durtbagz: so simple in theory

the idea behind this company is so simple: find the bags, make the signs, get people to hit the site to participate, and the company is born. theory is turning out to be so much easier than reality.

just trying to figure out the whole printing process is turning into a much bigger project than i anticipated. at first we were looking at buying the bags and getting them printed at the same place. then this seemed like a bad idea because: 1. minimums. most places that do bags and screen print require a number of them to be printed before they will take the order. typically, those minimums are not extremely high for a one time order or an established company, but feel extremely high when you are just beginning and are wondering if you are going to sell a single bag the first month. Second reason it seemed like a bad idea was the fact that we're changing the signs pretty frequently and if i don't sell those first bags within the first month or so, i'll be stuck with lots of product on my hands.
at first it was suggested to me to find a local printer that is willing to hold the images for a month and let me order weekly as my orders come in on the site. i'm still running into minimums, although not as high as with the distributors. and now i'm running into issues on how i'm going to get the bags to the printers and turn-around times so that customers are not waiting a month for their bags.
thankfully, a friend of a friend owns his own promotions company, http://www.k-wpromotions.com/ and we're meeting to try and figure out a way to do this as easy on both my wallet and time as possible. i'm hopeful that after lunch on friday, i'll have some options for solutions to this issue. who knew screen printing bags could be such an issue?

however, as annoying as this is, things could be worse: i could be lindsay lohan or yet lower, a fan of lindsay lohan. i'm 29, i look 29, and have never been to rehab...things are looking good.

if you're interested in learning more about me or reading something a little less serious, a little more goof, click on the link below.


">Link

durtbagz: keeping it real

i've been thinking this weekend about my target audience and how to keep them interested and in turn, involved. kids 14-25 have such a ridiculous sixth sense of when someone is trying to be something other than what they are. they can tell immediately when something is phony or fake. the reason i've been thinking about this has to due with marketing and methods of getting the word out about the company. since the company is strictly online, i've been focusing my efforts on promoting it word-of-mouth. sites like myspace and twitter are definitely a part of my marketing plan, but it's a tricky balancing act to use these sites for marketing and yet still remain legit. i already had a myspace page before i started the company, and slowly, i've been incorporating little aspects of it into my page. same thing with twitter, the few times i've been on it. my thought is that if people know me before and i incorporate their help into different parts of the company, they'll want to help me out by talking to others about the company. the idea is that the business model i have requires the help of my audience, whether they actually by a bag or not. of course, i'd like to make some money, but what will drive this site is creating the community that is necessary for the company to function. that community will happen if they believe in the company and feel it is legit. if they smell an ounce of fraud in the whole thing, it will be like blood in the water for sharks; no one will want to touch it. the question i have in this whole thing i guess is how far is too far? how far can i push this before it crosses the line into annoying? i have to get the word out and i have to do it rather quickly and i have to do it among an audience that aren't people that i normally correspond with everyday. there's a line that can be crossed that will take this from 'cool' to 'enough already' and i don't want to cross it, but i also don't want to stay so far away from it that i miss out on a substantial crowd. i don't want to be afraid of 'the line', just aware of it. honestly, i'd rather error on the side of people being sick of hearing about my company, than no one knowing about it at all. but in the beginning, it's a fine line.

durtbagz: things are looking better

so yesterday i actually saw the demos for the website and i cried i got so excited. they are wicked cool and i love them. here is how the site will work: you can pick your sign and pick your bag and be on your way. OR more importantly, if you think you can come up with a sign, you can submit your idea for a sign in an ongoing competition, where the winners' signs go on the next month's bags. the winners are chosen by votes given by customers and visitors to the site. even if you are not there to buy a bag, you can still submit signs, vote on others, look through a gallery of photos of people with their durtbagz and post a photo of yourself there too. you can post comments about bags and read a blog done by the head bag lady. it's really meant to be more like a small community than just a place to buy bags. some times we'll have tee shirts to sell, sometimes we'll have stickers. sometimes i'll send a bag to someone who's submitted a design, someone who's posted a photo, and someone who's voted just to keep people interested. sometimes we'll have themes for the sign competition to keep things different. at least this is how things will go in my head; how they actually turn out is another story as this whole idea has evolved into something completely different since it started two years ago.
at this point, i'm trying to work out how we're going to get the bags printed and that is pretty much my biggest worry/issue right now. at first i thought that we'd just keep enough in stock and when they sold out they sold out. but, that won't work; we have way too many sign, bag, and color options to keep that many bags in stock, especially since the signs will be changing monthly. way too much risk and cost up front to try and guess which colors for both bags will sell and then to try and figure out which signs will be popular...there's just no way. so i'm going to buy the bags from on vendor and get them printed by another one who is here in phoenix. finding the bags was one of the hardest and most annoying things ever. in my head, all i wanted was plain old canvas tote bags; no other materials used and all one color, but available in multiple colors. this has been the most difficult and most time consuming issue i've faced up to this point. finally, i have found the tote bags i want to use and i think i've found the messenger bags i want. however, like i said before, i thought i was going to get the bags and have them printed all in one stop. not so. so now, the issue of printing locally brings about more issues. i will be using the same signs for a month, then some, if not all, will be changing. i need to work it out where i can give the printers the images for the month and then give them weekly orders based on the orders i get. seems simple in theory, but there are set up fees for each image that i'll need to negotiate, otherwise, they could make this really expensive. also, i still have to pay per bag for each sign printed and those numbers will be all over the place in the beginning and could continue to be since there are so many options for the signs. we have to figure out a price for that too. let's say that we work out a deal that will work for both of us, now come more issues. i will have to work out a system for getting them the bags because i'm betting we cannot store them there. also, the issue of turn around time is pretty big. if i give them my order on a monday, those that ordered on tuesday the week before have already waited almost a week, then they'll have to wait for the bag to get printed and then shipped. i don't' want people waiting three freaking weeks for one messenger bag with one imprint on it. also, i've got to get bags from the printers as soon as they are done and ship them immediately...lots of coordinating that will need to be worked out. i feel sorry for folks that are my guinea pigs the first month. i'm thinking i automatically should send them a free shirt to make up for the time that i think it might take. and that is just the time issue. my cash flow is another issue; since i'm going to have to pay per bag too, something will need to be worked out so i'm not paying a different amount each week based on my orders. and we'll need to work something out for the set up fees for each image because those could get me too; each image has a fee of anywhere from $20-$50 every time they set up a new one. i would like to make some money, but i'd also like to like to keep the price of the bags low enough for poor college kids to buy one or two.
i feel better because now i've seen the start of the web design and i love it. it became real to me yesterday. it also became really scary too.

durtbagz: my head is swimming

so i thought that writing about my experience in building a company from the ground up would be a stress reliever. we'll see if i'm right or not.
one bit of advice before i get much further; do not shake the Parmesan cheese without making sure the lid is on tight.
anyway, right now i'm about 45-60 days out from launching the site for my new company. to give you some background: i do not have any experience running a business, i don't have a business degree (mine's elementary education), and i'm not an IT nerd. that was not a slight, you know you guys are nerds and you're re-shaping our world as we know it and you will be the wealthiest people around. i'd like to be a nerd and i'm working on it. this super idea i had is turning me into one in short order. so, here's the deal: about two years ago, i had a conversation with a group of my girlfriends and we decided that we were going to design bags. that idea lasted about an hour with the crew but i decided i liked the idea and kept thinking about it. about 6 months later, i was driving to tucson to see my parents and the idea hit me to incorporate street signs into my bags. the signs were so simple, basic shapes, colors and easily recognizable. so i started playing around with designing the actual bags and placing the signs somewhere on the bags or basing the design of the bag around the sign's shape or what the sign was depicting, (i.e. truck going down a ramp, pedestrian crosswalk...). i started searching all over to find signs from all over the world to use. some of these signs i found were funny, which made me change gears somewhat and realize that the signs 'as-is' are okay, but signs that have been tweaked a bit can be pretty funny and signs that have been totally created out of parts from others could be hilarious. keep in mind this time line puts us about a year out from the first discussion at this point. so i started drawing up signs and ideas for signs and creating them in the same format as real signs (i.e. square shape, black symbols and characters, yellow background) to make them recognizable. when we started trying to make the bags ourselves (at this point, i had recruited one of my friends to help me with the sewing as i am not and never have been a seamstress) and we realized that 1) we are not that good at sewing, 2) the designs of the bags were too hard to recreate accurately, and 3) we were way to slow in production. we could never make enough money to cover the time we had to spend making bags that, in the end, were not very pretty. so we started looking for manufacturers and after multiple hours spent researching and actually meeting with local ones, i determined that we needed to streamline this process in order to make it work. the design of the bags themselves was not nearly as important to me as the signs we were creating to put on the bags. so i ditched the idea of creating the bags and focused on creating the signs. i decided to go with generic tote bags and messenger bags and make the signs the focal point and the whole purpose of carrying the bag. that basically brings you up to speed as far as where this crazy thing came from. so, why's my head spinning?
here are a few of the reasons why i think i'm a bit stressed:
1. i have no experience owning a company
2. i have no IT knowledge; i can email, blog, and do myspace.
3. i am not 14-25, the ages of my target audience. although i was at one point.
all of this about to change. well, all except the age part. although i do not act much differently than i did when i fit into that bracket, i keep getting further and further away from it. so, in the past few months, basically since christmas, i've finally made the decision to make this idea a really real reality. i've decided that this company is going to be strictly online (unless it takes off and i need a flagship store. i'm okay with that) and that i need the participation of my clients in order to survive. at this point, most people go, uh, duh, you need people to buy bags if you want to stay in business. thanks for that tidbit, but i mean real participation, not just financially, but mentally, creatively, and emotionally. i got the idea after reading an article on a company called threadless. if you haven't heard about them or their business model, look them up. they are complete web nerds/junkies that stumbled into a super successful company without ever meaning to. probably the smartest idiots you'll read of. anywho, they started a tee-shirt design competition and decided they'd sell the shirts. what started out as a tiny website with tee shirts being shipped from their apartment has turned into a multi-million dollar enterprise with multiple spin-offs that the two founders also own. interestingly enough, threadless is the only one that is profitable and it is very profitable so what to they care if the others don't work?
anyway, i'm not trying to recreate threadless by any means. i am trying to incorporate the idea that people want to participate and have a say in a company that they like. so, my site and company depends pretty much entirely on the submissions and decisions of my customers. they submit their ideas for signs and vote on other submissions. the winners, chosen each month, are on the bags for the next month. not that complicated. but creating this thing and having it work the way i want to is. hence the stress...i'm hungry.