Graham Spencer DipM ACIM
188 Orchard Street, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 1DE

Telephone:	01243 531071 (home)
	01243 552121 (work)
	0776 449 6700 (mobile)
E-mail:	graybouk@hotmail.com

Date of birth:	12 May 1971
Nationality:	English
Marital status:	single
Full clean driving licence.

Profile

An enthusiastic and multi-skilled Marketer with broad experience of B2B and B2C business environments and e-commerce. Proven organisational, analytical, communication and problem solving skills. Computer literate.

Skills and competencies

• Skilled at developing, maintaining and improving good relationships with customers and suppliers;
• Publicity and promotion skills, including advertisement, press release and brochure authoring;
• Strong practical communication and presentation skills - regularly invited to give lectures and presentations to groups throughout the UK, as well as a presentation to 250 members of the Hardy Plant Society in Philadelphia, USA;
• Interview experience: have been interviewed for press, radio and television (including BBC Southern Counties Radio and BBC Gardeners' World);
• Exhibition experience, having co-ordinated promotional and sales stands at many local, national and international events up to and including the Royal Horticultural Society's Chelsea Flower Show;
• Proven event management skills, having organised more than twenty events attracting many thousands of members of the public;
• Web authoring skills: constructed one of the first websites in UK horticulture (www.croftway.co.uk) in 1996, and added e-commerce facility in 2000 which now accounts for 50% of all mail orders received;
• Experience of devising and monitoring sales and production targets related to the rapidly changing needs and wants of customers;
• Customer support experience;
• Selection and evaluation of potential new product lines;
• Compiling competitive quotations;
• Purchase negotiation with suppliers;
• Ability to work within strict budgetary limitations;
• Experience of small business accounting procedures, including tax issues and the operation of PAYE and VAT;
• IT literate. In particular, good working knowledge of:
  • website construction using HTML4.01 and CSS1
  • MS Word
  • MS Excel
  • MS Windows
  • MS Outlook Express
  • MS Explorer
  • MS FrontPage
  • JASC PaintShopPro
  • Macromedia HomeSite
  • Actinic Catalog
  • HLS (a specialist product-labelling package)

Employment history

September 1989 to date:
Croftway Nursery, General Manager

Day-to-day management of this small specialist retail nursery that is my family's business. Responsibilities include publicity, promotion, customer liaison and service, supplier liaison, web authoring, payroll and purchasing.

July 1993 to date:
Part-time event management

In addition to my main role as manager for the nursery, I also run a small number of annual specialist gardening events that attract several thousand visitors. These have been held at Pashley Manor (East Sussex), Parham House and West Dean Gardens (both West Sussex).

Education

September 1999 to June 2002:
Chichester College of Arts, Science and Technology (part time)

Chartered Institute of Marketing's Post-Graduate Diploma in Marketing.

1982 to 1989:
Saint Philip Howard High School, Barnham

A level Geography	grade C
A level Physics	grade D
O levels Maths, Physics, Technical Drawing	grade A
O levels English Language, English Literature, Geography	grade B
O levels Economics, French	grade C
CSE Latin	grade 3

Professional memberships

I am an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Interests

My interests include:

• music of all types, particularly alternative and urban;
• travel - particularly to European cities;
• art, especially abstract paintings and installations;
• modernist and post-modernist architecture
• cookery - my chicken in champagne and wild mushroom sauce is legendary!
• the Internet - exemplified by my marketing website which I set up to help with my CIM course: www.grayblog.co.uk/marketing.html;
• countryside and rural issues - I co-founded and was the first chairman of the Hardy Plant Society Sussex Group;
• reading of all sorts, ranging from contemporary novels to Wallpaper magazine;
• current affairs, particularly political and economic issues.

Referees

Details of referees are available on request.