Two Down, One to Go

Got my two orders done and out the door.  Thanks again, Evergreen State College and Snoozy's Bookstore - hope you like them!  Now starting to work on a replacement order for Western Washington University.  Since I won't actually get paid for these I'm feeling slightly less motivated, but I've decided to make them now and list them on etsy to see if I can get more money for them and also introduce my new design - whatever sells I'll replace, whatever doesn't sell by early September, I'll send on to WWU.

I'm liking my new design very much and am quite pleased with my first two orders.  I need more preparation of my materials, especially lining and padding, but otherwise the process seems to be pretty fast.  The padding is posing some problems - sometimes the tablet/netbook sleeves are a bit snug, and I have issues ensuring that all the layers are sewn together.  Nevertheless, I think this process is going to work well and be profitable.

One of my favorites

Had an interesting convo from American University about 200-300 passport covers.  They're looking for "green" covers that are, indeed, green, embroidered with a globe or their own logo.  I have the feeling that they sent the same message out to several etsians - which would be intelligent - so who knows if I've got a shot at this or not.  Honestly, it would be a kind of boring project but nicely lucrative and what a great school to have as a customer.

Globe proposal

Time to Focus on LapTopWraps

New design LapTopWrap

I don't want to lose the wine bag momentum but the time for back-to-school ordering is coming up fast.  My experience is that bookstores finish up the semester in May, do inventory in June, and are ready to gear up for the fall semester by early July.  My catalog is pretty much done, so now to prepare a MailChimp campaign with my video (yet to be finished).  However, I think I'll continue primarily with my current strategy of cold calling, it seems to be the most effective and I'm dreading it less all the time.  I feel that with my new processes, resulting in lower pricing, selling to bookstores this year will be easier than ever.  And I'm not going to focus on Georgia, although I won't ignore it, either, but rather target schools that are into sustainability.  Too many times I've heard from GA bookstore managers, "Our students don't really care about environmental products..."  Again, though, with the price point I've been able to achieve, even people who aren't into eco should be interested in the sleeves.