jcaroline's blog

The Next 8 Years

Okay, I can't think that far ahead, but I can tell you about the next year.  Just don't hold me to it...

As the economy starts to improve (crossing fingers here), we should be coming out with some new ribbon designs in the fall.  Some of the same designers, some new ones...

Quilting weight fabrics are still going strong and we plan on continuing to pick out new and old designers as their collections are released.  We've definitely had to scale back on our offerings in the last year, but hopefully by 2010, we won't have to be so picky.

I hope to get another canvas collection out of Jessica Jones next spring.  Nothing definitive in the works, but that is the earliest Braemore is ready to look at anything new.

We'll continue to expand jcaroline home!, adding new fabrics and new products.  We've already had several requests for slipcovers for different Ikea pieces, so let us know if you need a slipcover for your furniture that isn't currently offered.

We also have plans to launch another website in the next couple of months offering sewn gift items and baby items.  My hope is that this site will provide another outlet for our ribbons, fabric, webbing and other items we are buying in bulk so that we can continue to expand those offerings on jcaroline creative! as well.

But of course, as I've learned in the past eight years, we had better be ready to change plans at any moment.  Of course, whatever we do will revolve around fabric, ribbon and creative projects.  Thanks for hanging with us for these eight years and I hope we get to celebrate another eight!

The Sewer, the Crafter, the Fabric Maker

Another question people ask me is "How do you stay so trim and beautiful?"  Not really, but they do ask me how we got into printing our own fabric.

Actually, we printed our own fabric for the very first time way back in 2004. That's a sample of the little beauty up above.  (Accountants and Illustrator...)  Any hoo, we were using printed quilting weight cottons for the linings in our purses and we couldn't get enough yardage of any one design.  So, I decided it was time to print our own. I found a small screen printer (may they rest peace) that would print as little as 500 yards.   A great learning experience- the fabric wasn't always printed straight on the grain, we had problems with the inks running and it was relatively expensive.  But it beat the heck out of silk screening by hand.  And it planted the seed of the possibility.

I have an addiction to canvas.  I prefer its weight and texture over quilting weight cotton any day, especially for bags and home dec items..  (Shhhhhh.... don't tell!)   And I certainly can't complain about the variety of quilting weight prints out there today, there is still a void in canvas.  Plus, it was strategic-- I felt I had to offer something different to be competitive.

In 2007 I was reading a little blog called How About Orange.  And my, did Jessica create some great, approachable modern designs.  So I emailed her and asked if she would like to design some fabric.  She replied that she had never done fabric before.  I replied that I hadn't either (not really).  Fortunately, one of my sales reps was very helpful in hooking me up with the manufacturer to get custom runs of yardage done.  And the rest, as they say, is history.  Though I hope there is much more history to be made...

I have to say going to the mill to see the fabric printed is still one of the coolest experiences I have had at jcaroline.  It was awesome.  The process hasn't changed significantly in 100 years and its just plain old down and dirty manufacturing (which I love).  And the difference between waiting for new designs to be released and producing the new designs is awesome.  Isn't it, indie designers?

So Monday, I'll announce the winners of our giveaways and tell you what we hope to do in the next eight years.  Okay, maybe just the next year...

Fabric Flashback

Fabric has come such a long way since we started.  The variety of prints is stunning compared to eight years ago. 

When we first started selling fabric on jcaroline creative, the only licensed designer we carried was Amy Butler.

Don't these prints seem like a million years ago?  And at the time, they were considered pretty avant- garde!

I noticed as I was going through the old pictures, fashion was certainly a theme for a while.  Check out these Michael Miller prints:

 

Shoes and handbags were on everything.  They seem kind of funny now, but in 2003, these fabrics were selling.  Admit it-- you bought some!

 

 

These are some of my all time favorite Michael Miller prints.  I was so bummed when Funky Fruit (bottom center) only made it one season.  And is that Funky Flowers in the upper right?  It came in two other colorways that were equally cool. 

And of course, Alexander Henry and their fashionista prints.  Awww....

It's just amazing to think that I used to buy anything that was remotely funky because there just wasn't enough fabric to buy.  And now, I have to CHOOSE, because we can't bring in every cool designer.  That's pretty amazing. Hurray for bringing a breath of fresh air to a tired industry, designers!

How Purses Became jcaroline creative

Or "And My Husband Still Hasn't Kicked Me Out..."

I can't really continue with this story without talking about USWeekly's Shop-a-Thon.  Yes, we used to be a regular advertiser in that section.  I like to take partial credit for how that section came about.  :-) 

I used to take out a tiny classified ad in the very back.  (Shown at left, actual size.  Use magnifying glass if necessary.)  You know, back there with the breast enlargements, dating services and diet pills?  The classified advertising staffer liked that look and decided to start a feature called "Shop-A-Thon"-- just a picture of the product and a price.  And since they were putting eight other products on the page, the price of the ad was much less than a regular "in-the-book" ad.  (People also thought it was content, which helped the feature immensely.)

Did USWeekly Shop-A-Thon work?  Yes and no.  Man, do those readers get on the computer and look at stuff!  To this day, I have not found a magazine audience that is so web-friendly.  And buyers?  Well, some did, but usually not enough to justify the cost of the ads.

Okay, so finally, I'm getting to jcaroline creative.  Sometime in 2003, I had launched another website called jcarolinecreative.com where we offered any raw materials for sale that we used to make purses.  So the black canvas we were buying 100 yards of at a time, the boxes of 400 magnetic snaps, those zippers and other items, I would offer on the jcarolinecreative.com site because I knew this stuff was hard to find, especially in small quantities.  My only caveat is that I wasn't going to advertise it because that would defeat the purpose of an "overstock" site.  If I was spending money to promote it, I wouldn't make any money on it.  (Ding, ding, ding.  Dumb decision warning goes off-- but only in hindsite.)

So I needed to attract more buyers to the purse website in a less expensive method than magazine advertising.  Google Adwords was my choice for an experiment.  Adwords is basically an ad on Google that comes up before and alongside your search results.  Interestingly, in 2004, most users didn't realize those were paid positions, but we're so much savvier now, aren't we?

For a week, I ran a series of "purse" type keywords to drive traffic to the purse site.  "Canvas bags", "designer bags", "bags full of money", you name it.  I heard crickets.

So for the heck of it, I ran a series of "ribbon" type keywords for jcaroline creative.  "Ribbon", "grosgrain ribbon", "striped ribbon", and approximately 8,000 other combinations (I exaggerate a bit).  Holy cow.  People were searching on those words, coming to the website, and wonder of all wonders-- they were buying things!  So we added more products to jcaroline creative.  And bought more search words.  And added more products and bought more search words.  And by 2005, jcaroline creative revenue bypassed the revenue from the purses.  And it took less effort to produce the goods and less effort to drive traffic to the site.   Oddly enough, I had to think long and hard before dropping the purses.  But that's what we did in about May of 2005.

Fortunately, the people I had hired to sew and fill orders were easily transitioned to cutting fabric, ribbon and filling orders.  And we could take back the space filled with sewing machines and fill it with more fabric and ribbon.

So that's how we got to jcaroline creative!

Next up... a walk down fabric memory lane.

Back Up A Minute- What Made You Start in the First Place?

Okay, I think I promised to tell you how the purse business morphed into jcaroline creative, but I forgot to tell you how all this came about in the first place.  People ask me and quite frankly, I don't have a good answer.

I need something like "I dreamed that I would be queen of all things fabric and when I awoke that day, everything I touched turned to golden colored silk so I knew it was destiny."   Or "I was in a business that manufactured oil field blow-out valves and we found that the rough necks really needed colorful canvas bags."  But I don't really have that kind of story.

I always knew I wanted to have my own business, because that is what I was raised in and that is just what you do.  What kind of business was always kind of sketchy.  I was an accountant for many years, but I didn't want to start an accounting firm.  I'm not qualified to start an architectural firm (though I loved working with architects).  I've always liked manufacturing businesses, but I didn't feel comfortable entering one that required a lot of equipment.  I've pondered just about every business you can think of:  a computer software business, various business consulting ideas, even a dry cleaners.  (Yes, really.  I even worked in one for a Saturday and attended the "Clean" convention in Las Vegas.  For the record, most people's clothes are ugly.  Oh, and the stuff they use to dry clean will kill you and all living things within 50 yards of the building.  At least that was true in the mid-1990s-- in their defense, I think they have been working on that.)

I quit a "real job" in 1999 and was doing accounting work on a consulting basis, so I had the freedom to experiment and dream.  And I kept coming back to something fabric centered.  Fabric is something I have been around from birth and I've spent more hours in Jo-Ann's picking out fabrics to fake the ready-made outfit I really wanted than I can count.  And around 2001, purses were quite the rage.  The Etsy handmade movement wasn't around yet, but up-and-coming "designer" bags were everywhere.  Heck, even Monica Lewinski got into the fray.  So what the heck, I thought?  What the heck indeed.

So purses is where I started and after about three months, my husband kicked me out of the house-- my work that is.  Though in retrospect he probably wishes it was the former.  He thought the living room, dining room and part of the guest bedroom was a little too much space to be giving up.  Fortunately, I found a great landlord and we've been in one of their spaces ever since.

Okay, next time I'll explain how this adventure became jcaroline creative...

August 2001- The Purse Years

For those of you who joined us after 2004, you may not know that we started as a purse company.  What was that all about, you ask?  Well, I was going to be the next Kate Spade and sell my purse company to Neimans for several million.  But, alas, when they offered to buy it ;-) , I just wasn't interested in letting my baby go.

Okay, that isn't exactly what happened.  I started the business in August of 2001 and attended my first wholesale trade show in October of 2001.  You might remember a 'little event' in September of 2001 that disrupted the entire world, including the retail environment.  Not a successful show, by any means.  Undaunted, I attended four more shows over the course of the next year.  Okay, so I'm a slow learner.  I eventually switched to selling directly to customers via the web, which is where we had the most success.

 

[On the left are the original hand-dyed canvases.  The bags on the right were our tricked-out grosgrain stripe version.]

Oh the craziness of the purse days.  When I first started, I wanted dozens of colors of canvas, which I couldn't find locally and would have to order 50 yard rolls of every color.  So I dyed it myself.  Crazy?  Yes.  But not as crazy as when I decided to silkscreen my own fabrics.  3 yards took me virtually all day and of course it would have problem areas, so I might get 12 purse fronts, if I was lucky.  My husband did build me a shower/bathtub arrangement to wash the 24" x 36" screens which was as messy as you might imagine.  (My landlord was kind of horrified when we moved out of that space.)

 

[On the left is the Houston bag, our all time best seller, with interchangeable scarves and belts.  The bags on the right are hand silk-screened fabrics.  Don't ever teach an accountant how to use Illustrator or let them loose with ink.]

And did I mention the evening in January of 2003 that I was using the 5" straight blade cutter to cut out purses and engaged my two left fingers?  I thought "engaged" sounded better than cut the holy *#)@*^& out of them.  I had to have surgery to reattach the tendons and nerves and had four months of rehabilitation.  For real.  I can say (with just a little bit of pride) that I can stick straight pins in the side of my first and second finger and I can't feel it until they are about 1/4" in.  That comes in handy more than you might realize.

So, yes we sold purses until about mid-2005. So how did this morph into the site we call jcaroline creative?  You'll have to wait for the next installment...