Sales Reps

Bubele has it's very first sales rep, finally! I found a list of sales reps specifically for children's wear on www.jamesgirone.com/ and I would sit down and go through the regional lists and make calls. This lead to no where and took up a ton of time during the day. So, I started going through the lists and just pulling out the ones with email address listed and emailed everyone on the list about Bubele.

I have only done a few lists, but I now have a rep in the Mid West who is incredible! She emailed me back and showed interest in the line. She is so professional and she took the time to actually go to the site and look through my items. Speaking to her was such a breath of fresh air and gave me that extra push needed to reorganize my line and get focused on the more important items like the bodysuit with the attached loop and the bib with attached neck roll. I somehow have to find a way to market these items more effectively.

Taking on an investor?

When I started Bubele, I intended on doing everything myself in order to save money. I am finding this incredibly difficult as I watch other companies grow who have a bigger budget. I am starting to wonder if I should look for an investor for Bubele who can manage the marketing/sales so I can concentrate on designing and producing.

Taking on an investor would probably restrict me in ways, and would probably increase my prices because I use high quality materials, even higher quality than major brands, but I keep my prices competitive.

On the other hand, an investor could manage things that I am having a hard time with.

This decision will take some more thought!

Reorganizing the online baby boutique

When I started selling Bubele online, I had only put in each item individually and gave color/pattern options so customers could mix and match sets as they wanted. I had some great sales doing this....at first. The things that were selling most were the Bubele mix and match separates. It seems like one particular style sold more than the others. It was the same style that Evan is wearing in the main pictures.

As I began to sell out of sizes, I realized I had to reorganize the sets and pair them up so customers could actually see the sets paired up rather than trying to visualize how they would look. I now have Mix and Match Sets and then I listed some individual bodysuits because these are too cute paired with any pants!

I decided to do the same for all the products and now that I have almost everything finished, I will start to focus on sales again.

Advertising

I have had to make some decisions recently about how to advertise for Bubele. If you have read from the beginning (http://www.my-trip-africa.com/) you would see I have had some problems with deciding on how to do this!!

Bubele is still very small and has a very small budget so I am not able to place ads in magazines or buy expensive ad spots on websites. But I have found some very interesting ways to advertise thanks to some other great moms out there who have their own blogs and businesses!

After being featured on Tip Junkie, I explored other blogs and advertising on small sites but with a growing audience. Here is one that I found and have been recently added to their list:

A little description:

MomDot is a mom blog listing site that is run by mommy bloggers, trisha, alicia, and bridgette.They run contests weekly, reviews on awesome (and not so awesome) products for family and kids, and talk about their lives. But more importantly, they feature bloggers and mom boutiques to give them an avenue to get their name out there, also assisting in google links! You can head out and list your blog for free and talk to them about doing an interview about you. Head on over and see what MomDot is about!

I also came into contact with Emily over at Busy Mom who has a great blog with tips and reviews of products. She offers one month of free of advertising if you sponsor a giveaway. I currently have a giveaway on her site: http://busymomcontests.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2008-10-22T19%3A46%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=4

I also have an ad with a couple more blogs which I did end up paying $25/month for at the beginning which gave me great results at first, but the sales are slowing from those :(

Moving the Bubele Blog

After creating a blog about my journey into starting Bubele, I decided to create a dedicated blog for my clothing line. While I still want to blog about my family life along with my business (I feel the two go hand in hand for me) I wanted to become a little more organized! This is my attempt at becoming more organized and hopefully blogging more often ;)

I am still leaving my old blog up because it explains the meaning behind Bubele and how it got started: www.my-trip-to-africa.com