Fashion start-up : The Light at the End of the Tunnel

After five months of intense work to get the g.moda business under way and the g-zip garment line in production, there is a light visible at the end of the tunnel! On Friday (two days ago), I signed a lease for commercial office space for the company - so from June 1st, we will have what the French call "pignon sur rue", that is, a street address and a home base for the company that is different from my house. Although a commitment, this is a huge step forward for setting the company on its feet. Production is finally ramping up after having vetted the patterns by a specialist and producing versions of the pattern for all three targeted sizes - small, medium and large. We have a confirmed date for the company's official launching (August 25, 2011), and the online store is scheduled to go live by July 31st. So all the hard work is coming to fruition. The only major source of uncertainty (I say that with my tongue in my cheek, however!) is how well our products will sell! (And hence whether we shall still be in business this time next year!)

Still, starting a company bears with it the risk of failing, and it is a risk I understand and accept. If it fails, it fails - it won't be because we did anything less than we could have, because we have put months of hard work and effort into getting it ready!

This is interesting, and I think a comment on the nature of the stress I've been dealing with. The stress doesn't come from risk of failure. The stress comes from needing to be sure that if it fails, it doesn't do so as a result of anything I could have done differently. And likewise, if it succeeds, it does so as a result of the effort we've put into it. Anything less, and I would feel disappointed in myself.

So the light at the end of the tunnel is not necessarily the light of success, but the light that indicates when the success or failure of the business is no longer strictly within my own hands. Once the public weighs in, we move forward with a different spirit, or not at all. I am confident we WILL move forward, that our product WILL be a success. Through our current efforts, the product is not only innovative, it is also of high quality manufacturing. I am also confident we have done our best to position the product well in terms of marketing, and recognize that we will continue to need to do this, especially after we launch the product line.

We are already at work on designs for the second, and possibly third, garment lines, as well as extensions to the first, so there will be no difficulty fueling the development of the company and its product sales from the production end. It is the sales that will be the determining factor, and the launch date is fast approaching!

Stress Management

One of the real shockers for me in starting my own company was the level of stress it created. The minute I got the financing all organized, bank account open and the money deposited, my stress levels went through the roof. It took me several weeks to get the stress under control, to a level I can manage. I really did not expect this to happen - before getting the company going, I was simply excited about the whole thing.

It is true that, since about last September, I have a dual workload. My responsibilities at the university haven't slackened - if anything, they have picked up speed in several areas, and, at the same time, I have to keep a company on track, designs rolling forward from the worktable into production, setting up the production and the marketing and... the list goes on. Just to get a sense of my own time management, I've started to keep track of the hours I spend on each task. I have found that my week at the university is roughly 40 hours - certainly a drop from where it has been in the past, but still above the legal commitment to 35 hours a week. I'm also spending 30 to 35 hours a week on the company business, and that is since I hired an assistant and started delegating a number of tasks! My relaxation hours, which I've also been keeping track of, seem to be around 15 hours a week - not many, all things considered. I don't include sleep in my relaxation time, or eating, just doing things to distract myself or calm myself or, indeed, relax.

I'm not sure how long I can keep this level of time commitment up - I expect that after a year or so it will start to wear mighty thin! For relaxation, a friend gave me some tips that have been useful, and I try to get out and walk a bit more than I used to, and to see friends and/or cultural events, but I must say that most evenings I'd sooner crash than go out.

I've got to do something more active to manage the stress, but I still haven't figured out what is right for me. Exercise, yes, almost certainly, but under what circumstances still remains to be seen. I also realized that I have to engage in some sewing projects that are not within the purview of the company, as I find sewing to be particularly relaxing - it's one of the reasons I got into it in the first place!

Plans within plans

While I'm in the process of moving my designs forward to final versions in readiness for production, I have been doing a number of activities on the side to keep the ball rolling. This includes taming the twitterverse so that my company can develop an internet presence, on the one hand, but also putting down on paper a series of preliminary versions of policy documents.

As a researcher with a reputation for "out-of-the-box" thinking, I have long recognized the value and importance of planning, and writing down one's plans. Twenty years ago, as I was entering the academic world as a young professor, I set down on paper my long term plans, which at the time consisted of developing a cogent linkage/platform between the arts and the sciences. In 1990, this was a radical goal - academia was a long way from welcoming such a prospect with open arms. Even today, although there are many more venues where collaboration between the arts and the sciences is taking place, there is still a great deal of resistance to this program. So it seemed unusual and daring at the time.

Mind you, I didn't proclaim my goals up and down my department, but I did quietly work away at them, so that, 20 years later, I achieved what I set out to do.

Over the course of those years, I was involved in setting up a major and well-funded research network as well as managing a research centre and initiating an arts-science business venture. I learned how to write a business plan, and initiated and led several large-scale consultation exercices aimed at developing strategic plans. So I have a good deal of knowledge and savoir-faire about how these things are done.

For my fledgling company, in order to solicit a bank loan, I had to write a business plan. These last couple of weeks, using the business plan as a basis, I have started to set down on paper my understanding of where gdotmoda's marketing efforts need to go - i.e. a marketing plan. Right now, the company consists of only me, but within the next few weeks I shall be hiring an assistant as well as a number of production seamstresses/seamsters. For the assistant, at least, I need to work out a clear approach to marketing. But even simply for myself, writing down my understanding as it develops through voluminous reading is an important task. There are so many things to remember, that a clear set of plans to steer by seems to me, essential. My marketing plan has two major sections, one for internet marketing and one for local marketing. These two subareas have very different marketing needs, and require almost separate marketing plans.

Moving forward

Well, the bank approved my application for a loan, so I'm good to go, to set up my company and move the project forward! This morning I couldn't keep still, I was bouncing up and down so hard!

I've a website up and running, too - the address is "www.gdotmoda.com". My company is called "g.moda" - "g" for my name, and "moda" for fashion, although you could also interpret it as "g's way". The "dot" is a kind of bridge between the design and the production. The website is kind of a "placeholder" site right now - nothing is really revealed, but you get a glimpse at some of what is being planned. Essentially, the first two garment lines are described in fairly general terms. As the company moves towards its inaugural event, I plan to slowly reveal a bit more, just to keep prospective clients interested, with the big reveal happening at the inaugural event and its online equivalent. The website will be transformed into a sales site, where you can purchase garments directly online.

There is, however, a ton of stuff that has to be done to get to that point. More later!

Next step - Start my own business!

Well, the late summer and early fall have led to big things, even though things seemed to be moving along incredibly slowly! I found that the sewing course I did in London left me with a huge boost in confidence with regard to my sewing ability, and that this boost translated into a much surer hand when I sew! Where I used to struggle a lot to get a straight seam, now it seems more or less automatic. I've also done dozens of zippers lately, and so zippers no longer present themselves as a kind of nightmare part of the project - I know exactly what I'm doing.

Between a massive amount of work preparing my fall courses, I managed to steal about one day a week for my designing efforts. Since the summer I've come up with designs for more than a dozen garments. I've mapped out two garment lines, each with a common flavor to them, and I've constructed the pattern, cut and sewn up the first prototypes for each of the two lines. Somewhat to my surprise, the results are... well, in my opinion, stunning. I've checked this perception out with some savvy (and critical) friends, and I don't think I'm mistaken.

So I started to plan a fashion show to launch the garment lines, what I call my Collection 2011 show. However, when I sat down to work out production and event costs, I realized that I couldn't do a decent event, even under a scaled down framework for a group of friends and colleagues, for less than, say, 5000$ - and that doesn't take into account much in the way of production costs. So if I actually want to turn my garments into something I can sell, even in a small way, I am looking at a significant outlay of funds.

This led me to rethink my strategy... Because, in my humble opinion, the garments I am developing deserve more than a "minimal effort" with a lot of corner cutting to show something for the effort I've put into them.

Hence, I decided to rethink my strategy - what would it take to launch a business to do this properly? Well, it turns out it will take some real financing, so I will need to go to the bank, and for that I will need a decent business plan among other things. So I have decided to go forward with this adventure. I am working on a name and a logo right now, I have a draft business plan developed, and at the same time I am continuing to develop my garments (while also working on my lessons at the university, sigh!). Busy times!

I will be reporting more here as the whole adventure moves forward.