Um, anyone have another bag manufacturer referral?

I had another conversation with my manufacturer, this time I aired out my concerns in a way that was hopefully more effective. Instead of launching into a diatribe about how disappointed I was, I instead chose to use another approach that was non-confrontational yet effectively got my point across. When I got him on the phone I asked, “Scott, if you were in my shoes, what thoughts and questions would be running through your head right now?” Without hesitation, my manufacturer rattled off a list of things that I should be pissed about, everything from production delays to his poor customer service skills. He also said, “You came as a referral from a highly valued client of mine, and I don’t want to risk jeopardizing my reputation with him.” Hmmm, good to know. He is supposed to give me another update tomorrow, and should he not meet the revised delivery deadline, I plan to “tattle” on him to the guy at Orvis (the person who referred me to him). The countdown starts now!

Now on to other late breaking news: my husband and I are looking for rental houses on the Eastside. We decided to move for 3 main reasons: 1) our lease is up in January, 2) to be closer to Google’s Kirkland campus so my husband’s commute is shorter, and 3) we need more room– our tiny Seattle townhome won’t be able to accommodate the storage of hundreds of bags and accessories. There are several leaning towers of miscellaneous fabrics and bag prototypes currently surrounding my desk in a precarious, Jenga-esque fashion.  We’ve spent the last week researching and visiting places, and we are hoping to move by mid-January. If the bag production is delayed significantly it might mean that I need to postpone my launch until after the holidays. I hope this delay doesn’t happen.

I’ll be away for the holidays and will be working remotely from California until the middle of next week. I’ll try my best to blog from afar. Happy Thanksgiving y’all!

 

Wrapping up website design. Finally!

I didn’t finish up my search marketing strategy planning like I’d hoped (damnit!) so it looks like I will prolong my pain one more day. Somehow I got distracted with other things that weren’t bag-related. I met with a former Microsoft colleague who had some contract work that he wanted to offer me in December. Oooh cash flow…sooo tempting. I also recently took on the task of being a college alumni interviewer, and today I interviewed a prospective student, and then wrote some candidate assessments and uploaded them to the feedback tool. Maybe I should use this face-to-face opportunity to trick–I mean recruit– unpaid high school interns to help me with my business.

I did manage to review a few revisions of the website layout, and we’re about 95% close to being done with the layout and design. Next week we’ll get started on building the beta site. Yahoooooo! Looks like tomorrow I’ll be busy finalizing web copy (*sigh*), and wrapping up the search keywork copy (yuck).  Fun fun fun.

Let’s hope tomorrow is more productive!

Yet another trademark scam: International Data Medium Anstalt

Just a few days after receiving the scam letter from TM Collection, I got another “bill” from a fraudulent company called IDM, based in the lovely country of Liechtenstein. Similar to the other “invoice” I received last week, IDM offers the opportunity to be published in a fake trademark journal, and as a bonus, they’ll send you a free CD-ROM. They don’t specify what will be on that CD-ROM. For all I know it could be a bootleg version of Windows 95.

To the scam artists at IDM: if you want to cheat people out of their money, at least learn something from your shady competitor TM Collection. TM Collection’s fake invoice was printed with high quality paper and colored ink, and they didn’t use scotch tape to affix a picture of my logo to the pseudo billing statement. You also charge $1890, which is more than 15% higher than TM Collection. Do your research. I know times are tough now and the economy’s got everyone in a tizzy, but that can’t be an excuse for sloppiness.

I received a package from my purse organizer samplemaker today, and it was full of patterns and swatches of materials. It looks like I have to order quite a few different things before I can get the production started. Luckily he also gave me the names of the places he gets his raw materials from, so that’s a relief.

I spent most of my day working on my Google search keywords and copy. With the help of Google’s keyword generator, I came up with hundreds of iterations of “eco-friendly purse organizer” and “eco-friendly laptop bag”. I hope I can wrap this up tomorrow so I don’t have to think about search marketing for a really long time.

Thanks for reading!