Many thanks for that.

Denbies, if I am honest is a massive upgrade for us! They can handle up to 400 Jaguars which puts us on a par with premium commercial Jaguar events ( but we are FREE unlike them :-)) and are happy to give us a long term home.

However there is one proviso in that the open enclosed area for us is dependant on the weather - more so than Brighton as it is not tarmaced and has no cover..

I am currently waiting on the rates for tours, tastings, etc from the events manager at Denbies as they are things that I am sure quite a few of us will want to participate in on our day there.

Additionally I am waiting on feedback from Harwoods Jaguar. Due to our event moving approx 30 to 40 miles from our old home at Brighton we will likely need to make contact with either a new branch of Harwoods, or possibly an alternate Jaguar dealer network.

One of our sponsors has indicated that they are happy to supply a cup or plaque for our 'Best Turned Out Jaguar' award - which would be great for the next winner and will give some continuity from year to year.

Additionally I have more of our sponsors coming back on board as we go, and in view of our new capacity am currently planning for 200 or so Jaguars for 2017.

Yes I know it sounds an interesting target but then I thought to get from 60 Jaguars to 100 was pie in the sky for this year, but in the end I was actually turning people away .. :-)

I'm not too sure how many rabbits I can pull out of the hat for this one, but I do already have a select list of companies that I have already started to make aware of our event and am chasing on a regular basis to see what partnerships we can strike up :-)

I will be summarising everything about our 2016 event tomorrow, which will be the final posting from me to this thread.. sounds bad I know, but this years event and this thread have already been the most successful to-date, we have broken so many records set at our previous events it is amazing.. and all down to so many people happy to get involved!!

Then I will be kicking off the 2017 thread, with all the details I have to-date.. amazingly we already have around 40 attendees prebooked, and 5 sponsors officially signed up!! All before the next event is even launched!! It is incredible.. and as I say every year - next year is set to be biggger and better than ever! :-)

 

Steve, just a thought... Grange Jaguar (Croydon) 020 8667 1002, have been taken over by Harwoods.

 

Thankyou for that...

I have been in contact with Harwoods Marketing and they are looking into it - they think they cover the Dorking area, but need to check, and if not advise me of the dealership that does.

I have chased them again this morning as I need time to develop a working relationship with whoever we will now deal with, prior to our event, in order to get us the best possible Jaguar support.

My gut suggests Crawley or Coulsdon as possible Harwood locations that could help us, as they are both no more than 10 miles away, however Harwoods Marketing say that things are quite territorial out there, and they need to check if they are allowed to cover our location.

As soon as I know more I will let everyone know.

Meanwhile, as of today we also have carphile.com, one of our advertising sponsors on board, joining our other sponsors for our 2017 event.

 

A little more news for you, I am pleased to say that MotorMartin, one of our advertising sponsors has just confirmed he is joining our other current sponsors, and staying with us to support our 2017 event :-)

 

OK Guys this is the final summary for our 2016 Annual Convoy & Meet event.. after this I will be kicking off the threads for our next event in 2017.

This event started in the planning back in September 2015, with the aim of increasing the numbers to 80 vehicles, with more sponsorship involvement, with a high level of sponsor visibility at the event itself.

Our previous event threads had received up to 20,000 or so hits, and it would have been nice to beat that, raising the visibility of our event.

In the 8 months of planning and development, our event aims changed significantly.

We upped the target number of Jaguars to the maximum we could possibly squeeze into Madiera Drive, with our sponsors offering bigger prizes for our prize draw, a new prestigeous award was announced as the 'JaguarForums.com Best Turned Out Jaguar' which would run every year, & more sponsors than ever came on board.

Towards the day we were actually turning people away because we could not cater for more vehicles at the site, and the Welcome Packs, despite being increased in numbers were still running out in relation to the numbers coming.

This event took us to the very limits of what we could do, with the event in it's current format.. smashing all our previous records.

We had 100 Jaguars, over 60 years of Jaguar production on-site, bigger and better prizes than ever before, our Twitter feed over doubled it's number of followers, our Facebook page doubled it's friends, we started storing our images from all our events at our Facebook page, and a OneDrive account making them free to access and download, we gained an official event photographer in CarSnapped to take superb shots for us on the day, and we gained an official event filmer (is that a phrase? :-)) to film our events features!

As for visibility, we had threads on three Jaguar specific forums, and one general motoring forum and all our updates appeared on all of them plus our Facebook page. We also used our Twitter account to advertise our sponsors (part of the deal for improved sponsorship).

We are now quite well known on Twitter, our Facebook page is regularily monitored by our Facebook friends, our event photo collections are also regularily viewed, and our forum threads in total received over 102,000 views, which is almost five times as many as our last event!

Our event has grown, event on event, year on year, and still this year the general concensus was that people enjoyed the event. We have 5 event sponsors that had agreed to support our 2017 event before our 2016 event had even finished, and within weeks we had just under 40 people presigning for our next event..

This event did have some issues becoming very apparent with this event, as we had reached the absolute limit that our location on Brighton seafront could handle.

The parking costs, parking slots, catering, and the spread of this number of vehicles along the drive all becoming quite big issues, even the risk of sponsors dropping out at the last minute became an issue.

So, we have two options - we either downsize our event enabling us to retain Madeira Drive as our main venue, and continue to hunt for a financial sponsor to cover the costs involved in taking over Madiera Drive.. or we move our event and continue growing it to the size of commercially funded Jaguar events, but keeping our event free for everyone to attend and owned and run by us, the attendees..

I have looked at both options and am pleased to say that I have located a new venue for the event enabling us to keep growing our event.. giving us more Jaguars, more years of production, more sponsors, more prizes, and even a one day format rather than the current half day format. All the details of the new event will be in our new forum threads which I will be starting off shortly..

I believe that we can make our event bigger and better for all of us.. so please set a date in your calendar, and sign up on the new thread and help us make our event THE Jaguar event that everyone should attend..

If you know anyone who hasn't attended before please let them know we are getting bigger and better and get them to sign up for what promises to be a huge grass roots Jaguar event.. as always it will be free to sign up for, & free to attend whilst still giving you great goodie bags, chances at some great prizes that you will genuinely use, plus some fantastic discount codes to help keep your Jaguar costs down.

I am hoping that in this event you have found something you want to be involved in, and that you enjoy attending.. and very much hope to meet you again at our next convoy & meet event in 2017 :-)

 

OK guys.. if you haven't already found it the new thread is here: https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/u...2017-a-165121/ please consider signing up for it if you enjoyed our last event.

I kicked the thread off early after quite a few people contacted me to sign up in advance, and a number of existing sponsors also contacted me to ask if they could be involved in our next event.

We are aiming for 200 Jaguars at our next event, with good local business support of our event, coupled with as many of our current sponsors as we can retain.. and I believe there will even be an actual cup for the winner of the 'Best Turned Out Jag' to win this time!! :-)

For our SIXTH event we are pulling out all the stops, and more, to give ourselves a fantastic Jaguar Convoy & Meet event - bigger and better than ever before.