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About Us
The Village Directory is
very much a family business, it's run predominantly by
myself with help from my husband, our families also step
if required.
Four and a half years ago
I was a
commuter totally unaware of what was around me. We live down a country lane
between two villages and never receive anything unless it's delivered by Royal Mail. I had no idea what was going on locally, and I’d been living
here for 15 years. If ever I needed a particular service
for my home my only option was to look in the Yellow Pages,
but I wanted to use local
tradesmen and finding them amongst everyone else's
advertising was not easy.
I was aware of the success of small locally run
advertising magazines in the Midlands and I was sure
that with my years of IT experience and document design
I could do the same, so the
idea of The Village Directory was born.
We began the first
magazine for the Aldington Area
in July 2005, delivering to 3,000 village
homes. From the very beginning I
had decided that my magazine must be of high quality, I
wanted it to be valued by its readers and kept throughout the month
until the next one arrived. It was also important that
it wasn't simply a book of advertising, it needed local
content. I also
wanted it to reach EVERYONE and the only way to achieve
this in a rural area was to use Royal Mail. Initially I had to wait
for the delivery dates I needed with Royal Mail so my husband and family offered
to help me deliver the magazines. In June 2005 the first issue
went to print, that's when I panicked, the fear of what
I was about to do set in, but with a few supporting
words from my husband we crossed our fingers and hoped
that people would like what we were trying to do,
luckily they did.
For six months we
delivered the 3,000 magazines every month, searching out every letterbox
in the area. By the time Royal Mail took over it
had become difficult to pass a letterbox without
experiencing the urge to deliver a magazine. I don't
know what I would have done without the family, and in
these financially tight days all
they wanted was to be fed and watered at the end of the
day! My poor husband had the hardest job delivering to
all the rural lanes, he was on a mission to boldly go
where no magazine deliverer had gone before!
In addition to the
deliveries to homes and businesses we also drop off
magazines at locations where people can pick them up if
they haven't received one. These locations are
predominantly pubs but also doctors surgeries, village
shops and hairdressers etc. My father-in-law delivers
these to all our areas every month and enjoys a little
banter along the way.
With free distribution and
a focus on village life I hoped that the magazine would
help connect the community with their local tradesmen,
and through their advertising the local tradesmen would
in turn help fund the community pages, enabling the
community to
advertise local events and information free of charge.
It was and still is a balancing act, trying to provide
low cost advertising whilst ensuring that community
pages are provided and quality and reliability is
maintained.
The first magazine proved
a great success and received nothing but praise from
villagers and advertisers alike, many advertisers are
still with me from that very first issue four
years ago. The church, local
schools and charitable organisations could now
advertise their events to the community and anyone
raising money for charity could raise awareness with an
editorial. Editorial is also provided for businesses
when they first advertise or at some point during their
booking.
A year later we began our
second magazine in TN26 and now, four years on, we have
succeeded in covering every rural home around Ashford
and Tenterden. Without the support of our readers, and local business
we could not have done it,
my sincere thanks go out to everyone.
Debbie Allen
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