Archive: January, 2010


Our first talk and my new RISD tote

January 16th, 2010

Thank you to everyone who’s been so amazingly supportive. We could not be where we are today if it were not for all of you! The fabric testing results are looking good, so we’ll be pitching to buyers in early February for a Fall 2010 launch in stores. Wish us luck!

Last Thursday we shared our story and some tips as part of the Business Plan Writing workshop alongside Sixcia Devine (RI business plan competition judge, regional director of the RI small business development center, and accomplished female entrepreneur extraordinaire) in the BUILD workshop series at RISD. For those of you who are interested, these were our four major points:

1. Talk to everyone – Do your homework. It’s all about market research and getting concrete numbers.

2. Investors have bad imaginations – Ask them to imagine how your product will work/look? Not gonna happen. Make a prototype!

3. It’s all about the people – Simply put, this company would not be in existence without all the people who have helped us along the way.

4. Be positive – If you don’t believe in yourself, no one will.

What do you say entrepreneurs? Are these pretty essential? Feel like we missed something super important? Don’t by shy, write a comment!

To thank us, RISD gave us each a box of sinful, sinful chocolate and a black RISD tote! We’ve both been proudly sporting our snazzy new bags around town as if we need another matching item to look like we deliberately coordinate our outfits (It really is always a coincidence that we match). After showing off my new acquisition to a RISD graphic designer last night, she told me that Brown students sport new and clean looking RISD totes while actual RISD students carry battered and “improved upon” RISD totes. When I get a chance, I’m going to line my new, clean, unmodified tote with lace trim. How about that for an upgrade?

A Day in the Life of a Seamstress

January 7th, 2010

We finished sewing all 160 pairs of test prototypes and they will be in the mail on their way to testers on Friday! Here’s how things played out today:

7am Wake up, shower, finish cutting fabric pieces (luckily I had cut out most of them the night before).

8:30am Head over to Eunice’s house to get ready for a phone call. Afterwards we map out our plan for the rest of the day and return emails. We usually cc: each other on every email to make sure we’re both in the loop on everything.

12:30pm Leave for our meeting with April at North Start Marketing. In the car on the way, Eunice and I realize that we are both wearing purple cardigans on top of hot pink shirts, black skirts and black tights. Great minds think alike, but maybe we should call each other  in the morning to “uncoordinate” our outfits so we don’t look like identical twins. At North Star we discuss the tasks we need to accomplish before presenting our initial line to buyers.

2pm After meeting with April, we stop at the office of one of our R&D partners to work on elastics.

3:30pm Back at home, I can finally work on sewing our Eulie Test Panties (Eunice and I each took half of the sewing responsibility for this round). While sewing, this time is perfect for catching up on Gossip Girl episodes. Hulu is my new best friend, and I can now say that I’m a fan of Glee, Lipstick Jungle, and Gilmore Girls. As I get ready to sew, I realize that we had returned the thread stand to Elizabeth Breer (A special thanks Betty for helping us sew prototypes!).  We are using industrial thread, and when they sent us a “small sample,” it came on a very BIG spool (as you can see below it is about a foot high).

Large thread spool

So what’s a girl to do with this massive spool of thread? Here’s the homemade stand that I created to feed it into my machine. It consists of a lamp shade perched on top of two tissue boxes. The hole in the metal frame at the top of the shade allows the spool to unwind from the very center, and in case the machine pulls it closer, the strategically placed heart shaped candle prevents the shade from shifting over.

Homemade thread stand

10:15pm I finally finish sewing my batch of underwear and drive it over to Eunice so she can start washing. We are washing this group 24 times before mailing them to testers so we’ll know that the fabric is durable through laundering.

11pm Return more emails (they never stop!), a quick phone call to a friend, and then off to bed where I write this post. Now time for beauty rest before we start a busy day tomorrow (thankfully no sewing tomorrow since it will mostly be done by our cut and sew facility in the future)…

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