This website is now over ten years old - set up in 2001, it was originally written in house (by me) and published whenever new stock came along. Not a lot has changed since. In the intervening years, it has grown to be quite large, there are tens of thousands of images and words on it showing the vast range of things that have passed through our doors over the past decade.
Over the same time, as the business has grown, so too has the stock holding - at any one time these days we typically have half a million pounds-worth in the building, all of which has to be booked in, photographed and written up. Keeping track of where everything is has, at times, been a challenge (as some of you will have discovered when an engine you want to buy takes us a fortnight to find). Booking stock in, photographing and writing it up for the website (given that we buy, on average, an engine every day of the year) has become a substantial commitment in time.
So, currently in development is a new website, integrated with our existing database to show the live stock situation - everything will now be barcoded on arrival and scanned as it's put on the shelves. We're hopeful this will make the job much easier, allowing us to list and find things more quickly and at the same time make it much easier for visitors to find out what we've got and current availability. Our developers are expecting to beta test the new site later in the year and expecting it to go live in early 2013 - I'll keep you posted with developments (but if you just encounter a black screen when you visit one day, you know what's happened!)
