I'm taking the day off and attending to the business. A couple of things: - Between the two local retailers that are selling my cards, I made $100 in the last month. That's cool :)
- The local Borders has signaled that they're interested and my UPC code for the Connection Pack is being entered into their system under multimedia. The next step is to figure out the merchandising. What's the display look like? I think I want to go counter-intuitive with that. The easy way out would be an acrylic display. But I'm thinking wicker...
I love today. I've also called other retailers and I'll be following up with them in the next few weeks. Let's see how many stores I can get into. But in the meantime...Yayy! ETC: Here's a picture of the big cards in the Village Bean in downtown Des Moines.  Once I hit the afternoon, I worked on the merchandising, aka retail display for my cards. I could have gone with a simple acrylic stand, but that's flat for me. Everyone does that. How do mine stand out? I wanted wicker, and so I had a minor shopping spree at Michael's today. I bought the basket, a glue gun (the guy in me shudders just a bit at the thought of me buying a glue gun, but it's in the name of business, so that's a bit of salvation), and foam core for the backing of the signage. Next stop: Hancock Fabric across the street. Here's the funny... I'm walking out of Michael's and there's a retired guy asleep in the passenger seat of an older family sedan - obviously waiting for his wife, who dragged him along to shop at Michael's. I go across the street and sure enough, another retired guy, asleep in the passenger seat, dragged along so that his wife could go fabric shopping. Gotta be a demographic in there somewhere. I wanted a white cloth to line the basket, but changed my mind when I saw the navy broadcloth. Bought a yard and went to Office Depot for letter-sized gloss photo paper and double-sided tape. Thank goodness for my mom, the seamstress. I drove to Ames and she edged a couple of squares of the fabric. Here's the result:  I like it. Next, I work on the signage and then hot glue velcro to the basket, then glue the fabric to the basket, and then print and attach the sign image to the foam core and use the velcro to stick the foam core. Arts and crafts at my pad, eh? The big question: what if this all goes really well and I get into stores nationally? How do I ramp up production of the cards and the baskets/retail displays? What a great problem to have... I'll take it! MORE ETC: And the finished product:  I haven't glued anything yet, but this is how it will look. Yep - that beats an acrylic display any day of the week. I like this quote: "You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take." - Wayne Gretzky It's been interesting to see the reaction of my sons to this. They're watching me start with an idea, and then spend close to a year working on it, honing it, and turning out my money left and right to gamble on a dream.It's worth it. I'll keep tweaking this until I succeed. I like the little cards. In the next Connection Pack that I release, I'll have this:  I love life :) | 
