. The report was formally adopted during the daily voting session on the 25th October 2011.

Public procurement back in February 2011 included within their proposals / that the prequalification process remains administratively burdensome, unnecessarily repetitive and a drain on resources and it seems that / the government is proposing to eliminate PQQs entirely for all central government procurements below £100,000.

In addition, Supply Management recently highlighted the EU Remedies Directive which took effect in December 2009 and is now starting to bite / with a sudden tide of litigation! Great – that to me means more cost to us the taxpayer in paying for legal cases.

Anything that helps simplify and speed up the overall tendering process is good. I sometimes feel the need scream very loudly here at The Sourcing Team offices when it comes to tendering for public sector business. I know many share the feelings – huge amounts of information at prequalification (PQQ) stage, the filling out of, in many cases, awful templates and that’s just to be get to the invitation to tender. Then the tenders themselves – and very often dates and feedback are not met or supplied after all that work? My concern for public sector is that they are missing out on some very exciting, innovative and “best value” suppliers because frankly, it’s made such hard work for often, not particularly valuable contracts. Sadly, the process doesn’t work for SME’s and it needs an enormous amount of change – ideally, led by someone who actually, understands the world of the SME.

“Fit for purpose” is what I think we all want to see – knowing our money is being spent wisely, and eliminating waste – for the bidders and the local authorities. Time is precious and there should be more respect for the time of an SME – Heide is on the right lines!

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