Autostyle - a bit of the history

Autostyle as a brand has been around for quite a long time. We started off selling mats at shows and from there on developed our business and our products to also supply manufacturers, importers, car dealers, specialist retailers etcetera.

One important part of our business is our Autostyle website. We were fairly quick in recognising that the internet could play a vital role in our business. We went online on the 10th of September 1997 (to put that in perspective, that was 5 days before Google came online) and have since been a very recognisable brand on the web.

When I told our designers that I wanted to write something about the web history of http://www.autostyle.co.uk/, one of them came up with the picture above. I thought it was quite funny.

Anyway, I'll try and write some more on the subject later.

Autostyle - and a bit more marketing...

And I found another 'golden oldie' concept that didn't make it to print.

Autostyle - More Marketing

Over the years, we've advertised our Autostyle brand in a great number of newspapers and magazines and we still do, but not to the extend that we used to.

A lot of our marketing is now focused on the internet, as it seems that most of our customer find http://www.autostyle.co.uk/ through Google and Yahoo and other search engines. Over the last twelve months, we did play with the idea of doing some advertising, referring to current affairs or "news of the day" news items and our marketing guys came up with some funny takes on politics. Even last week a suitable bit of news came up.

We didn't actually use these pictures in a campaign, but I think they're too good to just ignore, so I thought I would publish them here on our blog. Here's the first one!

P.S. If we get complaints from the Conservative Party, I'll let you know.

Autostyle - A bit of product history

Since the company started, we've always tried to bring innovative products and follow customers' ideas in our product development.

Now this may sound like basic marketing, but it's not that easy with a product like car mats:
- they're flat
- they should fit snugly in the footwell
- they should be made in a colour that doesn't show up dirt too much
- and they should be easy to clean.

If all these boxes are ticked, it doesn't leave much to play with.

So in the course of our history, we've supplied mats with chequer plate heelpads made of steel (see image) which were riveted to the mats. This made the mats fantastically heavy, which is why we moved to alloy heel plates with holes in them. We've also supplied mats with reflective binding (so you can see your mats in the dark) and green luminiscent binding (still available for your Ford Focus RS, Porsches and Mazda 2 Sport etcetera). We've manufactured mats with heelpads with a cattle grid construction so the dirt of your shoes fell in a little tray that was below the heelpad. You name it, we've done it.

One thing that we've kept on doing: make the best car mat possible. Top quality materials and a very high standard of finishing. As our customer base consists of car enthusiasts, they only expect the best. And that's what we'll supply them.

If you have a bit of time, just read the feedback from our customers.

Autostyle - An introduction

We've started this blog today to give people a bit of an insight in what we do and how we do it.

We manufacture top quality car mats that we market under the brandname Autostyle car mats. As we cater for the top end of the market, we have some fairly colourful customers.

Our customer base comprises (well-known) entrepreneurs, singers, actors, the occasional MP, football players and a lot of normal people. They all have one thing in common: they're car enthusiasts, like us.

Which is why we're one of the few companies where customers will come to have a look at some samples and then spend half an hour talking about their car mats.

Anyway, more about that later. I was going through our catalogue today and found some nice pictures to post in this blog. I'll try and post some more later.