So why I am bouncing back from failure? Back in 2015 I produced a winter ice rink in the grounds of Colchester Castle that on the launch night went spectacularly well. It was 2 1/2 years in the making. A lot of blood sweat and tears liaising with English Heritage, liaising with the council, liaising with partners to pull this off. We sold near 12,000 tickets before we even opened - which everyone, even down to the suppliers were saying was going to be a fantastic success. We built the facilities. We built the huts. We built things for food outlets. We got a historic fairground in place and people would come!
I'd already successfully delivered number events for the town. My name in the business circles within the town was growing. The ice rink seemed a natural progression and with the ice rink I felt confident that we were going to be able to deliver a great event. I didn't do anything by halves and for me it was really important that we orchestrated a really good event. The branding was spectacular and the marketing I believe was great and it was all heading towards a great event. We launched at the end of November 2015. We had local sponsors, we had local dignitaries. We had launched!
However the following morning I woke up to the bad news that overnight the ice rink had melted. This wasn't any fault of the machines or any person involved in the project - it was just too warm. That winter was by far one of the warmest and hottest winters in history. The warmth continued to the point actually we had to close for a days upon end when the ice rink basically became a paddling pool.
There was no sense in being open with pools of water - there is no way anyone can skate they will just fall over in the water which wouldn't be fair to them. However we persevered and kept going, we kept trying, we kept on getting ticket sales, but finally just before xmas I couldn't keep it going. We weren't alone that xmas. Lots of rinks had issues but this being year 1 people thought it was our fault and it just crashed.