I'll be at the Eco-Fabulous Fashion Show on Saturday, May 3rd in Santa Ana talking with companies and retailers about their involvement in the sustainable style movement here in Southern California. Should be a fun learning experience for DressMonkey!
Come by and say hi!
Wow! And we at DressMonkey thought we were leading the pack in low-cost retail...
At its 264 barnlike stores in malls across the country, including the perpetually mobbed one at the Manhattan Mall in Midtown, Steve & Barry’s offers an assortment of flowery sundresses designed by Sarah Jessica Parker ($8.98), heart-printed hoodies by the Nickelodeon alumna Amanda Bynes ($8.98) and basketball shoes by the New York Knicks point guard Stephon Marbury ($8.98). Lines at the registers are often 20 deep.The question on everyone’s lips: How do they make a decent dress or a jacket, with sleeves, or a pair of functioning shoes for $8.98?
Read the entire NYT article here
It will be interesting to see if Steve and Barry's marketing strategy of latching on to Gen Y's obsession for anything and everything touched by celebrities will pay out for them. The article says the company doesn't advertise, instead relying on WOM. But partnering with celebrities to develop lines IS a form of advertising, and most definitely is a cost weighing on the company's profitability. The timing couldn't be better for low-cost fashion, however, with Americans looking desperately to save a buck or two anywhere they can.
For those DressMonkeys that were with us from the beginning, you may remember our own attempt at associating big name celebs to our brand. No one bigger than this guy! Unfortunately, we soon realized his sense of style wasn't all that cracked up to be.
We at DressMonkey are beginning to consider new ways of reducing waste throughout our business operations in order increase overall efficiency and improve our environmental footprint. Our first change will be to ditch the unnecessary cardboard box and styrofoam peanuts that we currently use to ship our packages and protect our pretty packaging. So, starting now, we're just gonna slap your UPS shipping label right on the top of that sucker, tape it up, and send it on its merry way to your door. Alas, the widely recognizable green DressMonkey box will be shipped solo. We at DressMonkey like to think we're saving trees and a dime or two at the same time.
Greetings fellow DressMonkeys,
The SD Union Tribune wrote a really cool piece on DressMonkey last week, which has lit a definitive fire under the butt of SD's hip and fashion-forward men and women. DressMonkey HQ (San Diego) has received an enormous amount of inquiries from guys wanting to design their own clothing, custom lining, even their own lines over the last few days! We at DressMonkey are excited for the opportunity to grow our customer base and get to know potential key clients. As always, thank everyone for their continued support of our young company.
Read the article that's put us on the minds of So. Cal's future fashion designers
Apparel's New Pattern
I can't explain it beyond the fact that for some random, probably insignificant series of events that have culminated into me being probably the happiest I've ever been in my entire life. A very bold statement, and I plan to back it up with careful reasoning and evidence, but I needed to start this post with that simple and clear point.
It happened around 4pm today, I got an email from Jeff on an otherwise uninteresting and boring day saying that we were featured in the LA Times. It took me a second to register, and a few minutes for this to sink in, but eventually it did, and I realized how significant this really is for DressMonkey, and for me. No matter how small the print, placement, or even tone of the article, this has brought me up onto a high greater than anything I've experienced before. One thing that no book about business, no professor, nor anybody thinking they know anything can tell you is how you'll feel when risks that you have taken, crazy ideas which made sense to no one but yourself, and late nights spent slaving away for some distant and undefined goal are all somehow legitimized. Thats exactly how I feel right now, I don't know why it happened, I really don't but I feel absolutely amazing. Someone in a position to supply even a shred of legitimacy to this crazy-ass thing we call DressMonkey has just bestowed upon me something that is beyond words, and beyond value. This is why I was poor for a year and a half, barely eeking by by the seat of my pants. This is why I took the bus and ate dumplings every day. This is why I missed Ziggy Marley (one of my now favorite reggae artists) when he came to Shanghai because I couldn't afford to go. This is why I worked 14 hour days at home. This is what being an entrepreneur is all about.
Don't get me wrong, we haven't gone public, seen an enormous spike in orders, or passed even the beginning of the hard parts that will surely surface over the next few years. But what we have done is achieved our first moment of solid, serious recognition and that has brought me to a mood and feeling far beyond money or material things ever could bring.
I should note that I've had a pretty difficult few months up until now. Our order levels weren't increasing the way we had hoped, my girlfriend left me, and I was in utter disarray for a solid chunk of time there. That came out in apathy towards blog posting among other things that I feel are now well behind me. And then things started to turn around a few weeks ago. We got a solid set of order volumes, new press, our wicked awesome movie finally came out, and we got some spankin new fabrics up online. I cannot begin to tell you how opposite I feel now of my former self. I told my friends today that I was on Cloud 17, and it's true.
I'm not looking to promote anything, tell you a funny story, or do anything but vent my happiness in this post. I have no explanation for my overwhelming sense of joy, (well, maybe part of it was because a LA Times reporter called my product descriptions 'hilarious') I have never felt so reinvigorated about anything in my entire life. This feeling I'm having right now is why I started this company, this is why I'll continue to do work for this company, and this is why I don't have a single regret about anything, not one. Time to drink a bottle of champagne for the first time ever that I paid for by myself, this company, and we deserve it.
No, I'm not getting married, for once Jeff is actually closer to that than I am, with someone far hotter than your girlfriend. My love life now consists of DressMonkey and ordering-in. But it's all gravy (do people still say that?), we're going gangbusters here at DM HQ! We've had a recent spike in orders following the post-Christmas lull, probably due to the flood of press we've just been getting.
I'm more than excited, because we've got a few great articles written about us and also the fact that we just completed ANOTHER wedding order. The suits came out great, and I hope that he's as satisfied as I was to measure and generally admire the fabric and craftsmanship of that there order. I can't wait to see pictures of all the spiffy grooms all done up, and hopefully that will mean we are that much closer to formally launching our wedding line. Right now we are sort of ad-hoc with that process, fielding orders only when they approach us, but I feel that with the success of this order, you'll start to see some new changes around here at DM, notably wedding offerings but finally we'll expedite the release of our pants line. You asked for it, we're responding and hopefully we'll have them up soon, but no timetables yet gang.
Things are all swell here in Shanghai, I'm starting to really enjoy the single life here, now I know what people keep talking about when they refer to Shanghai as sin city. Also, you'd be surprised how efficient one can be without a girlfriend. I have developed a complex algorithm that I'd like to impart on all of you with a ball and chain:
Man + Girlfriend + Full Time Job/Own Business = Inefficiency + Stress
Man + Full Time Job/Own Business = Efficiency + Freedom
That formula will change lives, bank on it.
In other news, we've got a whole new line of Bamboo fabrics that we'll be publishing by the end of the week. I'm excited to announce these, its been a long time coming and they are finally getting published online. I'm now struggling with uploading all this to our server, and it being in the US causes slow-load problems because of China's less than awesome network speeds. What I would give to go back to Switzerland or Japan where files download or upload faster than you can even realize you clicked submit.
We've got a great new employee named Xiao Pu (don't laugh at the name) who helps me with quality control. I head hunted him from our previous factory and he knows the DM 101 better than anyone as he helped develop our original line of blazers during MMM3, MMM2B, and even MMM back in the day. He's great, and your jackets will look that much better now that he's on board.
Thats it from me, hope all is well!
While I wanted my first blog back in a long while to be about Dressmonkey, this is the only creative outlet on the web I have so I felt like publicizing my frustrations on a generally shitty day. I promise more juicy entrepreneur fodder in my next post.
Every so often, the world smiles at you. Unfortunately, today wasn't one of those days. I had to book a flight back to the US and the cheapest one I could find was one for almost 1500 USD. I blame my brother for picking an obscure place like Tampa Bay Florida to get married. Apparently flights to Hartford, where I'm from, are about 300 dollars cheaper; strike one, Florida. I have never made this public before, but I have a profound hatred of Florida. I mean, I don't hate the people or the way of life, I just hate the weather. Really, how can anyone live in a place, especially seniors, where walking out of an air-conditioned house is 1 time out of 4 practically suicide? I think Florida and I fell off while I was waking up at 5am for early swim practice for 7 straight years of winter vacations devoted to improving my freestyle. While Florida can be indescribably hot at times, Florida in December, at 5 in the morning with an unheated pool is something comparable to what the passengers in the Titanic must have been through. Again, this has nothing to do with the people (the last thing I need to do is piss off potential customers from the FINE state of Florida), this is just a general rant about life being poopy for a day.
Well, in addition to getting angry at Florida, today I had to bicker with a supplier who, 2 months after we had bought our fabric from, decided that we hadn't paid her in full. After quite literally an hour on the phone with her, I convinced her to talk to our factory's accounting department and check directly with the source of the payment. An hour later, after hearing the typical whining at frequencies that only certain. Shanghainese women can produce, I got a subtle text message saying "I'm sorry, it was our mistake." Damn right, it was your mistake, now I want my hour back.
The third horseman of the apocalypse of my day today? The fact that my roommate decided that she couldn't afford the rent that she's paying now and that she wanted to live with a friend in the boondocks of Shanghai. This means that now I have to find another roommate, not go to Hong Kong this weekend so I can save money in the event that I have to pay rent myself for a while, and be generally ticked off for an indefinite period of time.
The only thing I could do after a day like today was go to the gym and work out for 2 ours. That really helped, I feel like a train hit me but at least I'm not thinking about how crappy today was. Well, I did just write about it.
I promise more entrepreneurial exploits in my next post. Sorry for the rant!
