Posts filed under 'The Startup Phase'
Good morning, good morning, good morning. Man, this has been a tough month for me (wait, is it only the middle of the month? yikes). And it all comes down to being disorganized. And then getting overwhelmed because I’m disorganized. Even yesterday, I lost yet another important paper. OK, OK, enough slaps in the face to get organized. I get it.
My how overwhelmed you can get as a small business owner. Sometimes it just feels like total insanity, like you’re going a hundred miles an hour and getting nowhere. There are so many things I want to do with, and for, the business and I think the hardest lesson for me to learn is all in due time.
I somehow need to take a step back and re-evaluate everything. Especially our marketing and advertising plan. I thought I had a plan, till I got into it and realized how much I don’t know about the whole thing. Now, I want to sit down and make a real plan, now that I’ve floundered around in the murky waters for awhile.
I do already know that I’m going to start though with 10 sales contacts a day. This can be touching base with existing customers, pitching new customers, dropping ad postcards in the mail, it doesn’t matter. But I need to make the 10 contacts a day. I need to focus specifically on getting customers, which means I need to chink away at the seven impressions it takes for someone to buy. And to do this, the marketing and advertising has to be very targeted and managed.
Right now, I feel like we’ve tried a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and really, it’s just too scattered in this big big world. Yes, we need to create a brand image, but we need to grow the brand through getting customers. I dropped a couple of display blankets in a very popular boutique yesterday and this exposure is going to be huge. Better than some random ads on some random kids sites.
So, at least now I feel like a woman with a mission. When I say it’s been a tough month, I’m not kidding. Tough business-wise and emotionally because of it. I’m so far into this business and here we are, finally launched and finally getting good press and finally getting business and I feel like crumbling. Because it isn’t as much business coming in as I would have liked by this time, and it’s stressful. But getting down to crumbling made me re-evaluate what’s going on and how much it comes down to me being reticent to go out and get the sales.
So, making 10 contacts a day, getting organized, and focusing on revenue-increasing activities ONLY during business hours is going to make a huge difference, and will put the pieces of Amber back together again.
March 18th, 2007
These days are so crazy busy, but this is a *good* thing, we’re on the upswing. We have this last week and a half push to the Vegas tradeshow. But what’s cool is that all the stuff we’ve had to do for other deadlines in the last month has pushed us to get it together, really together. Most of the print materials are done, just waiting for a few new pictures. Including the catalog. I want to shout from the mountains; that thing was hanging over my head forever. Now, it’s done. And I’m actually happy with it. If you have these print materials when you walk into a boutique, you’ll have enough information to walk out of there with an order, signed and sealed:
- Catalog / Line Sheets - I put these together because you can get away with the line sheets if they have good technical sketches - but the catalog adds some pizazz and imagery. The line sheets contain:
- Technical sketches
- Style#
- Colors available
- Useful name (maybe just my opinion but it helps to say “the retro flowers” instead of “BL2-8998-99″, better reference point)
- Price List - These can be really simple - just tables of the item#; brief description; and wholesale price.
What I don’t have here is bulk pricing, which I want to add.
- Purchase Order - I use the PO form to gather all of the store information; the order form, payment options, AND the terms & agreements. This keeps it all together and helps me stay focused long enough to gather all of the information. This is important because you’ll find that there’s a lot of chatting going on and it’s easy to get distracted.
We’ve made a few boutique sales this week and it’s been a great experience. I can’t get over how much I learn at each appointment. I get so much feedback on our product, what’s selling in the market, what sells well in that location; how many items they’ll purchase, and most importantly, their personal style.
It’s cool to visit all the boutiques and see how they set up their stores, you really get a feel for how each is unique, even though they are all baby boutiques. Some are edgy, some are frilly, some SO pink, some not pink at all - it’s pretty cool.
Back on the topic of getting it all together for the tradeshow; a lot of people are jumping through hoops to make it happen and to make another project happen on top of that; both now with a one week deadline. That’s amazing. And we’re so grateful - really, really, really grateful. There’s still A LOT to pull off on this end, but we’re in motion.
February 1st, 2007
“Support” has been a major theme in my life over the last few weeks. Well, really since starting a business, but extremely so in the last few weeks. And by “support” I mean both the incredible support I get from some people and the incredible lack of support I get from others.
Starting a business brings out the best and worst in people, especially you. I’ve worked myself to the bone and somehow find a way to work some more. But this escalates stress levels and everyone pays when everyone is too stressed. It also sheds a new light on friends and family and even acquaintances in your life.
My strongest supporter is my husband, my business and life partner. He does SO much to keep this business moving, from designing our graphic T’s to designing the website and handling product photography. I know that there is no way this business could run with just one person behind it (we’re not even getting into the numerous contractors who help us out). Even with just half of the business to run, I’m running around like a mad woman half the time. I resolve every day to get more organized, and while it happens in small pieces, I have far to go.
My husband supports me mentally, emotionally, and completely in the business. He is half of the design team, and it was his graphic onesies which were the biggest hit at the celebrity gifting suite.
Beyond my husband, the story is a little different. I’ve found some surprises in people who I thought were mere acquaintances - more than a few have turned out to be my strongest supporters. I’ve found surprises in those I thought were nearest and dearest to me, more than a few have given not only no support, but negativity and disbelief instead. To which I chant in my head an Ani DiFranco line “A thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy, while you were just flying past.”
I think that the celebrity gifting suite escalated emotions for people. Oh you would not believe the offers I received to GO to the suite and meet the celebrities. How few offers we received for hands on help (this is not to negate those who came to our rescue, no way we could have pulled it off without you). And I honestly could tell that some friends were jealous. Here we were, too caught up in getting prepared to even get too excited about meeting celebrities, and others are just chomping at the bit for a chance to see these people.
But man - those people who are jealous have nothing to be jealous of; they have no idea how many years of midnight shifts we’ve done to earn that prize. How much of our “free time” we’ve devoted to working on this business in order to craft products that are worthy of an event like that, in order to get enough attention to make it to an event like that. I can’t count the hours, but I know very few people who would give up their evenings and weekends for 3+ years in hopes of making something out of it. So, I’m proud of us and I feel okay saying we deserved the invitation and we put on a good show and presented celebrities with products that we are incredibly proud to present.
And what came out of it, even from people we love, is just how little they believed in us prior to that event. Sadly, it took that event to buy us validation with some people who are supposed to be the closest to us. What a joke.
January 20th, 2007
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