Paul Southworth - Director General

Dear Colleagues,

Amazingly we are already into the second month of the year, and I hope the early inclement weather did not cause too much disruption to your business.

I am pleased to report the year has got off to great start here at the DSA with continued good press coverage of our industry and also a strong interview by Lynda on Radio 4.

In January we also launched our first pilot workshop for Social Media with Ashley Riley providing hands-on laptop training to eight participants from member companies. This proved to be very successful and a further four workshops have been scheduled. If you are interested in hearing more about this training opportunity please contact Chris here at the office.

Hopefully companies have now received our Annual survey forms and we really need your assistance in returning them as soon as possible in order for us to collate the confidential data for our industry here in the UK. Accurate and timely data enables us to talk to the media and opinion formers with strong, supportive and up to date statistics.

Paul Dobson and I continue to meet with the Trading Standards Institute on the issue of transferring the Code Approval scheme from the OFT to TSI and to ensure the interests of our members are protected in this transfer. The OFT officially hand over to TSI in April, so please be reminded that you are not allowed to use the OFT logo on your literature after March 31st. Should you have any significant stocks of DSA booklets bearing the OFT logo, let us know and we will provide covering stickers as appropriate.

Finally two important dates for your diary. March 14th will be our next Seminar 'Insider Secrets' in partnership with our Supplier Group, and we are delighted to have Darren Hardy, editor of Success magazine as our guest speaker. The seminar will be held at the Amway Experience Centre in London and will include round table discussions on a variety of topics. Register with Chris now as we anticipate a sell out on this one.

Secondly our Annual Conference 'We are the Future' to be held at Hinckley Island on May 9th. Our new Conference website is now live and you can link to it from the main website or click here http://conference.dsa.org.uk Take a few moments to see full details and early bird registration offers.

Keep smiling and may I wish you a very successful February.

Best Regards

Paul Southworth
Director General
UK Direct Selling Association