Hey not to worry. I have just been very busy the last two weeks so I have fallen behind on my posting.
This past week was the gift show and we had to go for three days straight. So no posting on the net. After the show we had meetings with various sales reps as we are looking for people to rep our wholesale line out on the Coast and in the Midwest. So typically we shopped all day and had a dinner meeting. When we got home I was so beat I went to sleep.
What you do at these shows you go to various booths and see what they have. We are filling the lingerie shop but that will not just have bras and nightgowns and robes. We need filler items like purses and jewelry and lingerie bags and little cards that the girl shopping for a gift for a bridal shower could buy. You want to be a one stop shopping experience. Here Lisa is getting lingerie bags and make up cases that will be little add ons.
Now is the time you buy stuff to sell for the Holidays. These metal boxes are soy candles with three wicks which burn for about sixty hours with some really cool smells. Goes for twenty bucks retail and is a perfect teachers gift or Kris Kringle thingy.
Scarves are a big thing this season. We got these from an outfit from Nepal made by homeless Nepalese or some shit like that there. It was funny but after we bought them we saw someone wearing one of them on a TV show that night.
We walked up and down the aisle and we saw French inspired shit we would stop. The shop has a French motif which is of course karma. There is nothing I hate more than French people and now I have a French shop and French or Frenchified cunts coming in every freaking day.
One of the things we are going to offer is earrings that would be cute and sexy to wear with the lingerie outfit. Or to put together for a gift for your girlfriend. You can come in and the girls can help you pick out a whole outfit down to the cute earnings. These go for $40 retail which is very reasonable for the quality.
The problem is that all of this is very labor intensive. The little purchase we have above took about an hour to pick out. Lisa has to balance the cost vs. the cute. It is easy to buy very expensive stuff that looks great but then it is really hard to sell it in Obama's economy. So you spend hour after hour trying to find a good price point to be able to sell it and turn it over so your money doesn't sit in inventory. It was exhausting. Especially since the gift show doesn't have any chairs! When you are at a clothing store they have chairs to sit on while they show you the line. In the gift show space is at a premium so you are standing up the whole time.
The one thing that really worked out was that I was able to find the perfect pillow for Lisa.
15 comments:
I admire you man. I could handle pondering and analyzing that chick stuff for about an hour and then I would go postal.
Glad to see you're OK, even if you look like baked lobster. Been out in the sun, or is that a reflection from the Red light special?
Bra-fitting sounds like more fun.
So is a Long Island trip coming as soon as things slow down a bit?
And thank God your photography skills have improved!
Just out of curiosity to compare this to the musical instrument business, what is your expected inventory turn, say, per quarter, or however you work? Our goal was to get rid of everything--including $24,000 flutes and weird piccolos nobody wanted--four times a year. The boss wanted six, but given the custom nature of the business, that just doesn't work.
Inventory kills, especially with banks, taxes, healthcare costs, bullshit regulation, etc., etc., eating every spare dime.
Speaking of inventory, here is a promo video by famous YouTube stah pianist, Valentina Lisitsa, for Boesendorfer Pianos. (Steinway has been crap for about 20 years now. Boesendorfer is the last good piano maker. They've been bought recently by Yamaha, who says they won't touch a thing. Yeah, right.)
Anyway, it shows pianos being made. There are repeated shots of wood, stacked (or, more properly, "stickered") outdoors, in the Spring and in the snow in the Vienna Woods, and maybe in an open warehouse. You need to age wood in the air for the best strength and resonance. This will make inventory managers' heads explode. The idea of a natural material that cannot be processed by a predictable, short method by minimum-wage labor, is enough to make bankers and said inventory managers either slit their wrists or explode in fury. Bankers shake their heads and regard you as a complete fool.
This is, in fact, the reason, as the former Wooden Instruments Manager at Powell Flutes in Boston, exactly why I am the FORMER Wooden Instruments Manager.
And I am enjoying every minute of it.
Really relieved to set that big smiling mug and your upbeat commentary...even it is about the head exploding aspect of business. You "sound" like you are "smiling." My concern originally was the tone of your remarks of late and a somewhat sluggish responsiveness, very unlike you. As I said elsewhere, my time in the private sector, even if heavy equipment, was maddening at times. Going back to the Army was a relief. I am always in total awe of anyone who handle "retail" with good cheer.
I was in Madison today and saw a new women's clothing store named, Change. It is free trade clothing. I hope Lee Lee's is free trade!
nd: You mean "Fair Trade?" "Free Trade" sounds far too Adam Smith-y. In any case, "Hope &" ought to move in next door.
We don't have any kind of trade. You have to pay for it.....no barter!
My bad, "fair" trade clothes. I assume that means union workers.
Which means it's shit quality for 10 times the price.
Years ago when I had two partners, they bartered with a guy for services worth $900. He swapped us even at retail. Our out-of-pocket cost was about $250. I'll barter like that all day.
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