[windowwashers]

The guild logo was designed primarily to be printed on transparent 3 year vinyl as a vehicle decal,.. so the silver/grey was chosen as it will work no matter what colour your van is.
Guild members can download versions in red/blue/green/gold etc,.. whichever suits their stationary/website best. My favourite personally is the blue.
At avatar size it does look dismal though!

do you know think the bottom part of the logo would look better as a scroll, as it does not fit the rest.

I think what you are doing is great by the way 

Ian

[Cleaner Windows]

The guild logo was designed primarily to be printed on transparent 3 year vinyl as a vehicle decal,.. so the silver/grey was chosen as it will work no matter what colour your van is.
Guild members can download versions in red/blue/green/gold etc,.. whichever suits their stationary/website best. My favourite personally is the blue.
At avatar size it does look dismal though!

ahhh thats better!!! 

[Nathanael Jones]

The guild logo was designed primarily to be printed on transparent 3 year vinyl as a vehicle decal,.. so the silver/grey was chosen as it will work no matter what colour your van is.
Guild members can download versions in red/blue/green/gold etc,.. whichever suits their stationary/website best. My favourite personally is the blue.
At avatar size it does look dismal though!

ahhh thats better!!! 

Time to change my avatar again maybe???

 


Who's gonna be first to translate the Latin? 

[Captain Scarlet]

checked another dictionary, it can mean shining too, your safe! Luke

[Captain Scarlet]

http://www.babylon.com/define/112/Latin-Dictionary.html

[Neil Williams]

I don't think the Fed and APWC have "failed",... its just the average window cleaner would only use a fraction of the benefits and services that they offer, and therefore finds it hard to justify the member fee.

APWC Technically you're wrong here. One of the benefits which you couldn't have bought cheaper anywhere else was the life/sickness/disability insurance which on it's own was worth the subscription. We couldn't get membership on this
The bottom line is window cleaners don't care about these organisations and I should know.
What exactly can you offer for £12 per year? The only real benefit will for that price be permission to stick a logo on your vehicle. As an organisation you can only spend what you bring in. £12?

All the best but as someone who's been there, the words horse....a....flogging....dead.... spring to mind.

[Nathanael Jones]

I agree,.. the life/sickness/disability insurance is great,.... but as far as I know is only available to UK residents.
The Guild doesn't offer this as part of the package,.. but we are contacting insurers at the moment (Not just in the UK) who we hope will offer special rates to Guild members wherever they live.

[oliver collins]

Sorry to be dumb but what does the latin at the bottem mean if any thing at all
oliver

[Village Gleam]

Just to clarify the digression, are we saying the APWC has failed?

[Nathanael Jones]

Sorry to be dumb but what does the latin at the bottem mean if any thing at all
oliver

Its highly intellectual and deep,... took us weeks to come up with,....

"Shiny Windows Forever"

   

[Nathanael Jones]

Just to clarify the digression, are we saying the APWC has failed?

NOT AT ALL!!!

The APWC is a great and effective organisation, and to my knowledge is going from strength to strength,... the Guild is completely different both in scale and structure,.. although we share the goals of improving the lives of window cleaners and promoting health and safety.

[ClearviewServices]

The name was put to a vote,.. forum members chose, not me (I do like it though!)

The coat of arms, again put to a vote

Im on a few forums, ive never seen or heard of this till now

what forums ? ? ? ? its not like that secret funny handhshake gang is it ? ? ? ?

Matt... 

http://avondhucleaning.com/yabb2.2/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl

[geefree]

My opinion:

Bad name - sounds super old fashioned

Bad Branding - that coat of arms style logo is just terrible and re-inforces the old fashionedness

Bad website - looks homemade, map of the world but NO members anywhere
resource page with nothing of much substance on it except links to other home-made looking not very professional websites

Bad joining procedure - we have to send YOU references, but who are you? also how much does it cost? what are the member benefits? I cant see any at all

Bad idea - federation is in decline, the APWC despite hard efforts has failed, the whole idea of associations for window cleaners is a dead duck. Nobody cares.

No offense Nathaniel, i dont mean to be unduly negative, but we've seen things like this before, they last a few months then they disappear. To launch anything of any worth takes a serious amount of dosh, and even then window cleaners just don't care about joining stuff, me included.

My advice would be forget it and concentrate on your own business.

totally agree...

it sounds like the oddfellows association of window cleaners from years gone by...

or an old group of working mens club commitee members,

or a pigeon club or something.

voted in or not i think it is an old hat name, and if iam really honest none of the issues on the website are of any interest apart from the links to the suppliers... but again they are the same ones we all use...

what i would like to see is more competition within the suppliers bracket, giving us, the buyers a better deal../.

for instance. a few more shops opening where we can walk in, check things out and purchase, as opposed to paying vat and high postage costs, for every single itm we buy.

Gary.

[TennetClean]

Although you might have taken what i said negatively, honestly i meant it with your own interests at heart.

For example, you say that it will be a non profit thing, great but that means that you personally will be dealing with applications, sending out van decals, examining certificates, adding new members to the website everytime someone joins etc,

how long will you do that for basically zero money before you say to yourself "why am i doing this?"  Other associations have fulltime staff that deal with the admin stuff for a very good reason, its time consuming.  Will you be doing this instead of doing your own window cleaning work is what I mean, will your own business suffer as a result.  If so it will be only a matter of time before you pack it in.  (or worse yet, if you plan to do it in your spare time then it will be only a matter of time before mrs nathaniel says "its me or the guild")

N offense mate, and my hat is off to you for trying, but i dont think you've thought it through.  You just cant run sumit like this for a fee of £1 a month, as neil williams rightly said.

[peter holley]

this is true!!! time is VERY important!!!!

[Nathanael Jones]

I spend hours each evening on the forums anyway,... I won't be  taking time from my work, but from the forums (I know I'll be missed!).
Thankfully though, I'm not doing this alone. Richard Honey and Graeme Anderson are doing more than their fair share of the Admin work, and we've also Pat Purcell and Duke Theedam backing us up and putting in a lot of hard work.

Between the 5 of us, there's less than an hour a day running it,... mostly answering e-mails, sorting through new applications, and posting out van decals.

Once the real admin work is done,.. we're spending our spare time at the moment contacting suppliers, insurers, H&S trainers etc looking for discounts and special offers for our members.

[karlosdaze]

Just to clarify the digression, are we saying the APWC has failed?

I've only heard on this board that the APWC is dying out? Can anyone confirm this?

[Terry_Burrows]

The trouble is to many Fedrations! The one that has stayed the test of time is FWC some 50 years,those who started up Guns blazing you dont hear much about why need another one

[Moderator David@stives]

Karl

We are still here.

Dave

[Nathanael Jones]

My main gripe (I live in Ireland) is that all the good federations are UK based,... and the ones that accept members from outside the UK don't discount the price although the majority of the member benefits simply don't apply to them.

The Guild is international,.. we don't have insurance as part of the membership package, simply for the reason above,.. its not possible to offer it on a worldwide basis. So we decided to keep the core benefits small,.. but wrap thos benefits up in an even smaller price,... just £1 per month.

That's not to say we don't want to offer more benefits and services to our members,.. we do and we will,.. but they will be optional,.. you only pay for it if you want it.

We are currently working on some great deals and special offers for Guild members, and hope to make an announcement shortly,...