Jackie week 9

It has been a trying week working on this bag. The shops are on line and have gotten a decent number of views.  None of the views have lead to sales.  The question has now become: "why is no one buying this bag?" 

The past week has also been very insightful. The visit we had with Grace Ng was helpful.  She was able to give us specific feed back relating to the validation board. Because of Graces questions, explanations and feed back I have a better understanding of how the validation board works.  I had thought I understood the validation board from class and the validation board videos but, I was clearly wrong.  I wish we had been able to speak to her weeks ago when the validation board was first introduced to us a tool.  

I have heard back from potential customers about the bag.  Many people have asked if it is reflective.  The bag is not but we are looking into how we might be able to incorporate reflective material into the bag.  I took a trip to Pacific trim and priced out some reflective trim.  I was not able to get any swatches but I did take pictures of all the trim (pictures bellow).  Prices range between $2.5-$8 per yard.    

 

Meeting with my group, Phoebe Espiritu and Matt Raoul to discuss the progress of the bag was (for lack of a better word) a bummer. The constant drive and question of sales has reminded me why I never continued a career in the music industry and a gripe I have with my current job.  I feel that the bag has become driven by numbers, and that is not what I want to learn about.

Reflecting on this bag and my motivation to return to school just drives me to dislike sales even more.  One of the reasons I had decided to take a class about entrepreneurship was because I thought it wold be helpful to learn more about business.  As an artist I realize that I am my own business, too often artist do not realize that and I am trying to be more pro active.  Previously I started a sole proprietorship as an artist and met with the small business association of New York.    

Looking back on my entire experience I have had due to this bag what I did enjoy was the people:  the community around skateboarding and what skateboarders get out of skateboarding.  I am going to focus on the people, after all that is what I like.  Attending the even to rase money for the Rockaway skate park is more the mind set I want to be in.  So going further what ever return I make on the investment is going to just get donated.  This may also help when I need to do my taxes.  While the bag has turned out to cost more to create a prototype than everyone expected I look at is this way: It is still probably the least amount of money I have spent on a class project.  

A few weeks ago we had a visit from three young entrepreneurs: Kelsey Falter, Alex Godin, and Robert Gaal.  Hearing their stories was also helpful because it brought to light the lifestyle of what it means to be an entrepreneur, and I do not think that I want that.  Recently I had a really wonderful lunch meeting with an alum from MFA DT.   One of my many take aways from my meeting was: “be exited about what you are doing.”  I am not excited about being this type of entrepreneur.  I know I will need to deal with having my own business as an artist and possibly as something else but I will deal with that when it happens.  Apposed to forcing it prematurely which is what I feel I am doing with this current bag project.  

Although I have lost steam on this project I will still see it out to the end because that is my work ethic.  I have never been good at quitting.  The next step for this bag is to continue to talk to skateboarders and finish the video that Yu-Yi and Huy have started.  We plan to put the bag on Kickstarter and or Indi go go.  Kickstarter has its advantages because it is well known but if we do not reach the goal for the bag all the money goes back to the backers.  Indi go go is appealing because any money we rasise we are able to keep.  

I also spent a considerable amount of time sewing the patches onto one of the bag prototypes.  I can without a question of a dough say that I have invested both blood and sweat into creating this product.  I learnt the hard way that when sewing by hand thimbles are your best friend.  The patches had to be sewn on by hand because when the prototypes were created we did not have the patches.  

Typically when creating a bag you do all the patches and accents before putting the bag together.  This fact was pointed out to me by several people who saw me sewing the patches on.  I had hoped that I would have been able to find a work around by using a double sided fusible fabric to iron on the patches but that was not recommended when I consulted with some accomplished garment workers and bag designers.  Going further we may need to reevaluate the material used for the patches because it seems to fray a lot.