Saturday, November 22, 2014

We have some exciting news. Our friends are going to have a booth at a christmas craft boutique in a few weeks, and they said we could sell some of our bows there. We are really looking forward to this exposure and opportunity to share our product with more people. my wife came up with a few more styles specifically for this boutique. We put together a little christmas combination of red green and silver. We sent this to a few bloggers and friends so they can post it on social media. We feel like we got on the market just in time. We were able to work out the bugs in the beginning, now we have the product looking more professional and better packaging. We made some other cards out of cardboard that fit the bows perfectly. We played around with the logo a bit and came up with something new. We made some stickers and put them on the cards. I am really happy with how they turned out. I hope that we will have lots of sales at the boutique. It has been hard getting our name and product out there. I think it would have helped to reach out to the bloggers a little sooner- but once they feature the product, hopefully sales will boom! Below are a few pictures of the new products for the boutique.



Saturday, November 15, 2014

Update:

This week was slow as far as sales go- but we worked more on getting some back stock made. I was trying to come up with some ways to get more people interested in the bows/aware of them. We have used social media to try and get the word out, but this week I really tried to push it and see who we could get on board. I followed a bunch of bloggers on instagram that my wife recommended- I was skeptical at first... and didn't want to seem pushy or intrusive or annoying... but I am glad I listened to her advice. We had two bloggers that have a pretty good following that loved our product. I got in touch with them via email and got their addresses. I am going to send them each some product this week- and they are going to feature it on social media and their blogs. This is going to be great for our company. We have reached out to all the people we can think of, but we just need to get to a more broad audience. I think these two bloggers are key! They will be very influential in helping us get a following, and a larger following means more customers! We are going to launch a few more colors this week as well- our selection for the first run was fairly slim, but now we will have a few more colors and combinations to offer. I really look forward to what happens with these girls... until then, I am going to continue to search for some more people with a large following that will be willing to help get the word out!

Saturday, November 8, 2014

This little gal is adorable isn't she? Her name is Conley. She is my cousin's little girl. We got some of the fabric headbands made this week and had her be our model. These fabric headbands were the way to go! My wife has a whole box of scraps that she doesn't have a use for anymore. She asked me if he would take it to the trash and luckily I took a look inside the box before I tossed it. She is usually the resourceful one- but this time I said... "wait a second! We can use these scraps for more bows!" And that we did. These "top knot" headbands are apparently all the rage right now. My cousin was freaking out that we were making them. They were very easy and quite the hit. We liked making these much more than the leather ones. Now that we have both types available, we will test the market to see how they do. Our margins on both of them are very well. They each cost less than $0.50 to make I would guess, and we can sell them for $4-8. I love that both of these ideas for bows just came from scraps! We got a bunch of unwanted leather scraps- and good thing I held on to my wife's box of scraps!!


Saturday, November 1, 2014

1st SALE!!!!

I'm not sure if I've broken the rules. let me explain. Originally we were given 20 dollars to start the company. this 20 dollars was to cover any overhead and/or inventory. Heres how i broke the rule, let me explain. I decided that we need to just start giving bows away to our close friends and family. Our hope was that our friends would meet people and they would ask "where'd you get that cute bow?" Our strategy worked!My cousin went to a baby shower and like every baby shower there are girls and moms everywhere!  My cousin dressed her little girl in one of our adorable bows and off they went to the baby shower. One of the moms at the baby shower asked where she got her bow! This was the same exact experience my wife had the week earlier- at no other place than a baby shower! She told them about me and how I was making them for a school assignment. So, this mom actually called me and told me she like the bow but that she wanted to get a white bow for a baby blessing. I had no white material! I couldn't turn down the deal. So, off to Joanns I went. I bought some white material and we made a white bow. We sold it to this mom for $8.00. We could have probably made a little more, but it was stressful when she came over. It would have probably been helpful to have everything tagged with a price on it- so we wouldn't be caught in a weird place. I think she would have been willing to pay more- but hey- I am not complaining! That is our first sale! Now, hopefully we can sell more!!!