So, I’ve assembled the team:
Texas Creative---website, general help. Allison---ideas, investment. Elizabeth---lawyer,investment. Jeannie---nanny, general help, sweat equity.
All team members have contributions to make and all believe in the concept.That's key---get people or businesses who believe in your idea and who are supportive. Negativity is not helpful.
That’s not to say that you need “yes” people. But you do need people who agree with your principles and values and who believe in your base concept. We all meet too many people in our lives who drag you down. I have come to believe that life is too short. We have to maximize our contribution and not waste time with small-minded, petty people. OK---enough soap box. Back to work!
So we had the idea---career patches on onesies and tees---that's really as far as we have gotten so far in this tale. Texas Creative fielded several freelance artists and I had my sister-in-law do some initial artwork too. We knew what we wanted: contemporary, vibrant, simple graphics to convey each selected career name without needing a lot of interpretation. So for rocket scientist we have a rocket ship emblem; for biologist we have a cute little collection of colorful cells---you get the idea. If you look at our web site, Baby Potential, you can see everything we created.
Once we got a couple of the ideas down, Texas Creative’s art team--lead by Josh Norman---took the concept and ran with it. Next we needed someone to screen-print our designs onto patches and then embroider the patches directly onto the onesies and t-shirts. Some questioned why we didn’t just screen-print directly onto the fabric. Why spend time and extra money embroidering the patches onto the onesies and tees? Well, it was part of our initial concept and we thought it looked better. Also, we could put the patches on any color background.
We started with white onesies, but we always planned to add colored onesies and tees eventually. That’s another point---even though you may have a simple idea be sure to think it through, even into the future. Where can the idea take you? What is the furthest you can take it? It doesn’t mean you have to go there, but it's a good idea to explore those options and see if you can incorporate some simple things into the project in the beginning that will allow you to progress without going backwards first.
For us, we tried to keep things open. For our "lawyer" patch the design also allowed us to use similar careers on other onesies like, "judge," "supreme court justice," etc. Each patch could be used for several careers if the public interest existed.
We had a hard time finding anyone who could handle both screen-printing and embroidery but eventually, we did---American Classic. We had them do our initial 12 patches and we got them down just right! Were we done? No! Our next step was to sell them and here's where we ran into another hurdle. We had no knowledge of how to begin our sales process.
Thankfully, I have a great friend who has been giving me advice all along. Ellen Cotton owns THE baby store in town, Sugarplum Dreams (check out their website too!). She took me to market in Dallas to see what I was up against: pricing, packaging, etc., everything we needed to know to compete against and learn from the big players. It was very daunting to say the least, but I saw and learned so much that it was a fabulous opportunity. I went on this trip before we'd gone through our final production so we didn’t have great samples to show, just concepts. I got some positive responses and made contacts for possible business.
Another point: take whatever help you can get even though it may not be what you need at the time. I didn’t really need store contacts when I had a concept, but I sure did when I had final product. After we had product I contacted some of those market stores. No one picked us up at the time, but I got great feedback.
They didn’t want all-white (which was all we had) and they said our price was too high. I really think the cost did us in. As a result of the production in the U.S. we had to increase the price. Also, with small runs of items, the price goes up. As you know the retailers have to have their margin and the store at market or sales people you use have to have their markup too and you still have to at least cover your cost! Add all those layers and boom, you have an expensive onesie that very few people want to buy even if the idea is great!
Still, we forged ahead. Ellen was wonderful and let us host an opening in her store. Allison’s sister, Lisa, also had a party at her house so we could show our product to our friends. That all went really well and we had some sales. But we really thought we could do more. In fact, I had always had my eye on Target. I thought our concept, colors, and contemporary design would fit right in with their stores.
Up next in Part Three, Juggling: Trying to Balance the Demands of Being a Wife, Mother, Doctor and Mompreneur all at once.
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