Yes, it was 2 summers ago when we first launched our eco-friendly Rebagz at the California Gift Show in Los Angeles. The buzz around eco-fashion was just beginning to build, and it’s amazing to think how far it’s come since that July 2007. Granted, I’d been selling our bags at a few events a couple of months prior to that, just to see what kind of response I got. But I consider the opening day of the gift show as our true launch.
I have to laugh when I think back to it because I went into that trade show with what I thought was a very down-to-earth, realistic attitude. Given that this particular show had been shrinking in attendance and that we were a brand new exhibitor there, I knew it was a distinct possibility that, though we might meet a lot of interested boutique owners, there was a chance we might not write any orders for our eco-friendly handbags during the show itself.
The show ran from a Friday in mid-July through the following Monday. I figured if we were going to write any orders, it’d probably be on Sunday, though I hoped maybe, just maybe we might write one or two on Saturday.
So what happened when someone wanted to write an order on opening day, after we’d only been open for business for a few hours? Justin Bird, an amazing college student who was a godsend that summer, looked at me and I looked at him – and we realized we had everything in place except a procedure for taking orders. Oh, we had the order forms, catalogs, price lists and all that. But we hadn’t yet actually thought through the order process or practiced it.
Our first order was a comedy of errors and I’m forever grateful to Gesture Boutique for being patient with us while we worked through our mistakes with them. I even had to send Justin chasing after the buyer – twice! – because we’d forgotten key bits of information, like their telephone number, shipping address – tiny details like that.
It’s a good thing you can’t see how red my face is, even now as I think about it 2 years later.
We also did the Accessories Show in Vegas a month later – that’s where that booth photo was taken. Got a good response there too. So, much to my relief, I realized I was onto something.
Last week we took some time out at the office, went into our warehouse and popped the cork on some champagne. There was chocolate cake too, ’cause what’s a birthday without some cake? Justin went back to finish up at Cal Poly up in San Luis Obispo but we still keep in touch. He even built a beautiful eco-friendly bike out of bamboo! If I can find the photo I’ll add it in here because it’s a thing of beauty.
I’m so grateful to so many people -
- our current office staff (Rorey, Shasta, Bonny and Laura)
- our sweet broker Malu over in the Philippines
- all of our weavers and sewers
- my brilliant publicist Lisa Elia
- the Wild Web Women at Web Marketing Therapy for helping work on my web outreach issues 
- and, of course, all our wonderful customers and supporters like you. (I have to give a special shout out here to the folks at Gesture who were so tolerant on our first official day in business.)
Thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of my eco-happy heart.
XOXO Marty
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