Why it's Kurtis's birthday!
Happy birthday to the love of my life, my partner in crime.
Now get back to work.
xx
S
Documenting the struggles and triumphs of a husband and wife team as they try to grow their home based business.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Whatever, it's fine.. pfff, I'm fine.
Hello blogosphere! Yes it's been a few minutes since my last post, I apologize.
You see, apparently, here at KSS, we think we're rock stars. We take on all of these projects, thinking we're so fabulous that they'll just work on them selves. We can handle anything here. Right?
So, so wrong.
Ok let me rephrase that. Yes we can handle anything. Can we do it without heart palpitations, fighting, dizziness, alcohol, crying, hugging, high fiving, jumping, cheering, realizing we missed something and repeating the same cycle?
No. Most of the time no. Kurt and I work so well together when we are doing the day to day KSS activities. Throw something new in there, and we are beside ourselves.
Hence the reason for my lack of blogging. Last month (last minute, of course) we decided we would enter a trade show. Not just any trade show, the Babytime show. This is a major industry event, with every brand name and who's who in the trendy child rearing game. With names like Playtex (two booths down from us..holla), Quinny, Britax, Honda, Dr. Browns, Babies 'R' us .. the list goes on and on... then there's little teeny tiny KSS Maternity. The new kids in town, trying to make a splash amongst tidal waves.
We have spent the last month completely revamping our company. Our website is being rebuilt & will function much better. Our business accounts are fully functional (why yes we take Visa..) and ready to roll. We designed new tags for three of the 4 lines. Held photo shoots to get new product lines up and running. We have moved over to a new book keeping system. No more small beans Excel, we're on Quickbooks now, homie.
Quickbooks. Ha.
Yes our experience today with Quickbooks and Iillustrator, are two perfect examples of classic Kurt and Sarah dysfunction.
I am a creature of habit. So is Kurtis. I have been using excel for a while now, and I'm comfortable entering my items manually. Enter Quickbooks. It throws it's little digitized hand up in my face, and says ".. you're gonna do it my way now." Hours went by. I entered items, re-entered items.. re-re-entered items.. grunted.. banged my head against the keyboard, yelled at my computer, begged my friends for help (thanks by the way!) and eventually I had successfully entered 4 separate items in inventory. Yep, 4.
Gave that up and moved over to our bags. We need retail bags for the show, as we are selling to live humans now and not their computers. Gotta get fancy like that, right?
I wasted two hours sizing, and resizing images to fit into this lame template that didn't load properly on our computer because we DON'T HAVE MICROSOFT WORKS (cough.. Kurt... cough..) just to make stickers. To stick on paper bags. 500 paper bags to be exact. They are made of recycled materials, and are themselves fully recyclable. Just in case you were wondering. Don't even get me started on the bag selection process.
I know, I need to cut us some slack. We are learning as we go. We are by no means seasoned business vets. We take it one step at a time, and hope for the best. Sure, our "one step" always tends to be a giant leap that may be a bit too much for us, but we always manage to bring it together in the end.
Come visit us at the Babytime Show if you get the chance! November 12-14 2010 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, booth 119.
If you buy something, I'll give you one of these 500 jerky bags. Yeah I said it.
You see, apparently, here at KSS, we think we're rock stars. We take on all of these projects, thinking we're so fabulous that they'll just work on them selves. We can handle anything here. Right?
So, so wrong.
Ok let me rephrase that. Yes we can handle anything. Can we do it without heart palpitations, fighting, dizziness, alcohol, crying, hugging, high fiving, jumping, cheering, realizing we missed something and repeating the same cycle?
No. Most of the time no. Kurt and I work so well together when we are doing the day to day KSS activities. Throw something new in there, and we are beside ourselves.
Hence the reason for my lack of blogging. Last month (last minute, of course) we decided we would enter a trade show. Not just any trade show, the Babytime show. This is a major industry event, with every brand name and who's who in the trendy child rearing game. With names like Playtex (two booths down from us..holla), Quinny, Britax, Honda, Dr. Browns, Babies 'R' us .. the list goes on and on... then there's little teeny tiny KSS Maternity. The new kids in town, trying to make a splash amongst tidal waves.
We have spent the last month completely revamping our company. Our website is being rebuilt & will function much better. Our business accounts are fully functional (why yes we take Visa..) and ready to roll. We designed new tags for three of the 4 lines. Held photo shoots to get new product lines up and running. We have moved over to a new book keeping system. No more small beans Excel, we're on Quickbooks now, homie.
Quickbooks. Ha.
Yes our experience today with Quickbooks and Iillustrator, are two perfect examples of classic Kurt and Sarah dysfunction.
I am a creature of habit. So is Kurtis. I have been using excel for a while now, and I'm comfortable entering my items manually. Enter Quickbooks. It throws it's little digitized hand up in my face, and says ".. you're gonna do it my way now." Hours went by. I entered items, re-entered items.. re-re-entered items.. grunted.. banged my head against the keyboard, yelled at my computer, begged my friends for help (thanks by the way!) and eventually I had successfully entered 4 separate items in inventory. Yep, 4.
Gave that up and moved over to our bags. We need retail bags for the show, as we are selling to live humans now and not their computers. Gotta get fancy like that, right?
I wasted two hours sizing, and resizing images to fit into this lame template that didn't load properly on our computer because we DON'T HAVE MICROSOFT WORKS (cough.. Kurt... cough..) just to make stickers. To stick on paper bags. 500 paper bags to be exact. They are made of recycled materials, and are themselves fully recyclable. Just in case you were wondering. Don't even get me started on the bag selection process.
I know, I need to cut us some slack. We are learning as we go. We are by no means seasoned business vets. We take it one step at a time, and hope for the best. Sure, our "one step" always tends to be a giant leap that may be a bit too much for us, but we always manage to bring it together in the end.
Come visit us at the Babytime Show if you get the chance! November 12-14 2010 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, booth 119.
If you buy something, I'll give you one of these 500 jerky bags. Yeah I said it.
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