Extrees is a long established firm of traditional craftsmen involved in the design and production of hand-carved wooden ornaments. Its managing director, Harry Acorn, is convinced there is a worldwide market for Extrees' tasteful and typically English pieces, such as their popular Nelson's Column reproductions.
Spurred on by newspaper coverage of Internet entrepreneurs becoming overnight millionaires, Harry Acorn has launched the extrees.com Web site. 3 Although it has already generated many orders, all is not well.
A spate of E-mails has revealed a design fault in some of Extrees' products whereby any sudden movement causes Nelson to fall off his pillar. Some unhappy consumers in Paris and Tokyo and a Berlin gift shop are threatening to sue in their local courts.
Also, an American bank has unexpectedly ordered 500 pairs of miniature busts in the exclusive M'Lud / M'Lady series, which it intends to use as promotional gifts for new account holders. Extrees cannot cope with this order, by far the largest it has ever taken. There have been complaints in the workshop about repetitive strain injuries.