Category: Guest post

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A seagull and some glass business

A woman in a long red dress and black shoes standing on Scarborough beach. In the background is the back of the Grand Hotel, cars and seagulls.

A little over three years ago, Richard and I went on a trip around the UK delivering and buying window glass. I wrote about this in a previous guest post for this blog, A librarian on a glass trip. While that trip was a holiday, it was very much a working holiday, with many stops collecting treasure. More often, business trips that I join Richard on are rather more holiday, just with some occasional glass related stops. This late May bank holiday weekend, and school half term, has been one of these holidays, with enough glass related anecdotes that we though another blog post was in order.

Holiday destination

The destination for this holiday was Scarborough in North Yorkshire – a long way away from our home in North West London. After seeing our children off to stay with grandparents (much appreciated!) we were on our way.

No holiday with Richard involves going directly to your destination… we stopped off in Headingly, a suburb of Leeds, to collect this piece…

A damaged leaded stained glass window panel. It has four pontil roundels and the border is a variation of figure rolled glass including lustre.

…that he’d had his eye on for a while. Parts from this are for sale in the roundels, coloured panes and borders categories. The profits will contribute somewhat towards the diesel. It was the only purchase he had arranged before we set off, so could well have been the only contribution. Before he had this arranged he was a bit down, feeling the lack of a glass purchase or delivery – as was I too be honest – I do like the excitement of glass pick-ups.

The Grand Hotel

I am not one for organising holidays, and within reason don’t mind too much where I go – as long as I can have a break from work and cooking and so on, and a chance to read my book. Somewhere with history to explore is a plus. So I am happy for Richard to come up with ideas on where to stay, and make suggestions for me to agree to.

Scarborough was his idea, and I was immediately hooked once he told me about a Britannia hotel he’d found on a discount website, The Grand Hotel. The hotel we stayed at in Liverpool on our trip in 2023, the Adelphi, is a Britannia hotel. These are not luxury hotels anymore, but they are hotels that used to be grand in years gone by, and therefore have interesting history and architecture to explore.

A woman in a long red dress and black shoes standing on Scarborough beach. In the background is the back of the Grand Hotel, cars and seagulls.

Despite not specifically paying for a sea-view, we were lucky enough to be allocated a terrace room, with a brilliant view of the beach, and soundscape of waves or seagulls (depending on the time of day). Richard got rather obsessed with this regular visitor…

A seagull standing on a window ledge in front of a sash window which is slightly open. In the background is a car, lamppost, beach and sea. On the internal side of the window is a radiator.

But on a more glass related topic, we did spend quite a bit of time pondering how often the seaside windows get cleaned, and considering the challenges of cleaning large numbers of high-up windows in an environment popular with sea birds!

We explored the hotel, which has 12 floors (for the 12 months of the year – one of many interesting figures learnt reading the history page of the Britannia website), on the lookout for interesting glass. We were not disappointed, as we discovered this window, containing figure-rolled glass, viewed from multiple floors overlooking the lobby. How many people would spot the value and history…?

An electric chandelier with lit light bulbs and a window at The Grand Hotel in Scarborough overlooking the lobby. The window has 19 panes and the frame has a circle in the middle.

We got a better view the more staircases we climbed, it was only on looking at the photos, with a proper close-up view, that Richard realised most of the panes were not hammered, but something else entirely. The “star” panes are also a rare find and he doesn’t know what they are called either.

A variety of figure rolled glass panes in a window.

In the hotel dining room, where we spent significant time due to the deal for our two day stay including breakfast and a buffet dinner, I noticed these leaded light dividers all around the room. Richard was initially dismissive when I pointed them out as he is used to seeing cheap modern versions of this kind of thing in pubs. But he took a closer look and decided they were well made. Being around so much nice intricate glass he does sometimes forget to notice functional pieces like this.

Richard would be interested to know if there’s a more accurate architural term for this style of “partition” leaded light?

Glass in Scarborough

The Grand Hotel wasn’t the only reason to visit Scarborough. After a trip to Scarborough Castle (which is a ruin, and therefore has no windows with glass in), we went exploring round the town (aka walked for a long time to try and find Richard’s interpretation of a good pub garden – this trip took place in a heatwave weekend. Concerning, though pleasant for a seaside visit).

A man and a woman with an audio tour device around their necks, standing against a railing. In the background is Scarborough, beach, town and the Britannia Grand Hotel.

During our walk around town, we indulged in a favourite passtime: spotting interesting old window glass (and content for this blog post).

First up was this hidden treasure at the top side of a row of shops next to the hotel…

This row of shops were adjacent to The Grand Hotel, which was built in the 1860s, so perhaps these shop buildings were built at the same time.

Not that rare still, but it’s always nice to see an original shopfront featuring leaded lights…

The top of a shop front which has signs saying "Swidish Style Bjorn Clogs established 1978" and "Hand made clogs". It has five leaded window panels in a floral pattern, two of which are curved.

We also spotted one remaining window with leaded lights in a block of flats. Not the best of photos due to the shadows, but worth noting as an indication of how rare it is to see original window glass, and in Crittall frames, in this kind of building these days:

Six windows within a stone building. The window in the bottom right, below a balcony, is a Crittall, all the others are modern replacements.

Finally, on an evening walk along the beachfront after dinner, we found our way to the Scarborough Spa (the town has a history as a spa town, which people would visit for the medicinal waters). The spa building is now an events venue, with shopfronts below. We initially were disappointed to see fake leaded lights (a glass pane with sticky lead attached to one side of the glass)…

…but then saw that some originals are still there …

There are several ways to spot a real leaded light. One is if a single pane is broken. A large sheet of modern glass, with sticky lead attached to the surface in a grid pattern, wouldn’t break in a small area like this.

The return journey

Richard commented on the journey from Scarborough to our next destination that the drive felt very long. Then realised that this was because all the potential pick-ups he’d had in mind hadn’t materialised, so he didn’t have any thrill to aim for (other than the nice hotel where the bulk of this blog post was written of course).

He’d has his eye on two doors, each of which had three huge panes of hammered glass. He lost out on these though as someone else had got in first. But this all adds to the thrill of the antique glass trade – never knowing whether you’re going to get the glass you’ve seen for sale.

The following day, we did lots more driving, which Richard didn’t seem to complain about too much. Partly because of a good podcast we were listening too, but mainly – I think – due to the fact that each destination involved some glass to pick-up. The night before, in a Peterborough hotel, he’d managed to arrange a pick-up of this from Norwich…

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And at the last moment he remembered someone in Southend-on-Sea had offered him some hammered glass. Among the set was this, which is possibly the largest frameless hammered he’s ever had in stock…

A sheet of Hammered Pilkington glass in an irregular shape being held upright next to which is a bottle of Gordon's gin.
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This post was my idea and Richard was very happy to take me up on the offer – he’s always saying that it’s been so long since he published a blog post. And yet while I’ve been writing this he’s been full of ideas, constantly chipping in saying ‘we could say this… and this…’ I have had to be quite firm in keeping the blog post as my own story!

Alice Cann is an academic librarian, who blogs at researcherlibrarian.wordpress.com. She is also Richard’s wife. She has previously written about the glass business in:

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Marketing a stained glass business – Search Engine Optimisation

A woman, Alice, sitting at a desk using a laptop computer, with two stained glass windows in wooden frames on the window sill in the background

I have asked my wife, Alice, to write another guest post . This post discusses:

Being the wife of a small business owner

Richard regularly describes himself as a one-man business – often when having a bit of a moan about having too much to do, and really wanting to focus on using the knowledge he’s built of the industry to buy nice stock. It is true that his business is run by him on his own, without any employees. He is – to use a technical term – a sole trader.

The pair featured in the above photo are for sale as A1568b (adverts enable this blog post to be free!)

I’m reminded at this point though of the proverb “Behind every great man is a great woman”. I’m being somewhat facetious here, as I worry that quote could come across as sexist, suggesting that the work that men are known for is always based on hidden work done by women. This might have been true in the past, and has truth today on a macro level, but on an individual level I don’t want to diminish the huge amount of work Richard has put into building up this very unique business. Having said that… I mentioned a few of the ways I help out in my previous guest post, A librarian on a glass trip and Richard has now got me working on another task, trying to improve the reach of his website through Search Engine Optimisation (with better use of Instagram coming up too). While I do have my own job to do, as an academic librarian (documented to an extent on my own Researcher Librarian blog), I am interested in this topic, and as a business librarian it is theoretically within my territory.

Deciding to try some marketing

The impetus to work on marketing came from the awareness that Richard’s website has lots of people coming to it (unsurprising, considering all the pretty pictures of stained glass!), but not as many of the the views turn into sales as we would like.

While the business started as what could be described as a side hustle, it has for many years been Richard’s job, and a key source of our family income. There are probably things Richard (we) can consider doing to improve the rate of views leading to people pressing Purchase at the checkout, but it is understandable really that people think and look for quite a while before investing in glass for their home. It’s also understandable that people want to check out the authenticity of a person who offers to ship stained glass all over the world.

Increasing the number of website visitors

A potential solution – to the fact that not enough of the people browsing are actually buying – is to expand the number of potential customers browsing the website. Even if there are lots of people already browsing there are surely more who don’t know of the business already, or don’t even know yet that an old stained glass window would be the perfect addition to their home – even if used as wall art rather than as a functional window!

Lauren’s privacy screen, which Richard shipped to her in North Carolina – it simply hangs behind the existing window – more available coded R820.

I am quite active on LinkedIn these days, as I’m doing a lot professionally, and a post written by someone who works in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) came up in my feed. I liked the post, and she followed me, and I followed back (usually how things work on LinkedIn!). This now means that I’ve had lots of SEO posts appearing in my LinkedIn feed, and I’m regularly discovering ideas for how to increase the potential for Richard’s website coming up when people search on Google. What I’ve been doing is a work in progress, and I’m not an expert at it yet, but I (we) thought it might be interesting to share.

Existing marketing practice

Richard promotes his glass stock in various ways:

  • through images selected for the website homepage, and his customer ideas page [Later note: I completely revamped this into a series of pages soon after writing this blog post, and wrote my own blog post on the topic the following year: Developing stained glass inspiration pages and SEO experience)
  • through email that he sends out to different groups of people (he has four identified customer groups: home owners wanting salvage, home owners wanting bespoke, trade buyers and people working in the stained glass industry needing spare pieces of old glass which is not made anymore)
  • more recently through Instagram @cannglass
  • through blog posts…

    He gets me to read through all his email mailouts and blog posts before sending them out, checking for typos and tone (I don’t always agree with his tone – he can get a bit rude for my liking at times…!). Anyway, I have an interest in the blog posts, so this is where I decided to start with my ‘marketing campaign’ (when I write marketing campaign, I’m very aware of the various marketing professionals, researchers and students who I know – if any of them read this at any point, I know there is a lot more to the whole thing than the pulling together of ideas and trying things out that I am doing!).

Why the focus on blog posts?

Blog posts have value beyond being an opportunity to reflect and document and self-congratulate(!) on what you’ve been doing. They are a method of building a relationship with your potential customers without directly marketing products…

But as we’ve got your attention, isn’t this sunray, A1371f, delightful!

…they allow people to get to know you (and your family business). People might find a blog post on a topic they’re researching which isn’t directly related to your business (such as his QuickBooks post) and then become aware of your business, using or recommending it at a later date. Richard tells me these ideas come from my LinkedIn SEO contact, Emma Dow – I’ve been reading lots of things aloud to him, but forget where it comes from!

There’s such a lot of work that goes into the blog posts (some of them at least) and, while they get lots of views when they are first published, this is less common a few months down the line. I think there’s valuable content – that could help people in their glass purchase decision making – which gets lost as time passes and they disappear from the homepage menu. An example is Steptoe – the reality of architectural salvage dealing in modern London (it surprises me that it’s well over two years ago that this post was published – I remember it well, including doing quite a bit of research into how to attribute the Creative Commons copyright for several images).

Identifying and integrating keywords for Search Engine Optimisation

My reading about SEO – and my experience as a librarian from the search side (teaching people to search for academic literature and secondary data is a major part of my job) – tell me that the keywords you allocate to a blog post or webpage are vital for new people to be able to find your content. There are tools that can be used to identify the words that people coming to a webpage via a search engine are using, and possibly even words that people are using that don’t get to your website (maybe that go to competitors…). These tools can help with thinking about what words to include in your posts. This kind of software has a cost though, so is probably used more by marketing professionals who can invest in a subscription when working on campaigns for multiple businesses (if anyone does have a recommendation of a free keyword analysis tool, then please do let us know!).

I have done what I can with Google Analytics, which is included with Richard’s WordPress website subscription (WordPress is the platform where his website is hosted). To be honest, while the information available is very interesting, and gets me wanting to learn to use Google Analytics properly, it didn’t bring up any big surprises!

Following SEO people on LinkedIn, and seeing lots of posts on the topic, means that I am constantly developing in my learning, and not long before publishing this post I discovered a really useful post which includes advice on how to use Google Search Console. You can use this tool to identify potentially relevant words that people use when searching which don’t include your website high up on the first page of Google results.

Richard’s website is 20th in the list of results when people search for ‘architectural salvage stained glass’ – far beyond how far most people will scroll! (But the above search was done over a week ago; I now note he is appearing 7th.)

This has been very enlightening, and even made Richard, when I showed him, tempted to change the strapline on his homepage (which is currently “British Leaded Lights and Stained Glass…”) on the spot. I managed to stop him before he did this – we need to explore the data more before making big decisions! Richard encourages me to say here what words we have concluded on, but this really is a work in progress.

When I write posts on my own blog, I always include tags – keywords that the blog post is about – and which can be included as a link to refer people to other blog posts on a similar topic. I also add Alt Text (a description) to images – this is mainly to ensure that my images are accessible for people using screen readers (for example people who are blind or partially sighted), but I have also read that use of Alt Text affects the order search engines might put you in on a results page.

An image from my last guest blog post, with the Alt Text displayed in the HTML code
An image from my last guest blog post, with the Alt Text displayed in the HTML code

Record keeping to keep track of the effects of SEO

Tags and Alt Text are two things I was aware Richard hadn’t been doing, so I have been on the case – sometime with the help of our daughter. There are currently over 70 posts published on the blog, so there’s a lot to do, but we have made a good start. I’ve treated it as a proper project, and have an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of what changes have been made to each blog post, and when (librarians love a good spreadsheet!). I then hope to be able to refer back to this in a few weeks (months?) time to see whether the search engine optimisation efforts have had any success – I know that you do have to be patient in waiting for these things to work!)

Richard assures me that he will take on some of these things himself when writing blog posts in the future. I’ve done it for this post myself though!

I wrote earlier that I’m constantly discovering new things to do to improve SEO. Another one, which I should really have cottoned on to sooner, is including headings in your blog post, actually formatting these as headings, and perhaps even including them as a linked list of contents at the beginning of your post. I think this advice also came initially from the LinkedIn post I referred to earlier. Doing this should help readers to get a clear idea of what the post is about, and give search tools accessible information to better trawl and promote your website. Richard’s previous blog posts only have headings in bold, rather than formatted as a heading – if they have headings at all. So I have lots of work to go back and make changes, including all the record keeping that I described earlier. The first blog posts that I included headings in – the latest post on my own blog – resulted in my highest ever number of impressions on LinkedIn.

A LinkedIn post, linking to a blog post, with lots of impressions

Future marketing plans

There are many projects still to do to improve the reach of the website:

  • Richard is working on an Instagram strategy – something I was originally going to write about now, but which we have decided to leave to another post.
  • There is a frustrating oddity on the website in that the search box only searches stock, not all pages, meaning the content on the blog is hidden, and not easily searchable.
  • We don’t have an obvious link to view all blog posts – they’re just displayed on the left hand side of pages when using a computer, and hidden away at the bottom of the page on a mobile device.
  • Educating people to use the website product filters which again only appear on the left hand side of pages if using a computer.
  • There are other things that should be considered when writing blog posts, some of which Richard and/or I are already doing – use of images, bulleted lists, and others which we’re not doing enough of, such as thinking about the placement of your post’s keywords within the post, and ending each post with a Call to Action (CTA).
  • Finally, I have a feeling there are pages with stock on, or business information, which would benefit from have links to relevant blog posts, which might not have been published at the time.

Call to action

To finish with one of these plans for the future, here is a Call to Action: if you’re a regular reader of this blog, please would you let us know (via a comment, or an email), of a previous post that you’ve found useful or interesting and that you perhaps think we should highlight more. If you’ve found this post by chance, via a search engine, please let us know as well – it would be fascinating to learn how you found us!

Alice Cann is an academic librarian, who blogs at researcherlibrarian.wordpress.com. She is also Richard’s wife.

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Alice doesn’t know I’ve written the following: she wrote the above so all I have to do is press “publish”. The bottom line is no matter how sophisticated my marketing strategies are, there’s no way I can operate my business without Alice’s unpaid support. She really does have a life of her own and a professional job! But she drops whatever she’s doing to help me. Other examples are IT trouble-shooting, the endless stream of window holding for photography (all the windows you see in pairs are held by her!) and being a devoted mother to my children while I obsess over my business. THANK YOU ALICE!

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A librarian on a glass trip (guest post)

A man and a woman (Richard and Alice) standing smiling in a pub, with wooden background including a partially glass door and floral stained glass windows

In this post I’m discussing:

Opportunity for a glass trip

When Richard has been on his many trips around the country over the years, collecting and delivering, and meeting with fellow stained glass enthusiasts, he has occasionally been asked whether his wife ever comes with him on these trips (or at least that’s what he tells me – maybe to keep me involved!). There is good reason why I haven’t taken up this opportunity:

  • We have two children who, while they’re getting older, do need a parent to cook them meals and keep them company
  • Though I support Richard in his business, especially with holding windows for photography, and creating Excel formulas, I do have my own job to be getting on with, as an academic librarian (and emerging researcher – which is the theme of my own blog)
A woman (Alice), smiling, standing wearing glasses, blue dress, red tights and a stripy jumper, holding a Kindle. Standing by several stained glass windows, leant against a temporary railing, with blue plastic sheet behind

Guarding treasure in Grantham which will eventually appear in the Victorian category.

But at long last, in early April this year, I have been with my husband on a business trip, one which took us from London to Edinburgh and back again, with many places in between. He’s taken one or other of our children on some of these trips in the past, but only for a night or two – I had a whole five nights away! We are very lucky to have wonderful parents to look after our children while we took this ‘Busman’s holiday’.

My ‘work’ during the trip

I wasn’t only along for the ride – Richard did find me things to do:

  • I did some deliveries (from van to door!) and took some part in carrying the windows we collected to our van.
  • I sent all the text messages letting people know that we’d be with them in half an hour – a very important task this, as they’ve usually been given a wider time slot, and occasionally we’ve been delayed due to traffic.
  • I researched alternative accommodation when our planned hotel fell through (a broken boiler!) Richard spends a huge amount of time planning all the logistics in advance of a trip. My usual research is using the likes of Bloomberg, and academic journal databases, but I can switch to hotels.com on request!
  • I offered my opinion on whether we (and it does feel like we) should buy certain pieces, sometimes during a ‘board meeting’ over dinner! Though as a business librarian, I must make clear this is a joke – there is no board of directors as the business is a small concern that doesn’t require them…
  • I guarded purchased stock (with book in hand), from the wind and from interested passers by, while Richard rearranged glass in the van. Working out where to safely put all the treasure acquired – which will gradually be added to the website in the coming weeks and months – was a regular issue throughout the trip.
  • I got to visit some interesting businesses, and unique and beautiful houses. I regularly get to see what some of Richard’s customers do with the glass they purchase from him, in the images he posts on his Customer reuse ideas page, but have only now had the opportunity to be shown round a customer’s home – one of the aspects of these trips that I always enjoy hearing about. [Note – I distracted myself for a good ten minutes looking again through the reuse ideas page, when I had intended to just get the URL to provide a link!]
A woman (Alice), wearing a blue top and pink skirt, carrying a stained glass window towards the front door of a house

Delivery in Birmingham

What I’ve learnt from the trip

  • Travelling around the country in a van is very tiring, both for the driver (Richard) and for the person along for the ride (me). We did manage a bit of exploring in the cities and towns we stayed in (and even had a night staying and socialising with family – we brought a stained glass suncatcher as a gift, as well as a bottle of wine!), but on several evenings were too tired for tourism beyond a meal.
  • Where we did venture out to our surroundings, we spotted glass in all sorts of places – in a fascinating grade 2 listed pub in Liverpool, and in the Adelphi hotel in the same city. Our history and research interests led to us reading up about the background of this hotel. My librarian tendency to read critically and look at multiple sources meant that I got the more positive perspective from the hotel’s website, and some more shocking details from Wikipedia (I won’t go off on more of a tangent by listing my further research on this topic!)
  • There are many skilled people who work with stained glass. Seeing some locations where the ‘magic’ happens was fascinating.
  • There’s only so much you can fit in a medium-sized van. And quite a bit of this will need to be stored in near vicinity to me, until it can be photographed and eventually sold. As Richard has been unpacking the van and putting glass in temporary locations before photography and proper storage, I’ve enjoyed surprises seeing them displayed around the house. But I must not get too attached!
A man and a woman (Richard and Alice) standing smiling in a pub, with wooden background including a partially glass door and floral stained glass windows

The Vines (The Big House, Lime Street, Liverpool – Grade 2 listed

A big grand room with a glass ceiling, arches in the walls, tables and chairs and a patterned carpet. A woman (Alice) sitting on a sofa, looking up at the ceiling

The Grand Lounge of the Adelphi hotel, Liverpool – the ceiling consists of Victorian rolled glass panes!

A man (Richard), looking away from the camera, standing at the back of a van, with doors open, holding a stained glass window. The van contains other windows, and polystyrene
A messy desk, in front of a bay window, stained glass window on the windowsill, secondary glazing and wooden frames behind

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Stained glass windows piled on top of an old duvet on a wooden floor. Dining table and chairs to the side. Polystyrene behind. Clothes horses outside in the background, through bi-folding doors.

We have stacks of small framed windows (toplights) waiting to be listed in the trade category.

Most people prioritise putting washing in the machine when they get back from a holiday…

The inside of a garage. Stained glass windows leaning against a washing machine, with an old duvet on top of it

This scenic pattern is from a set of doubleglazed units which will soon be listed in the scenic category.

Merging a glass trip with a holiday

While this was a business trip for Richard, it was definitely also a holiday for us both. It may not surprise you to learn that my husband finds it hard to stop working at times, and it is the same for me. Turning off from work is very hard when you’re running your own business from home, and it’s almost as challenging as a subject librarian who’s the library liaison for thousands of people (to say nothing of my current research obsession!). Therefore days off work when at home are never fully days off – work is always on your mind. For me, being on this trip, getting more involved in sourcing salvaged window glass, I was able to properly take a break from my usual preoccupations. Though I admit that I have referred to my job multiple times in this post!

When not eating or socialising, as described above, I got lots of opportunity to read (I collect books at the rate Richard collects windows, though am less keen to let go of them than Richard is willing to part from the glass – necessary when running a business!). For a librarian, I’m not very strong at ‘weeding’ (aka withdrawing books from) my collection, and have many shelves of books waiting to be read.

We listened, while driving, to multiple podcasts. So the time on the road didn’t feel wasted, and was enjoyable. While our listening was more of the comedy and true crime variety, I’ll take this moment to highlight the time Richard was on a podcast, True Tales from Old Houses, talking about his glass business…

We even played a game, despite being away without our children! Proper evidence that my husband did take me on a holiday, not just a business trip!

A low table, with a game on it. Rummikub stands and tiles. A glass if white wine, an open packet of peanuts. A woman's knees and arm in the background.

Alice Cann is an academic librarian, who blogs at researcherlibrarian.wordpress.com. She is also Richard’s wife.