About us

Round About Harlow is brought to you by Chris Clements

Let me introduce myself to you

I have been working as a Market Research Focus Group Recruiter in Harlow for over 34 years now.  Before that I was a District Manager for a Party Plan Company called Oriflame so a  lot of people will know me from those two occupations. 

 I have been  married to Ray for 37 years and we have four  children   2 boys and 2 girls (perfect) and 8 grandchildren (where do the  years go?).

 I had the idea for this website about 6 years ago.  I had been sending out emails to quite a few thousand people on my mailing list  informing them of the Market Research groups I was recruiting for.  People started  asking me if they could add things to the end of my email i.e. advertising for their small businesses, local tradesmen etc and classifieds. People were also asking me to pose questions to the rest of the community like Does anyone know where..... and can anyone recommend..........

I had so many emails from people saying how much they enjoyed receiving the email.

Eventually the emails were getting too long and I felt that there was a definate need for a Community Website in the area where people have the chance to chat to each other and read useful information about the area. 

I contacted a local website designer (Paul from Rubber Cheese was recommended to me) who talked me through what I wanted, colours, layout etc and we came up with this site. The name Round About Harlow was thought up with friends and family on a weekend away whilst caravanning at West Mersea.  We were walking along the beach on a beautiful sunny day trying out different names and by the end of the walk we had the name.  Paul from Rubber Cheese very cleverly designed the logo with the road weaving in and out of the O's in the words.

I have got quite an advantage over other new websites  as I had over 7,000 people on my mailing list when I started this site so I already have a captive audience and that figure is growing all the time. 

The Website went live the last week in November 2006. 

In 2007 the website won an award for "Best Community Website" with The Herald Newspaper.

My goal is to have a website that everyone in Harlow will know about and use to find out information about the area.

If you have any suggestions of what you would like to see on this website then please let me know here