5 Weeks Until Launch – Change of Plan – Jake + Maya [Kids] Journal

It has been a pretty interesting week.

5 weeks until planned launch and I am definitely starting to get stressed about the whole thing. Fabrics being printed, samples being made. New website is underway. Labels printed, hang-tags ready to go. Photo campaign being discussed. Marketing strategy in place. Press releases done.

Although there was a lot of things happening, I didn’t have that much to do myself last week, as it was all kind of out of my hands but I just had this feeling of being busy all the time. Busy doing what ? Busy being stressed !

Sleep was restless and way too short most nights. Something didn’t feel right.

During one of the late night/early morning awakenings, I made a decision and then suddenly, my mind seemed clearer and much calmer. I made a decision to NOT launch this collection to retailers this season. I decided that it wasn’t the right thing to do, for many reasons. ( A clear advantage of having a small company is that you can change plans, even at the last minute, if you really feel like it.)

I want to sell directly to our customers. I want to personally connect with and inspire our customers (not through other retailers).

There is a message that I want to get across. That message is that we can do better, for ourselves and for our children. I want to encourage people to be more mindful of ourselves and our environment. I want to give people an opportunity to be less wasteful by providing them with better choices. I want to encourage people to slow down the pace of their lives and their consumption.

This new collection that I am creating is about ALL of those things. It is about doing the right thing for our environment, ourselves and others. This has to come directly from us/me, otherwise our message/s may get lost in translation or lost all together. On top of all that, we can skip the retailers mark-up, which is at least double the wholesale price and offer our customers a much more reasonably priced product. Good, right ?

However, a launch won’t be a launch unless we can create a bit of a buzz, so I will create a Kickstarter campaign in the next few weeks to enable you to find out more about the collection and to give you a chance to help us make this a huge success. I will keep you posted.

Here is a sneak peek of a few samples in working progress.