The Luck of the Wholesaler
Very few people get into a business and base their decision on the time off/holidays that the job allows; or at least I didn’t. People often approach me at this time of year and say ‘You must be busy for the holidays’ and the good news is that most of my work as a wholesaler is done earlier in the season when I send out orders to stores across the US. I still do have online orders to manage, but the bulk of the business for a designer line is done in August or September; and then again for Holiday in November. Lucky me, I guess, because I like to take time around the holidays to be a bit more mellow in the mind and in the case of my productivity. The rest of the year I find myself running from one place to another with only moments in between (if that–I’ve been know to stretch my departure time to the very last moment; which doesn’t always work out) to spare.
So I’m on my way to Las Vegas today to visit my parents for the holiday. I’m lucky not to work in retail where the opportunity to travel during the holidays would be slim to none. I didn’t chose to be a handbag designer because of it, but it sure is an added bonus to live life like most of the folks out there–with family and friends for the holidays; a nice reprieve from my normal way of being and operating. Happy holidays and safe travels.
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Organ-ized
No matter how you spell it, or where the word came from, if you looked at my studio today you would think I was un-organized. The Leo in me is out today and frankly most days when it comes to my studio.
When I first set up this space after moving my office out of my home (only because I was forced to due to a house fire) I was tenaciously trying to keep it organized. I even bought shelves for all the boxes of bags and placed them neatly in the huge room. The reality hit me slowly (which is best because I think I would have been really upset otherwise) that the studio office space that I was so adamant about having clean was not going to happen. The nature of the space and of storing boxes and boxes of things is such that it can be organized, but never look organized or more desirably neat. It took me about a month of moving the desk here, moving the plants there, and setting up the work bench here, to realize that it was never going to look as I had hoped. The space simply warrants the artistic ‘thrown about’ sort of existence that is obvious when you walk in the door. I have come to love it, even though it took me a while.
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Lucky girl
I’m a very down to earth, modest girl who doesn’t think much about my entrepreneurial nature or my creative abilities. Don’t get me wrong, I am proud that I can start and run a successful business and I do think I am creative, but beyond that I don’t think much about it. That is until I hear from friends and people I meet how awesome they think it is that I run a business that affords me the ability to do something creative. And when I think of it that way I feel not only a great sense of accomplishment, but also I appreciate what I do for a career all the more. I guess it is about luck somewhat, but more so about nature. Being creative and operating a business seems so much of ’who I am’ and while I have of course honed skills to do so, doing what I do feels more natural than nutured.
My mind is always racing with ideas for new businesses and I truly love the ins and outs of operating a business…keeping organized, watching the dollars, implementing new sales strategies, and even customer service. I am lucky in that way, because most people get one–the creative side or the entrepreneurial side. Many artists have difficulty in business because it’s generally a different type of person who excels in either. I owe my ability to doing well in both aspects to the fact that I’m a Leo with my moon in Virgo (based on the date, time of day and where I was born). Leo is the creative, unorganized part of me and the Virgo is the alter ego–the anal, problem solver in me. Yes, I have had some internal struggles with this, but I am still a lucky girl because I get to do what I love on both accounts.
Sigh of Relief
Well I’m done with my designs for Fall 2007–finally! It felt like an eternity while I was in it, but really I work best under pressure, and get more done in a shorter amount of time when I have an fast approaching deadline. Most people I know say that when they are busy they are more productive than when they have more time on their hands. It’s an odd truth, but don’t you find it that way for yourself? If you have some structure and deadlines to meet, and are running around like a chicken with your head cut off you get tons more done than if you didn’t have a ton to do; don’t you agree? I think it’s because your mind set gets in a relaxed mode and you think “I don’t have that much to do” and so you put it off. When you put it off, your time to complete what you do have to do, of course decreases, and well, you’re still in the relaxed mind frame. So you still don’t rush to do it, and all of the sudden you’re out of time and have that original thing to do plus other things that have come up. That’s when you really get it all done. Right? That’s how I work anyway.
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Destiny
I’m still in the thick of it and it is down to the last wire with the designs. I really was proud of myself for making as much headway as I had on Tuesday with measurement decisions and completing the majority of the sketches. Today is the big day though…the decisions about colors to use for the leathers and types of leather; this is the decision I will fight till the bitter end to decide. Amber, mustard, brass, indigo, gray, olive and rust are contenders for the body of the bags, but then there’s the question of colors working together to compliment one another on one bag. This is where it gets hairy and I just need destiny to take over. Calling destiny, come in destiny.
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To the bitter end
I’m in it, in the throws of it all; designing, stressing, and trying to stick with the concepts I’ve developed. Argh, this is tough; remember in my last post I mentioned this was fun and challenging? Well now it’s only challenging, the fun has escaped into a stressful whirlwind of color, leather, detail and shape choices. Any artists out there have any words of wisdom?!!!!
Size does matter
I realized over the weekend in the process of designing for Fall 2007 that even though a color can’t be ‘wrong’, a size can. It is the decisions about measurement and size of the bag that get me stressed out and cause me to procrastinate. This stress is compounded now because last season many buyers wanted smaller bags…apparently cute smaller bags are hard to find and I wasn’t fulfilling that gap in the market–so I want to fill the gap now and argh–the stress that comes along with that is, well, stressful.
In any case, I do think I have some great designs for smaller bags coming to fruition with a good blend of practical to snazzy. One that I can see myself wearing (not all are made for me) is a messenger style with a long strap (that is removable to create a clutch) that has slots inside for credit cards, etc, and an inside zip pocket right in the middle for easy access to keys, the phone and of course the lipstick. It’s small, but has enough room to fit quite a bit, so you could even made it a wallet and throw it in a big bag if you wanted to.
Now the fun part is waiting to see how the designs get interpreted by the sample making room. Sometimes their interpretations of my sketches turn into a bag I would have never wanted to see created, but most of the time they are better than I ever imagined they would be.
Visit www.dutchy.net for current collection and big sale!
Pulling teeth
Even doing something I enjoy–designing–can have procrastination written all over it. The process of sketching, coming up with ideas for shapes and sizes, playing with leathers and choosing hardware are really exciting and fun, but I seem to put it off until the last minute-every time.
I have been analyzing this design process procrastination for years and the only thing I’ve come up with is that I am fearful of making the wrong design decisions; choosing the wrong colors, the wrong leathers, not designing the right shapes, sizes, and the list can go on. Oddly enough with regards to color, the ‘wrong’ color is really, in my opinion, not a possibility because choosing colors does not yield the ‘wrong’ color, rather a group of colors that buyers can choose from. One color might be less popular than another color, and the third color might not be trendy enough, but the ‘wrong’ color really doesn’t exist because there are so many buyers who have their personal tastes for colors they will or will not buy (and this is impossible to predict completely). So there’s one example of why my fear is unreasonable and why I should just get to work!
Other ‘wrong’ decisions do exist and are a possibility, but I know intellectually that not making a decision and procrastinating is likely more detrimental to my line than making ‘a’ decision. So here I go, the procrastinating stops here…this weekend I will spend a good chunk of hours working on designs for 2007. Not only just working on designs, but making decisions about them.
The table
You should see the top of my dining room table. It is covered with swatches of fabric, magazines, sketches, ideas on scrap paper, buttons and wooden hardware. Covered. This is how I like things when I’m designing…messy, real messy, but just enough that I can still see things under things. The swatches of leather are giving me tons of inspiration since they’re so cool…croc skins in the most amazing funky colors, soft caribou and the luxurious cow leather I have always used.
I really want to work in these new leathers to the dutchy style and now I just need to sit at the table long enough to make some decisions.
To Press or to Press
I just sent a couple of the coolest totes–one black, one mocca (the jet tote) out to Marie Claire for review.
It’s always such a test when bags go out to the magazine editors for critique; in fact it feels like I’m interviewing for a job everytime. You know that feeling when you want a job, it’s your dream job really, so you prep your resume and you send yourself to the interview and hope you answer all the questions perfectly (or at least what they’d consider perfectly). That’s what it feels like to have my dutchy designs sent to editors. Not to mention the fact that they are reviewing hundreds, if not thousands, of other bags to choose just one. It’s such a great opportunity, so I do it everytime, but the stress does get to me…hoping, wishing, praying…that they’ll pick me–I mean pick dutchy. But isn’t that the quandry with artists anyway; their work becomes not only a reflection of who they are, but sometimes the line gets very gray and their work is truly who they are?
See line at www.dutchy.net
