Viv wishes the happiest of holidays to you and yours!

xo

Hat from KnitandCrochet2009 on Etsy

Vivian Sunshine Crawford says hello!

She was born November 4, in a hospital room overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, on one of the last days of San Francisco’s late-blooming summer.

Pardon the cliche — not to mention the pun — but she’s the light of my life! Having a baby is so much more meaningful and amazing than I could ever have imagined.

See more from Viv at janettecrawford.tumblr.com!

A bad case of “pregnancy brain” and a heavy workload put this blog on hiatus much earlier than I’d intended — and now this baby girl is due at any moment, so who knows for how long I’ll be taking off from regular posting!

To catch you up on a few things I’ve been doing, last month I was able to share a list of my favorite things on Joslin Taylor’s fabulous blog Simple Lovely, and a few weeks ago I was the subject of Refinery29 San Francisco’s “How to Dress When You’re Super Pregnant.” So fun! I plan to share more pregnant looks when I can.

If you or anyone you know would be interested in contributing to FLP while I’m giving this baby the best introduction to the world that I can, let me know at janette (at) fashionlovespeople.com — I have plenty of content, just not enough time. :)

Much love! xoxo

Jon and I had never been to Europe
+
The baby comes in October
=
Vacation time!

From August 10-26, we visited London, Dublin, Paris and Florence. It was the trip of a lifetime! (Though hopefully we’ll have many more!)

One of my favorite parts was the fact that we’re 28 and 30 years old and were still able to experience so many firsts and have so much wonderment about it. From flying first class for the first time (they gave us pajamas!) to soaking in the history and beauty of each city we visited, this trip was so worth the wait — I was probably able to appreciate it now more than I ever would have before. And who knew, but being pregnant can get you some extra-special benefits, like getting ushered to the front of the mile-long line to the Eiffel Tower! Oui oui.

And now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, and even though Storenvy stuff is busier than ever, more great brand features coming soon here on FLP! xo

From top to bottom, loosely: In London — afternoon tea and “hire bikes” in Hyde Park over sunset. In Dublin — bangers and mash and a 360 view of the beautiful countryside south of the city. In Paris — beautiful not-overly-manicured landscaping all over the city, the bathrooms at Colette (my first bidet!!), la Tour Eiffel herself, a vintage pair of designer frames that I didn’t buy… but wish I had, my favorite cherub at the Louvre and a beautiful produce stand. In Tuscany, on the far left and far right — Pisa Tower and a beautiful hidden courtyard in Florence.

Lena Corwin’s ~>O<~

Lena’s aesthetic (and even her approach to blogging) are so down-to-earth and lovely. As I’ve been buying things to decorate our apartment, I even find myself thinking, “would this fit Lena’s aesthetic?” She also had a baby last year and writes a beautiful blog about textiles for babies that I love as well, Wee Textile.

Ecouterre

The quintessential green fashion blog, of course! Jasmin, Yuka, Jill and team do a killer job of staying on top of need-to-know eco fashion news. Inhabitat and Ecouterre are both examples of news blogs done right.

The Jealous Curator

I met Danielle Krysa last January at Alt Design Summit and am now so glad to call her my friend. Her curatorial skills are second to none — that’s what we tune into the blog for. But in addition, she’s a former award-winning agency art director who took some time off from her career to have a baby boy, and during that break, she launched her blog to spur an all-new career: a gallery curator, which she officially became this past spring with her first show. She originally wrote her blog anonymously, but a handful of us at Alt helped encourage her to out herself and share her work with the world, and isn’t it fabulous? On a personal note recently, she’s given me such a welcome perspective on balancing a devotion to your work with a devotion to your child. Great stuff all around.

Design for Mankind

Whereas The Jealous Curator covers art that makes her think, “Damn, I wish I’d thought of that,” the career that Erin Loechner has shaped for herself sometimes makes me think, “Damn, I wish I were that”! On Design for Mankind she curates excellent design, art and fashion, but my favorite posts are her Design for MYkind, where she posts personal outfits, musings and all the sweetness that she really truly is as a person.

The Sartorialist

Need I say more? Scott Schman’s eye amazes me. Still the best people, places and style in street style.

Closet Visit

Jeana Sohn in LA knows some of the most beautiful and stylish women I’ve ever seen — or if she doesn’t, she certainly makes it look that way, which of course is an art all its own. She photographs women in their homes, wearing different beautiful outfits in different beautiful rooms, typically including their closets. These homes often end up on my Pinterest account. Note: Closet Visit isn’t actually a blog and doesn’t have a traditional RSS feed, so I subscribe to Jeana’s personal blog for bits of her style and preview images each time she posts a new Visit.

And a handful of honorable mentions, because I just can’t help it:

• Refinery29‘s daily emails — for  general finger-on-the-pulse fashion tidbits, and especially for My Style galleries of the homes of indie women in fashion. (More popular fodder for Pinterest.)
• Well Spent (formerly Commerce With A Conscience) — The only men’s fashion blog I read (and regularly contribute to as well).
• Simple Lovely — Joslyn Taylor in Dallas has a beautiful home, two beautiful daughters who she’s dearly in love with and simple, lovely style in just about every area.
• sfgirlbybay — More Pinterest interiors fodder. Total eye candy.
• Arrow & Arrow — Brought to you by the Austin-based owners of Spartan and Bows + Arrows. Great random bits, and a good dose of love for Texas.
• Fashioni.st — San Francisco street style from Mai Le, who personifies San Francisco style both personally and through her lens.

What are your favorites — blogs you can’t miss without feeling like you’re missing out on something special?

(I mean, even well-edited lists could always use some fresh inspiration, right?… :)

I’m having a baby!

Due October 28, just felt the first kick yesterday, won’t know the sex until next week, still feeling like this whole process is incredibly CRAZY — I think that covers all the main questions. :)

Got some great blog posts coming up soon! Much love!

xo

If you have a minute right now, I would really appreciate your help. Please sign in and vote for my panel at South by Southwest Interactive in Austin next year!

» Empowering Conscientious Consumers: Take the Power Back

I’ll discuss case studies of brands/concepts that educate and empower responsible consumers through the web, along with:

• Buster Benson, creator of the iPhone app Locavore, helping you identify seasonal produce
• Brent Schulkin, founder of Carrotmob and Virgance, organizing win-win situations for buyers and sellers

The panel is up for public voting now, though final cuts will be made by SXSW execs, so your vote could really help me out. And I hear that they really like affirming comments… do I ask too much?!

And while you’re at it, also check out my husband Jon’s panel about social shopping and vote for it if you like. He’ll talk about our work on Storenvy, where we provide free online stores for indie business owners.

Voting ends Friday, so click fast. I really appreciate it. Thanks everyone!

Image cropped from The Broken Family Band album artwork.

Did you miss me? About a week ago Jon and I took a short vacation to Disneyland! But it’s taken me a while to get the wind back in my sails since we got back. It’s just that time of year, I guess, for vacations and transitions and the like.

Last week was my first time visiting Disney-anything. And guess what, I loved it! Disneyland wasn’t my idea, but Jon and enough friends persuaded me of the magic I was missing out on that I eventually came around. And there was something extra-special about visiting the very spot of Walt’s original vision for making Disney a destination — we geeked out on Disneyland history the entire time, devouring Wikipedia pages on our iPhones while we waited in line for rides.

My favorite stops at the park were the Tiki Room, a campy animatronic song-and-dance show that originated in 1963 (the truest in-person performance I’ll ever see from that era!), and Magical, the nightly fireworks show. Such imagination, and quality! I just loved it. Have you guys been? What were your favorite parts?

Last November, I launched the small business “experiment” of Fashion Loves People ♥ Kirk, a line of organic tees printed with vintage fashion illustrations by J. Kirk Davis. Kirk and I are partners in it, and we release a new design every few months.

I set out on this venture for the sake of putting myself in the shoes of the designers I write about here, and my plan from the beginning was to share the process with you along the way. So in a fit of transparency, here’s what I’ve struggled with and, hopefully, how I’ve made the most of it.

This is a doozy of a post, but hopefully it sheds some light on the world of the independent designer. (Disclaimer: Not that I am one.)

Struggle #1: Price point

How pricing works. Brands like ours have two options for their pricing structures: Either direct-to-consumer (DTC) or wholesale. In a DTC model, your profits are the difference between your hard costs and your list price — so if the base cost of your product is $10 and the list price is $20, you make $10.

In a wholesale model, your profits are the difference between your hard costs and your wholesale price, and your retailer’s profits are the difference between your wholesale price and their list price. (Whew.) So if the base cost of your product is $10 and your wholesale price is $15*, the retailer will list it for $30**. You make $5 and the retailer makes $15.

*Sellers typically make a lower margin in a wholesale price structure than DTC.
**Retail markup is at least x2, sometimes more.

In the wholesale model, the sellers themselves most often still sell their goods online for the same list price as a retailer will use, because you don’t want to undersell your retailers. (Especially if your product hangtag has your website address on it, you don’t want shoppers to find your products for sale on your site for less than they paid at retailer. They’d probably feel ripped off.) In this case, when a shopper buys directly from the seller, avoiding the middle-man of the retailer suddenly gives them a wonderfully higher margin than usual.

Where we ended up. When we first launched our shirts, we had a DTC model and sold them online for $28. But, sales weren’t that great. People can buy graphic tees online for a lot less than that, so why spend that much from us?

If I may answer that — $28 covered the excellent organic cotton shirt we selected, the “upgrade” eco-friendly water-based inks, the custom-printed tag, the custom illustration and design and, of course, a touch of profit.

But, it turned out that people had to see and feel the shirts in person to appreciate what they were getting. So, we turned our focus toward getting into retail shops. To do this and make any profits, we had to increase our price point to align with a wholesale pricing structure. This was a really difficult move for me to make: I didn’t want to take me and my friends out of my own target audience, as I’m not usually one to splurge on expensive t-shirts.

But on the positive side, besides the benefit of the exposure of retail shops, a higher price point at the retail level would also allow us to align with other similar tees on the market — some even coming in a good $25 more than ours. (Some that use the same base tee that I use, even.)

We increased our list price in May to $48 per shirt, and so far it has been working at retail. Only time will tell.

Struggle #2: Selling myself

To potential customers. When you have a thing you want to succeed, who do you turn to first? Your friends and family. Hopefully none of mine are sick of hearing about new t-shirt design launches — but, there’s a fair chance some are. Or at least in my mind, there is. I hate asking favors of people. I’m also not crazy about getting such a low response rate from people I like — I have to tell myself that I’m just as bad at responding to mass emails. (Because I really am.) Anyway, it can be hard.

For our next shirt launch, I will be more discerning about my email list. I haven’t kept a Fashion Loves People follower / customer email list, but I’m compiling one now as a starting point for going forward. I will email people who have an interest in FLP, rather than, well, everyone I know. I think this will be better for both me and my recipients.

To retailers. Selling to retailers is an entirely different game… but also hard. Very competitive. Several months into the life of our line, as I was courting a few retailers, John McClain at Habitat Shoes graciously agreed to give me some much-needed advice on pitching to retailers.

He told me I needed a linesheet — a catalog of our offerings with their wholesale prices listed. In my next retailer meeting, though I rocked the linesheet, I learned that I also needed an order form. Now that I have my own of each, I feel so pro. And everyone seems to think I know what I’m doing.

What I still don’t have down is seasonal timing. Retail buyers place their orders for any given season months before it rolls around. (To allow for brand production time.) I’ve heard a lot of, “We’ve already done all our fall buying. Call back in a few months?” You’d have to ask someone smarter than me for what the buyer’s calendar is.

Kylie Grater from Early Jewelry will tell you the virtues of going to tradeshows, which is where she got her line off the ground. I’m not there yet, but her business advice in general has been priceless. Which leads me to…

Struggle #3: Asking for help

Contrary to the advice that many people will give you, I have had a hard time asking favors of friends. Maybe it’s that the friends I’ve asked are all so talented — I want to value them as highly as they deserve, and doing so monetarily can be difficult when I run a brand that makes no money.

So, I think I have solved this: The trick is to ask favors of people who aren’t already working as a professional in whatever area you’re asking them for help in. Ask the friend who wants to get into it, not the one who already is. This may make perfect sense to you, but I had to learn it the hard way. The work you get may not be quite as awesome, but at least you didn’t go into debt.

And remember: Advice is free. Ask for it constantly, from friends and from heroes. I so wish I did a better job of this.

Struggle #4: “Just doing it”

I’d like to tell you a story. Last spring, I approached many retailers about carrying my line, and one who graciously responded was Greenloop. Greenloop said, “send us your product images and let’s make this happen.” But I didn’t like my product images at the time. Greenloop probably would have gladly accepted them, but I was playing the perfectionist and ended up not following through on the opportunity altogether. That was DUMB. (And hopefully the door is still open.)

I have other stories like this. Many times, I am my own worst enemy. But I’m learning.

Struggle #5: Profits

We haven’t actually made any. Yet. But we’re working on it! And at least I don’t have any debt.

But, did you know that small businesses can’t get small-business loans until they’ve been in business for at least six months, and they can’t get a small-business line of credit for two to three years? This is what I was told at the Austin Small Business Development Center, anyway. That shocked me — what about a restauranteur, who would need loads of capital upfront? They have to have it saved up personally? I thought this was the Entrepreneur Age.

In our case, I was able to personally cover the costs of our first few print orders, and by the time I was ordering my fifth or so round of printing (including several reprints), I had them paid for in advance by drumming up a few pre-orders. I’m also lucky enough that my printer is deferring my payments until I have the money (retailers don’t pay upfront; pay-on-delivery is pretty standard), but not everyone has that convenience. And my payments have been for measly print orders — imagine if I were outsourcing the production of a full garment line, where the costs would be so much higher. I still don’t understand how small independent designers do it, like Samantha Pleet or Mociun or Lorick Lady.

Struggle #6: Making sales

Like I mentioned, sales haven’t been through the roof. Fortunately, affirmation has been, which has meant the world. But we wouldn’t mind getting past the point of just getting by. From my experience at Storenvy, I see brands all the time that print lots of merchandise and then don’t sell nearly as much as they’d planned… and as much as I’d hoped otherwise, we are not immune.

But for my next product launch, I like to think I have some tricks up my sleeve. I’ll be stepping out of the box and taking some chances, thanks to some very amazing people. Stay tuned. Here’s hoping it works!

***

I know myself enough to know that my role in the world is not of “creator,” but of “sharer.” That’s why I write this blog: To share good design with a good backstory.

I didn’t start this apparel line to become a creator. I started it to enhance my perspective as a sharer. And while I have always had such a soft spot in my heart for supporting independent designers…

I now have an even softer one.

(Like being a better tipper after you’ve worked the tables yourself.)

Thanks for reading.

Remember how I just moved to Austin in April? Well the adventure continues: I’m now living in San Francisco for the summer!

Crazy, I know. In a nutshell, Jon and I came here to follow a great opportunity for Storenvy. The opportunity ended up falling through for reasons beyond our control, but we decided to stay anyway, because who wouldn’t jump at the chance to live in San Francisco for a summer? We were only house-sitting in Austin (thanks Miranda!) and had no lease tying us down, so the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

Moving around this much lately has made me think so much about how much “stuff” we own. Jon and I have a full household of belongings in a storage unit in Austin, and even though I got rid of a lot of stuff in the move there, I can’t wait to downsize even more when we go back. Here in SF I have only about a half of my closet, basic toiletries, basic kitchen supplies and the bare bones of furniture. (I even brought too many toiletries. When you’re condensing your essentials into a few suitcases and boxes, that’s crazy.) Let this be a lesson: Less really is more!

We just moved this week into an awesome old flat in the Mission on a two- to three-month lease. I seem to have new “how cool is this city?!” moments day in and day out — love it! A few snapshots from our stay so far…

Our new backyard has a lemon tree!

Message in a bottle: The “card” I bought for a dear friend’s wedding gift, from The Curiosity Shoppe on Valencia.

Me & Jon in Tiburon. (Oops, funny face.)

Our summer address.

“Whatever happened to pre-dict-a-bil-i-ty…” I can’t tell you how much I’ve been craving old episodes of Full House since we’ve been here. There must be something in the air.