Get it together

Literally – I want a collection that goes together. No matter how many styles I settle on for the final collection, they must be cohesive. Cohesiveness matters to more than just the look and feel of my collection- it matters to my overall brand building and my bottom line. If you are a small, just-starting-out business, then you are going to want to maximize your buying ability. You will want to use the same fabric in more than one style – this will help ensure you can ‘make the cut’ (meet the minimum yardage required by the supplier).

To get it together, I’m starting with a theme. I feel incredibly lucky to have been struck by a theme idea when I was doodling the other night. Right now, there is nothing solid behind my theme idea – but it gives me ideas for discovery. I’m starting with a combination of two keywords – those keywords are already inspiring me to look at fashions, cinema, movie posters, etc. from certain eras. They are basically a great starting point for exploring. Just an idea to kick-start your theme hunt  – try random keywords together, jot down words that strike your fancy.

Plan, plan, plan

Right now – I’m  gathering some discovery tools (sketchbooks, color books, reference books) and hashing out a broad time line for the production of my collection. From there, I can layer my marketing and sales plans on top of the production plan. To start your production plan, work backwards from your launch date (selling season for Fall collections is late Jan/early February through May; shipping starts end of July; of course, nothing is ever set in stone) and set at least the following milestone dates:

• Salesman’s samples complete
• Trade show booth (and/or marketing materials) complete
• Website/wholesale ordering information complete
• Sample (production or technical kits) dropped for assembly
• Sample fabrics ordered (I have a lot to share about sourcing in the next couple of weeks)
• Final patterns approved
• At least two cycles of: pattern design, test sample for fit, fit meetings, pattern edits, test sample for fit….etc.
• Technical Sketches complete
• Styles approved for pattern-making
• Final style meeting
• Fabrics sourced
• Logo, website, and stationary design underway
• Collection theme finalized

Keeping on my radar

So much goes into just developing a collection, that it’s easy for me to let a lot of the “launching a business” activities get pushed to the side. I will keep bookkeeping activities on my radar daily. Stay on top of your bookkeeping from the very beginning, if you can manage. In addition, I have to constantly and consistently work on your branding, pr, and marketing –>both the plans and implementation. We just wrapped up a new logo design today – I’ll need it on my hang tags and care labels, website and marketing materials, email signatures, social media site avatars, website, and on and on.  This time around, I promise to keep the trade show booth design and trade show schedule on my radar from the beginning too. Also – supporting my sales rep by providing them with pre-launch information and sneak peeks at the collection.

Ok – enough to do right now and more than enough to keep on my radar, I think I just made myself dizzy!!

          

So, as I’m planning for a photo shoot for our organics collection, I know I have a lot more to think about than just the product being ready:

• Models – need to locate and confirm models
• Scheduling for the day – the setup takes up most of the shoot time. If you haven’t been on a shoot, it’s almost unimaginable how long it can take to get the lighting setup.
• What types of photos we need – we need model shots more than isolated product shots. If you need isolated product shots, you should create a photo shot list that lists every product you need to shoot. For a model shoot – the photo shot list includes all the products /scenes you want shot. Send this list to the photographer; the list will help you group your shots in a logical order and plan for a realistic amount of time.
• What is the mood / atmosphere – this is where I still need to do the most thinking. I learned a lot about “hero” shots from the photographer. You need props – think if your product is candles, you might want to set a dining table scene for your “hero” shot. The candles would be the main focul point and glasses, centerpieces, etc. would be background items. The hero shot helps your customer envision the product in use, it should make the customer WANT that scene in their life.
• The setting – indoor or outdoor? If outdoor, where?
• Costs – of course, there is always the cost to consider!

I’m excited to get to our next shoot and feel happy that I will be much more prepared than the first time. Oh, one more tip – if you are using models (especially babies), don’t have them arrive until the time you anticipate being finished with setup. It will keep them from burning out before it’s their time to shine.

Have fun – it’s one of those aspects of our jobs that is creative and fun!

          

This time a year ago, I was incredibly stressed out by the CPSIA (wonder how many sleepness nights they caused coast-to-coast). I shudder to even think about how crazy that was – trying to understand what was going on, what we were responsible for, how much it could end up costing us, and what the heck we were going to do about (when we did finally understand it). Now, it seems there are more options for component testing and reliance on supplier’s certificates (duh!) and an extended stay on required third party testing until February 10, 2011. I’m happy happy happy to have our components tested, I’m happy to comply with a reseasonable law!

We are slimming down the business (so it will reach new heights) – we are cutting the ecommerce portion of the site (at least for the time being), and are likely to cut most of our drop shipping programs too. I feel a huge sigh of relief at the decision to “go wholesale only”…it’s one that has been eating at me for almost a year. So, we have a lot of changes to implement to get that change ironed out, but I feel it is a change in the best interest of our retailers. They now get our undivided attention, which they deserve.

I’m happy to let go of driving traffic to the ecommerce site. I’ve been “sitting” on things for a few months, keeping the business in maintenance mode, but feeling unsure of where I wanted it to go, so I have not really been seeking out new sales channels. It gave me some much needed time to reflect on what type of business i WANT to be running vs. what type of business I AM running.  And I approach the future of my business with much more certainty.

I’m easing up on myself this year – I’m making more time for quality-of-life committments, such as playing with the kids more, volunteering at my kids’ school, visiting with good friends, going on dates with my husband, and making sure that I remember to be in the moment as much as possible.

I feel happy and confident that 2010 holds great adventure and much excitement…and I’m eager to get on the roller coaster again.

          

Create a time line for 2009

My 2009 time line is different than my master business plan (which is in desperate need of an update too). Starting with the main financial goal, I mapped out not only how much the sales should increase each month, but also what it will take to make that happen. I have a plan for release of new designs, monthly advertising and pr, rate of increasing sales reps, and even the number of units (by product) that we need to sell each month.

How to get yours started: Make a list of the top ten things you want to have accomplished by the Dec. 31, 2009. Write this in past tense (ie: We made $8 zillion this year). Next, get 12 pieces of paper, and starting with your MAIN goal, work backwards from Dec. Make sure you cover all the development, sales, and marketing steps it will take to reach the monthly goal. Think about potential obstacles you could encounter each month and create a plan for overcoming them (including laziness and de-motivation!).

Meeting my January goals

One of the first things I need to help meet my January goals is MORE HELP, and thankfully, I’m getting it already. We’ve brought on some fantastic new sewing contractors for the blankets. This is huge because it will decrease our turnaround time without effecting the quality. This will translate to even happier customers, which will translate to more good word-of-mouth for the company.

Stay committed to your goals and plan

The hard part about goals is staying committed to them. So I make myself look at my January plan every morning. So far I’m on track. Had some great conversations with existing retailers today, will be visiting a few of them next week because they are ready to re-order (yes!!). We’ve got new designs for them too – which the retailers always love.

So that’s how I’m starting the year – optimistic.

Other ways you can stay connected to your goals include posting them on the wall, creating a vision board, and having an accountability partner.

Side note on the CPSIA – I’m not saying much about how we’re handling this because I’m not in any position of authority on the matter. I’m weeding through the information and am talking to whoever I can and am forming a plan. I’m not panicking, I’m not panicking, I’m not panicking…please visit Fashion-Incubator.com if you are looking for more detailed information on this very pressing topic. Also Get on twitter and search #cpsia to follow the conversation.

Follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/babyfabulous

Have a great new year!!

          

It’s been really really good for me to work with my partner on creating the master goals (the big financial one). Now, we’re in the midst of working backwards through the year from December towards January. Starting with December enables us to see where we need to be on the path towards our goals each month.  By working backwards, you can increment the steps and sub-goals realistically through the previous months.

Tip: Make sure you add important events to each month as  you make your plan. Include monthly marketing / development / release plans if applicable. Also include what you should be pitching (july could show “make holiday / gift guide pitches”. You want a map of everything that needs to happen each month in order for you to reach your goal.

I personally feel more attached, committed, and engaged with my goals than ever before, because we’re down to the level of specifics I’ve never been at before. I’m good at the high-level goals “want x number of reps by x month” – but then I don’t do the follow-through and plan out the work and time it will take to reach that goal. Until now.

I feel so proud of us…

I’m also doing a lot of end-of-the-year cleanup and organizing so that we can truly hit the ground running towards our goals.

          

**You must now issue a certificate of conformity with all of your shipments**

That should raise enough questions in your head. Start at fashion-incubator.com and keep your eyes there. I saw her sending out a request for more info from experts, so if we’re lucky, she’ll be posting even more information soon. Here’s the post to start on:

New product safety regulations that affect all manufacturers (fashion-incubator)

This is all due to the passing of the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act.

Here’s the link to the Consumer Product Safety Commission page that deals with this topic.

Make sure you do your research on this one and that you have all your bases covered. Also note that there are extra special regulations for manufacturer’s of children’s products.

          

On the wholesale orders side, if I can get an appointment and get into a boutique, the line sells, no problem. The problem is the first part – the time it takes to be the sales rep. The time it takes to make all the calls and follow-up emails and get to the appointments. It’s a full-time job, which meant that everything else was getting neglected – admin stuff, DESIGNING, PR – ugh I can’t even think of it all right now.

So, the answer is what the answer was when I first started out – delegate and get help – put people who are better than you are in place to help you.  I have this in place for the web stuff and the production / manufacturing part – the actual sewing I need to get it into place with the sales stuff. We have picked up an east coast rep, but I’ve been too nutty to even give that the attention it needs. We need a sales rep on the west coast. I’m struggling just to manage all the accounts I did go out and create in the last few months, much less get around to getting new ones – which we definitely need.

So, low-and-behold, I don’t have all the answers and in retrospect, I’ve probably given some mis-guided advice on this blog. Or I’m just experiencing growing pains. I’m sick of hearing from everyone that I’m too hard on myself, so I’m going to tell you that this isn’t what this is about. This is about taking a realistic look at the way we’ve been doing things and taking a pro-active stance to change it for the better, for the survival of the business.

I want to be running a business and designing a successful clothing line, instead of being a nut job which does no good for my mental state, my family, or the state of the business. I want to finally be able to put out my first real collection, and to do that means I need to get a lot of stuff more organized and I need some really good people who are experts in their field to wear some of the hats I’ve been wearing.

Which I know can and will happen, now that I have some direction in my head.

          

I know that we need more help. We’re even picking up more help – especially with production and sales. But the worse part is that I keep talking myself into getting “just a few more” things ironed out perfect before I seek out the help. I have to get over this glitch or it’s going to kill me. I have to be ok with where we’re at and just ask for help. I am lining up the jobs that will be easy to train on and pass off and I’m lining up the next level of suppliers. So, see, I’m working through it – even though I feel like a deer in the headlights.

I let my stress get the better of me today and had a totally uncalled for outburst. Shame on me. Lame of me. I even thought I had prepped myself for the day – I certainly prepped my daughter when she got out of school: “Mommy has a shipping deadline today and I’m already behind, so I’m going to need your patience for just a little bit.”

I didn’t make the deadline. WHAT?? I always make it. Even if I’m flying out the door at the last minute – I make it. But not today. And it cost me a pretty penny b/c it was a rush order that we promised would be there. It will be there, it just cost us for express shipping. Oh, and side-tracked my daughter’s homework for the evening.

I’ve landed a guest blog column on a business magazine site (ha ha that won’t make me busier) and since I owe them content, my first column will be about the real effect having our own businesses have on our families. Believe me, everyone in the family sacrifices to make it happen – but everyone reaps incredible benefits too.

***Have you checked out the forums? Sometimes I’m not able to get around to answering emails as quickly as I’d like, but I’ve noticed some of you are helping each other and asking questions on the forum. This is fantastic!!!

          

I did a great follow-up job of coming home and writing up a press release. I even stayed up late to perfect it and get a bunch of images together to send to one big-traffic site. I got that sent and it paid off. We were featured the next morning.

Then I tweaked it a little for the other media outlets, put my computer on stand-by and never saw its happy face again. That was it, my computer crashed completely. I did an ok job of backups, except for my emails and email lists. Oh what a mistake that was – what a nightmare it has been catching up.

Get an external hard drive and set up automatic scheduled backups for all of your files. That’s my big duh-I-should-have-already-known-that lesson for the day. And I wanted to say I’m back and I really have a lot of posts coming up to share about press releases, affiliate programs, preparing for the next cash-and-carry events, creating a “wow” display, and all sorts of other things I’ve learned since the great crash of ’08.

          

I found the site to be an incredibly great reminder of ways to ‘stay on track’. I’m already great about To-Do lists, but now, I’m applying the priorities and then re-writing the list so that only “Important” items are at the top. And then I work down the list.

What I saw immediately is that some of my most important tasks have stayed on my To-Do list the longest. By having them buried somewhere in the middle, I’m able to excuse them by not really ‘seeing’ them. Now these things are at the top and have to happen first. I can also see that I “skip” over them lightly because they are tasks I don’t like doing.

We’re working on tracking how long all of our tasks take, and that’s also a real eye-opener. I spend a lot more time dilly-dallying during the day than I thought I did. But this is good news (and not to be mistaken with IMPORTANT brain breaks and kid-time). It’s good news because it means I really DO have more time in the day to get stuff done. A lot of emails can be accomplished in a “found” 15 minutes.

The best by-product of this is that by the time I reach my night, my stress levels are down because I know I took care of the most important stuff for that day. If I keep working after the kids are in bed, it gets to be on some of my more enjoyable tasks – like DESIGNING!!!!

By the way – Project Runway is back on Wed. nights!!