Wednesday, July 29, 2009

KOOL-AID STAND - 1 CENT A GLASS


I AM GETTING READY TO SIGN MY FIRST CONTRACT!!!

Pretty cool, huh? It kind of makes everything seem so official, if you know what I mean. It's exciting and it's sad in a way because I wish my dad was around to see his picture being professionally published on a greeting card. He would have loved the technology today, too. I can just imagine him sitting there with all his slides and spending hours and hours tweaking them with Photoshop.

I have spent the past week submitting the photos to various greeting card publishers and received the fastest rejection ever today. Within 30 minutes there was an email in my inbox but I don't feel too badly because they said they weren't accepting ANY submissions. I have been procrastinating creating a Facebook account but I think it's time...then on to Twitter which I hope I NEVER have to do! I am still hoping for one of the two major companies to come through with an exclusive so that I won't have to Twitter. Why can't we do business the old-fashioned way like the image I am going to post in the next blog???

Thursday, July 23, 2009

IT ONLY TOOK ME A DAY AND A HALF TO...

create a video, add music, and upload it to Youtube, which you can hopefully see here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn7xVMuiUXc

This week seems to have flown by. I have been getting the nicest rejection letters and emails from companies. I'm serious, if you're going to get rejected it is much better to be rejected nicely :)

On a side note, I thought it was interesting to note on my HS transcript that I only scored in the 25th percentile in clerical on an aptitude test. I thought this was kind of funny considering I have spent my entire professional career as an executive assistant :) I only scored in the 23rd percentile for artistic which is what I consider what I am doing now. So there you go...that proves that those tests don't mean a darn thing! However, it also said that I only scored in the 18th percentile for "persuasive" and that part might be true considering I haven't sold any cards yet :) (Just so you know I wasn't totally illiterate, I scored a 96% in literary and 85% in verbal!)

Back to the drawing board...

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

IS THIS A REJECTION OR ACCEPTANCE?

I got an email today from a company that I had submitted my greeting cards to and it states that they have reviewed my materials and yes, this is the style they are seeking for their card lines. However, they did not choose any of the images/cards I had submitted at this time but I could feel free to submit more in the future. What the heck does this mean? It's like saying this is KIND OF what we're looking for but NOT EXACTLY what we're looking for :) Anyway, I need to go mail the check.

THIS IS WHAT I MISS ABOUT THE MIDWEST...

Totally off-topic from the greeting cards, I am applying for a full-time position at a local community college and I needed to get a copy of, get this, my HIGH SCHOOL transcripts to submit with my resume. So I call up good old Grosse Pointe South High School and the woman in the records department tells me that there is a cost of $2 to FAX them to me. I'm thinking that I am going to have to use Paypal or my debit card or some form of IMMEDIATE payment but, no, she says to just mail them a check for the $2. And that's what I miss the most about the midwest...the character, values, and morals that seem to be missing out here in California. They actually TRUST me to send them the check. So I am off to the post office to mail them the $2 check, after I say this: (go to next post)

Monday, July 20, 2009

I LICENSED MY FIRST CARD THIS MORNING!!!!!!!!!

Believe it or not, I actually received a call this morning from a company in Michigan (which I still consider my home state even though I haven't lived there since 1973) who wanted to license one of my cards...how exciting is that? I feel like it's somewhat of a breakthrough after all my hard work so it gave me a little boost to keep moving forward and not get discouraged. Thanks!

Friday, July 17, 2009

I SPENT 7 HOURS TODAY JUST TRYING TO FIGURE OUT...

how to put a watermark on my greeting cards so I could publish them on the web and not have to worry about anyone stealing them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (That's me screaming...I feel a little, but not much, better now.) After FINALLY figuring it out from what was SUPPOSED to be another easy software program (I'm not telling you which one in case it really IS easy and I was just out of it today), here is a link to my first card and my google website:

http://sites.google.com/site/prittiehartpress/our-products/candy-necklace-card-1

Hope the link works...if not, just type it in the address bar because I am done with this for today!

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

MY MORALS WILL PROBABLY BE THE DEATH OF MY COMPANY...

On my "to do" list was to check out a website where you can use your photos and have them made into T-shirts, mugs, calendars, etc. so this morning I did a VERY little research (like 3 seconds worth). All I did was type in the website address and immediately on the first page were objectionable photos and language so I just got out of there. The whole site (well, the first and only page I looked at) just really turned me off and I wouldn't want to be associated with them. The good part was that I got to cross something off my "to do" list after 3 seconds :)

The rest of the morning was spent submitting my cards and images to a greeting card company based in New York. I should hear back from them pretty soon after sending them 20 emails...if anything, they'll write to me to tell me to stop sending them emails. Several months ago I sent out about 100 resumes to individual realtors at one real estate company and the receptionist actually called to tell me not to send any additional resumes...she commended me on my persistence but said she didn't have time to deliver them to everyone. However, my plan kind of worked (I got a call from a realtor) but kind of didn't (I didn't actually get a job).

Back to work...

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

THANKS TO MY FRIEND...

"L" who is out there trying to sell my greeting cards today without any compensation whatsoever. I warned her to be prepared for rejection and to not take it personally if she gets turned away. I'll have to wait until she checks in with me later to see if this was the first and last time she'll ever do it...but I give her kudos for attempting it!

Monday, July 13, 2009

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST...

This was just a minor little rejection and it was actually kind of funny. I received an email (thankfully, NOT from the two remaining large corporations) which had a subject line that read: "No Thanks Sample." It was actually nice of them to respond...maybe I should reply and say "Thanks for the No Thanks." :)

Friday, July 10, 2009

REJECTION ONLY MAKES ME STRONGER AND MORE CREATIVE...

Well, today I finally heard back from one of the three companies I sent PowerPoint presentations to where I proposed an agreement whereby they would be the exclusive carrier of my cards. It was, unfortunately, a rejection letter...and a form letter at that. At least they gave me the courtesy of sending back my CD, even though I can't use it for anyone else :) The way I look at it is that I still have a 66% or so chance of succeeding since I haven't heard back from the other two companies and I assume they would at least send me a rejection letter if they're not interested.

Anyway, I had a new marketing idea today and I did a lot of research this afternoon. I identified some exclusive children's clothing boutiques and I thought since mothers usually take their kids clothes shopping and my cards are really family-oriented, what a perfect venue this would be. Instead of driving around to a lot of shops haphazardly, I am going to mail four samples of my cards to each of these places. It's really hard to find out the name of the person you should send something to at these corporations and I just feel like putting the company name and address and writing "Attention: Head Honcho" but I don't know if they would think it was funny :)

That's it for today...

Thursday, July 9, 2009

DOOR-TO-DOOR SELLING IS NOT FOR INSECURE PEOPLE!

Well, it was an interesting day today taking my cards out to various stores. These are the reactions I received:

1. A small AIM store..."No, we already have too many cards." (He didn't even look at them).

2. Another small AIM store...super nice young guy in his 20's who had lots of advice for me and said that after I designed 8 more cards that he would carry them on consignment. He actually never looked at the cards either but said that he always wants to help people get started in business. However, my problem is not designing more cards, it's investing another $2,000 into printing costs. He also told me that at this point, I shouldn't be looking so much toward profit, but exposure...which makes sense but you have to be able to afford to do that financially.

3. A small clothing store in Town Centre...the owner was a total "witch with an attitude" and asked me to come back when I had 50-100 cards designed and next time to make an appointment. (Whatever happened to just walking into a store and talking to the owner as long as they're not busy?) Which brings me to...

4. Craig and Karen at Pix & Dubs in Laguna Niguel...a really nice couple who actually looked at the cards and gave me lots of advice and even said that they would carry them on consignment. They are the nicest of the small business owners that I met today, followed by #2 above. #1 and #3 made me wonder how on earth they stay in business.

After all my marketing research, I really think that the absolutely best way to market these cards is for one of the major corporations that I approached to carry them exclusively. I really hope I hear from them soon (one in particular who I would really like to be associated with because I think it's a great fit).

Well, I'm not giving up and I have a few other ideas up my sleeve. I think I'll try those tomorrow.



Wednesday, July 8, 2009

I JUST RECEIVED MY FIRST ORDER OF 1,000 GREETING CARDS!

I'm so excited...they look really fantastic and professional, if I do say so myself :) I really think there has GOT to be a market for these and now I need to get out there and sell them. I hope that they mean as much to other people as they mean to me...even though the pictures are of MY family, I think that they are nostalgic and that many people will relate to them. I really wish my Dad was alive to see his pictures in print. I think he would get a big kick out of it. Well, I'm off to go attempt to sell them...wish me luck!

Sunday, July 5, 2009

HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF CO-TWEET?

I was investigating Twitter and ran across cotweet.com which is apparently for employees to use within their organization. They have some major players on there but I was thinking that it would be funny if I signed up because I would just be one person tweeting to myself :)

MY CARDS ARE BEING DELIVERED ON WEDNESDAY...

and I'm still not sure the best way to go about marketing them. In addition to seeing if more local stores would carry them, I was also thinking about opening an Amazon Webstore but after doing some research, I decided not to take that route. I have applied to be a vendor at a major store and I'm waiting to hear back from them. I have a domain name registered but have no clue how to develop a website :) Actually, that's not really what's holding me back...the reason I am not really excited about establishing the website is because then you have to get into SEO and all that stuff to drive traffic to your site and I think that's more than I can deal with. In addition to selling the cards, I also thought I could sell the images on Istockphoto which would be an additional revenue source. I also need to create a Facebook and Twitter accounts in addition to my existing LinkedIn account. A good friend of mine came up with the idea of incorporating the family history on the display racks in stores which was really creative...thanks, J!

I need to get back to designing...

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

WHAT A WEEK!

I have been busy working on my marketing plan for the past week and designing new cards and, guess what? Designing is WAY more fun! The problem is that I think I am actually better at marketing than I am at designing. When I placed my order for 1,000 cards about a week ago, the graphic artist called and told me that I had designed this humongous card (something like 10" x 14") and she thought she should verify this with me prior to printing. That's what I like about this company...they not only do printing but they actually fix my graphic design mistakes! How cool is that? And...here's a drum roll...I actually have a local store who is willing to carry my greeting cards which is really exciting. Well, I need to get back to work and hopefully design a regular sized card :)