Business or Personal? January 22, 2009

Yesterday I went to see the owner of a local store, who commissioned some custom plush toy samples from me.  He wanted animal shapes that could be sewn out of designer fabrics he carries.  Though this store recently stopped carrying my Sweet Meats plush, I tried not to take it personally, but rather to see it as a new business opportunity.  Clearly, they hadn’t rejected me or my taste, just one of my product lines.

I took care to design what I thought were modern, iconic forms, that would fit in nicely with the rest of the store’s collection.  I also took care to make them quick to produce, in order to keep the cost down.  In the end, each toy comes out to about $15 wholesale.  Given that their other stuffed toys start around $30, I thought this would be reasonable, especially for exclusive, handmade originals by a local artist.  But the owner immediately started trying to talk me down.

I wasn’t sure if this was simply business or somewhat personal, but I couldn’t help feeling disrespected.  I wasn’t bidding for a contract, after all, I was filling a commission.  Why would he try to lowball me?  I can only guess that he doesn’t see my work as art, but rather as manufacturing, though that seems uncharacteristic of someone with a design education.  Maybe he just feels he needs to maximize profits at any opportunity, even if it means taking advantage of a less savvy business owner.  Either way, it was clear he didn’t see me a busy, professional person.  He told me to “go get a coffee” while he waited for his partner to come back and give me the fabric.

I didn’t wait around, and I stood firm on my price, which is hard to do in the current economy.  No one wants to risk losing work.  But if I don’t believe in the worth of my own skills, no one else will, and the job wasn’t worth it anyway if it was just a sweatshop job.

The owner ordered ten to start, so I feel mildly satisfied, but I’d still like to prevent situations like that from happening in the future.  After all, if people don’t respect you, it’s your job to make them.  Here are a few things I’ll do differently next time:

• State my going hourly rate during the very first conversation.
• State that I will charge for the time spent developing designs and preparing samples, whether or not any are ordered for production.
• Provide an estimate for the time above.
• Lay out a pay schedule that compensates me immediately upon receipt of the products.
• Put everything in a written contract before I do a single hour of work on the project.
• Create an online gallery of other plush designs I’ve done in order to legitimize and grow this part of my business.

Despite leaving with a bad taste in my mouth, I have no regrets, because I learned a great deal from this transaction.  I’m sure I’ll continue to make mistakes, but the more I refine my system, the less these business deals will have the potential to become personal.

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The Fourth Times’ the Charm: My Emotional Rollercoaster Ride with the New York Times December 30, 2008

About two years ago a writer asked if he could interview me for an article about plush food for the New York Times.  Naturally I said yes, and tried to make all my answers as punchy and fascinating as possible, while weaving in anecdotes from my iconic New York childhood.  I was still teaching at the time, and sewing my toys on the side, but this piece seemed to indicate to me that perhaps my small side business had the potential to grow into a full-time venture.

Two weeks later a photo assistant from the Times e-mailed to ask if I could send in samples of my toys.  The article was due to be a feature in the Sunday magazine—one of their quarterly “T” Style editions, in full, beautiful color.  I was ecstatic.  I told everyone I knew.  I reminded them a week before it was due to come out, and again the day before.

That Sunday I tore the magazine from the paper and flipped through it rapidly.  I didn’t see any plush food.  But there were two articles on stylish items for foodies, so I thought my interview might be part of one of those.  Not there either.  I checked the shopping guide, the back page, article sidebars, and eventually the Style Magazine’s web site.  Maybe it was a web-only article?  Nope.  The article had not run at all.  Anywhere.

I was crushed.  After enduring a week or so of painful conversations with confused friends and relatives, I e-mailed the author to find out what happened.  He said that the Times had cut the article due to space constraints and that they were considering running it in another issue, six months away.  Six months later, the entire process repeated itself, only this time, the Times didn’t shelve the article, they tossed it completely.  The author ran the interview on his own blog instead, which was a rather nice consolation.  Still, I felt spurned and embarrassed after having gotten my hopes up so high.

So when an editor for the Times contacted me again a couple of months ago, I was naturally skeptical.  They wanted a “glamour shot” of a meat medley to feature in the big holiday gift guide in the Home section of the paper.  I sent them a shot, but didn’t tell anyone about it other than my mother, my husband, and one good friend.  The following Thursday, the Home section contained several gift guides: what to get for friends who are hard to buy for, a “25 Under $25,” and so on, but none of them contained Sweet Meats.

I again felt burned and frustrated, despite having lowered my expectations significantly.  After all, it’s hard not to get your hopes up about the New York Times.   Besides the fact that it can cause an uptick in sales (one store owner in my neighborhood reported an additional $25,000 in sales during the month her store was featured), the New York Times definitely has a certain cachet.  Validation by the Times suggests that you have made it, that the experts on style and taste consider your product worthy of sharing with the world.  It’s an easy deflection to disparaging questions such as, “Why do you make these?” and “Who would buy such a thing?” and it’s a signal to every other media outlet that your business is worth paying attention to.

Two weeks later I received a call from a very strange number: 1 111 111-1111.  Telemarketer. Robo-dialer, probably.  I dismissed the call to voice mail.  Immediately there appeared a harried message from a fact-checker at the Times.  She wanted to verify my current prices for a shopping guide in the Home section.  Again?  Seriously?

I felt mildly encouraged that I had been contacted by a fact checker—a step I had not previously reached–but at the same time, I was totally over it, even slightly annoyed.  When would they stop toying with me?

The day the issue came out we flew back east for the holidays, and I didn’t buy the paper until we got to our second airport.  And what do you know?  There they were, in a “fun-loving” holiday gift guide on page 4.  They didn’t accompany an interview in a large-format magazine, and they weren’t part of a full-page color spread.  In fact, they weren’t in color at all (except in the New York City edition).  And okay, maybe they listed my phone number without asking, and maybe they incorrectly stated that Sweet Meats were designed to be children’s toys, but I got to list “New York Times” on my press page, and my mother got to brag about it at her Hanukkah party.  My distributor used it to tempt more New York stores.  My husband thinks the link might even raise my Google ranking.

The direct result was an increase in web sales for a day or two (about a dozen more sales per day than usual)—comparable to the effect of a mention on Cool Hunting two years ago.  I also got a call from another distributor, this time someone in the Midwest who sells mostly to restaurant gift shops.  The full indirect results remain to be seen.

The lesson?  Patience is a virtue, good things comes to those who wait, and don’t get your hopes up—unless a fact checker calls you in a hurry because they’re going to press tomorrow.  Then you can get your hopes up.  A little.

Recession Guilt December 29, 2008

On November 30th, I participated in the second annual San Francisco Holiday Bazaar Bizarre.  I asked many of my fellow vendors how they were doing and I got the same response from all of them: “It’s going well, but not as well as last year.”  Many of them acted apologetic for having said this, abruptly adding qualifiers like, “But last year was crazy,” as if they didn’t deserve such a singular event to repeat itself.

I admit, I felt similarly.  I felt guilty for the moderate success I was having during one of the worst holiday shopping seasons on record.  I felt guilty at the Mission Bazaar the following weekend, and guilty at the Unique Los Angeles fair the weekend after that.  Even if sales were slightly down from previous years, it didn’t seem right to be turning a healthy profit when other vendors were slashing their prices to wholesale or cost.  Three-color letterpress cards were 6 for $10 at at least two different stationery booths!  You can’t even buy cards at the drugstore that cheaply.

Now this may not be p.c., or even totally true, but I’m going to say it: I think we’re feeling undeserving because we’re women.  Generally speaking, I believe that a man would be more likely to attribute his success to talent and intelligence than to good fortune.  Why?  Because as women, we can’t abide the opposite.  I don’t want to believe that my fellow Biz Misses are having trouble because they are being naive, inert, or unsavvy.  They are my sisters-in-arms, and it seems mean to imply that they are responsible for their own troubles.  It’s much easier to attribute my success to random factors like booth location.

Of course, luck has something to do with the success or failure of every business, but I guess the lesson is to make your business hardy and flexible enough to withstand unanticipated events.  Start slowly, build slowly, and have a diverse set of products, markets or sources of incoWhen sales are slow, use the extra time to focus on marketing strategies, product development and setting up infrastructure, so that when the market turns around (and it always does), you’ll be ready to take off.

50,000 Feet September 19, 2008

Once I got back on track, I tried tackling the 50,000 feet questions again, like, “Why does my business exist?”  Though you’d think it would be the most fundamental thought driving your business forward, I had actually forgotten all about it.  I got so caught up in the lower-level questions of, “Will I be able to roll out a new design in time for the holidays?” that I completely lost sight of my company’s purpose.

My company’s purpose is/was to be a springboard for bigger and better things.  Sweet Meats are a trendy product, currently riding the ebbing wave of the meat zeitgeist.  They were never meant to last, or to expand very far (maybe to the pet boutique market, or the barbecue circuit).  My plan was flood the market while they were hot and then take my winnings and apply them to more meaningful business pursuits.  I didn’t feel particularly good about just putting more stuff into the world, but it made more sense to me to try to turn an already-running side venture into a full-time business, than to try to start a new one from scratch.

In hindsight, that was a mistake.  I should not have started a business that I was not totally comfortable with from an ideological standpoint.  Yes, I made sure I was using sustainable materials and fair labor practices, but that still doesn’t change the fact that my products don’t really change anything in the world for the better.  I also should not have started a business that requires a huge volume of stored inventory.  I also should have narrowed my focus, to something like designer toys, or just the pet market.  But those mistakes have already been made and are now in the past. I can’t do anything about them.

What I can do now is cut my losses and learn from my mistakes.  I can stop working on prototypes for new Sweet Meats designs.  I can sell what I have left and call Sweet Meats limited-editions, which they now are.  I can stop being so worried about the perfect new web design and just put up the one that I have.  I can promote the hell out of that web site and my now limited editions, and in the meantime start work on a business plan for something I’m actually passionate about.  I’m finally excited to work on Sweet Meats again, just so I can finish with it and move on.

As a new entrepreneur, you always hear the statistic that nine out of every ten new businesses fail.  I was determined not to be one of the nine, despite the odds, but I’ve made peace with that now.  Most successful entrepreneurs have at least one failed business behind them.  You can fail at your first business and make it out with your shirt still on–so long as you catch and address your problems soon enough.

The new purpose of Sweet Meats now is as a learning experience.  In the end I think I was lucky to have made my mistakes with a company I wasn’t 100% passionate about.  It means I can make the sound financial decision to cut out early and move on, rather than hold on for dear life because I’m too emotionally attached.  I’m a firm believer in the notion that you can never tell whether an event is fortunate or unfortunate at the moment it occurs.  It’s only with context and distance (say, 50,000 feet) that you can see the role it played in your greater path.  I’ll let you know when I get there.

Recovery September 16, 2008

Since Thursday I’ve been slowly making my way back up from the bottom.  It started when I finally realized that sometimes it’s okay to leave your guilt behind and just take care of yourself.  In the same way that your cold won’t go away if you keep going in to work and don’t get the rest you need, you can’t come up out of an emotional funk by continuing to hammer away at the issues that caused it in the first place.  So I got up, grabbed my camera, and left the house.

First stop, comfort food.  I picked up some mozzarella sticks and a passion fruit bubble tea and ate them in my car.  I rolled the windows down for some fresh air and listened to the radio.  It wasn’t solving anything but it felt good.

Next stop, Safeway.  For months I’ve wanted to make a series of tiny Color-Aid collages depicting packed supermarket shelves, and I thought taking some photos would be a good first step.  Low stakes, and no possibility for failure.  The photos themselves weren’t meant for display, just as studies for possible subjects.  I managed to take about 120 pictures before a manager finally kicked me out.  Without having even looked at the photos, I felt like I’d accomplished something.

When I got home and downloaded my pictures, I found two or three that I really loved.  Then I felt even better.  Good enough to write some thank you cards to relatives–a high priority task I didn’t think I’d be able to tackle.

I had started my day trying to write down what I ultimately wanted out of life.  Then I figured I’d brainstorm a plan from there.  It was a total and immediate failure.  In hindsight it was a terrible idea to start with something so huge and existential when I’d just had a nervous breakdown, but it seemed at the time like the only way to “redeem” myself.  In the end, I learned yet another valuable lesson.  When something becomes so stressful that it makes you sick in the head (or in the body), you need to remove yourself from it completely in order to recover.  Only then can you regain the strength you need to actually deal with the situation.

Hindsight is Crazy-Making September 10, 2008

I had a complete meltdown yesterday.  I took an all-day seminar at the SBA entitled, “Writing Effective Business Plans” and immediately began to feel that it was a mistake to start my business.  A horrible mistake.  It dawned on me that my job for the next year is going to consist solely of digging myself out of the hole I’m in. By the time our lunch break rolled around I was already having heart palpitations so I went outside for a walk.  In the window of Stacey’s bookstore, a book entitled, Get a Life That Doesn’t Suck caught my eye.  I headed straight for it, telling myself I was doing reconnaissance for my sister, not me.  The chapters had titles like “Start. Do it Now,” “Think Good Thoughts” and “Have Fun! Celebrate Life.”  Useless.  I put it down and went back to class, where I listened to the really smart and successful-sounding comments of my classmates.  One woman named Suzanne told me how lucky she felt that the business plan class was happening just a week after she quit her job to start a business.  She had four or five business ideas she liked, she said, and now she was going to plug in the numbers in order to decide which one was most likely to succeed, and therefore, which one she should start with.  I almost threw up.  Why didn’t I think of that a year ago before I got myself into this mess?

As soon as I got home I began a panicked rant around the living room, starting with a list of all the reasons why I was never going to get rid of my inventory in time, and quickly progressing to the declaration that my entire life is pointless, I contribute nothing to the world, and I am a complete waste of space.  I was seized with the immediate and overwhelming desire to recalibrate my life and develop a new long-term plan–now. It was already 10pm, but how could I sleep that night knowing that in the morning I would have to begin completely changing my life?

Whenever I find myself in a crisis and don’t know how to proceed, my first instinct is to educate myself.  I don’t like to make choices, especially life-changing choices, without feeling fully informed by the “experts” first.  So the place I turned last night was to a well-used copy of David Allen’s Getting Things Done. GTD is best used as an organizational and time-management system, but I remember reading a chapter (#3, it turns out) about forming plans of action, from small projects (the view from 10,000 feet), to major life goals (the view from 50,000 feet).  The chapter lays out a step-by-step plan for accomplishing a comprehensive life review, which made me feel better about not have a plan myself.  “You’ll notice that a natural organization [emerges],” it told me.  So, after getting a few things out of my head and down on paper, and after committing to also read The Now Habit and The Four-Hour Workweek, I went to bed.

And that’s where I am this morning, standing at the edge of a giant precipice, ready to take the leap.  I’ll let you know what I find at the bottom.