Post Holiday Madness

here's me taking a break from work, putting up holiday decorations.

Middle of December, and I still hadn't busted out our Christmas decor and trimmings... kept saying to myself, I'll deck out our Christmas trimmings after Thanksgiving, then it turned to, first of December...to First week...Second weekend....Before the 15th, and oh my, my head had been in the sand because I was really living my December month (and you know how busy December is!) as if I was in January.
What made the whole thing even more devastating was when my landlord came over to fix our microwave, he asked me if my religion/ethnic background celebrates Christmas, at which I bursted in tears yelling, "YES!"
Well, that same week, we had some guests come over, and she had brought an ornament to hang on my tree that still wasn't up, and profusely apologized for assuming I had would celebrate Christmas as she saw no tree! I was mortified. Well on Dec 18th, the kids and I muddled through our boxes of Christmas trinkets and tinsels, and put everything up within hours.... I can't even explain the guilt I have towards the kids for cutting their Christmas experience short.

And to even make it worse, I am living my January life now unedited, full-blown, and it's only January 1st.

I decided to throw basically 3 shows this month:
Dallas, Atlanta & NY Gift. NY Gift and Atlanta will be managed by my reps, but Dallas, I personally have to attend to, and I was busy again getting ready for the crazy trade shows... doing it again after I just finished ABC (seems like yesterday), is really tiring me out... I love the synergy and the thrill it brings-meeting customers, selling and designing.. but the work leading up to it is almost too much for me.

I just got back from Dallas yesterday because I had to set up the showroom for the Dallas Gift Market coming up in 2 weeks, in which I need to go to. Still haven't arranged sitters, rides for the kids, but I hope I can hatch a plan in the next few days.

It's been 6 months since I moved back from Japan, and the kids still do not have beds yet, a piano bench, and the house is still looking like we are still moving in... all of which I had made a promised to myself I would get it done by Christmas...well maybe Valentine's Day this time!

Organized Chaos

A little information about our company.

My show is finally coming together.  At least I feel like it is.. I am super-duper excited! CRAZY-FILLED day:

Today, I received my cool-custom made Jaq Jaq Bird fabric that I designed for the table cloth at the booth. I'm not crazy about the the colors: way too muted. But it will do...

I am running around trying to get the booth wall finished....long story, tremendous pain in the butt, I'll spare you the gruesome details.. but I think it's going to end well, keeping my fingers crossed....

Good NEWS: The rest of the products came today, (wet bags are still coming) PRAISE GOD! My daughter helped me stage some of the products to be shot with my camera, but I still have to set up the full studio tomorrow which will take pretty much all day.

Took the boys to piano lessons, but came at the wrong time, then had to run back home and come again at the right time.  I swear I thought she told me we changed the time this week to an earlier time. She must think I'm the most frazzled mother she ever met...

In the mean time, I am waiting for my catalogs, banners, and my COOL sign that my sister created. I have a vinyl cutter, and I am trying to cut the letters out for my logo, BUT I CANNOT find the electric cord. The Japanese movers didn't pack it with the cutter and I'm running around everywhere looking for the cord. I finally called the company, and they told me to buy a basic notebook/computer cord. Doesn't work, spent $60 and tried all different type of ports-nothing... I can't believe this, I don't know how I will finish up the sign.

GREAT NEWS: I already created a lot of buzz around the brand so I'm getting orders, and a great retail company approached me about designing some private label products for their cool store! I'm pumped!

Drinking wine and grading my son's math now, signing off....

The Downside of Owning a Small Biz

I love working for myself: I can set my own hours, set my own goals, and even drink as much coffee as I want to in a given morning! However owning a small business isn't very easy, because I basically do everything, wearing many hats: I'm the photographer, editor, blogger. I designed the website, designed the product, print, all the way down to the packaging. I also have to manage production, quality control, etc, and it's become too big for me to handle. So Seung (my husband) and I were trying to figure out if we should fly or drive down to the ABC Show, it takes 11 hours to get to KY from here, and last night we decided to fly, and find a shipper to ship the booth and products. I did some research on shipping and one shipper basically told me I need to have my own pallet and shrink wrap if I wanted to ship with them. I was a bit intimidated: pallets? shrink wrap? loading dock? No, I think I'll suffer and drive the whole way, but hubby doesn't want to drive. The shipper assured me it's easy to find pallets, and stores are ready to give them away... well, say no more, I happily signed the dotted line.. and now let me knock my way through some local stores here and see if they would give me a pallet... NOT.  There was not one store that wanted to donate, sell, or give any pallets to me because they use and recycle them for credit. I called pallet stores in my area, no luck, they don't even answer the phones. I even called one out in TX to beg them to ship a pallet to me, no luck. So this morning, I stopped by Lowe's drove around the back and guess what I saw?

Pallets! and there were some great ones and not so great ones. I decided I was going to load one in my car, but I felt like a thief, so I rang the back door and asked them if they were for donation. Guess what they said: NO. I was so disappointed. I asked them if I can buy one: Answer: NO. There were some beaten-down crates, but useless to me. So I went inside to the front of Lowe's and asked and asked others and the same answer was given to me until Jeff, the commercial manager told me if I buy Quick Rete? (cement?), it comes with a pallet. He told me though I would have to buy a pallet-full of Quick Rete (sp??) in order to receive the pallet, well, I wasn't going to buy a pallet-full of cement to just get a pallet.. so I was out of luck, until he asked another manager and she said she was willing to sell just the pallet for $13.00!!! I was so excited! I bought 2 and they loaded in the back of my SUV and I got home and unloaded it (very carefully, and if my hubby found out I did this, he would kill me), and here it is in the garage! :)

Pallets in my garage!

I'm all set now! Next: buying shrink wrap! So, I finally got the pallets I need and I will load my whole creation on these little wooden boards and I pray with lots of fingers crossed it will make it in one piece to the ABC SHOW!

Ramping up for the ABC Show

So there are some great pros to living in a small city: Stay inside my home-office and pour into the business during the day! It's so much fun, I love what I do: creating, designing and developing! Ironically, I am not a very "crafty" person, and I'm terrible at decorating anything that has to do with space. Fortunately, my chic little sister, Caroline is very good at it, so she's been giving me some pointers. Right now, I hired a nice handy man here in LA and he's making my hard walls. I have an inline 10x10 booth at the show. 3 years ago, my sister and I did the show together in Las Vegas and the booth looked like this:

We didn't know what we were doing. The little banner on the far left was added during the show because I needed more pictures. Buyers would walk by puzzled by the Chalk mat display, so the banner on the left really brought more people inside the booth. The little stool and table set up was super crowded.  Believe it or not, I spent close to $10,000 on this show 3 years ago: plane tickets, hotel room, food, transportation, signage, dreyage, shipping, press kits, products shipping from overseas, etc.. But this show was well worth the investment.  For such a humble booth, we walked away with some great accounts...

Now for my next post.