Little Miss Entrepreneur
Because the 95th time’s the charm
Well, it’s been quite awhile since I sat down and put something on paper, publicly anyway. I spent most of August in Australia and came home with thousands of photos and an endless amount of video to go through. Unfortunately, I haven’t done any of that. Instead, what I initially came up with as a cute marketing idea for the blog has since morphed into a complete undertaking of an all new business.
For a long time I’ve been thinking wouldn’t it be cute if I had come Bitter Bitch merch to wear for my photo ops? Maybe a cute top with the brand logo or perhaps a snarky little saying that would envelope the sense of the brand. The answer was obviously yeah, that’d be fucking adorable. In fact, if the top was cute enough, it could really be the centerpiece of the photo. It just so happened I recently befriended someone who already had apparel design knowledge and she turned me onto a company (that will remain nameless) that simply prints your shirts and ships them out for you. All I had to do was upload a design and bam, instant product. I thought fuck, now that’s handy!! So I threw myself into creating a couple simple logos and uploading them. But I soon realized all was not as simple as 1,2,3.
I got to work on my new business venture but quickly learned that third party printing was a hell of a lot cooler for the third party than it was for me. In order to know if the print placement and colors were right, I had to order all of the things I was creating, so I dumped a quick grand on that only to find the product less than desirable. Half the item’s logos were crooked and generally seemed cheap in quality and execution. The second major problem was pricing. With a destabilizing economy, the prices being charged by the third party were fluctutating daily. Production costs and shipping were already so astronomical at the “wholesale” price, I couldn’t make more than a dollar or two on each transaction, even with higher than normal retail pricing. It was a mess, and I was quickly losing steam on the project.
A week before my trip, I half ass decided to give home printing a chance. But what I didn’t do was buy the one thing I actually needed: a fucking press. So the night before my month long trip to Australia, I received some blanks shirts and decals in the mail with no idea what to do with them. Rather than table the idea, I instead threw the scraps in my luggage and drug them with me all the way down under. Once in Newcastle, I borrowed an iron and board and got to work trying to hodge podge these industrial DTF decals with someone’s 1980’s handheld iron that reached a max of 275°. They stuck about as well throwing shit on a wall, but that was all I brought and I had committed myself come hell or high water. However, I quickly decided all my designs were fucking stupid and really only the one design was even worth being seen in public. Fortunately, the weather was complete shit and I ended up wearing coats the entire time I was there.
One month later I returned home, having only taken one singular photo of myself in my subpar BB merch. But instead of taking the “L”, I instead decided to create yet another time consuming project and make myself into a graphic designer/apparel producer/distribution center with online storefront. I got to work on really hashing out some cute, creative, and extremely sassy designs I wouldn’t be embarassed to wear in public. This was quite the undertaking as I knew nothing about the design aspect of it. Then I learned the ins and outs of wholesale. I learned how to transfer these designs onto apparel without burning the fucking place to the ground. Then I had to redo my old storefront and get after the SEO again. Needless to say, I haven’t posted a single picture or written one story about my time in Australia save the Black Tank Fiasco, because, well, like I said before, shit does stick.
So here we are, the last week of October. Two months have passed, and I just received my very first order from a stranger. Not my mom, not a supportive friend, or even a regular from the bar. I some-fucking-how managed to sell a shirt to a complete and total stranger, and I am ecstatic! I sublimated a tee (where the ink turns to gas and adheres into the fibers of a fabric), packaged it up in a manila envelope (because I’m still in my ghetto stages of packaging), and sent my very first order off to Kentucky where I hope my t-shirt will spark conversation and find itself heavily photographed and tagged online. Although it seems small, it is actually the culmination of a decade of ideas and hard work. Dare I say I almost have the will to live again. So while the first fifty business ideas I’ve launched did nothing but teach me lessons in fortitude, The Bitter Bitch Co. is No. 51 and I am, yet again, all fucking in.
The upside here is that the blog was not extinguished, only paused, and instead of replacing my time spent writing, I hope the shirts will instead reinvigorate organic traffic from the web and into all these blog posts that I poured my love and humor into that have never seen the light of day. Hopefully they will culminate in sales of merchandise and clicks on advertising and become the foundation that my blog sits on, allowing me to continue to sink all my time and energy into this non-profit labor of love I call a business. My attention has been diverted as of late but I assure you, I intend to ride this thing out until the wheels fall off, figuratively or literally.
If you’d like to support a poor writer before she is forced to turn tricks under the overpass, stop by The Bitter Bitch Store and peruse our line of wildly inappropriate apparel not to be worn to work, church, or any children’s birthday parties.