Real life store.

Well it took a while, but out of the blue I got a message from the IRL store saying that they'd sold my nappies and did I want to send some more :) They requested more gender neutral ones, which I found a bit hard because that's what I thought I'd given them.

But I think part of it is having things suitable for little babies, because a lot of their customers are still pregnant so they want something sweet. So here are the two tone nappies, mostly neutral but with a bit of something different. I'm really happy with the way they turned out. I think the apricot ones in particular are a bit girly, the yellow ones would have been good but someone already bought them. So we'll see how these go.

What is success?

I've been open a bit over a year now, and I've been reflecting on what my goals were and whether I've achieved them. Trying to decide what is success?

• Financial - I haven't broken even, there were a lot more expenses than I thought, as things changed and I discovered how addictive fabric is. It hasn't been a complete disaster, although I have to admit I haven't finished the books so I'm not really sure. It keeps being put back behind other jobs such as sewing and being a Mother. I do know where everything is but I haven't finished entering it all. I didn't expect to make a profit, I know most small businesses take several years to consistently be in the black, but it's important to me that it not become a black hole. So this one is iffy. I actually thought I was a lot further down, but things have been going well since the GDUNH and some other marketing has been paying off.
• Advocacy - Definitely achieved. I have been doing markets, so have talked to lots of people about MCN. Being a small town it's got back to me, so I know people have noticed or discussed them. Plus I have answered a heap of questions and discussions online, and did the RNW afternoon tea.
• Sewing skills - Huge improvement. I'm doing some fun sewing, when I get time, and my knowledge and skills are much better. This is coming out in the side snap pattern I'm doing at the moment - it will be a much more technical pattern. With the snappi pattern the challenge was to do it in such a way that it wouldn't wick onto the tabs and decorative outer, with the new pattern I'm looking at fitting and what makes a garment work in much more depth.
• Business skills - Hmmm, some yes, some no. As mentioned I have all the receipts, but my bookwork isn't up to scratch. I have learnt a huge amount about the internet - how it works, SEO, what's out there. I have learnt some marketing tricks and how to define and look for my market. I am still hopeless at organisation and time management.
• Enjoyment - Again a yes and no. I'm enjoying sewing, although it is frustrating when I'd like to be making myself a skirt and have 6 nappies to finish. I'm enjoying getting nappies out there, especially if they're repeat customers. I'm enjoying experimenting and trying new designs. I'm a bit hard to please - if I have lots of orders, I get stressed. If I have no orders, I get stressed. If I have lots of nappies sewn, I get stressed because I haven't sold them. If I sell them, I get stressed because then I don't have much stock.

Sometimes I love it, sometimes I really regret it because life would be much easier if I didn't have any pressure on me, and I hate the thought of having spent all that money and not getting it back. On the other hand, if I didn't have it I would probably just read in my free time and get bored. And I wouldn't have thought of my future plans without this experience. To be honest most of what's keeping me going is bloody mindedness, then I get an order and I'm enjoying it again.

More sets!

I love getting the chance to do sets and do something a bit different.

The tiger one has a fringe left along the sides to look like a fluffy tiger face. The Dad actually likes his T-shirt - all the other adult ones I've done have ended up as Mummy nighties.

This is definitely for the girls. At the top of the shirt is a woman and her coolamon, collecting the bush tucker. The nappy has something similar on the back, but a different plant. The shirt would look great with a nice brown belt.

Is it weird to want to co-ordinate with your baby's bum?

Collaboration - How Exciting!

It's really exciting, I'm involved with a group of WAHMs who are starting a collaboration. And it's not just nappy WAHMs, we're mixing it up a bit to get new ideas.

The first one will be in December for Christmas. I'm making a minkee/bamboo velour fitted nappy to go with some clothes. I'm deciding which red minkee to use, the plain or the beautiful variegated one. It will depend which goes better with the clothes, but I'm also experimenting to see if I can applique on it, or possibly do something with other colours or fabrics.

And I'm possibly embellishing a shirt and/or bib to go with someone else's nappy, I can't wait to get photos of what they're doing so I can get creative on the shirt.

The one I'm working on now is to make a gift set for a little girl, with a fairy picture and I'm making fairy wings and a skirt. The wings will be like these, blue and purple, and the skirt will be blue with ribbons and embellishments in the purple. I've just found some cool instructions for making really nice flowers and suffolk puffs, it will be a really girly fantasy skirt.

Re-usable Nappy Week

Along with my very supportive husband, I just ran an afternoon tea for Re-usable Nappy Week. I put up a couple of posters and DH told the pregnant women he works with, plus I put it out on a forum and playgroup and half a dozen women and one dutiful father-to-be turned up. That's pretty good for such a little town!

Widget ran around with another toddler and DH looked after them, and Midget was a great little model and let people practice putting snappis on her.

This is just about every nappy I own spread around on the floor, including the really sad one I made for the recycling challenge. That one had to go as it's the only AIO I have, plus I mentioned frugal nappying and making your own.

There were a couple of nappies I had just washed that morning, and of course the bamboo hadn't dried. But that's really just an opportunity to demonstrate how a stay-dry liner works, because it feels dry while the rest of the booster is damp.

They all had a good play with the different nappies, and I made up "Show Bags" as well. Lots of information, including web addresses, a pattern, the ANN brochure, a snappi and some cool magic cloths. So they can have a look at it at their leisure afterwards.

The minkee cover was a big hit, as was the pink chinese brocade and tiger.

I feel like I should run a little competition - how about some magic cloths for anyone who can identify the nappies in the photo :)

My time is worth more than bamboo (even velour)

So the thing you have to understand is that I'm mean. Not nasty, and I contribute to various charities, but scrape the last smidgen out of the Homebrand margarine type of mean.

It's one reason I make OSFM nappies - I can't handle the thought of them growing out of them, and my poor little baby is in her sister's hand me downs. (Although the fact that they're going strong after 2 years is good.) She is getting some new ones now, and not only because she's a guinea pig for side snaps.

So making the most use of my fabric is important to me and I keep just about all the scraps, even the tiny ones. That's been good, because several times I've thought of something to use them for later. Unfortunately it can be a false economy too. When I make inserts I've been cutting them all to the same size and trying to overlock around them. It doesn't work, not only are there different thicknesses at different places, some of the fabrics are stretch and some are woven. I always end up with bits that overlapped wrong or bits that didn't get caught, then spend way too much time trying to fix them because I don't want to waste them. I know there is a simple solution, I just haven't brought myself to do it before.

So this time I cut the microfibre layer slightly smaller. Rather than trying to line everything up I just put that one in the middle so there was hemp and bamboo sticking out all around it. Then all I had to do was overlock around the microfibre and all the rest is trimmed. Voila! Everything is caught properly, no fiddly trying to line it all up, no having to redo bits, only one set of threads to weave back in.

Of course next time I'll cut the microfibre bigger (because it's cheaper :)) but this time it was already cut so I couldn't. But saving so much time and hassle was definitely worth a bit of double sided bamboo terry.

Oops

I did an interesting training session today on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). I'd heard about it a lot, but didn't realise how exactly search engines work. Afterwards I did a search for pocket nappy, because that's what I sell. Well 12 pages later and I still hadn't come up.

I've been checking, but for the wrong things. I've been looking for things like my brand and snappi, rather than the standard searches new customers who might be interested in my nappies but who didn't know me would use. While I have Pocket Nappies on my site, the button is an image, so not searched, and it's not used in my title descriptions. Ironically I've recently been making it worse, because I stopped doing detailed descriptions of each item. I thought that seeing there is a picture right there people didn't need me to tell them that it was green, or purple, or had flowers on it. And they don't. But Mr Google does.

Luckily the store manager has a quick way to change titles so all of my products have just been renamed to reflect what they are, not just the different fabric outers. It will be interesting to see how quickly, or if, it works.