So, why a handbag business?

Natalie,

What kind of business are you starting?
Steve

Recently, I sent an e-mail out to many of my friends and relatives, letting them know that I had started a blog detailing my efforts. I got this e-mail back from one of my friends, and I thought it was a great question. And the answer? Why a hand bag company! (My husband and I refer to it as “the empire.”)

So, why start my own company? Just what am I doing, exactly? Why did I leave a challenging career in retail management for what, right now, is essentially sewing? Three factors went into my decision. I’ve always had a love of all things creative; of design and the design process; of fashion and textiles. Inspired by my grandmother’s skillful sewing (she made clothes for my mother and her three sisters throughout their childhood and adolescence), I first took a sewing lesson when I was seven, and from then on, was hooked. Throughout my life I’ve poured over fashion mags and studied design, and dreamed of a creative career. Add to that the fact that I have, for some time now, been obsessed with having the right bag. For me, each new event has required some new tote or piece of luggage, leaving me with a huge collection of totes, backpacks, and luggage. I am a bag lady.

Besides wanting creative fulfillment in my career, I also wanted a job that let me spend more time focusing on my family. Since I’m in the start-up stages, and have yet to see any revenue from the sale of my products, the jury is out on this. But that is the hope, that this new business will allow me to have work life balance as well as creative fulfillment.

Within the past ten years, I realized that I love to travel; I love seeing the world and am inspired by the different cultures that I have encountered. In 1999, I took a trip with two friends to Malaysia and Thailand. It was out of that trip that the inspiration for sophie says go! was born, although it would take several years for me to get to where I am now, actually producing sample hand bags and even thinking about approaching stores and customers to sell them. Yet here I am, very close to really testing the market, rather than just getting input from my friends.

I’ll keep you posted.

Pocket tote pieces are done!

Yea! After several hours spent at the dining room/cutting table, I have cut out all of my pieces for the initial run of Pocket Totes that I will be making. As I have mentioned previously, I am making 30 of each bag style (Pocket Tote and Market Tote). Each bag comes in three different colors, so that is a total of 60 bags -- 10 in each color.

Of all of the tasks involved with the production of my bags, I would have to say that I dislike cutting the pieces out more that anything (it is the same when I am sewing some item of clothing for myself). It is something that I just have to get through, although TV helps. Another thing that helps is a rotary cutter. While it doesn't work equally well on all types of fabric, I am able to cut out multiple layers of each piece, which helps to speed up the process, and it saves my hand from repetitive strain and muscle crampling. Someday (hopefully sooner rather than later), I will need to graduate from my dining room table (Ikea) to an actual cutting table, to save my back and to keep our house from becoming my studio. I've seen a few DIY recomendations for cutting tables out there; one that I like is from not martha and is probably the table that I will be building.

Looks like I will not be making my EOM target date, as I'd hoped, considering the fact that it is October 25 today. But I do see some finished bags in the near future, hopefully within the next few weeks.

Cold Water Classic

My husband and I went to visit some relatives near Santa Cruz, CA this past weekend. The weather was sublime, and as I was enjoying my walk along West Cliff, I stumbled onto the Cold Water Classic surfing competition. What luck; I (not a surfer) had no idea that this was happening this weekend, but was thrilled to hang out for a few hours on a beautiful day and watch some incredible surfing. My husband and I caught the men's quarter finals, and saw some pretty awesome talent riding the waves. A great way to spend the day!

Tomorrow, it's back to the cutting table.

Bag Lady: On Design and Desire

The September 25th issue of the New Yorker contained an article titled Bag Lady by Andrea Lee, which profiles Silvia Fendi Venturini, designer for the house of Fendi. She is known for designing the Fendi Baguette, a style that has been released between seven hundred and eight hundred times, changing it's outer appearance but always keeping it's form.

I found two things very interesting about the piece. First, it illustrates the design process for Ms. Venturini when creating a new bag. She discusses the inspiration for the design of the first prototypes, initial design variations, fabrication, and the initial models (around 100) that are created and from which will be selected the bags that make it to the runway. Some bags will function primarily as artistic objects, rather than as functional handbag. "The effectiveness of a handbag design, it was becoming clear, turns on its versatility: you have to create a shape striking enough to hold its own when rendered in a wide variety of colors and textures and sizes," writes Ms. Lee in discussing the nature of a successful design from the point of view of the designer.

Second, the article's author touches on the relatively recent elevation of handbag to Object Of Desire. When I Googled the web for handbag blogs, I came up with over five million choices, all of people who are writing about hand bags that they love and covet (one blog that I stumbled across and really enjoy is Purseuing). Ms. Lee writes, "...for the past several years we have been living in a gilded age of handbags: a rococo time of profligacy*, opulence, heights of stylistic genius and depths of vulgarity, but, above all, a time of exponential proliferation and vitality. Since the turn of the millennium, the role of the handbag has changed from that of a useful but peripheral accessory to the absolute object of desire." Since the article is primarily a profile piece on Ms. Venturini, Ms. Lee does not investigate the reason behind the rise of the handbag to status object, but does offer that handbags "...are really more like households or dowries, signs of possession and responsibility and flaunted power which we women -- always foragers -- carry around with us and display to each other." As a new handbag designer and entrepreneur (with a B.A. in anthropology), the meaning of the symbol (in this case, a handbag) is facinating to me as well, and in some sense, influences my design process, even if only on a subconscious level.

As I continue with the development of my own handbag line and company, this blog will serve as a forum to discuss my own design process, the evolution of my company, my love of travel and the inspiration of other countries and cultures in my design. I look forward to sharing the process.

* profligacy: restless extravagance

Book Review: Kick Start Your Dream Business

One of the books that has been very helpful to me in planning for and getting the courage to start my business is Kick Start Your Dream Business, by Romanus Wolter (published by Ten Speed Press, 2001). The book is full of inspirational stories as well as a process for researching, preparing, and getting a business idea up and running. Mr. Wolter is positive (kind of like a cheerleader in your corner) as he covers all of the actions necessary in the developement of a business idea.

What I most liked about this book is it's step-by-step approach to researching an idea and developing a business. Kick Start Your Dream Business helps by anticipating steps along the way that the fledgling entrepreneur might not necessarily consider. The book is writen in a workbook format, and includes plenty of templates that are helpful in completing the exercises in the book. Downloadable templates are also available at the Ten Speed Press website.

Screen Painting Pergatory

My focus for today, as well as for a couple of days last week, has been the process of painting my screens in preparation for screen printing the second bag design that I'm working on, the Market Tote. I finished my fifth screen (a lotus flower) today. Each screen takes me about five hours to paint. For my previous screens I painted each one twice, to make sure that the screen filler was even and that there were no 'holes' in the screens that would create erroneous dots or other problems in the screens. It's definitely feels like slow going in getting this business up and running, and I feel a bit frustrated that I don't have samples, right now! I read some where that success = action, and I'm keeping that as a focus so that I don't get discouraged. It seems like samples are a long way away yet.

Pattern making 101

This past week has seen significant forward movement in my goal of getting samples ready by the end of this month, so that I can hit stores and begin selling my handbags. I spent a couple of days this week creating permanent copies of my patterns, with a little help from my furry friend. Right now, my dining room has become my work room, and certainly reflects creative disarray.

I also spent the better part of Wednesday cutting out the lining fabric for 30 of the sample bags that I'll be making (that's right; I'll be making all of the initial samples, and probably the initial production runs as well). I've been using a rotary cutter to cut out the pattern pieces, which allows me to cut out about 4 layers of fabric at a time.