Thank You Good Day Sacramento!

We had a blast yesterday morning on Good Day Sacramento! Live television is tricky because you never know what's going to happen. Stephanie Cruz and I spoke several days before and again yesterday morning when we arrived at the studio. Mason was suppose to be part of the piece and then he decided he didn't want to. Stephanie wanted him to so after I already had my space set, a chair was brought in and Mason propped up with just moments before we were on. As it turns out, it went just fine. The only thing I would do again is I would smile more and move more fluidly. All in all, Mason rocked, he stole the show with his addition of the "nose wipe" feature. If you didn't see it, here's the link to the piece. Come back and let me know what you think! http://www.gooddaysacramento.com/momtrepreneurs

Tomorrow Is A Big Day!

Tomorrow I will be featured on channel 31 Good Day Sacramento's Momtrepreneur segment. This is a feature of moms who invented a product or started a business while running a household. I'm excited to introduce ZipperBack Gloves to my hometown and let people know we've solved this problem! I'll post the details on Wednesday!

Disappearing Inventory

I've been following up with the people from the ABC show and everyone is as nice now as they were there. That's notable because sometimes people are caught up in the moment and say, "Love it! Want it! Call me!" and then when you get home, think, eh, maybe not.

My issue now is that our manufacturer has different numbers than I do for what we've sold and what we have left to sell. It's pretty clear what I will be working on this weekend. I'm convinced that we will be sold out of our current inventory before October 1st. I'm honoring the "No Shipping" sale on our web site, so if you think you want gloves this season, buy them now! Seriously, they will be gone.

Getting Organized!

I can't believe how overwhelmed I feel. We spoke to so many wonderful people, some placed orders right on the spot, some asked me to call for their order, and others showed interest but sounded like they needed more information.

The orders that we took need to be reviewed (some were filled out in a hurry and not clear or complete), missing information collected and then sent to our manufacturer to be fulfilled.

Phone calls and e-mails need to be made and sent to those who said they want to place an order. And when I can muster the umph, I'll follow up with the many other folks who were kind enough to talk to us and leave us their contact information.

My other task is to work out our inventory. It's very clear to me that we WILL sell out of all of our 2009 season's inventory. This is good, I know, but on the same token, I want to go to the snow and have gloves to sell this winter. As a salesperson, having nothing to sell is a drag. It's very possible that we can order some more gloves, but at what cost? I'm going to get to work and I'll let you know what I figure out.

It's Monday!

There is SO much to do this week. I need to sort through all the leads we got, pick the winner for our gift basket of mom invented products, package it to mail, process the orders we took at the show, contact our manufacturer about the many questions that came up at the show, put together a conf. call for our ZBG team, package the first orders from our pre-sale, make a trip to the post office, figure out who we will work with to review our gloves, update all the sales information in ACT!, return e-mails and phone calls, Catch up with my loan modification business, do laundry, get groceries, and the list goes on, and on, and on...Maybe those mostly clean sheets need a little more of my time. Smiling! Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, it's off to work I go....

Home And Very Tired!

We made it! It was a long drive home yesterday and I'm more tired than I knew I could be...and still be awake. Dave flew to Anaheim for work this weekend so I expect he'll be exhausted when he finally makes it back to Auburn on Sunday. That gives me a few days to recover and change the sheets on the bed. There's not much that's nicer than arriving home to a clean house and fresh sheets. I'm so tired, I don't care if they are fresh or not, I just want to sleep. Sweet dreams!

Last Day At ABC

Well today has certainly proven to be the busy day. Buyers who stopped in to look and said they would come back, have. We took six orders here at the show and got contact information from other retailers asking us to call them next week to take an order. I'm sure that not all of those will pan out, but if even half of them do, we will sell out of all of our inventory for this season.

I'm still not in that mindset, all wholesale/no retail, as I was excited to get out and show our gloves to consumers and sell to them. It's a bit of a let down to think we anticipated this time and planned to sell, sell, sell, and what we end up with is, "Sold!" now back to normal, regular life...Laughing! Maybe it's just me, but there was some real fun in meeting people and putting gloves on little hands.

It's all good news and just speaks to the saying, "If you want to see God laugh, make plans." I am honoring the pre-sale happening now on our web site. Go to www.zipperbackgloves.com to order your gloves and pay no shipping for the whole month of September. As of October 1st, I expect all of our inventory will be going to retailers. There is a slight possibility of getting some more inventory before Christmas, but that still has not been determined.

Finally, we learned that ABC is not really our target market, it's geared too much to pregnancy, infants, and furniture. We are gearing up for SIA in January and expect to do a booming business for next season with the ski & snow sports industry. Thanks for taking this ride with me, and if there is anything I can do to help you bring your idea to life, please ask! Big tired smiles!