the blahs
I have the blahs. Loss of appetite, sleeping more than usual (8 hours during the week, 12 on weekends), feeling unproductive and lacking energy. I force myself to present full energy at work and then I come home drained. It takes effort to return emails. Ugh.
On the plus side, my assistant is super efficient and wonderful. Fast learner, no attitude problem. Good sense of humor, good sense of style. I absolutely love having competent people around me. I almost get a high off of it.
The New York tradeshow was super busy, busier than it had been in years for Spring. I’m very excited about it, because it was my debut collection. The last couple of weeks has been filled with sending out samples, photos, swatches. We’ll see how many orders we get. The buying season isn’t over yet so I’m just gonna save my excitement until then. In the midst of all this, while wonderful, I couldn’t help but wonder if I would be doing all this stuff if my sales guys were up to snuff. Isn’t this the kind of stuff sales people do? Send out swatches and photos and linesheets? At my last jobs, our showroom took care of that part. Hrm. Maybe I was previously spoiled?
The big drama at work now is that the CEO thinks we waste too much electricity and wants to turn off every other light in the main office. As it is, the light in my office is poor, so much so that I call it “the cave” and I have to go to the main room to match colors. (Samples to control skins, leathers to knits, and so forth.)
I miss drawing. Danielle’s sketches have me thinking I should probably get in some practice (I only work with flats 99% of the time at work), but like I said, I have the blahs.
Help a girl out? Give me a topic to blog about? What do you want to know?
on August 16, 2006 on 2:51 pm
Hey VC,
Good post. You whetted our appetite with a few little snippets of what you feel a showroom/sales office staff should carry out, and left it hanging. You could post for a week on that alone and never even scratch the surface.. Why not expound on what one should expect and anticipate from showroom personnnel ? If you don’t think that worthy of covering, why not write about what makes a good and interesting fashion blog.
I think our fascination with blogging is slowing down and people are growing tired of some of the slop being offered up. Tell us why you provide links to the “associates” and try to give us further insight as to why fashion bloggers blog. Tell us why you got involved in this intially.
on August 16, 2006 on 4:39 pm
I will second the recommendation for a post on expectations for the sales guys; it’s a side of the business that I don’t know enough about!
on August 16, 2006 on 7:12 pm
Here’s a topic I would love to hear you talk about. Reviving the SF Bay Area’s fashion industry. We just had our first formal meeting last Monday at the Renaissance Center about really networking together on things like sourcing and production. What’s you thoughts about that?
on August 16, 2006 on 7:55 pm
I’d also like to hear more about the SF industry – beyond the once-great now-sad Levi Strauss & Co. what else is going on in SF?
I’d also get a kick out of seeing some of your illustration work… especially after you nailed me yesterday. Oh yes, I’ve got something to prove now – I must draw something that even VC can’t pick apart =D
on August 18, 2006 on 3:56 am
This isn’t worthy of an entire topic, but what do you think is the best light in which to match colors? I always want to go outside to check my lab dips but the colors have to match under nasty flourescent lights in the stores. I have horrible lights at work too so that doesn’t help my problem any. PS- post about the SF fashion industry!
on September 12, 2008 on 8:02 pm
[...] touched on the topic of the role of salespeople for an apparel manufacturer earlier on my own blog and some expressed interest in reading more about what I had to say on the matter, and I do try to [...]