"Heroldsbay Festival" come join the fun.

Come join us for Virtual Planet Beach Soccer, Virtual Planet Touch Rugby, Virtual Planet Beach Volley Ball and other great events. The festival is running from the 17th December to the 20th December and it promises to be some scorching hot action. Come check out the Virtual Planet team and join the fun.

November 2008

So Tamara is with us full time and into the thick of things. She employed a great team and I am looking forward to work with them all for a long time. Nicoleen is of to a shaky start as she disapeared to Johanesburg in her second month and I was dissapointed as it seems that I pay people and they just do not deserve the pay as no clients signed on through them. Do I have to become a Bastard and pay people minumum wages or better yet just pay them commision no risk to me or the company. Do these people not realize that there is people depending on them, or that they are the cause that people do not pay decent wages in "The Garden Route". Here I am offering a decent package with benefits, flexi-time and what have you and I get screwed over. Thus I have decided that Japie Leeuwner is 100% correct in paying on a strictly commision only basis. The girls working for me now Desiree and Lorraine is the last of the ones that I made my promises to and I will honour all my promises, the rest is going to be a different kettle of fish.

Burglers strike at our office.

On Friday evening November 7th our office got broken into and 4 of our Laptops got stolen. As usuall the police was incompetent and we are still waiting for the inspector to show up 18 days later. Hope none of you ever have to rely on Inspector Plaatjies from George SAPD to assist you in times of great need. Well we took things into our own hands and issued a R10 000 reward leading to the recovery of our equipment. This was a minor setback for our operation and things got back to normal a week later. We lost all of our files and company client history, but my family was not harmed. The robbers would have unleashed a beast of a different nature, if they have harmed my wife and two kids. The streets of George would never hav been safe again, I would have hunted them down and eventually I would have gotten the right one's that broke in and harmed my family. I still have a score to settle when I get home.......

October 2008

So here we were in our second month of trading, we landed San Marco Tile Center in Mosselbay and George as clients. We also managed to get our first Developers on Board, Num-Num Eco Estates. Go to www.virtualgardenroute.co.za to view how we are marketing our new clients.
Tamara started working for us half day to ease out of her obligation to Le Grand Estate and we employed Nicoleen Snyman. Stiffeney Knell decided that her personal life is interfering to much and on mutual agreement her employ was terminated. So the start is still slow, but the sites is looking better by the day. We are up to 12 Franchises developed.

On the 27 September the "Little Flippers" Swim school hosted a golf day to promote swimming within the SWD area and we were proud to be a part of the day. We would like to wish Theo, Brigitte and Mariette all the best for the future. We would also like to thank them for teaching our kids how to swim and give us some peace of mind. Linda and I know how hard it is to get Jasmin to concentrate and to listen and we can see how much love and patience you have whenever you are in the pool with our kids. You can always turn to Virtual Planet for any sponsorship in the future and we will gladly do so again next year.

Virtual Planet sponsors Golf Day.

Aidan and Jasmin both take swimming lessons at the "Little Flippers" swim school and thus it was not a difficult choice as to which event Virtual Planet would sponsor first. When Approched by the owners of Little Flippers to know if we would sponsor one of the Tees or Greens. We jumped in and bought the 18th Green for maximum exposure. We also decided to sponsor the First, Second and Third prize for this day too and donated a 7 day holiday and 5 day Holiday anywhere in South Africa for the lucky first and second prize winners. The third prize was a weekend breakaway any where in the Garden Route. We also sponsored a Golf Scope range finder as a lucky draw. I was in Nigeria during the event, but heard it was a great success. I will publish some pictures of the winners at a later stage once I know who the people are that won the Prizes. I would also like to thank Marlet Nel who represented Virtual Planet at the prize giving and handed out the prizes. Also, thank you Nicoleen Snyman for being there and representing Virtual planet during the day. A special Thanks to my wife Linda who assailled all my fears and made this day happen. Thank you Theo for putting up the banners and giving us this great chance to give our new company some exposure to the business community.

Our first advertorial newspaper report

The first advetorial on Virtual Planet was run in the George Herald the 11th September 2008. Now people are starting to take notice of us. a couple of people we know phoned to congratulate us on an excellent article, people even stopped me in the street to chat. We recieved our first responses via e-mail and someone even phoned as far as Riversdale to ask if we could assist with his marketing. Strange enough Estate agents phoned me for a job, showing we are on the right track. Well team, things are rolling and we launched within 3 months of the original idea took shape in my head. Thanks to all the support from my wife Linda in this hectic time, Love you lots. To my Kids I want to say sorry that Daddy has not spent so much time with you as in the past, but I promise to do so in the near future as soon as everyone else throws their weight in behind me and help make this venture a sucsess.

Virtual Planet's First News Paper Ad

Virtual Planet ran their first newspaper advertisement on the 4th September 2008. It was placed in the whole Garden Route published newspapers, The George Herald, The Mosselbay Advertiser, The Knysna Plett courant. The response was minimal but the exposure was to 40 000
readers. We had to run an ad campaign to get the editorial exposure for the next two weeks after the advertisement. All worthwhile for the long run as people started taking notice and the logo is starting to get recognised.

Welcome

The Virtual Planet team would like to welcome Japie Leeuwner and the rest of the Leeuwner pride to our zoo. Japie bought the Gauteng and the Free State Franchises and together with his sister Stephanie they are going to build a bussiness to be reckoned with. Japie and Gerhardt recently met and since then has become friends and partners. Japie is an avid Quad biker and together with Gerhardt they enjoy hitting the trails on weekends. Be sure to keep an eye on the franchises and see which one grows the quickest. Also keep an eye on the Blog as Gerhardt will shortly announce who bought the Western Cape franchise and also the Eastern Cape franchise. Negotiations for these two is on going and should be completed soon. There is also going to be a competition amongst the franchises to see the quickest growth rate and laso daily Hit rate, all these competitions and prizes to be annonced soon.

Tamara Smith

Tammara is the Marketing Manager of Virtual Planet. Her Birthday is the 10th of Ferbruary, and she said a true lady never reveals her age, so she has not given her birth year. Your guess is as good as mine as to her age. Tamara was miss York in her younger days, a true Socialite with plenty of friends. She loves life, and likes travelling. I think she is going to be a great asset to the company,

She is in charge of bussniess whenever Gerhardt is not availlable.

We will tell you more about Tamara (Tammy to her friends) in the near future.

The faces behind Virtual Planet,

Gerhardt Koch, born on the 27 December 1969.
Gerhardt is married to Linda Louise Koch and they have two beautiful kids. A daughter named Jasmin Gale and a son called Aidan Thomas.
Gerhardt was the youngest ever cadet in the South African Air force, he joined when he was 15 yrs old, in Sept 86 intake. He turned 16 right after basic training. He was in the Air force for 6 yrs before he decided to go travelling and seeing the world. He past by and touched many peoples hearts, minds and other body parts he cares not to mention. Any way he came back to South Africa in 1997 and started working like normal people do. He worked at Mossgas for 2 yrs and the got married to Linda, they moved to Botswana where he worked for DeBeers on the diamond mines. (He will tell you some snippets about this some time). Jasmin was born in 2001 and Gerhardt went off to Angola to work on the oil Rigs, he did this not to change nappies every day and to earn some serious dollars, he was in Angola for 6 years. Aidan was born in 2006 and funny enough Gerhardt changed jobs as soon as this happened. He started working in Nigeria for more money and less work, enough time to sit and ponder about starting his own thing and thus the idea off Virtual Planet was hatched. He is described by some as a "dark horse" his wife calls him a stud, not sure if it is because he is well hung or because he wants to procreate so much. He travelled extensively in his younger days. And has a lot of memoirs, he is sure to publish an Auto-biography about his life some time.

The Birth of Virtual Planet

The Idea of Virtual Planet was born in May 2008 and so the seed grew into an Idea and the Idea
became a reality when I spotted a Virtual Tour done by Omnivision. The Tour was stumbled upon when I looked at my daugter's School web page. I followed the link and started e-mail correspondence with Heinz Oellrich, the owner and creator of all my web sites. We met for the first time on the 13th June 2008, in a coffee shop and Virtual Planet was born.