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20070615 Friday June 15, 2007

Pure Fiction

The irony is overwhelming.

I've just been sorting out one of my old Usenet news folders for Rec.arts.books. It contains all the postings I found of interest between 1992 and 1999. Time to remove the dead stuff. I came across this post. 

Subject: Yahoo! PURE FICTION wins another award!
From: David Bradwell 
Date: 08/23/1996 01:31 PM
Newsgroups: alt.books.purefiction, misc.writing, rec.arts.books, alt.books.reviews

Hi everybody,

Everybody here is rather chuffed at the moment! As well as being listed in the 
Internet Magazine top 20, Pure Fiction is now officially cool! We've just 
been recognised by Project Cool as one of the coolest sites on the Web. If you 
want to see what the fuss is about, point your browser at 
www.purefiction.com.

Bestselling novels and how to write them ... and plenty more to come!

Best wishes and thanks to all those who have helped!

David

How the mighty have fallen. You think they could at least change the company name.

[]

( Jun 15 2007, 12:00:20 PM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [7]

Comments:

Perhaps that's the "plenty more"? :-)

Posted by joanie on June 15, 2007 at 02:37 PM PDT #

How good of you to remember us! However if "falling" means morphing into a successful online hosiery retailer, providing employment for 10 people, let's hope we keep going down, down, down... Best wishes David

Posted by David Bradwell on June 19, 2007 at 02:25 AM PDT #

Hi David.

I wish you all the best in your stocking retail business. I just find it a little suspect that you retained a URL for "Pure Fiction" that points to your new business (which is nothing to do with books or writing). Or that you didn't change the company name to reflect the business that you are now in.

I do hope this isn't where all your customers are coming from.

Posted by Rich Burridge on June 19, 2007 at 07:29 AM PDT #

Many thanks for your best wishes. There's nothing suspect about it though. Our registered company name is Pure Fiction Media Ltd.

The old Pure Fiction site was great fun to do, but didn't ever help pay the bills and with a full time day job I always struggled to find time to do it justice.

From about 1998 to about 2002 it got steadily less up to date and hence less relevant as a resource. In about 2003 (my memory is a bit vague on the exact date, but give or take six months or so!) it was so out of date it wasn't really serving any purpose at all so I decided to close it rather than leave it as a ghost site.

By that time the company had grown substantially and as the purefiction.com domain name accurately reflected our company name, we pointed it to the new retail site. Our suppliers, bank, insurance company et al, know us as Pure Fiction, and the company domain name points to the site which is the major focus of our company's operations.

I hope that helps explain things! As you semi-accurately suggest, the new site has nothing to do with books or writing (although we actively encourage writing through the six discussion forums and give a free pen with every order to keep the dream alive!) but it does have everything to do with Pure Fiction Media Ltd as a company.

Best wishes again

David

Posted by David Bradwell on June 19, 2007 at 08:19 AM PDT #

Hi David,

I should probable just let this rest, but I'm still confused.

What media does Pure Fiction Ltd sell? If it's stockings, then I wouldn't call that media.

Looking at the site that www.purefiction.com redirects me to and by googling "Pure Media Ltd" at google.co.uk, I don't see any other "media" business mentioned.

Posted by Rich Burridge on June 19, 2007 at 08:47 AM PDT #

I understand the confusion. However it's easy really.

The company was set up in 1997 to do multimedia and internet development on a part time basis alongside a day job, based on a decade working as a professional writer and content developer. At the time there was no plan to do sell hosiery. However, I built a web site for a hosiery company and was given 900 pairs of stockings in the process.

Hence the company (which by then had been trading as Pure Fiction Media Ltd for four years) launched the Stockings HQ shop with a view to deploying in-house Internet development knowledge to sell the 900 pairs.

Rather surprisingly (but there again, we are quite good :-) )the demand was huge and within four months the day job had gone and the Stockings HQ site became 99.99% of the company's focus. In the intervening years it has grown and grown to now be the largest dedicated stockings retail site in the world, with 30 big brand suppliers, frequent national press coverage, 10 employees, and an ever growing customer base.

Unfortunately the technology (your department, I presume) does not exist to wind the clock back four years and rename the company to something about hosiery from the outset. Equally we have never felt the need to change it as, at the heart, multimedia and particularly Internet development are still what we do.

So, another conspiracy theory bites the dust, although as the saying goes, just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

David

Posted by David Bradwell on June 19, 2007 at 09:22 AM PDT #

By the way I forgot to mention, we do sell medias, at least in Spain, as medias is the Spanish term for stockings. At the last count 300 million people in the world speak Spanish but perhaps you know better than all of them :-) D.

Posted by David Bradwell on June 19, 2007 at 10:59 AM PDT #

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