If You Don't Talk, I Won't Listen

pinterest and skimlinks

2012-02-09T08:35:00.000-08:00

it was discovered that pinterest had been using sort of an affiliate earning approach to their users content. so, if i post a picture of something i think is freaking amazing and you click on it and buy it from the store, pinterest makes some $. i still have to check out how skimlinks does this but it is a very interesting revenue generating model. think about when they were talking about during tv shows people would be able to click a link and buy anything they saw on the show.

is this a bad thing? hell no. i have to agree with skimlinks (http://bit.ly/yG8k10) that content sites desperately need a way to actually make money. and what a great model. nothing horrible that i can see. instead of obnoxious ads, i, the reader can find places to buy all the amazing things i am reading about. um, what is bad about that?!

their content is generated by users outside of their organization. they are not paying people to post to their site. they only make $ if readers find what has been posted about worth buying.

the only thing i am wondering is what if pinterest is motivated by the almighty $ to give more web prominence to those items that are generating them more revenue. then, their community content site turns into more of a store of interesting things people will actually buy rather than just curious finds. this also, in itself isn't a bad thing, but i would like to know this is what i am surfing.

peel back the curtains pinterest. there is no need to hide behind them. what you are offering your readers is a good thing. not a bad thing.

Group of brilliance

2012-01-13T09:10:00.000-08:00

I signed up for this workshop with some people from the Hello Etsy conference. A group of artisans and crafters trying to make some changes to their business. We decided to continue meeting after the workshop just to touch base and be accountable to someone or something for our progress. I think we all needed the support and we were all at the same level and all makers/shakers/changers. We met at the Slow Bar and began discussing the changes we had made over the last two months and when you are sitting in front of seriously active people talking about the things that you have done it over the last 60 days you become propelled to do more, think bigger, define and follow your visions. I like this quote from Jenelle Isaacson newsletter this month, (principal for Living Room Realtors).
Psychologist Richard Wiserman studied 400 people over the course of 10 years and watched for lucky breaks or chance encounters, both good and bad. This is what he found.
"My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good."
And, for me, even with the economic downturn, having to lay off my employee, having to start going into production myself, I can only see the opportunities here. There are so many. It feels good. Not bad.
We went around in a circle talking about changes and each and every one of us over the last 30-60 days had made some enormous ones. We questioned each other. We critiqued. We were not afraid to voice our true opinions. This is a good group of ACTIVE makers. I am glad to be part of it.

the holidays!

2012-01-04T11:28:00.000-08:00

I just went through a most difficult transition but I think I am beginning to see the light. With the holidays being slow for my site I recognized fairly quickly into December that my website was no longer going to be able to support even one employee. The lost traffic still not regained and all the $ I had borrowed to carry the site up through xmas made the choice obvious even to Rebecca. The second week in December on a day when we received only two orders to the website, (and December is historically for me as busy as all of September, October and November put together) Rebecca asked me if I wanted her to go to part-time. I said YES.
The third week of December I laid off the woman who had been my compadre and employee for 5 years. But for only one employee I was paying a hefty wage, payroll taxes, payroll fees, workman's comp, full health, dental, vision, paid vacation etc. The choice was obvious. It was a sad day. Plus, it meant I had to come back into the shop and do all the production, ordering and customer service on top of all the website, marketing, programming and product development.
I am not sad that I have come back to this point. The same point where I started 8 years ago when I first built the business. I honestly feel reinvigorated and challenged for the first time in many years. Excited. I mean, I don't really like making shirts or emailing customers but I am challenged with regrowing my business. So, I've come up with some new direction. I've talked about it a bit in some past posts but I really want to focus my store on US made products and showcase the designers who make the products.
My drop ship program is gaining some interest.
And slowly I think my traffic is coming back. Every other week I get an email from google saying my traffic to my site has increased by 5% from the previous day and no alerts to that it is dropping. I am hopeful.
The holidays have been difficult. My ex and I stagger our weeks with the kids and I have somehow managed to get all the weeks with no school. But, I have set up a monitoring system and, while I work in the garage my kids play with one another. It devolves into squabbling every once in awhile but for the most part what I hear through the monitor is some very imaginative barbie/plushie play.
Plus, my wonderful 70 year old mom is sitting in Mississippi praying for me and also entering image tags and testing the upgrade on my cart. Thanks mom! I will pay you back all the $ I owe you and I'll do it this year by selling the coolest baby clothes on the web.

handmade goods gets BIGGER, craft fairs

2011-12-12T07:26:00.000-08:00

17,000 shoppers stopped by Craftywonderland this weekend. 17,000! Just a few short years ago this show was held in the basement of the Doug Fir. I am blown away but not surprised. It is a shopper's glorious, lavish feast of unique goods. I only had two hours to walk the dozens of rows of vendors displaying their handmade goods. I am sure I missed a lot.

Every year there are new vendors to delight the eyes. A man with thick fingers that twisted wire into amazingly detailed subjects. I picked up the naked woman teaching a baby elephant to walk. A goth selling her own brand of lipstick and face powder fashioned from all natural ingredients, the lipstick so full of color one only needs to swipe it once across the lips once to achieve full coverage, a man who had drawn various landmarks around Portland and Seattle and fashioned a beautiful deck of cards, hand painted wooden toys, jackets one finds at the goodwill refashioned into ultra hip embellished hoodies, screenpainted, letterpressed, hand-stamped, hand cast, hand photographed, sewn, hand drawn, HANDMADE goods all made locally with the creators, builders, artisans, crafters personally selling their wares (or someone 1 degree away from the creator). It was all here. Along one wall sat a row of tables with the children of the parents selling at the show peddling their own crafts. Ruby Girl's daughter had made bookmarks and after only 2 hours at the show had already grossed over $100. If she sold out she will have come away with $700. Not bad for someone still in single digits age wise.

The Portland Bazaar ran at the same time. dj's, live bands, vendors selling their art, clothing, my favorite booze, chocolate, Grove, Bridge and Burn, Beacon Sound, salted caramels. Packed as well.

Amanda and Paul had a small art show at their shop Infinity Tattoo. Paul was a former chef and made this rub to die for. I picked up a giant painting by Amanda for my daughter's 9th birthday.

I bought a lot of my gifts over this weekend dropping nearly 1K in total on handmade goods. The things I bought are beautiful and unique. I met each of the artists/creators behind the goods. I feel a connection to each piece because I got to meet the artisan, shake their hands, say hello.

And that's another thing. For a person who is not very social I said hello to a lot of people. These shows are a time of reconnecting, visiting, sparking new ideas. The creativity and energy that surges down these aisles of vendors is mind-blowing. Portland owes a big thank you to Cathy & Torie for Crafty Wonderland.

I talked to over a dozen vendors selling unique baby onesies, baby toys and baby accessories about doing wholesale on my site next year. This is certainly the direction to move towards. The discounts they can offer me are not the traditional ones a wholesaler offers a retailer but this is ok because I am an etailer with less overhead. This means as an etailer I can bring my consumer these amazing products without the typical markup that retailers have to make on products to stay in business. Win Win.

I want to create a bio for each vendor with their products on my site because the connection one feels between buyer and seller is a huge deal. It lends the objects much of their personality and value.

For instance, the print I purchased at the Portland Bazaar of an elephant buried in his grave with circus members gathered atop the grave to mourn, would be meaningless to me if I had purchased it at say Pier One....although I have difficulty imagining this exact print in Pottery Barn or even being in Pier One. I would imagine that there were tens of thousands of these same prints sitting in people's houses across the US. I would never have met the artist and his girlfriend who was helping him man his booth.

I feel hopeful. A sign. 17,000 buyers of handmade goods in one weekend. I hope this is the direction we are headed. It is so beautiful. A utopia of consumption because in this sort of consumption is a very real exchange made between humans. It is warm and fosters positive human interaction. The other model of consumption is one-sided. It is cold and dark.

baby clothes, cool baby clothes, hip baby clothes, organic baby clothes and hopefully soon more handmade baby clothes.

amazon bribes customers away from small businesses

2011-12-06T20:49:00.001-08:00

i posted this article on my fb page and had written this along with the post.

"ok i know you are going to hate me for saying this but if you are selling the same crap that amazon does then it probably wasn't made in the US. and, if you did make it i doubt that amazon is selling it unless you are the manufacturer and are getting a large % of sales and traffic from amazon....just saying and although it does throw a huge wrench into small physical retailers that sell the same products as amazon and it is enormous competition, maybe physical retailers should be looking at selling locally crafted goods rather than made in china name brand corporate stuff that amazon sells. whoa...what a concept. and then, if physical retailers picked up more locally made goods the entire landscape of retail/wholesale would or can i say IS changing. change hurts."

I got slammed pretty quickly by a small retailer. i deserved it. my post was a bit offensive. but what i wanted to say was perhaps even more offensive so i didn't post it on my facebook page.

*note before reading this know that i have never and will never own a retail store so i have no experience in this arena. this is just me opining away and has no basis in reality. my thoughts. little to validate them with. just so you know, i claim no expertise in brick and mortar or retail in general.

but, i really do think there are huge changes happening in how people interact with one another. for me personally what the internet alters the most is that it allows direct connections between people who previously had layers between them. it removes the curtain, layers of curtains. a fan can interact with a star, a politician directly with his constituents, it allows groups to form internationally and chat with one another directly, it allows the musician to connect with his audience, an author to connect with her readers, it removes the middle man.

the US is a land filled with middle men and tons of corporate opaque curtains, thick black out fabric blocking out loads of light.

the internet is a beautiful thing in wiring individuals TO individuals.

she accused me of supporting a morally bankrupt corporation with ethically unsound business practices. i am not supporting amazon's way of practicing business but i do amazon's site and the way they sell things is indeed the direction things are moving. and if it was not amazon it would be some other site that allowed manufacturers to directly sell to their customers, small stores to sell their goods online, people to sell their used books, etc etc.

she said that amazon was putting her and all other small businesses out of business. this is pretty much true. that i was supporting a corporation that was destroying our communities. amazon is putting all retailers out of business but not all small businesses.

and after talking with her i had to really and am still thinking whether or not i should be selling my manufactured goods through amazon. because i don't support their price cutting and competitive practices and in selling my line to their customers i am supporting them. plus what amazon is doing with the publishing industry freaks me out!

but i do believe that it isn't amazon but rather the internet that is leading to retailers demise...amazon is just making it happen at the speed of light...along with an economic downturn.

what i really wanted to say on fb and to this retailer but i did not was that i kind of thought that there was much less purpose or function to having so many physical retailers anymore and not just because of amazon. she would have the same struggle even if amazon did not exist. amazon was just a shadow of what i imagine is to come. that yes, i agreed with her. that there is no way that she can compete with etailers. she has overhead, a real store to run etc.

she argued that she offers far more to her local economy than me an etailer, employing people, renting space paying taxes. i disagreed. etailers pay the same into their local economies as brick and mortar. their employees salary is paid directly from our local community was the only real difference i could see. at least here in oregon where there is no local sales tax. in states that tax, yes the physical retailer does contribute a sales tax but this is currently under discussion and will probably change.

what i wanted to say is that i thought brick and mortar resellers should perhaps go out of business if they could not find a way to compete with etailers.

retailers had a purpose when there was no internet. they would travel far and wide gathering a collection of unusual goods that could not be found elsewhere. people would enter their doors finding treasures and willingly pay the prices required to keep the retailer in business.

but now there is the internet. everyone can see what everyone else is selling and they can sell it for less.

plus, everyone is selling the same stuff in their stores because they all go to the same damn shows and buy the same shit. their mix may be a bit different but for the most part you find the same stores in pdx that you find in sf.

so what i am saying is that maybe amazon (albeit in a nasty big corporate kill all competition sort of way) is moving us closer to what we could be because in my mind if her store can't compete with etailers then that would indicate to me that her store doesn't really serve a purpose to the community anymore.

sure she keeps a few people employed and purchases from local manufacturers but what she is really doing is purchasing goods, doubling the price and from these sales supporting a store front that sells basically the same stuff that is in a gift store in sf or in nyc or somewhere else in pdx and paying sales people to sell this mix and rent for a place to store this stuff.

what i didn't say on fb is it seems like a bit of a waste of resources for so many physical stores to be offering the exact same products as competing etailers because all the store owners go to the same wholesale shows and see the same manufacturers season after season.

so instead of these shops selling the same sorts of mixes that one sees in other stores in other cities and in webstores, these same spaces could be filled with manufacturers, clothing designers, small publishers, printers, growers, bakers/chefs, manufacturers, artisans, crafters creating these goods locally, having their own showrooms, employing people to make these items and then selling these items at a bit above what they would to retailers (20% above wholesale or a bit more to cover showroom costs). then locally manufactured goods would be set at a price that was competitive with overseas pricing and the internet connects the manufacturer directly to their customer rather than having to go through storefronts. Win Win.

I am not saying that there is no use for retailers because there is. lots of manufacturers don't want a showroom or to sell directly. they are going to have to hire someone to build them an online store or to run their online channels and to interact with their customers. lots of people want to see objects, feel the weight in their hands, touch the goods, test them out, last minute gift shoppers. people who love to pop in and out of shops spending their days off work shopping. retailers aren't going to die. but the reality is that the internet does mean retailers are going to have to change their mix to more local and away from what everyone else has. i love what this shop is doing. crafty wonderland took it's favorite crafters and put them in a showroom. i don't see them being undersold on the internet. perhaps the biggest issue facing these sorts of shops is it costs more to manufacture small and these stores are having to mark up enough to support their overhead. this makes these sorts of products pretty pricey. also getting people away from shopping on the internet and interested in goods that don't come wrapped in corporate packaging is a challenge. i don't really know the answer but maybe it lies somewhere in retailers instead of opening their own shops partner with manufacturers.

etsy, ebay, and amazon are the first of these channels but others are moving in this direction. google with their checkout, paypal with a community of stores, zappos moving into clothing, yahoo stores, shoot maybe even some sort of craigslist not for profit shopping site could start in and take over. the landscape changes so swiftly.

but what doesn't change is that the middle man is much less necessary than ever before.

the woman who makes beautiful corsets will be in her shop making her goods while customers come by to try them on and buy one, or perhaps pull out a scanner to try and find it cheaper somewhere else only to discover it is the same price on amazon and across the web because the seamstress is the one selling them through all the other channels and she is not a gigantic corporation who produces overseas so she does not give enormous volume discounts.

just my thoughts. my opinion. don't rake me over the coals for them. i am easily swayed. my opinion might change in a snap if amazon decided to crush my business model.

ps amazon offers some of the same items i do in my store for far less. i tend to drop those products as soon as that happens because i can't sell them for the same price and make $.

pss i sell loads of other cool baby clothes and unique baby gifts for new moms from many manufacturers. that was for google...

pss i read a lot of sci fi and was a star trek fan. i don't imagine anyone in star trek spent a lot of time shopping.

using your child as a billboard

2011-12-06T10:26:00.001-08:00

last night an acquaintance came over to do a trade. i had a photo lightbox that i never used and she has some amazing handmade glass jewelry. my daughter saw this beautiful glass leaf and i saw a spider pendant and an octopus pendant. she saw the funny kids shirt with the word ambivalent on the front and not ambivalent on the back and had to have it for her four year old boy.

and a hoodie with the galaxy swirling around in silver with the words Center of the Universe.

she was searching my site for other stuff because we loved so much of her jewelry. she said i just love the one unorganized liberal but my husband would hate it because he doesn't want to use our child as a billboard.

i get that. we got criticized in 2004 in the washington observer and also on the view by the blonde woman...whatever her name is for just that.

and our retort was but how do you not use your children as a billboard every single day when you dress them in their polo shirts or batman shirts or vans slip on or nike running shoe for the tots. Unless you are a waldorf parent who blocks commercials and media from accessing your kids brains then your child is most likely parading around in or playing with something from some corporation.

my argument is why not use t-shirts with strong/political ideas on them for generating a discussion on what you believe and why you believe what you believe and then letting your child decide if they want to billboard the same idea or not. because whatever your child is inundated with enters their psyche.

and finally, it isn't easy to wear t-shirts that express one's opinions but t-shirts generate discussions, thoughts. you are publicly casting your vote for an idea or belief. you are building out a visual of yourself so others can demarcate or categorize you. in wearing a t-shirt with a strong statement you are standing up for what you believe in.

is this such a bad thing to teach your child?

passive aggressive gaslighting cool baby clothes

2011-12-05T12:53:00.001-08:00

today i am trying to come up with some imagery for the i heart dirty boys with no money shirt. i've had more than my fair share of them. i don't know why. really. i like wealthy men. i like clean men. i do! this shirt has very little to do with baby clothes or toddler clothes or kidswear. although perhaps i will catch my tween in it.

a friend posted this article last week on her fb page.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yashar-hedayat/a-message-to-women-from-a_1_b_958859.html
and i was amazed a dude had written it. that makes him rather hot in my book.
he was right on. men more often than women participate in this demoralizing behavior. and such a rude reaction to someone else's feelings.
over time i have come to recognize that i tend to be a lot less attentive to people's needs and this gets me in quite a bit of trouble. i just have difficulty focusing on all the required social behaviors that are necessary to interacting with folks who are more in tune with these social nuances.

i get hit up at least once a week with some criticism on my lack of attention or my tone of voice or my general rudeness or on something i may have said. i admit to having a slightly abrasive personality but i do try to make efforts at conveying more warmth, more caring, more attentiveness to those around me.

often when i receive these criticisms i feel internally that the person is WAY TOO SENSITIVE/judgmental and has misunderstood my intentions.

but when a person criticizes me for my behavior or lack of attentiveness or because i am late once again or because i did not thank them enough or because they felt uncared for i cannot imagine being so rude as to voice my inner thoughts....'you are so sensitive'.

yesterday i received an earful from a male i am working with on a video. i felt terrible that i had upset him. i also thought he was just way too sensitive. but, i cannot imagine voicing these thoughts out loud when he has taken the step to voice his displeasure with me. when someone, especially a female, gets up the courage to voice their displeasure it seems cruel to belittle their efforts and to discard their hurt.

all one needs do is acknowledge the pain or irritation one has caused and then make an effort to determine what the other person's boundaries and limits are. or am i way oversimplifying this task? and on the person who is constantly hurt by others, maybe the people around you really have no malice towards you. maybe you could give them the benefit of the doubt. just voice your displeasure. 'this behavior has made me feel this way. could you please make an effort not to do that around me." a statement without judgment on their character...

just ranting. anyway, good article. not at all one about baby clothing or hip toddler clothes but a good read nonetheless on where passive aggressive behavior originates (and btw, in my opinion men are some of the worst offenders of PAB.)

value of time, rant on thieves

2011-11-29T22:10:00.001-08:00

i've have this flash animation from my 404 page running on my screen for hours. it's a great screensaver. the animation was built for our cool baby clothes site somewhere in 2004 for the home page, before i realized that flash would kill our seo. i haven't found a good place for it until now. it's supposed to make folks who have reached a bad url feel a bit special.

no flash allowed on the baby site and now i must write a blog filled with keywords so forewarning, unceremoniously i am going to be dumping words like baby or toddler clothes into my writing. how horrible. i feel like such a whore because really i don't feel at all like writing about baby clothes or hip toddler clothing. how about today instead i write about how my car was broken into last night. it has nothing to do with baby clothing and will probably weaken my seo but god, how much can one write or read about the baby clothing industry day in and day out.
i will update you on yankers. i've tried to get a hold of my yankers pattern maker in sf to make some alterations and still haven't heard back from her so i am getting a bit antsy. what, did she take a VACATION? jesus.
and on jesus did you see the shirt that said 'Jesus Wouldn't Defriend You?'
Rebecca suggested that i could use a shirt with the like symbol thumbs up on a shirt with the number 1 under it cause i only got liked by myself. HA HA HA. so funny rebecca.
here's my rant to the f@cking thief who broke into my car last night.

I chose the gym over another drink with an online blind date. I had been at my computer all day long and at 9 pm I decided to go for a nice work out at the gym. I did manage to get out briefly for lunch and to grab a brace from the rebuilding center for a new light fixture Jason had given to me. I found the perfect one sitting in a pile of crap, gold with leaves embossed into the metal. Very antiquey looking. It would go together perfectly with my gold metal bedframe. Currently I have one of those horrible sort of home depot fixtures hanging above my bed that I suppose someday might be considered a cool treasured antiquey sort of fixture by some woman hunting rapaciously through boxes of ancient fixtures in some junk store. I have my doubts about that though. Everything these days is built so cheaply as easy tossaways.

I parked in the garage even though there was plenty of street parking because the garage was lit up. I grabbed my workout bag but decided to leave my purse and this not two days after Dana had explicitly warned me not to leave my purse in my car. Her friend’s car had just been broken into while he was working out.

I selected number 56 to place my bag into and found on the top shelf of the locker a brand new iPad2 sitting in a very nice black suede case. I have been lusting after one for months but went with the kindle to save money. Oh the temptation. Of course I must return it to its owner but I cannot deny I was tempted as I opened the cover and slid its button on to search for information on its careless owner. The device was close to brand new, no scratches and hardly any applications installed on it or fingerprints marring its smooth touchscreen. I found the owner and phoned her letting her know I would leave her iPad2 at the front desk.

After my leisurely workout I meandered out into the frigid night air and found two guys in the garage sweeping up glass around their cars. I opened my car and found my seats covered in shards and cubes. My purse gone. The two guys swept up the glass from my front seat and cleared it from beneath my car. We lamented on what we had lost.

As I drove home I began to think of all the things in my purse.

My expensive glasses,

all my favorite make up like this amazing eyeliner and dark smudgy blue eye shadow color that worked perfectly together,

my favorite lip gloss that embarrassingly cost over $20 (lip gloss is very important),

my credit cards,

my omsi card that i haven't used even once this past year,

my drivers license,

business cards with my home address on them,

$150 and odd change in cash,

an unused $100 Script card to New Seasons,

a $200 money order that I had delayed in cashing because I found it difficult to make it over to my new community bank,

my checkbook with my groovy edward gorey cover i'd picked up at a 2010 secret society xmas sale,

my back door key that was attached to a little pouch I picked up at crafty wonderland last year. I thought it a fabulous idea that she make little pouches with keyrings on them. She sewed them all out in these groovy vintage fabrics.

A necklace that I loved but had unclasped and placed in my change purse because my son grabs at my neck quite a bit and its chain is so delicate that it tends to break easily.

My brand new spider ring that I just picked up from ruby girl. I love this ring. It is cast in sterling silver from a harry potter lego piece. It feels like it was made before things got cheap. Built to last. Heavy with weight and a solid band. Its little spider legs were getting hooked on my hoodie and I have always had difficulty wearing rings so it was sitting in my bag waiting for me while I worked out.

And, my favorite queen bee bag, one she no longer makes. It is super cool, grey and black with a huge wing sewn across the cover.

But, all these things together do not add up to my deductible per incident.

Right now I am sitting at safe lite auto glass where I must spend over an hour waiting for them to install a new window. I was worried all last night they would return to clean out my auto. The thief had been frightened off by the manager at the gym just after he had broken my window. My car was the final car he got to. What I wondered is why the manager failed to let its members know that four cars had been broken into in their garage. He told me he didn’t want to make all the patrons nervous and figured everyone would find out when they left. I suggested that perhaps if he'd been kind enough to let me know right after my window had been broken I might still have a purse. It wasn't like the gym was packed at 10 pm at night.

Because in my purse there was much more than just my things, my time sat in there. Loads of it and time is something I cannot buy and I cannot make more of to replace my lost time. Time, once lost is gone. Permanently. I did not get angry until I began to realize how much of my time was stolen.

I looked at my phone and saw a new email from my credit card company. Not even an hour after the theft and there was fraudulent activity detected on one of the cards from my purse. I spent the early morning calling all my credit cards and canceling them. They went to plaid pantry to spend $13.32 and hit up the shell station for some gas. Then off to eat dinner TWICE. I guess they were hungry. They used my REI card at REI.com (do i get cc points for that purchase)? They used my amex at northface.com. They used my bank card to purchase monthly passes at TRIMET. I passed this information onto the police officer who took the report. She was amazingly sympathetic. Young with a spray of freckles across her face.

“We will get them with their purchase at the Plaid Pantry. They film everything at those places and there is a time stamp on the use of your card.”

More time spent moving all the things from my car into my house.

Today I am sitting on a plastic chair at a plastic table inside of safe lite to have my glass replaced before it starts pouring. They are located off of 158^th somewhere in nowhere land. They estimate it will take them an hour to an hour and a half to finish. Safe Lite has no wireless. I cannot work. Every minute I don’t work is costing me and with NoSchoolvember I’ve had to really struggle to put in enough hours. Add into it all the things that keep piling up…broken presses, holidays, finding cash, managing contractors remotely, yankers, a shopping cart that still needs a tremendous amount of massaging, SEO woes, educating myself on new marketing techniques to get our sales back up and on and on and I have two children who NEED me. I have to be present for them. It’s a struggle to find time.

Then off to my community bank because I must sign papers to contest the TRIMET charges and close my checking account and open a new one. More time to inform my mortgage and car lenders of my new checking account number.

Then the DMV to apply for a new license but first I must dig up my passport, social security card, proof of name and address. I can only imagine how long I will be sitting in that row of chairs staring at the clerks calling off the numbers from the queue.

Then I need to somehow replace my glasses. But, this means going to see an optician as my prescriptions is expired. Then, I must go and select new frames and order, wait and go pick up.

My back door lock needs to be changed because he has my address and my key. I will have to purchase a new lock and install it. This means going to Freddy’s, picking out a lock, waiting in line, bringing it home, removing the old lock and installing the new one.

I understand theft quite well. the motivation. the thought process behind it. "i don't have enough money and they have so much, they'll never miss it."
or "their insurance will cover it."
or "i really like that new iPad2 and someone careless left it in a locker so it was just going to be taken anyway."
or "those millions of mindless idiots who bought houses they couldn't afford are losers anyway who don't deserve to own a home."
honestly it wasn't hard for me to call the owner of the iPad2. and when i turned in the iPad2 to the desk clerk it wasn't for some fear of being the recipient of some karmic retribution or guilt out of hurting someone else but rather because in reality i was saving myself time. See it takes time from both sides when something is stolen. the loser must spend time replacing all that is gone, the taker must figure out how to make it their own or dump it and how to escape punishment.

My time has been lost but so has the time of the person smashing the windows, sorting through wallets, trying out cards at gas stations and restaurants to be captured on film, shopping online to pass out their address. Time has been lost in our community as the police officer takes the reports and follows the leads, the insurance companies who file the claims and jack up their rates, the credit card companies who close down the cards, send out new ones, mail out claims against the fraudulent charges, make up for these losses by raking their customers with higher fees etc. it all circles around to end up in a punitive circle of vicious taking with every member of our society taking part in some way because busy work isn't constructive work, it's just damned wasteful.

We all have pretty much the same amount of time. a second for me is the same as a second for you. i do not have more time than you nor you than me. it is rather how we decide to make use of our time that adds or detracts from the value of this precious asset.

the value of time. it has taken me decades to recognize it. today has made it crystal clear.

broken presses, broken dreams

2011-11-28T13:23:00.001-08:00

just kidding. well both our presses are broken but our dreams are not. rebecca is working slowly on all our black friday orders with barely functioning presses. again, don't buy a hix heat press. 2k invested and it didn't even last a year.
got my period yesterday. not that anyone wants to know this sort of thing but it went towards explaining A LOT. because you see, when i pms everything sort of breaks down. i was debriefing rebecca on my thanksgiving and she said 'it's giving me anxiety just listening to it.'
met with monica drake today to discuss a new project i am working on with dana hush. sort of a community building project we've been hashing out and monica said she'd absolutely help with a panel. she also told me about this phenomenal running art project she has running. basically, she goes around at large gatherings and asks people to complete a sentence. then she creates a word cloud and an art piece from each event. so, from an occupy rally the larger words are much different than shoppers at walmart going after a $2 waffle maker. i think it an amazing sociological investigation so if you find me coming up to you at a gathering and ask you to complete a sentence it's to add to monica's database of word clouds.
we are also going to make a series of shirts for little ones called sad sally with bubbles filled with expressions of what we as adults WISH our children were really saying. more to follow soon.
i have gotten to know Amanda Meyer and Paul Zenk at Infinity Tattoo and they are a lovely couple. very much fun. their art is amazing so we are going back and forth on creating a series of tattoo shirts for kids.
also, i have been advised by seo masters on blogging and i need to include some keywords in my text regarding toddler clothes. so here it is. toddler clothes. and also new mom gifts. we have amazing new mom gifts. i mean what mom would not be thrilled to receive the "he thinks he's my daddy shirt" at her baby shower. Come on!

here is my product review of the day. over thanksgiving i was losing my mind because apparently i was PMSing, the newsletter program wasn't working for black friday and the kids were fighting fighting fighting. so i had ava and atticus give maia her gift. she opened it and they played together peacefully for TWO solid hours. they were in heaven. Two 4 year olds and one 8 year old put together half of the animals from this fantastic collection. It's definitely a keepsake piece. the card stock is quite heavy and the patterns beautiful. i give this set an A+++. What i like best is that all the pieces can be organized by animal in their own envelopes so they don't get lost in the mix.

rejection, hormones, thanksgiving, black friday

2011-11-27T09:53:00.001-08:00

apparently november has been designated no schoolember and because of the schedule with my ex i have ended up this entire month with my kids being on holiday. this has not been easy as i have been working hard at getting my site back up a bit (unsuccessful so far) to it's old ranking before the url restructuring. i have a feeling we will never be at the top again. not sure why but think it has something to do with how before on our customized products for each decal i had to offer up 5 different products all keyworded differently and in this new system one decal is one decal with the same keywords just placed in multiple categories.
plugging through the site and keywording it. i have been so busy with filming yankers, watching kids, keywording, working out issues with the new site that i have had no time to really monitor a person i hired on odesk. he had such a high rating and i just kind of trusted him. over thanksgiving i had a chance to really look at his work and i apparently shelled out 500 bucks for him to keyword by copying and pasting my title into the meta title, description and keyword section for 300 products, 250 which were invisible products and did not need keywording. to late to contest as i am responsible for making sure the work they submit is what i want. i feel like and idiot. so no more trusting and more monitoring. sigh.
i arrive at our friends house on bainbridge island wednesday evening. atticus is reunited with his best friend maia. when i see them together i cannot help but smile. they are just so happy to be around one another and they get each other even though they are so very different. at one point while they were playing atticus grabbed maia and said to ava (his older sister) you cannot give me a daughter but maia can. hmmm, i wonder where that came from? what was going on in his 4 year old brain.
rebecca had just finished up the newsletter wed afternoon and it was queued to go out friday morning but when creating the discount sitewide i realized that none of our sale items were actually listed as on sale so i spent a couple of hours on thanksgiving trying to fix that bug while my friends were cooking up dinner in the kitchen.
friday morning comes and we all want to go to seattle but the newsletter, our biggest newsletter of the year, the black friday, cyber monday newsletter did not leave the queue. i am freaking and of course nexcess support is of no help. there normal response to anything is 'hire a developer.'
thank goodness rob is a programming genius. he really is. he is considered a flash expert (wrote the bible) and does stuff with streaming video. he sat with me for a couple of hours to work the bugs out of the store and he helped massage that damn newsletter out the door.
but, because he has spent time helping me he has to stay behind while we all go to seattle. everything is rushed. so rushed. i throw our things into a suitcase and shove my computer into a bag. we pack the car up and are off. as we are parked waiting for the ferry i realize i can't find my cell phone. huge panic. snow phones up rob and asks him to look for it and if he finds it he will catch a ferry over in the afternoon.
he can't find my phone. i know it's there. i tear the car apart on the ferry ride. rob is calling my phone as he walks through each room and he finds it in a slipper under maia's bed. apparently atticus decided to take it off of my computer and hide it under maia's bed. sigh. rob took the ferry over that afternoon just to return my phone to me.
these folks never got irritated with me even though i completely interrupted their lives. they were so generous with their time and such high tolerance of my chaos.
our sales during the big holiday are so sad. even with the 20% our sales are now what they were before we lost traction in google. i hired someone to work some magic and do an ad words campaign but without money coming in how do i spend more money? i did find a good way. another credit card company came along again and offered me 0% interest again so i paid off a huge cc bill that i would have been unable to meet by transferring the balance. someone is looking out for me. so i went and purchased a new heat press from insta because the hix never did get back up and running and the thermometer i replaced in the insta was faulty so we were left pressless.
last week after filming the video i went onto kickstarter to set up the campaign but i did not realize one had to APPLY to ask for $. that some projects actually get rejected. mine was one such project. i have no idea really why. i had a minor panic attack because in my head i had already set up this whole thing so i could get the funding i needed to do yankers. i mean, i could go the traditional route and do shows but that takes bank and i don't have bank right now. so i was devastated to not have access to potential funding from the general public. but, one thing i have noticed is that if you don't succeed the first time you might end up with a different answer if you try again. i think my daughter and son recognize this as well. ha. so i reapplied under design rather than the fashion category and was fortunately accepted.
plus, i've been feeling those hormones raging through my body. for me, hormonal imbalance feels like a huge amount of anxiety and desperation all rolled up into a giant lump that sits right around my pancreas. that switches drastically from day to day. one day i will feel the lump and the very next day i can feel as though i am walking around with all these long strands of amazing white energy extending out of my finger tips, legs, arms, head that seem to bounce around embrace everything around me. oh life. right now i have the lump. ugh. what does your hormonal imbalance feel like?

shooting of yankers kickstarter video

2011-11-20T08:02:00.001-08:00

i've been feeling kind of uninspired as of late. ok, maybe for the last two years.
and when my site flat lined through my own carelessness i jumped into an emergency resuscitation mode. it is terrifying and exciting all at the same time, watching the potential death of my only source of income. i'll keep you posted and let you know what i did seo wise to halt the falling off of traffic and hopefully build it back up to where it was before i launched the new cart.
friday, after much procrastination on my part, my attention refocused on a product i developed back in 2008. earlier in the year a good friend thought it crazy that i wasn't taking yankers to the next level. with all the positive feedback, letters and encouragement from customers and friends i began to think maybe i should dedicate some real energy to yankers. but i wasn't feeling the much needed inspiration that i needed to go there. for me inspiration or the drive is this feeling in my gut that this product/activity/business plan has everything it takes to make it to the next level.
last week before the shoot i went down into my basement to dig up my first prototypes of the design and began to recall its' history. the huge number of revisions, the patterns, 4 different pattern makers were involved. when i pulled out my first two versions i couldn't help but laugh out loud at how absolutely ridiculous they looked.
on friday a group of three women and one man gathered with their infants to participate in the video. i was nervous because although i had heard from customers how much they loved the product i had not witnessed it used by multiple people who weren't my friends.
it was overwhelming.
stunning.
i got what i needed.
a huge dose of inspiration.
one woman reminded me of some of the advantages built into yankers that i had completely forgotten about like 1. a toddler can't access their own diaper and 2. checking to see the status of the diaper is easy as pie.
yankers IS brilliant. people are wondering why this product doesn't already exist because it is so SIMPLE.
and there's the ticket. in product development simplicity is key.
a product that people wonder why this did not previously exist. the obvious products. like dropbox. i love dropbox. it's so obvious. so brilliant. so simple.
why ARE we busy parents spending our precious time buttoning and snapping countless fasteners, throwing velcro into washers to have it tear at our clothing and catching delicate skin in zippers?
hello.
i am all over yankers. it's in my heart again.

google product feeds and homelessness

2011-11-18T06:56:00.001-08:00

after much back and forth with google and a request for exemption for the new required color and size fields and a rejection of request i decided to submit a product feed of our customized products that is based on the blank garment, one blank garment in each size variant, the same color with the decal listed as the pattern. this means i will be 303 x 7 products x 3 sizes just in infant/toddler/kids. and this is with just one color...that is one big spreadsheet.

i am not getting the color requirement because they don't specify color assignments as they do categories and with all the billions of possible colors a manufacturer comes up with i don't see how the color field is going to be of any use in their taxonomy. i get the sizing but color? and it isn't just the main color they are asking for, it's the primary color/secondary color/third/fourth etc. there has to be some logic to this requirement but i'm not seeing it. someone explain how the color field is useful without them dictating the naming. Black, blue, green, purple, red, orange, silver, grey, yellow, white or something like that.

i'm sure this is just fascinating. last night i had my friend yawning with my talk of spreadsheets.

this is before i whispered to him what i really thought of the big bowl of kale salad sitting on the table at the thanksgetting.

i don't really want to take any of it home because i didn't really dig it.
why not, what did you think of it rosalee?
well the dressing left an aftertaste of (whispering into his ear) stale socks in my mouth.
oh really?
yes. it was kind of gross.
well i made that salad.

i invited a homeless man to stay in my house while my children are with their father. he is the ex-husband of a friend. i was sitting on her couch when he showed up on her doorstep, angry, cold, out of gas, wet and desperate. it was not pleasant.
she had never seen him like that. she was terrified that he would lose it and no longer be able to be a father to their daughter. i did not want to offer up my home. i am not generous like that. she explained he had recently gone through his second divorce, gotten into drugs for a month and through a series of unfortunate events LOST EVERYTHING.
this was an incredibly talented man who, when he was working would turn down gigs paying him more than most folks make in a month.
homeless. no gas money. had slept in his unregistered car the last few days. all resources gone.
"rosalee, he's trying so hard and this crap just keeps happening to him."
i told her that he could stay in my house until my kids returned.
no skin off my back and perhaps it would put a stop to the downward spiral. my only request was that there be no drama, no chaos to follow from my offer.

well, you can't offer up to someone who is homeless your home as shelter and not expect some chaos/drama to ensue. this is a person who has used up every single last resource and every minute of the day is spent trying to stave off the streets, keep out of the rain, tucked away from the cold.

he complimented me on my pesto.
it's kale rather than basil.
amazing.

he is the creative artist type who can't function very well within laid out societal norms. if their talent is recognized perhaps they can build up a career of some sort. but it is precarious. always tilting and tottering on the edge. and it can all disappear within a month or two. their house in the clinton district, their devoted clients, their wives, their equipment, portfolios, childhood photos and then their car.

my insurance has lapsed and there are repo men are outside trying to get my car. they are after me. four different vehicles with darkened windows. can you bring me my things. meet me at this cafe? i can't lose my car. it is the only thing i have left.

yes, yes no problem.

i bag up doc martins, black plastic framed glasses, socks, expensive designer clothing. his shirts are hanging up. his shoes neatly lined up. a tea cup is sitting on my daughter's desk.

as all our resources continue to dry up, more slowly than his, perhaps it takes a year or two, we are all feeling closer to the street. we spend less of our dollar which in turn effects small businesses such as mine who cannot offer Walmart prices. i as a wholesaler buy less. manufacturers produce less, spend less. we are all spending less and less as our resources shrink, becoming thinner and thinner.

it is a tense time. i marched occupy portland. i want it to change. i want my children to have health care and a good education. to keep my house and my business. to continue to employee a single mom who has been with me for over five years.

it ain't all that much. really.

ok enough, i am off to make my kickstarter video for yankers with billy wild.

the focus is to ask for enough $ to go into a real production environment with my product. in 2006 i could have done this without asking for $. today, it will be the only way i can push this line out. crossing my fingers for social media to do it's magic.

The Entrepreneurial Generation

2011-11-16T13:11:00.001-08:00

an acquaintance just sent me this article and i found myself wondering why he fails to talk about the other drivers that makes one do one's own thing. the diy movement itself is a protest against big corporations, over consumption, waste and our throw away culture. it is a generation trying to find a way to push back up against mass media's brainwashing and corporate dictatorship of our culture and is also perhaps a path to self sufficiency with less dependence on the big. it is a backlash against our current mode of over consumption and is most certainly a movement (with more and more mainstream participation e.g. occupy).
His lack of acknowledgement of it and failure to even mention these drivers is odd. i mean, beyond the organics and dyi small biz climate it is a huge amount of protest/fight/anger/sadness against a culture that does not value the products it creates and in fact works to create disposable throw away goods at huge costs to our society.
but yes these folks tend to be nice about it and perhaps it does have to do a bit with the fact that it is a business they are cultivating. it is the dawning or birth of the small business that WANTS to stay the small business. it is an age that celebrates the small business.
Here is a new shirt i added today. a friend suggested this verbiage as a sign. i took his slogan and made it into a tee. i think it accurately defines the participants in the occupy movement and it is not a bad thing.

kids one unorganized liberal

women's one unorganized liberal tee

men's one unorganized liberal tee

dissident t-shirt, wikimedia, google product feeds

2011-11-15T09:09:00.001-08:00

i spent all day yesterday trying to build out our google product feed but with their new specifications that every garment have a color attribute and a size attribute you can imagine what my spreadsheet was starting to look like with all the possible permutations our site offers up. on top of that they'd really like an image submitted for each different color variation and since our site offers these images up dynamically...it's looking like we are not going to be submitting a google product feed for our customized items.

i submitted a request for an exemption but realistically i don't see how they could grant it with what they are trying to do, which is offer customers the same shopping experience that amazon or zappos does. basically, building out a giant shopping cart and unless they add in customization then it kind of kills the point of their feeds and if they add in customization or exemptions for me (offering fields for size ranges and multiple color options) they'd have to do it for other folks who can't meet their stringent standards. so i don't see it happening. depressed after spending one day plugging away at the damn sheet. so many new fields.

i just added a shirt with the word Dissident across it because the times are a calling for some dissension. A dissident, broadly defined, is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine, policy, or institution. When dissidents unite for a common cause they often effect a dissident movement. (source: Wikimedia). This is not a bad thing in this day and age considering the established institution is not promoting a sustainable future. This is an interesting video worth watching. Broke Video

Women's Shirt Baby/Kids Shirt

I also donated some bucks to Wikimedia. I mean I use them as much as I use google and they ARE ad free. If you use them you should too! I love wikimedia.
Donate

Reinvigorated about www.babywit.com

2011-11-14T09:45:00.001-08:00

Losing one's position on google is devastating but i can't go back to my old cart. we worked so hard on the new one. it is so fabulous. so we are spending all our time doing what we did not do on the old site which is start to write keywords and meta descriptions. it is exhausting. but, in this process i am learning a lot and it is fascinating.
i did get bored with bw after the initial launch and marketing. my ambivalence began set in around the third year. i'd made the site. i got the traffic. i was going to shows. i did my own line. and after awhile i just kind of lost interest.
when i separated from my husband i stopped marketing. i stopped going to shows. i stopped going into the office regularly and started doing fun things. looking for that thing that would respark my passion.
is this what happens in long term relationships? you get bored. you want that passion back. you fear you might not find it again? then there is the very real possibility of loss. of losing that person from your life and suddenly your passion surges back in and every hour is spent trying to salvage that relationship.
that's what happened with babywit.com and I. with the thought of loss i am filled with passion once again.
a girlfriend the other night said of life...we need to feel a little hungry, a little cold, a little bored, a little scared, a little sick to appreciate what we have.
i just added this new design today:
i hand drew it. We see these parents all over Portland. It amazes me that they do this in the pouring rain rigging up creative solutions to protect themselves from the elements.
The idea is not mine. It came from a friend of a friend. Pam was chatting with me about riding in the rain and she mentioned her friend who rode her kids around in this amazing bike caravan and had made a shirt that said one less minivan. she recently gave up on the bike train after she had another child. she now has a suburu or something. anyway, blah blah, i went home and drew out this shirt because i felt it deserved to exist.

One Less Minivan

i hope you enjoy it!

Heat Presses

2011-11-12T10:32:00.001-08:00

I am not a mechanical person by nature but last night i spent about 30 minutes installing a new thermometer on my insta heat press. i have had this machine for SEVEN years. i have replaced the thermometer on it twice and a piece of metal that broke. i've greased it twice. That's it. It's been a fabulous workhorse for these seven years.
The first heat press i purchased was a used hix and i really liked it because it made this nice ding. I also had a mighty heat press (cheaper hix i think) for awhile. they both broke. i decided a year ago to buy another hix. for some reason i had this romantic delusion about the hix heat press. perhaps because it was my first heat press.
i spent a lot of money on this new heat press. we used it as our backup press over the year. it broke in the 11th month, a month before the warranty ended. they sent me new parts for what had broken. it required a flame torch and the soldering of a piece of silver. i borrowed a friend's flame torch who was working on my house and tried to install the new part. it didn't take. i spent over 3 hours trying to install and solder it. i called for advice. they told me i needed to get someone who had experience soldering so i asked my friend who worked on houses and did electrical to come take a look.
it took him over an hour to finish it. he griped the whole time. 'what the heck? this crap doesn't melt. i am worried about melting out everything else around it!'
then something else broke on the hix. the pressure went out. the warranty had expired. this is after a year of minimal use. it sat like that through the xmas holidays. it sat like that for a couple of months because it took so much back and forth to figure out why the press no longer had any pressure. they diagnosed it as the linkages had broken and charged me 100 bucks to send out a new one. they didn't have instructions because it wasn't a common thing they sent out. i imagine it is because linkages are nearly impossible to actually replace.
i tried to follow the instructions and get the caps holding the rods removed but this was impossible. i couldn't get the old parts off. i tried everything. tons of force, a screwdriver inserted inbetween the cap and the rod while banging the screwdriver with a mallot. i called for advice and the technical guy didn't know. he had to call someone else to find out.
i had a dude friend come in and try. he built furniture. he tried and gave up. the people at hix told me i had to find a machinist. it took me half a year to finally find one. he came and picked up the press and kept it for a week.
when i picked it up he told me that he had had a time of it. that the hix press was built so poorly that there was no way it would not break when being used and that the linkages would have to be replaced periodically but if i could catch it before a certain point the replacement would be easier. he told me never to buy another hix. that was 2 months ago.
guess what? it's broken again.

Rememberance Day

2011-11-11T17:00:00.000-08:00

today i took my children over to pioneer square and at 11:11:11 am we stood in a circle with about 25 veterans of peace. they played Taps and read a poem. there was a large peace sign made out of trillium flowers. i told my children the story of the soldiers who opted for peace over war. i also told them they could make a wish. it was a good wish day. what are you wishing for mom? well, this is the biggest wish day in about 100 years so i am going all the way with a wish for world peace. it was a nice way to make a wish.
after relaunching the site with our new store our seo dropped shockingly. down 60%. i expected it to fall off a bit until our new url structure was recognized but when it kept falling and falling over the past month i knew something was up. i've spent the last week trying to figure out what the HECK?
i am making a guess that it has something to do with the google toolbar i have installed on my computer and that maybe somehow it read that i had gone to our test site and also our old site that had been relocated under a DNS and spidered them because i stupidly did not think to put a robot.txt file in there telling google to skip over these sites...honestly i didn't think google would find them so easily. well, looking in webmaster tools i see that over 100,000 link ins are coming from these two sites weakening our search because well, all of it is duplicate content and most of it leads to our home page. OW. so now, i am just waiting for google to reindex those sites. i tried to force it by asking them to remove those two sites from their index but i guess unless the entire site is gone they don't do it?
so, rebecca and i are sitting on pins and needles waiting to see what happens before xmas. i mean this is our season. holy moly.

but, some good things came out of this research. one was that this blog that i haven't written in for over 2 years had a lot of link ins. secondly, one of our products that i totally forgot about and left off the new website had a lot of link ins as well. it is a shirt that i kind of love and kind of hate. on the front it reads ambivalent, on the back is printed not ambivalent. it is the toddler's way.
they're both back!

Read kids books before you read them to your child

2009-03-14T21:40:00.000-07:00

An obvious thing I know but with being so busy sometimes I just don't do it. I trust that the books that are put on display in my local library in the children's section have been read by the librarian, otherwise, why highlight them. I am in the middle room picking up an assortment of animals, crayons, dolls clothing, blocks, paper, stickers, coloring books, videos, more books, clothing....and am listening to my husband read my daughter this book. So, this Genie saves this King but makes him do all these foolish things in order to get rid of some awful spell or something and the King is pretty embarrassed and decides to kill the Genie even though the Genie saved his life. I am drifting in and out of the story. Then I hear, the soldier gets mad at the dog his best friend because the dog bit the horse he was riding while he was trying to shoot a deer. His horse broke his leg and he was so pissed that he was unable to catch that deer that he shot his dog. He then started to run after the deer and began wading through some water and realized that the water was cursed. As he began to turn to stone he realized that his best friend the dog had only been trying to save his life. This was the last thought he had before he was petrified. About 10 minutes later Ava came out of her room weeping inconsolably about the dog who had been shot and had only been trying to save the man. About the man who had realized he had shot his best friend who had been trying to save him and had died as well. About the horse who had a broken leg.
I will read the book before I read it a loud to my daughter.

Clarification about the CPSIA for small businesses and crafters!

2009-02-10T07:12:00.000-08:00

sbguide.pdf

Check it out. A bit of common sense regarding this law. Thanks BreeAnn from Tiny Revolutionary. Once again you rock this world!
XOXO

Hope for all us small manufacturers

2009-01-21T10:00:00.000-08:00

Just received a copy of this letter from BreeAnne from Tiny Revolutionary and it is great to hear that we are being considered.

Congress%20Opinion%20on%20CPSIA.pdf

Also received this email from Congressman Earl Blumenauer today:
Dear Mrs. Frost,

Thank you for your letter regarding the Consumer Products Safety Commission and the recently enacted Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. I am a strong supporter of that law, which ensures that children's products do not contain dangerous amounts of lead.

Under the Act, all products aimed at children 12 and under must be tested for lead and phthalates, beginning February 10th. Recognizing that this testing may place a heavy burden on smaller retailers, I'm very pleased that the Commission is taking a critical look at the manner these requirements will be implemented. I am also pleased that Congress will be reviewing these requirements early this year to ensure they are implemented as efficiently and fairly as possible.

Again, thank you for expressing your concerns and I look forward to the implementation of a law that protects children and preserves economic opportunity.

Sincerely,
Earl Blumenauer
Member of Congress

CPSIA law takes effect Feb. 10th. Retailers take inventory of all your current stock!

2009-01-13T13:35:00.000-08:00

Got this information directly from the horse's mouth, Nychelle Fleming, spokesperson for the CPSC. As a retailer and reseller of new children products everything you have in stock before Feb. 10th 2009 does not need to have certification or be tested for lead. This is also true for resellers of used children products. What we do need to do as resellers is to make sure that we don't accidently resell products that contain lead. This means carefully screening all your instock products for metal and paints. Things like cribs, jewelry for kids, snaps, zippers etc should be verified because if you do inadvertendly sell something with lead and you get caught the fine is heafty.
You can rent a scanner that tests for lead if you have a ton of products you are concerned about.
http://www.niton.com/Toys-Consumer-Goods-Screening-with-Handheld-XRF/
Or you can just throw away those items. But, things like cotton t-shirts or books you can continue to resell and there is no deadline for getting these products off your shelves.
Resellers are responsible for making sure the products they put on their shelves after Feb. 10th do have certification so keep your records.
Manufacturers have to test and certify anything they sell after Feb. 10th. They must test all products for lead and toys, sleepwear, childcare items (bedding, bibs, burp cloths) for lead and phthalates.

Save our world of fun

2009-01-07T10:14:00.000-08:00

Always get your quote in writing

2009-01-05T10:12:00.001-08:00

While I am ranting away I learned a valuable lesson this last week. Always ask for a quote in writing because you may be on a very different page than the contractor you are working with. Also, contracts are very good to have as well. A signed contract from a previous contractor saved me a couple of thousand dollars when he did not fulfill his end of the contract.

I got my quote over the phone. Big mistake. Big misunderstanding. He said he charged $20 an hour and I am like wow cheap but he did come with a reference.

I wanted him to move the cat tree on the left up a little, add a little to my css, add in a couple of boxes at the bottom of the page so I can put in specials. Nothing major. In my mind I am thinking 2 to 3 hours tops. He tells me I should convert from tables to divs and I say sure. He says to pull out the javascript and I say sure. Both seem very minor. Then I ask for a quote and he says he figures around twenty but if he goes over he will let me know.

I am thinking twenty DOLLARS and also thinking "Wow, that is really really cheap but if he can do all that in one hour more power to him. I think, he is probably quoting low and will probably end up calling me"....never ever imagining that someone would turn this into a twenty HOUR project. My whole website store took less than that. I could have taught myself CSS in that amount of time.

I get a bill for $400 and a page that looks like crap in ie6, with a style sheet not attached to the xml...just a lot of buggy stuff and because I was thinking $20 and once I get the basic layout I will beautify it into what I really want I get an ugly assed looking page too (my fault...he did say he wasn't an image guy). A contractor that can take a 3 hour project and turn it into a 20 hour one (actually 40 cause he said he spent 40 hours and was cutting me a deal and I could throw in some clothing to make it even!) ....well it can happen so get your quote in writing.

I do not think this contractor was cheating me. I honestly think he took 40 hours of his time to work on tweaking my front page. I do not think him a bad person. He just worked in a very different way than I do. I should have been suspicious when I got a long paragraph about how my facebook logo wasn't showing up and the reasons why and how it might be fixed and I am like dude, don't worry about that, it will show up once you are on my server. I think this contractor was overly diligent and slow as molasses because he was probably teaching himself along the way. Hence the cheap $20 an hour price tag.

IF I had gotten a quote in writing from him I would have realized that he intended to take 20 hours to tweak my front page and all the pain that followed could have been avoided. My bad. Lesson learned.

I just spent 5 hours learning some CSS and redid my page.

Here was our starting point:
http://www.babywit.com/original010809.php

Here is what I got from the contractor:
http://babywit.com/divs.php
Really ugly in explorer 6 as is most everything

Here is my redo:
http://www.babywit.com/

And now I know some CSS. :)

Extremism defines the US...my rant

2009-01-05T09:58:00.000-08:00

It is everywhere. Good vs Evil. Either you are on the good side or the bad side. Stories, books, movies. If you are evil you are quite evil. So evil you deserve to die and the good are good because they take out the evil. It is a necessity. This is what we are teaching our children. This is what my daughter is learning. So, I have taken to telling her stories where the grossly evil are actually not so bad, in fact can turn out to be your best friend if given the opportunity.
Our politics are a shining example and on the polar ends of both camps sit very frightening closed minded people. People who judge others. People who write in to websites they take offense to only to offend back, to kill, to take down...all the while feeling justified somehow. People who write into sites that sell baby clothing to rant on and on.
Today I see it in our laws. Ever since I started babywit I have been begging for phthalate free goods. I have requested from all my vendors. In my own shop I use what is supposed to be (as much as possible) free of things like lead and phthalates. Overseas for quite awhile it has been illegal to make children's goods with these poisons in them. The US lagged far, far behind in any sort of legislation to protect our children. Finally, after a few deaths, a few scares they come up with an act. An act so extreme that it will dismember the entire sector of manufacturers that make children's goods. Handmade toys, locally sewn clothing and on and on. What is it with the US? All I see happening is for phthalates to be removed from products and then a huge plastic makin' companies to come along with something equally horrible ....I mean it is plastic afterall....that does just as much harm to our environment and our children...am I just a downer or what?
I am all for testing but sound testing that makes sense and doesn't wipe out an entire sector from existence... one sector that is actually using or trying to use materials that leave a lighter footprint on our earth.
That was my ten minute rant and sorry it doesn't make much sense at all. Lots of coffee and irritation.

Please help keep small manufactures like Baby Wit in business!

2009-01-04T13:01:00.000-08:00

Read this article in the LA times about what is going down:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-thrift2-2009jan02,0,2083247.story

As most of you know I own a children's clothing business, and as of February 10, myself and thousands of others in the children's industry will be deeply affected financially or will be out of business. Remember the outcry last holiday season over lead in imported toys? In order to combat such safety issues, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has passed legislation called the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA). The law sets stringent guidelines for children's products containing lead and phthalates (a chemical used in some vinyl products). It is supposed to go into effect February 10th, 2009, and after that date any product intended for children ages 12 and under must meet these guidelines, and have a certificate of compliance from a CPSC-accredited laboratory. This includes not just toys, but clothing, jewelry, blankets, sheets, books, bibs, strollers, carriers, and anything else that a child under 12 might come in contact with. Sounds great, right?

In theory, maybe. But in actuality the law is so far reaching that it may succeed in turning the economy upside down. For starters, the CPSIA requires end unit testing on every product intended for use by children under 12. It is the responsibility of the manufacturer to do this testing, regardless of how small the business. That means that manufacturers (like myself ) will have to pay to get every different product they offer tested. These tests have to be done at a CSPC accredited lab, and cost tens of thousands of dollars. For example if you offer 3 different types of dresses. Each dress contains 2 different fabrics, as well as buttons, and thread, so that's potentially $600 to test one dress. But if you have 3 or more styles, that's $1800. And when you get a new bolt of fabric, you need to start all over again.
At present, there are no exemptions for small businesses and "micro" manufacturers and most handcraft artisans. There is no exception for quantities made, where the garments/products are made or anything else. Nor is there an exception for unadorned fabric components, unfinished wood components, materials which, by their nature, are free of lead and phthalates.

Also, the Act takes a "guilty until proven innocent" approach, which would treat a handmade, unfinished wooden toy that doesn't meet the certification deadline of 2/10/09 as a "banned hazardous substance" which would be illegal to distribute in this country. Each infraction carries a $100,000 felony charge. This legislation is also retroactive for any pre-existing inventory as of February 10th, 2009. This means that everything on the shelves in those big (or small) stores will also be "banned, hazardous substances" - contraband.
Larger corporations that can afford testing will incur thousands, maybe millions of dollars in fees, and this expense will be handed down to the consumer, probably making the prices for children's products go through the roof.
This also means that after that date, even selling your kids old things on eBay or Craigslist will be illegal. Charities will not be able to accept donations without a certificate of compliance either. February 10, 2009 is being dubbed "National Bankruptcy Day" by many people in the apparel and toy industry. If this legislation is not amended, it will affect everyone from port workers to parents looking for legal products. Billions of dollars worth of children's products will have to be destroyed because they can't be legally sold, and this will cause major environmental problems.
While I am all for higher safety standards and keeping our kids safe, this law is so overreaching as to put thousands on manufacturers of children's products out of business -hurting our economy and causing even more loan defaults. Though this legislation was well-intentioned, it cannot be allowed to stand as is.
Please help us defend the American dream and our entrepreneurial spirit! This law affects every stay at home mom trying to help put food on the table and every grandmother knitting blankets for the local craft fair. It makes the thousands of us who have found a niche in the burgeoning children's market have to make a tough decision - continue to produce items illegally and possible incur a $100,000 fine, pay the enormous fees and raise costs of goods sold, or close up shop!

Please help us!
Contact your Congressperson by clicking HERE.
It only takes 30 seconds!
If you have an extra minute send a hard copy of the letter as well!

To sign the online petition click HERE.

Read more about it here at www.nationalbankruptcyday.com

Please copy and paste this on your blogs, we need all the help we can get!