Review #2 - February/March 2011

February came and the work with the business plan was my full priority. I went by boat to visit The Centre of New Businesses (Nyföretagarcentrum), to take part in their free meetings and consultations. If you are thinking about starting your own business, I would strongly recommend you to pay them a visit. They exist in the most swedish cities, and If you don't have one where you live it shouldn't be far away. 

Ellen was helping me to do some calculations and I remember that I at this time was spending quite a lot time at my local gym, to get some distance from the home office and clear my head - it was a great but sadly short lived lifestyle. Now a days I'm happy if I manage to visit the gym once a month..

I started to get some samples of cotton labels, and I remember that I felt euphoric - now it all slowly started to feel more real, like there was actually a chance that this dream might come true.

March arrived and I visited a fabric fair in Borås, guided by my great inspirer Patricia, who runs the clothing brand Isela. The fair made me quite dizzy with millions of buttons, labels, zippers and - of course - thousands and thousands of fabric samples. Sadly I couldn't find any fabric producer that accepted quantities less than like a thousand meters. Way to big quantities for me and my plans.

And in March it was also time to hand in the business plan. Nervously going through page by page over and over again.. 

To read all the blog posts from February, klick here. And from March, klick here. (still in swedish)

Review #1 - January 2011

I started to look back on the year that passed and found out that there's way way way to many things to write about than what could possibly fit in just one blog post. Therefor, we will go through 2011 month by month, starting with January of course.

 

The very first blog post ever on this blog said "Hi and welcome to my journey", kind of. The picture above is from my notebook, a page listing important stuff to do - like "Start cloocollection.blogspot.com" and "Make a jaunty view over the pieces of the collection".
The other one simply says "Write a great fucking budget". Sort of like a note to self.
At this point I was working towards getting the allowance for new businesses, so that's why the budget part was so important.

So, the work was on and there was A LOT to do. It was high time to get going with the samples of the collection, and of course deciding which pieces it should include. The overview on the picture above (to the left) was really helpful to keep a good look over what pieces should have what fabric and so on. At the same time I was struggling to get some of the pieces together and look in reality as they were looking in my head..

I was also making the labels for the brand - and remaking them. Very glad that I made that decision.

I was working at home - at my tiny tiny "office" that allowed me to close the door behind me and hide from my daughter, who was then five months old and screamed as soon as she saw me because she then realized that I wasn't holding her. Made visits to the bathroom or kitchen really hard.

Finally the collection started to take shape, and the samples look like they were supposed to.

Do you recognize them? I surely do.. ;)

To read all the blog posts from January 2011, klick here. (This was before I changed the language, so these posts are in swedish)