We are delighted to announce our top three suppliers for 2016. Each of these superb companies have gone the extra mile in providing exceptional service to us and have greatly assisted us to grow and maintain our market leading position.
If your business is looking for these types of service we can thoroughly reccomend:

Our sincere thanks to all three of you for making a real difference in our business and we look forward to working with you in 2017. We also take this opportunity to thank our other suppliers and partners that we worked with last year – we appreciate your support too.

Mince pies. Carol singers. Absolute bedlam on the high street. It can only mean one thing – Christmas is approaching. And fast! But don’t let the thought of all the presents you haven’t bought yet depress you. There’s one thing everybody loves about the run up to the Big Day, and that’s the annual Scan Film or Store Christmas quiz.

This year, we’ve taken our inspiration from the silver screen and put together a list of quotes from 10 of our favourite Christmas films, along with a few trivia hints to help you identify them (and give you something to talk about at the office Christmas party). Get all the film titles right and you’ll be in with a chance to win a bottle of champagne and a box of mince pies to help you celebrate / cope with the in-laws / tick another item off the present list.

So, do you think you’re up for the challenge?

Ready, steady, quiz!

What are the titles of these 10 popular Christmas films?

1) “We elves like to stick to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup.”

The star of this 2003 movie had to eat so many sweet products during filming that he ended up getting headaches from the sugar.

2) “Look, Daddy. Teacher says, every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.”

This 70-year-old film may be a firm favourite, but two of its writers called the finished work “horrid” and refused to watch it when it was released.

3) “Blast this Christmas music. It’s joyful and triumphant.”

The prosthetic make up worn by this film’s star took around eight hours to apply and was so uncomfortable that he needed counselling from an expert in torture-resistance techniques.

4) “No! No! I want an official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle!”

This story is partly based on a book called In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash, a collection of short stories written by Jean Shepherd for Playboy magazine in the 1960s.

5) “You’re skipping Christmas! Isn’t that against the law?”

This film won the Young Artist Award for ‘best family feature film’ in 2005, but was also nominated for ‘worst film’ in the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Awards.

6) “Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho.”

The all American hero of this popular action film, set at an office Christmas party, was actually born in Germany in 1955 – unlike many of the actors playing the movie’s German terrorists.

7) “I gotta tell you, Santa, there’s something about this place that doesn’t seem quite… kosher.”

The central theme of this Christmas film was inspired by the retail hysteria over the Cabbage Patch Dolls during the 1980s.

8) “A sequel. That’s it. We’ll bring it out on March 25 and we’ll call it… Christmas 2!”

The role of BZ in this film was offered to Harrison Ford, Burt Reynolds, Dustin Hoffman and Johnny Carson, before finally being accepted by John Lithgow.

9) “If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!”

Released in 2009 and featuring the voice of Jim Carrey, this was the first Disney animated movie to release in IMAX 3D – and Carrey’s first film with Disney.

10) “Okay, this is extremely important. Will you please tell Santa that instead of presents this year, I just want my family back?”

This family film took $17,081,997 in its opening weekend in 1990 and stayed at the number one spot for 12 weeks, and in the top ten until June the following year.

How to enter

It’s really very easy. Just SCAN through these FILM clues, then STORE your answers in email format (see what we did there?) and send it to info@scan-film-store.co.uk. Remember, we’re looking for the film titles please! All entries with 10 correct answers will be put into a hat (by which we mean random number generator) and the winner chosen at random on 15th December 2016. You’ll receive your prize by 23rd December 2016, ready for the big day. Good luck!

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Minimalism. It’s a big thing right now. People are decluttering left, right and centre. Stuff, it seems, is no longer cool.

Just ask The Minimalists, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. Joshua was leading an outwardly successful but ultimately unfulfilling life as a corporate executive when he discovered that what he needed was not more but less.

He soon converted best mate Ryan to his way of thinking. Ryan took a pretty drastic approach to his conversion. He packed up literally all his belongings as if he were moving house, draping dust sheets over big items like furniture. The deal was this: each day he would unpack or uncover only that which he genuinely needed. At the end of 21 days he would throw the rest away.

All of it.

Just let that sink in for a moment.

Crazy, right? But the pair now have 4 million people regularly reading their blog, and they’ve been featured everywhere from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal.

Japanese decluttering expert Marie Kondo takes a slightly different approach in her book The life-changing magic of tidying up. Although the first two thirds is likewise dedicated to divesting oneself of earthly possessions, her rather charming method involves keeping only those things which ‘spark joy’.

It’s all very inspiring, but not necessarily as easy to apply to an office setting as it is at home. After all, while toner cartridges and A4 envelopes don’t spark huge amounts of joy in most people, they’re pretty essential in the workplace.

What you can do, however, is get rid of some of that excess paperwork. Those musty smelling box files full of forms and letters and reports that haven’t seen the light of day since perms were in fashion are neither joyful nor essential, and are in fact costing you rather a lot of money in rent.

If you’re worried you might need them one day, get them scanned or at least store the originals offsite to create a more Zen-like atmosphere in your own office.

Ideally though, chuck them. Actually don’t chuck them, get them securely destroyed (you don’t want confidential information showing up in the papers or on a competitor’s desk, do you?).

We can help with all of the above, so get in touch today and we can chat about the best options for your business.

Just don’t expect us to help you clear out the kitchen fridge. We don’t do mouldy sandwiches.

Nothing makes you feel quite as old as realising you can’t listen to the first single you ever bought without getting hold of equipment that today’s teenager would classify as retro. Or vintage. Or antique, even. Charming.

Technology certainly has moved on. Would your younger self have believed that one day we’d be able to buy, store and play music on our phones, or watch movies on handheld screens the size of greeting cards? You’d probably have dismissed the idea along with Marty McFly’s hoverboard and Martin Bower’s teleport bracelet.

Much as we love the progress that has been made in these modern times, we can’t help looking back with fondness at some of the tech dinosaurs that have become extinct over the years….

Cassette tapes

Remember listening to the radio and waiting with your finger poised above the record button so you could tape your favourite tune when it came on? Without any of the DJ’s introduction, if you were really skilled. Fun times. Less fun was having to find a suitable pencil to wind the ribbon back in if it got chewed up in your old cassette player.

VHS and Betamax

Long before the PC vs Mac gang wars started, it was all about Betamax vs VHS. Whichever side you were on, there were definite disadvantages to the whole video thing, from the crazy convulsing picture when you pressed pause, to the chance for your mum to record over your favourite episode of the A-Team because you forgot to label the cassette.

Reel-to-reel

Is it just us, or do reel-to-reel tapes make you think of spy films? No? Just us then. These bad boys actually date back to the 1920s, but there are still plenty of them out there today, mostly boxed up in attics and warehouses for lack of anything to play them on. Sad, isn’t it?

Floppy disks

Now these made us feel like proper techies, and not in a bad way. “You need a copy of that report I wrote? No probs, won’t be a tick… no, no need to fire up the printer, I’ll just copy it onto a floppy for you.” Genius. Especially when they added that little ‘write protection’ tab so no one could wipe out all your hard work.

Ah, nostalgia. If only we could go back, right? Actually, scratch that – no one needs to live through shoulder pads, mullets and Milli Vanilli again. But it is nice to take the occasional trip down memory lane, if only to laugh at the clothes you once thought made you look super cool.

That’s where we can help. At Scan Film or Store we can convert old analog audio and visual material into DVD, CD, external hard drive or USB format, which won’t snap, tangle, unravel, fade or lose quality. That way, you can listen to or watch your old music or video footage on any modern machine, and ensure that your memories will last well into the future.

If you’d like more information about how we can convert your old analog material to a digital format, just get in touch.

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So summer is upon us, and Facebook will soon be full of holiday snaps from a rash of exotic beaches around the world. Which is great if they’re yours, but less fun when you’re looking at them from your desk, with its ineffective air con, wilting rubber plant and view of the skyscraper next door.

There’s only one way to survive a summer stuck at the office, and that’s to cheat and bring the holidays to you. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

1) Join the tourists and get the open top bus to work instead of your usual commute

Be sure to abandon your laptop in favour of a backpack (worn on both shoulders, naturally) and hang a digital SLR around your neck so you fit in with the crowd. Then relax as the usually frustrating journey to the office becomes a mini staycation adventure in your own town.

2) Suggest a theme for dress down Friday – Hawaiian, beachwear, mermaid etc

You’re not the only one who isn’t eating paella and swigging sangria on the Costa del Britsabroad – your colleagues are bound to be feeling the effects of the green-eyed holiday monster too. What better way to boost moral than to get everyone out of their shirts and ties and into something far more suited to a resort theme night?

3) Buy a cocktail kit and mix everyone up a pina colada* at lunchtime, complete with umbrellas (*It may need to be a virgin one, depending on your boss)

If anything’s going to distract you from the why-am-I-here-when-it’s-sunny-outside blues, it’s a cold glass of something cheerful. Even if you decide that vodka at midday is probably not going to help you balance the accounts or proof read that report, a well made summer mocktail can do wonders for the soul.

4) Insist that everyone in the office speaks with a foreign accent

Granted, this one may be harder to pull off, but if you can get everyone on board (and we suggest trying this after the cocktails, assuming you were able to persuade the manager to let you have real ones) the sound of non-English chatter should help you feel like you’ve escaped home shores for a little while.

5) Fill a tray with sand, put it under your desk, take off your shoes and pretend you’re on a beach

If you can’t go to the beach, the beach must come to you. If anything signals being on holiday, it’s the feeling of sand between your toes, and this particular summer survival kit is so easy to make (helpful hint: sand is readily available at any good DIY store, or your kid’s sandpit).

Of course, you could always book yourself an actual real life holiday. In which case, we’ve got one final summer survival tip – make sure you don’t forget data security while you’re gone. Thieves tend to see the holidays as a chance to notch up a little overtime, so get your documents stored securely, either by locking them away at an alarmed and monitored unit like ours or by transferring them to protected digital formats.

Then lock the door behind you, and forget about it all for a week. Oh, and before you go, don’t forget to send these tips to the colleagues you’re leaving behind – after all, if you’re going to make them look through your exotic Facebook snaps, you should at least give them the tools to survive a summer stuck in the office.