Tag Archives: entrepreneurial life

Jul 18 2012
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Business Truths, Trend Research

Economics: The 0.01 Percent

 

In the issue 98 of Textile View, David Shah said:

The world’s biggest luxury goods purveyors enjoyed a record-breaking 2011. … this is a reflection of a new economic reality. We are not talking about recession here: we are talking about the polarization of wealth and the arrival of a very small, but fabulously wealthy stratum of society that has created a new, super luxury niche market.

 

So how are your couture sewing skills? Sounds like we’ll all have to take our opportunities where we can get them.

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May 12 2012
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Business Basics, Business Truths, Fashion Line Development, Inspiration

Rekindling the Creative Spark

I have had my head down developing some new freelance projects and haven’t had a lot of time to think about much else. Also, my sister is getting married in a few weeks so there’s that.

I have been thinking a lot about creativity, specifically my own creativity and how I seem to have misplaced that spark in the day to day work of keeping food on the table and a roof over my head. Even though I now work in a field that is supposedly more creative, the work I’m doing is just as administrative as ever. I think Thomas Edison meant this when he said,”Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.”

When I’m in a rut I go back and read Hugh MacLeod’s manifesto “How to be Creative”, which lays out the process very well. But at the beginning of any creative venture, there’s the terrifying moment of facing the empty dot paper. David Seah calls this “The Blankness” and I think everyone is intimidated by this.

The only strategy I have ever been able to successfully implement in this area is doing whatever I feel like doing to get warmed up. This usually takes the form of improv piecing, which I can do without thinking and is very relaxing. Breaking free of the pressure to do something of value helps clear my mind and find a little more direction.

An old friend of mine used to say “write drunk, edit sober”, which is a short way of saying “just get started”. Getting started is the most challenging part.

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Jan 17 2012
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Business Basics, Fashion Line Development, The Industry, Tools of the Trade, Trend Research

Style Evolution

 I have been fascinated by the book Simple Modern Sewing by Shufu To Seikatsu Sha. She takes 8 patterns and gives instructions on how to make 25 different styles from them.

 Here is an example from the book. She made one wrap dress (on the left), and modified the pattern to make two different styles by changing a few details and the fabrics. Most fashion companies do the same thing, for a variety of reasons:

  • Cost  Every time a brand new design is created, it has to be draped or drafted, fitted, altered, and fitted again. This requires the use of a patternmaker, a fit technician, and a fit model. This is expensive. If you just modify an existing pattern, you can eliminate a lot of these steps.
  • Time  When developing a brand new style, there i always the chance that it will just never come out the way you want it to. If you are working with a new pattern that has to be fitted and fitted again, you could run the risk of not having it in time for market. That would be a lot of time and effort wasted.
  • Bestsellers If you had a style that sold out for one season,, it would be silly to just put it on the sample rack and forget about it. By changing a few details and the fabric of a bestselling style for a new season (for example, making a bestselling coverup in a warm fabric and selling it as a winter wrap), you can extend your selling season.
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Jan 10 2012
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Business Basics, The Industry, Tools of the Trade

What’s Your Elevator Pitch?

It’s New York Spring Fashion Week, and this is a marathon run for anyone with a fashion business. When you’re trying to get the attention of the multitudeess of buyers and journalists at the events, you’d better be able to tak fast and be fascinating.
 

Jeffrey Hayzlett, a former chief marketing officer at Eastman Kodak, wrote an HBR blog post about how the 30 second pitch is now an 8 second pitch!

 

He says your pitch must:

 

•Grab the attention of your prospect 

•Convey who you are 
•Describe what your business offers 
•Explain the promises you will deliver on

Try writing out your pitch, then take  out 100 words. Do that over and over until you have just the most important facts. Your elevator pitch is an important marketing tool that will get better with each time you use it.

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Nov 26 2011
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Business Basics, The Industry, Trend Research

Product Development Roulette: Better Girlswear

Every season I draw some category out of a hat to design a collection for the current season in development, which is Fall 2012. This is a category I’ve never designed for so this should be fun. The steps involved are:

Brand analysis: What is the brand we’re developing for, and who are their competitors?

Trend analysis: What are the major trends for Fall 2012

Fabric and color story: What are the colors and fabrics on trend for Fall 2012 in this category, and which ones will we be using in our line

Line development: developing and choosing the designs for our line

Next week: figuring out our brand.

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Nov 22 2011
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About Me, Business Truths

What I do When I Lack Motivation

Dan Ariely says that people are more willing to work for free than to get paid a low wage. This has everything to do with the stories we tell ourselves.

I’m having some motivation issues right now. The short days of winter are sapping my energy, and my hectic holiday schedule is basically making me wish I could just stay in bed with my trend predictive magazines and a hot cup of Scarlet City coffee. I have a couple of client projects on my desk that are not shaping up as quickly as they usually do, and I’m feeling like I need a vacation.

Every time we decide to take on a task, we write a story around it. We ask ourselves, “Am I the kind of person who does this?” Say, for example, if we’re asked to do a low-paying job we think, “Am I the kind of person who works for peanuts?”, or if we’re asked to donate our time for charity we ask, “Am I the kind of person who helps people less fortunate than I am?”

So, who are you? Are you someone who makes excuses and lets things get in your way?

Right now, I’m asking myself “Am I the kind of person who lets a little evening gloom get in the way of doing fabulous work?” What I’m saying, is the answer is no!

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Nov 17 2011
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About Me, Business Truths, The Industry

Your Biggest Problems are the Ones you Don’t Care About Solving

The little issues you don’t really care about fixing are the ones that will hold you back, because they’re the ones you’re least likely to address until they become a big problem. This creates a negative situation that you could have avoided, which is a big waste of time and resources.

I hate to put my work away. I’m the kind of person who has to walk away from a project when it isn’t working out in order to solve it, but I’m also the kind of person who forgets about anything that isn’t right in front of me. The result is that my live work space is a complete cluttered mess. My sewing table is piled high with samples that I haven’t figured out yet, like the denim shorts with the waistband I can’t decide should be contoured or not – from Spring 2010. My coffee table is 3 layers deep with sweaters that should or maybe should not have knitted-on collars or three-quarter sleeves.

This doesn’t really bother me much. I do a pretty good job of keeping the place otherwise sanitary, and I have convinced myself the clutter is part of my creative process. However, in my heart, I know it is not. It is the result of not enjoying the feeling of being paralyzed by a design problem and choosing to ignore it rather than tucking in and doing the boring trial-and-error work of fixing design problems.

I read this blog post on the Harvard Business Review blogs by Michael Schrage about managers putting their most creative people on their most boring problems, and I realized that boring problems require the most creativity to solve if only for the fact that they’re so hard to get motivated to even think about. So maybe thinking of this kind of problem-solving as a chore is the wrong approach, and reframing it as an opportunity for creative thinking is a better way.

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Nov 15 2011
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About Me, Business Basics, The Industry

Business Basics: Don’t Quit Your Day Job

I have spent a lot of time working for startups and small businesses in many different industries over the years, and I’ve paid very close attention to the way they do business. While I do cultivate a small product development practice catering to independent craftspeople and artisans on my own free time, I have a terrific day job working for a small women’s athleticwear company in San Francisco that I do not plan on leaving voluntarily any time soon, for the following reasons:
It brings in a base salary and benefits Until you’ve struck out on your own, it’s hard to imagine how much it costs in terms of time, energy, and revenue to supply for yourself things like health insurance, 401(k) plans, and forget about paid vacation! My day job takes the pressure off me so I can fill my free time with things that are very interesting to me but less lucrative than what I do in my 9-to-5 hours.

It keeps me in the industry Working every day in the industry helps me to remember how important it is to stick to the fundamentals when running a business. It keeps me aware of the state of the industry as it’s happening and how it responds to a changing retail environment. Most importantly, I have the benefit of the friendship and experience of the talented industry professionals I have the pleasure to work with and learn from on a daily basis.

It gets me out of the house Starting a business by yourself can be very isolating, and takes a lot of self-discipline to stay motivated in the face of huge project deadlines or slow- to- nonexistent paying work. Having somewhere to go, getting dressed and interacting with other people and working towards a common goal can do a lot for your mental state and self-image in the face of what may seem like impossible obstacles on your way towards achieving your dreams.

Working on your business model while otherwise employed gives you the freedom to dip your toes into the waters of entrepreneurship without taking the huge risks involved with throwing all your resources at an untested business idea. It takes a lot of discipline and time management, but it’s a good way to go for a lot of first-time businesspeople.

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Nov 11 2011
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Business Basics, Business Truths, The Industry

Business Truth: You Will Never Work for Yourself

Most of the testimonials I read about the advantages of starting your own business talk about the beauty of “working for yourself”: the freedom to set your own schedule, the financial benefits, and the personal satisfaction. This sounds great to anyone who sits in a corporate cubicle for 8-plus hours per day, but it is not quite a complete picture of entrepreneurial life.

No matter what you do for a living, whether it’s working in a giant corporation or a one-person freelance business, we all have an obligation to someone: the person paying us for our goods or services. If you worked for yourself, you would pay yourself, but if you could do that you wouldn’t have to work at all.

If I asked the president (and co-founder) of the company I work for if he “worked for himself”, he’d probably laugh. Most of his job consists of solving problems for and making deals with our company’s customers, vendors, and even our employees. This is his more-than-full-time job. It’s his responsibility to make sure the complicated net of relationships that drive the business forward are in good condition.

If you have the drive to “work for yourself”, you should ask yourself why. If it’s because you have a hard time getting along with people, you should really work on improving your social skills before you make any big decisions. Working for yourself is a full-time job making other people happy.

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