Lashings World is a brand which has been in existence for 25 years – including as a business for 18 years. The business is centred around events involving sporting legends, with its roots in charity cricket legend days. From a fund-raising perspective, we raised (or helped raise) £230,000 for charities and sports clubs in the calendar year of 2019.
Due to Covid-19 restrictions, a total of 46 of our live events across the UK had to be rescheduled and some are being rescheduled further. Normally March – September is the company’s most dynamic time of year, preparing for and running a cricket tour – however 2020 was very different.
After a short period of consolidation, rescheduling the live events diary and ensuring the business and team would be protected, we started to look at how we should maximise the significant spare time that the Summer and Autumn now gave us.
An area of focus was to look at longer term projects which (pre-covid) were in the early stages of development but had stalled literally due to lack of available planning time within our schedule. These two projects, during the pandemic, have both been through a full product development and strategic planning process. They are both viable within or post Covid-19 restrictions.
The Lashings World 100 Club is a a senior level business club, where members are able to interact with sporting legends, showcase their brand as well as entertain and network with clients and other members. The club has three categories of member benefits being around 1) Virtual Events 2) Live Events and 3) Lashings themed merchandise. We wanted to launch a product that can add value straight away but also provides clients with an excellent package once live events are allowed again. This was launched on 2nd February and the feedback, enquiries and uptake so far has been superb – certainly above our expectations in the first week.
The Lashings World Master Blaster Tour is all around one-day cricket master class coaching featuring our international cricket legends. We are collaborating with an existing successful coaching company International Cricket Masters and already have 6 cricket club venues signed up for what we intend to be a full national UK coaching tour. These courses can take place safely under Government tiered restrictions and our designed for boys and girls aged 5-18 of all cricket abilities.
In summary, as difficult as it has been for an events company which relies on audiences/corporate guests being able to meet together and socialise naturally, one positive is that we have been able to use the time to scope out two projects that we have been passionate about for a long time and have/will enable us to pivot in 2021. We decided on this approach rather than launching new hastily thought-out products very soon after COVID-19 broke. The two new products are enabling us to “pivot” our business, but we believe are robust enough to be an attractive part of our long term, post Covid-19 offering.