Today We Place Our First Official Order!

At some point today, we are suppose to sign off on our final design and place our first order with the manufacturer. For those of you who don't know, I negotiated a kind of hybrid deal. I originally was hunting for a licensing deal. It didn't make sense to me to re-invent the wheel, uh-er, the glove, when in fact, that's exactly what we did. I thought it made more sense to take this gross improvement to someone who already made a kids glove and let them keep doing what they do, only a lot better.

What I ended up with was two manufacturers, one well known, one not so much. Of course I wanted the well known one to sweep me off my feet and we would mosey on down the lane making sweet money together. Turns out, the big name was not so nice. The lessor known company made me an offer I couldn't' refuse.

In a nutshell, they have done all of our prototyping for us. We went through four or five rounds until we got to the product we felt was what we wanted and could compete in the industry. They offered to handle fulfillment for us as well. Additionally, they offered us a line of credit to get our supply of gloves to sell directly from our web site and at any face-to-face event we want to do to promote WarmEase ZipperBack Gloves. WOW! Really? I didn't just jump right in feeling like the best mom negotiator of all time...not so fast. First of all, I've done plenty of negotiating in previous careers, and nobody goes this far out on a limb for someone they don't even know. Secondly, if they really believed in this product why didn't they just license it and do it themselves.

I sat down with the CEO and asked him point blank, "Why are you doing all of this?" His answer was straight forward and he said, "Kathy, you've done all the work. You have so much more to lose in this venture than we ever will. Even if we produce 1000 or 1500 pair of gloves and you drop off the face of the earth, we've lost very little. Based on your track record over the last year, continuing to call and e-mail when we are less than timely, making sales before you even had a product to sell, and basically, doing all the things I know you'll continue to do to make this venture extremely lucrative. Ultimately, nobody can sell these gloves like you can." Well, then, okay. What do you say to that answer? I can tell you what I said. I simply replied, "Thank you. Thank you for believing in our product and me." 'Nuff said!

So today we place that order, 501 pair sold and hopefully another 500 pair in initial inventory. I'll let you know on Friday what the final numbers come out to be!