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.

Uncommon Goods

Finished up South Carolina cold calls today, still have some follow-up to do.  Only found 29 stores on google with several of those being Total and Winestyles, so actual number called is only 21.  Of those, only 4 have asked for photos so far but 6 are still outstanding so too soon to tell how interested SC is in general.

In researching more stores, I ran across a site called Uncommon Goods.  It's an online store that specializes in artistic/unusual products with some emphasis on handmade and eco.  Sounded right up my alley so I made an application for the wine bags.  However, I think I should do the same for my other products, which either have no competitors or just a few on the site.  Of course, I never heard of this site before today so I have no idea how much traffic it actually gets.  Still, doesn't hurt to submit them.  It's noon, so not a good time to call wine stores.

Three in-store calls this afternoon, assuming everyone cooperates (David, this means you.)

Marketing Plan

I think I'm finally understanding how to use the marketing plan I got from the Get Clients Now workshop I attended several months ago.  Although there are peripheral marketing activities that I can and should engage in - networking, for example - the number one thing I need to do is make phone calls.  It's paying off beautifully for my wine bottle bags and there's no reason to think it won't work as well for the other products.

So now my first 3 marketing activities are all around calling - first, follow up all outstanding calls; second, make 10 new cold calls; and third, research new stores to call the following day.  Since they're on a list, it's pretty certain I'll do them.

Of course, I really need to up my cold calls.  I started with 5/day, then 6, now 10.  But I just did 10 calls and it only took 13 minutes, not really enough time.  It's getting toward noon now which tends to be busy for wine stores, but I need to make a bunch of afternoon follow up calls so I'll tack on another 10 cold calls at that time.

Right now, however, I need to fill my order from Mac's Beer & Wine, received yesterday.  I think that makes 7 stores now!

Two Wholesale Orders in One Day!

I hope there's a time when I look back on this post and laugh.  Two orders?  How about 200?  But for now, I'm pretty jazzed about it and it is absolutely a first.  Thanks very much to my friends Hunter and Curt, in Cumming and Savannah, respectively.

If only I could now turn these orders over to my "people" who would then make the bags, tag them, pack them, and ship them.  The problem with the wine bags is that they're easy but tedious.  At least Curt's is a custom order, so it's a little bit unusual.

I'm proud of myself for following up immediately on 2 leads that Hunter gave me in nearby towns.  My instinct was simply to drive home and call, sometime, from there.  The ecologist in me, however, was somewhat stunned by driving 1-1/2 hours (roundtrip) for a 10 minute meeting, so I called the leads on the off-chance that I could schedule meetings with them while I was in the area.

The one in Cumming was interested but not until closer to holiday time - I get a lot of that.  But the one in Dawsonville agreed to see me.  He didn't seem entirely thrilled so I'm not feeling very confident of a sale, but at least I made the contact.  And who knows?  I've certainly been wrong about who my potential customers are before.

Sales Efforts Paying Off

Hmm, I guess I got busy...I'll blame it on the trip to Cuba, which was fabulous.

Things are moving more or less according to plan.  There's been progress on the Whole Foods front - my vendor application was approved!  Now I just need to be put into their system.  It's been 2 weeks and it seems I'm not in yet; 2 follow-up emails have had no visible effect.  Very frustrating.

From Our Cave to Yours

In the meantime, I'm concentrating on my wine bottle bags.  Have sold to 3 wine stores now, plus Hafner, with interest from others.  I'm steeling myself to make 5 cold calls a day; not overly ambitious, I admit, but pretty good for me.  Getting a lot of requests for info/photos that I hope will turn into orders.  Learned, however, that this is the slow season for wine sellers.  I guess that makes sense.  Will have more interest closer toward the holidays.

Had a good chat with Michael at Western Washington University, let him know what I was up to with respect to the new laptop sleeve design.  He was encouraging, said there was a lot of interest in the bags but the price seemed to discourage them (he's sold about half of what he bought).  They should like the new price point a lot better.

Status Update

With a lot of my focus on Oberlin and the house recently, I haven't kept up with the blog.  So, current status:

1.  Sandwich bags - "Dropped by" the Sandy Springs Whole Foods today to see what was going on with my vendor app.  Was able to talk face-to-face with Tatjana, who said that the regional grocery coordinator now had the application in hand; her part is finished.  It's confusing because Mary in the Duluth store said that they had the authority to add certain items themselves, and that's the impression I had from Susan as well, who declined to take these on at the regional level.  Anyway, I will soon have a contact name and email and can follow up with him directly.

2.  Wine bags - Had a nice order from Hafner based on the listing I sent him showcasing his wine.  Also had a retail order today from one of my networking colleagues.  Nevertheless, I think I need to review the construction process to see if I can't get the time down a bit; I had a lot of pushback on the price point.  Then I need to continue to expand the sales effort.  Cook's Warehouse/Sherlock's (I think that was the name) was suggested this morning.

3.  Sleeves - I like the streamlined design and think the price can't be beat.  Just need to have a few more samples and rework my catalog.

These are all projects for next week as I'm leaving for Cuba tomorrow, returning next Wednesday evening.  And they all take a back seat to cleaning up my workroom which is an absolute disaster.  (Not to mention the guest bedroom next door - thank you, Sunny.)

First Wine Bag Wholesale Order!

Batting 1 for 1 - yoohoo!  Thanks, Cori!

Wine Stores

I think I've done all I can do with Whole Foods for the moment, including 3 follow-up emails and phone calls this morning.

So I'm moving on to wine stores.  I've developed a list of 38 in the Atlanta area and I'm going to start dialing for dollars, as Arden always said, to see who wants to take a closer look.  Can't put all my (organic free range) eggs in one basket, right?

And More WFM

Had a very nice meeting with Mary today at the Duluth WFM.  She is interested and planning to contact Tatjana so hopefully they can collaborate to push the vendor application through.  It sounds as though the decision really can be taken locally, which is great.  She might also be interested in other bags later on.

Good way to end the week, plus it put me it good proximity for Dom's I Am a US Citizen luncheon with his team.  Now to finish the mah jongg bags and do a little cleaning up.

More WFM

Just got back from visiting the Buckhead store which was interesting.  Chris and Blakely liked the bags but weren't sure there was a good market there for them.  They'll keep them in mind for back-to-school.  On the other hand, they asked me to send them photos of my tote bags and suggested I contact the specialty department about the wine bags.  Will do!

Stopped by Sandy Springs WFM on the way home but Tatjana wasn't in.  I think I'll drop by tomorrow on the way back from Duluth - I really want to keep the vendor app process going and I think the personal contact will help.  Until it gets annoying.

Going to send this bag (in stock) plus some sold samples.

WFM

Just submitted my new vendor packet to the buyer at Whole Foods in Sandy Springs.  Keeping my fingers crossed that it is approved and an order is forthcoming!

In the meantime, I have a meeting with the WFM in Buckhead tomorrow and the one in Duluth on Friday.  Have not been able to talk with the one on Ponce de Leon yet as she just returned from vacation yesterday; I'll call her again tomorrow.

No word from Fresh Market yet; I'll call them again today.

Now off to standardize my reusable sandwich bags process and costs; this afternoon I'll do the same for the laptop sleeves.  Oh, and I have to make a custom tote bag for Charles for WCOG.

Cartier Women's Initiative Awards

A big thanks to Obse at the Alliance Francaise for turning me on to the Cartier Women's Initiative Awards, a $20K award to women entrepreneurs in 6 regions.  She emailed me about on the 11th and the application was due by end of day on the 14th, but I decided to go for it.  Talk about frustrating!  The on-line application had a bug that prevented it from "saving" unless there was something in every single field.  I had to completely rewrite the application once - the second time I got smart and copy-pasted it into a word document.  Thank goodness, because I had to completely redo a second time!  Unfortunately I was in the middle of the executive summary and hadn't copied it into my document yet, so I ended up writing it 3 times!  An email came out around 3:00 in the afternoon letting us know there was this little problem.  A bit late.  Still, I do believe that my second effort was better than my first.  Not sure about the third summary...

I could use the $20K but I think the odds are slim that I will be a finalist much less an award recipient, but I don't care so much about that.  What was great about the process was that I really had to think through where I was, after 2 years, with my business and where I wanted to go with it.  And I determined the following:

• etsy.com was a good way to start selling right away, and I made some money.  However, it is a long way from the original vision and I think, all things considered, that I need to get back to it.  I'll still continue to sell a few things on etsy but that's going to take a back-of-the-bus back seat to my wholesale efforts, which have flagged.
• I'm going to focus on 3 products:  sleeves (laptop/iPad/ereader), reusable sandwich bags, and wine bottle gift bags.  I think these have the best wholesale potential.
• I've got to simplify.  No more straps - too time-consuming and therefore costly.  No attempts to be "artistic."  That wasn't part of the original vision, which was geared more toward colorful and cheap.  And I'm sorry, but let's face it, I am not artistic.  I do, however, have a good eye for color so I should capitalize on that and leave artistry to the crafty people on etsy.  I've always thought of myself as a more of a manufacturer than a crafter.  Maybe do a project once in awhile for fun, but mostly need to figure out how we can churn out products that are one-of-a-kind, colorful, and functional, but simple and inexpensive.
• Really need to nail down the standardization of sizes and design and get patterns made.
• Absolutely have to step up my sales efforts.  I realized that I need 30-70 wholesale orders at the minimum level to break even this year.  That's a lot of orders! 

Honesty - Not Such a Lonely Word

I was pleased and relieved to get a call from Lisa yesterday.  Lisa had purchased a set of 3 champagne bottle bags at the Atlanta Wine & Jazz Festival a few weeks ago and had given me her credit card to take down the necessary information to process via PayPal.  When I tried to do so, I realized that I had written the wrong CSC code.

All I had for Lisa's contact information was her street address.  So I sent her a little hand-written note, asking her to please call or email with the security code.  A week later, not having heard from her, I assumed that either she hadn't opened the letter or was blowing me off.  Sigh.

But no!  As I was driving home from Whole Foods she called me on my cell!  She gave me the code and was very gracious about it, to boot.  More important than the $25 I got from her was a renewed faith in most people's basic decency and honesty.  Thank you, Lisa.

Moving into the Big Time??

Well, I'm either taking a giant step into future profitability or killing myself financially this year.  The good news is, a local Whole Foods is definitely interested in purchasing my sandwich bags!  The bad news is, they require UPC labels before even approving you and putting you in their system.  To get a UPC label I had to apply for a unique identifier for my company.  This cost $760 with annual fees starting at $158.  Yowzah.  Once I have my company i.d. I can go ahead and order the bar codes which, if I understand what I've read so far, will cost around $10 per bar code artwork and around 6 cents per label.

But I don't want to focus on the scary money part!  I'm thrilled that Tatajana likes my bags.  The other Whole Foods buyer I met with also liked the bags, so I'll keep my fingers crossed that I'll be amortizing this cost over many Whole Foods stores.  Today Atlanta, tomorrow the southeast region!  Maybe next year the holy grail - California.

But what's up with WF buyers' scheduling skills?  This is the second time I've shown up at a Whole Foods and the buyer wasn't there!  At least this one had let her assistant know that I was coming, but sheesh!

Wine & Jazz Festival update

Ok, I know it's too soon to know for sure, but based on the day's sales, it was, as usual, not worth it to attend a show.  On the plus side, I developed a new product line - wine and champagne bottle bags -that went over pretty well.  I met a wholesaler and 2 women who have local co-ops.  So maybe something will come of them.

On the minus side, I invested $230 plus a lot of time to pull in $150 in sales.  Don't need my global MBA to know that that's not a very good return.

It was a pleasant afternoon and I got to listen to some great jazz, but next time I'm asked to be a vendor at a show, would someone please slap me until I say no?

A Little Courtesy, Please?

I kicked butt (for me) on Tuesday making sales calls.  Yesterday I had a meeting with a north Atlanta Whole Foods and sent a bunch of follow up emails, as requested, to some other Whole Foods plus a local gift store chain.

So, does it count as a successful sales meeting if the person I'm supposed to meet isn't there?  Kudos to the assistant who tried to cover for her boss and who took the meeting instead.  But what's up with the boss?  Apparently it was not an unexpected day off, and I had made the appointment just the day before!

And my thoughtful, personalized email to the gift store was obviously closely read.  I offered my silk passport covers as a potential offering to their customers - I still think it would be a great fit.  Received a reply the same day - impressive - informing me that they already had two bag lines but would keep me in mind if they intended to add another one.  Hunh?

Yeah, I know, everybody's busy.  And I'm only a vendor; I saw at ADP how vendors can expect to be treated.  On the other hand, I'm a person with a small business and guess what?  I'm busy, too.  Is it too much to ask that somebody read the email they ask for?  That people show up for their meetings?  I don't think so.

Whole Foods

How much would I love to have an account with Whole Foods!  It would be just one more reason to love them.

I have now contacted all 7 of their stores in the Atlanta area.  Result:  2 appointments, 3 requests for information, 2 call-backs needed (buyer wasn't in).  All expressed some level of interest in my reusable sandwich bags.  Keeping my fingers crossed!

Also contacted "Ashley" at Festivity, a gift store, and had a request for more information.  I'm thinking about my silk products, like card cases and passport covers, for them.  Four stores in metro Atlanta, so this would also be a nice account to get.