Childrens Products, Sore Feet, and Vegas

Hi Everyone,

Vegas, Vegas, Vegas. Holy Crap! The ABC Kids Expo was a crazy experience. The BabyLegs booth was on fire! We knew it would be a busy, but we had no idea this many retailers and exhibitors were in love with these adorable little leg and arm warmers. Woobee Kids and BellySock also opened new accounts, and it was great for our products to be able to attach our information to all the BabyLegs info going out.

I am very grateful for my set-up in the BL booth, but sharing space with BabyLegs has its good and bad points (mostly all good). When people come to see BabyLegs they are very focused. Retailers have a lot of decisions to make when ordering and are often overwhelmed with all the styles - around 100. Making those decisions in addition to all the other wonderful vendors surrounding them is totally overwhelming. Many buyers have a list of the vendors they need to order from and want to stay on track. No room in their day to find new lines. We were lucky to be able to slip our line sheets in with the BL's, but I can't help but wonder if I had more space with Woobee's displayed and layed out properly how they would do. Next year the three lines (BabyLegs, Woobee Kids, and BellySock) will have a 20 x 10 booth. So that should be much better for display options.

Loads of great products!!! The shopping at the end was a little crazy. I picked up some cute things for Lola and Ava, but I tried not to get out of control. So many parent owned companies. Check out Bink Link pacifier attachers. If my girls still used binkies i would own all of these! Another parent owned company and these parents are hard working and really good people. I love to know the stories behind products so I can support good people. There are way to many cool companies out there to have to support ones run by a**holes.

I'll talk about more great companies each post. Enjoy your weekend. I am still trying to go through all the contacts we made at the show...it is an enormous pile.

Shipping for the Working Mom Sideshow

I am lame these days about blogging. It's not for a lack of things to say, it's from the lack of time to say it. I am so swamped! I'll stop my whining. I sound like a broken record...I'm so busy - blah, blah ,blah. This craziness is totally self-inflicted. I am just determine to grow Woobee Kids until I have achieved Woobee World Domination and doing that is exhausting while raising two young girls.

I feel like I am a total sideshow, complete with a beard and stench of cotton candy and corn dogs (oooo...i love corn dogs). I bet many of you business owning moms can relate to the day I had Friday. I started the day thinking I would do something really fun with the girls, and then everything went terribly wrong.

First there was my lesson in shipping.

I am bringing in a whole new Woobee fabric line for this fall and spent the early morning trying to pay for the shipping I arranged from LA the day before (that was unexpectedly time consuming to do). Apparently, you can't pay for shipping until the truck has picked up and logged your shipment, and for whatever reason the company will not just take your credit card number to charge you when this data is available. You actually have to keep calling back until all the info is in their system and then they'll take your money, but not a minute before. Anyway, I had arranged for a COD delivery so I could get the product moving asap and the company quoted me a $55 fee for the COD. Well when I called in the morning to pay the price had changed to $189.00! Imagine my surprise when it cost half as much as the total shipping charge. This little bit of information sent me into a tailspin. I spent a long period of time getting everyone to be cool about cancelling the COD charge in mid-transaction.

Then the day begins.

So, I started my Friday at the post office in my pj's at 8:30 a.m. sending a check overnight to my fabric company to avoid the obnoxious COD charge. I convenienced them to allow me to fax them a copy of the postal receipt in place of having the actual check in hand. I had to rush home so I could relieve my husband from his fatherly duties and leave for work. I threw the girls in the car so I could meet a friend and give her the 5 Woobees she ordered. After we met her at Fresh Flours (and getting my girls in and out of a coffee shop is no small task), back in the car and run home to fax the fabric vendor the overnight mail receipt so they'll email the shipping company and release the COD request. Back in the car to start the 35 mile drive to my seamstress in Everett to pick up some samples I need for the ABC Kids Expo. The girls are being pretty tolerate at this point, but their patience is getting thin. Luckily my seamstress has a funny little dog and a swing set so this may be the only "fun" time they'll be getting before nap. Did I mention that Lola was up at 5:15 am - therefore I was up at 5:15am. She unfortunately fell asleep for 20 minutes on the drive (which is what I was trying to avoid). By the time we drive home it is 12:00 and time for lunch then hopefully nap...wrong! Lunch time was no problem, but nap - clearly the 20 minutes was enough to reset Lola for good times. Neither Ava or Lola took naps, but I did manage to spend endless time trying to get them to go down. After I resigned to the fact that I would not be getting any peace to work on all the marketing info I needed to put together for this show, the girls went back in the car and we headed down to BabyLegs to pick up the new fabric samples from overseas and then to my Seattle manufacturers to drop off materials I had at home and purchase orders. Whew. By this time I am so tired and running on caffeine for energy. Now, it is 4:30 pm and time to head home and start dinner. The girls are a little punchy from no nap and I am just about ready for the Little Einsteins DVD to relieve me from my parental duties (I admit with a little shame).

It sucks that this was the girls day. Is making a point to be a work-at-home mom so I can be with the girls really benefiting them? Wouldn't they be better off having fun with other children than running errands with me? Um, yeah. They would be. However, good childcare cost a buttload of money and we are just not there yet financially. Do I try to make all that running around fun? Yes. We sing a lot in the car and make up stories as we go along. My girls have great imaginations and I try to feed that as much as possible. This is the way I justify dragging them along.

I know there are other mothers out there with the same type of days going on around them. I find women's stamina unbelievable. My husband is amazing and a terrific father - he bathes the girls, packs their lunches and does laundry. But, a day like Friday would bury him.

PS - Happy post-Labor Day!