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When you get a couple hundred soapmakers from all over the country together in a room, there’s a lot of energy.
We were 95% women, but certainly not all the same. There were exuberant Texans with lots of jewelry and sass, greying mid-westerners who raised goats, and black-clad urban gen-xers (or are they Ys or Zs? I’ve lost track) who’ve been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. Still, being soapers, we were kind of a tribe.
For four days we networked and partied and attended workshops on a lot of topics, ranging from technical how-tos to legal, financial, and marketing advice
On the last night, I went through all my notes to pull together a list of highlights and action items. I’m trying to avoid the tendency to immediately get caught up in life-as-usual – in short, to fergettaboutit – till I run across my handouts during an office purge a year from now.
Anyway, I’m back now with fresh inspiration and new things to try, plus some nice memories of Portland.
Five things about Portland:
People are friendly, helpful, and seem genuinely happy to be there. Even the security people at the airport have an attitude that seems to say, Hey! Cool! I live in Portland!
There’s an air of civilized calm on the streets downtown compared to our frantic east-coast cities. Crosswalks are respected. Traffic is law-abiding. Life seems less stressful.
As expected, the city is crawling with youthful types who look like they’ve just biked to work. Some of them, and I don’t mean hippies or the homeless, are walking around barefoot, including at the airport. What’s up with that?
There are two rivers, clean air, lot of pine trees, and sunshine (although we were assured that sunshine isn’t the norm)
And finally there’s Mt. Hood, a classic cone-shaped, snow- covered mountain, looming over the scene giving a serene sense of proportion to the place.
Some pics from Portland:
Like this:
If you’ve ever done any kind of a business workshop, you’ve no doubt been exposed to the SWOT analysis. It’s a quick assessment of your business’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
The most interesting category to me is Threats: things like new competition, regulatory changes, accidents, and supply disruption that can derail the business instantly or slowly over time. The hope is that, by anticipating threats and doing a little “what if…,” we won’t be blindsided when stuff happens.
Still, in spite of this effort, there’s always something. No sooner are things chugging along nicely than something unexpected rears up and whacks us on the head.
The latest demonstration of this fact-o-life came Thursday night in email form. I’d been pulling together my big annual order of the handmade paper we wrap our soap in. It’s a time-consuming process that involves looking at existing inventory and anticipating sales for each soap. This year we decided to brighten up the color palette by switching things around and adding some new papers, so that had to be factored in too.
Our papers are made to order in Thailand, and can take anywhere from three months to a year to get. Random things can affect the timing, like a monsoon season that starts early. (The papers need sunshine because they’re dried on racks outside.) Once the order is complete, it takes months to travel by boat to San Francisco and clear customs, and more weeks to arrive at our door on Cape Cod. Did I mention that we really have to plan ahead with this?
So Thursday night, I was not happy to get an email from Vicky, who imports the papers for us, telling me that the supplier in Thailand has closed his business. No more paper. Apparently he hasn’t been able to find enough workers to keep the operation going. His regular women have all taken factory jobs. Maybe it had something to do with the flooding that swept over Thailand last fall.
I could marvel at how interconnected we all are, but mostly I want to shriek. NO PAPER?! AIYIYI! I have enough paper to last me till mid-summer, and then what? Can we find another supplier? Should we re-design all the packaging?
Such is the life of a business owner. Stay tuned.
From now till the end of September, it’s crazy season at Summer House Soaps. Five days a week, Sarah, Priscilla, or Maggie will come to pack up for one of six farmer’s markets we’re selling at this summer – often arriving as early as 6:45 in the morning.
I’m the substitute for the days when someone can’t make it, plus I’ll be selling at several craft shows in July and August. I keep the cash boxes filled with bills and coins and enter the sales at the end of each day, while Julie stocks for the next day’s market. Our wholesale business also explodes during the summer, and we make, cut, wrap, pack, and ship between 1000 and 2000 bars of soap each week. (And of course I’ve got my second job.)
Phew! It’s a lot to keep up with. Fortunately, and I am blessed with a wonderful crew.
But this is nothing compared to what the farmers have to manage during the summer months. Every morning before loading up their trucks, they go out into the field and pick their day’s produce. One farmer I talked to is selling at 16 markets each week, plus running a farm stand, weeding, watering, tending his chickens and livestock, and supervising his employees.
And elsewhere on the Cape, retailers and restauranteurs are gearing up for the coming flood of visitors.
All winter and spring, we’ve been waiting for this moment. We brace for it, and welcome it. It’s the joy/craziness of living and working in a seasonal economy.
Anytime I feel proud of some facet of myself, it’s almost guaranteed to come around and whack me in the head.
The other day, for instance, John and I agreed to put up some people who will be walking from Providence to Boston to draw attention to the plight of Tibet. Most of the walkers will sleep on the floor in sleeping bags – an arrangement we’ve grown accustomed to from years of having our sons’ friends crash on our floor.
We’ve always had pretty relaxed house boundaries. Over the years, we’ve exchanged homes with British and French families, and hosted strangers who contacted us via GlobalFreeloaders.com. Having a business that operates out of the attached barn, I’m used to people coming and going. Most days in the summertime, someone is here at 6:45 a.m. loading up for a farmer’s market. Employees let themselves in every day, and there’s always a UPS delivery guy around.
I generally like living this way. I like feeling that my house is a permeable container rather than a fortress. I was pleased that our house could accomodate the Tibetan group, and even more, I was pleased with us, for being the kind of people who would welcome such a visit. Many people, I thought, were too private and protective of their stuff to live like we do. An open house could even be considered a step towards an open heart, towards reducing excessive attachment to I/me/mine.
Yes, you could say, I was feeling rather smug.
So of course, here’s what happened the very next morning. After a bad night’s sleep, I staggered out of bed at 8 a.m. I was sitting on the toilet with no clothes on, eyes half shut and my hair sticking up wildly, when I heard a small voice coming up the stairs from the living room below.
“Hello? Is Ann available?” It was Karl, the young man who makes the soap. He’d come in early that morning.
“NO I’M NOT!” I growled. “What is it?”
“Uh…could you come down here for a minute? I have some things I want to show you.”
“Karl…IS IT AN EMERGENCY???”
“Uh, no.”
“GOOD! I’ll see you at 9:00”.
Grumble. I guess I do have boundaries after all.
I ran across this term recently in another blog, and it stuck with me. It’s a succinct way of describing those moments when tightness triumphs over the impulse to be generous.
I had a Generosity Fail yesterday at the Orleans Farmers Market. A pleasant silver-haired guy stopped by my table to tell me he’d bought a lot of bars last season and given them to his family members as stocking stuffers. They were a big hit.
“That’s great to hear! Have you tried the soap yourself?”
He admitted he hadn’t.
“Well you should try it! Look, these seconds are just $2 and $3.”
At that moment my attention was drawn away by another customer at the table, and when I turned back, he had moved on.
Dope! I thought. Why didn’t you just pop a nice bar in a glassine bag and hand it to him? “Here….try it! It’s a gift.” Not because it was good marketing, which of course it was, but because it’s nice to give things away. The freedom to give people stuff is one of the perks of being the business owner. I also encourage my employees to err on the side of generosity when dealing with customers. Giving things away frees up energy. It’s fun.
In that instance, it wasn’t exactly a case of stinginess triumphing over generosity since I didn’t care at all about making an extra $2, but of simple inattentiveness to the opportunity of the moment.
Oh well. Generosity Fail. Better luck next time.
One of the central themes of Buddhism is that everything changes.
I had a full dose of this reality last spring, when Elaine and Priscilla, my production assistants at Summer House Soaps, both came to me in the same week to tell me that, for differing personal reasons, they had to leave.
I had just returned from the New York Gift Show when this came up, and business was jumping. Suddenly I was looking at the possibility of having no soap to sell as we headed into the busiest time of year. (You may have noticed a long gap in blogging during this rocky period of adjustment!)
Now – flash forward – the business has recreated itself in a robust new shape. In production, we now have Karl and Julie. Elaine and Priscilla have stayed connected through wrapping soap and selling at the farmer’s markets. Debbie and Sarah do the same.
Yesterday we all sat down together for a celebratory mid-season lunch on the screen porch. We feasted on chicken and shrimp and lots of locally grown vegies (click here for my new favorite summer soup: chilled minted borscht). I looked around at everyone’s faces and marvelled.
Change happens, things end. We resist it, but it happens anyway. And then something else arises in place of what was before, and it’s often very good.
There’s a scene in Beauty and the Beast (the story, not the movie) that captured my imagination as a child. Wandering about the Beast’s castle, Beauty discovers “a store-chamber piled with treasures a king and queen might have envied.” I thought of this scene last week when I was at the New York Gift Show in the Javits Center – it was truly a Palace of Stuff. Read the rest of this entry »
Summer House Soaps is going to the New York Gift Show in a couple of days. Getting ready has felt much like waiting to take the plunge on New Year’s Day….same anxiety, same “let’s get this show on the road” impatience. I’ve been waking up at 3:00 a.m. and having trouble going back to sleep, my mind filled with Things to Do. Read the rest of this entry »
This morning I walked down to the rocks overlooking the place where the marsh creek drains into the harbor, and sat for a while watching the birds. A flock of gulls hovered over the water, diving, hitting the surface, and swooping away. Perhaps there was a school of small fish in the creek. Whatever it was, those gulls were pretty excited.
I wondered: what percentage of dives were successful? How many fish per day did these gulls need to survive? Was this a demanding schedule, or were the pickings easy? Read the rest of this entry »
I started seeds today: tomatoes, chanterais melons, zucchini, eggplant, and brussels sprouts. I pushed the seeds into peat pellets and set them out in two lasagna pans covered with saran wrap. Once they sprout, I’ll put them in a sunny window. Come August, I hope my tiny seeds will have turned into a bounty of fruits and vegetables.
Starting seeds is a springtime ritual, a tiny miracle, and a rich metaphor. Read the rest of this entry »
