Makin' Lemonade

Last night and this morning I was pretty disillusioned about my life. How did everything turn upside down so quickly? What did I do wrong? How am I going to fix something I have no control over?

This afternoon I decided fuck it! If I can't do anything about it I might as well get on with things. Everything might work out and that would be great, things might not and if that happens I know I'll survive. It will be hard and I'll have a lot of sorting out to do but I'll be OK.

One thing is still certain. I have a daughter to raise and a business to run.

While we were on holidays the shop was pretty slow. And with little money coming in and lots of bills to pay I really have to pull my finger out this week and get some extra sales through the door.

I've come up with a plan. I have a small amount of summer stock that I need to move so I thought I'd start with that. It's currently sitting on a 50% off rack but being so cold it's not moving. So I've decided to have a Facebook sale. It's a Market Night where my customers can purchase excess summer stock at below cost price in a one off offer. If you want to check it out you can go to my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Bearly-Worn/123812704350325 .

The second part of my plan is to win some free advertising for the shop. Tiny & little are having a competition to win a full free page ad in their Winter 2012 issue out June 1st. All I have to do is receive the most votes and my little shop Bearly Worn wins! So I've asked all my FB fans to go there and vote. If you feel inclined (this is a bit cheeky) I would also love your vote. Just got to tiny & little and type "I vote for @bearly worn" so that the shops page is tagged and the vote gets counted.

Hopefully this gives me something else to concentrate apart from my personal problems and makes me a little money just in case.

TFIF!

What a massive day......or not really.

It started with a semi successful drop off of Emily to her new day care center. All was going well until I put her bag in her pigeon hole and she realised Mummy was leaving. There were tears and the poor childcare lady could barely pry her arms from around my neck. I sat in the car, told myself to get it together and took off for work. I hate leaving her like that.

Coffee in hand I was determined to get a heap of pricing done today and was also hoping my three boxes of winter Eternal Creation clothing would finally turn up. After the morning rush of sales (yay! I love meeting my target by 11am) I received a much awaited package from one of my organic clothing suppliers. I won't name and shame......you can figure it out by yourself. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I had to return some stock from this supplier due to imperfections and marks. There were about a dozen pieces and one in particular looked like it had been dragged across the factory floor before being packaged and sent to me. So when I received my replacements I expected to find perfect pieces all ready to hang.

To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. I think they just re-packed the pieces I returned and sent them back to me! A pair of pink footed tights for a newborn had dirty marks on one of the feet and all the cream tops had small red marks. Two of the items were listed as no longer available but there was no credit on the invoice. I was slightly fuming.

OK, stay calm I thought. I filled out new return forms and repacked the stock to return for the second time. Then I called my agent to tell her that for a second time I'm returning faulty or marked stock. When she called me back she was apologising profusely and also wanted to let me know the Production Manager wanted to call me personally to apologise. Quite frankly, having come from a manufacturing and logistics background I understand that the owners and reps are not responsible for this kind of thing and as much as they try, it's the guys on the ground who make it happen. Unfortunately the guys on the ground are in China and their Quality Control sucked. I also wrote a long winded email (well they did ask for my complaint in writing) expressing my "disappointment" at the lack of attention to detail and difference in quality from last year.

The fact is this brand is extremely good and apart from one line everything else is perfect and my sales reflect how good they are. So I'm not going to hold it against them, but I'm allowed to be pissed off that I wasted an entire morning and half the afternoon sorting it out and I only got one tub of stock priced for the shelf tomorrow.

Hubby was home sick today and apparently too sick to pick up Emily from childcare so at 5pm I rushed out the door, stopped by the butchers on the way to the car park, picked up some stir fry and raced to pick her up before they closed at 5:30pm.

By the time I got home I had a splitting headache and no motivation to cook a rousing stir fry and rice. It's Friday night for FFS! Pizza! So I called the new pizza delivery up the road while hubby lay moaning on the couch and Emily tugged and cried at my legs for a bottle of milk that we're desperately trying to wean her off. I swear you'd think she was coming of heroin the way she carries on.

The pizza was disgusting and hubby complained the whole time about it and how sick he felt. Emily finally went off to bed crying herself to sleep because she wanted a bottle and we're trying hard to stick to our decision to get her off them.

Then I sat down, opened my laptop, checked my Facebook and what do I see? Mrs Woog shared a picture of me in my short condom dress. You can see it here https://www.facebook.com/woogsworld. Thanks Mrs Woog, as one of my blogging hero's you made my day!

This is my little munchkin all ready for day care today. I think she thinks she's driving the Mazda.....

Who's your Blogging hero?

Social Media Bullshit

Recently I held a competition on my Facebook page to get to 250 likers. I don't know why I put so much emphasis on getting so many likers.

I posted and promoted and shared and did liking ladders all to get to this magical number of 250. I had a giveaway of a $50 gift voucher and customised handmade tee by A Dor able. But why?

New likers, or any likers for that matter does not mean I have 250 customers who are buying from my kids clothing on-line shop. It doesn't even mean 250 people like my shop. It means a certain number of people just liked my page to win a gift voucher and when I announced the winner my number of likers magically went back down.

Ms J from the cafe around the corner popped in to say hello on Friday. She told me she went out the night before and ran into a woman she hadn't hung out with for 15 years and hadn't even seen for 5 years. This woman had sent a friend request to her on Facebook. Ms J felt obliged to accept the request but recently culled her friends list to only include people she actually talks to and family members. The woman wanted to know why Miss J deleted her as a friend and was very upset (some might say aggressive) about the fact that Miss J had deleted her.

My point is.....do we place too much emphasis on social media? I mean, I follow a lot of blogs, I write a blog, I Facebook, I Twitter. How many people do I actually talk to? Apart from face to face customers, probably not that many.

In some ways Facebook has helped me reconnect to a lot of people I haven't seen in a long time and some of them have become close friends again. On the other hand I have at least 100 "friends" that I have blocked posts, don't see or speak to, don't actually like and probably don't really like me. So why are we friends?

My sisters and I never really called each other much. We never needed to, we always just pick up where we left off. Now that we are all connected on Facebook we chat, post photo's of our kids, email and see each other even more. Why couldn't we do that without Facebook?

I don't have answers to my questions. I don't even have an ending to this post. Social Media can be bullshit and it can also be a great way to feel a little less alone in a huge world.