Excitement builds, production at hyperspeed

We accepted the offer to stock several more stores with our goods, and find ourselves realizing that we can only produce our goods so quickly…. a reality of growth means we are faced with a blessing and a challenge.

Over the weekend we stocked Revolve Fashion Shop, located at 5686 Mayfield Road in Lyndhurst with our soaps, scrubs, REblooming bags.  Lovely store, their focus is on better womens clothing as a resale shop.   Their store has a lovely boutique feel, with quality items.

We also stocked Grand River Bead, located at 19361 Detroit Road  Cleveland, OH 44116 with soap, scrubs and my wire crochet jewelry.  Eva Sherman, the owner, discovered our work through a recent gallery show I did called Pinned and Pined.  What a delightful woman, and a bright and vivacious gallery/shop/bead emporium.

And this afternoon Steve is stocking Bay Arts, located at 28795 Lake Road, Bay Village, OH  44140 (Located in the Huntington Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks).  They requested our Reblooming Bags, salt and sugar scrubs, soap gift sets and wire crochet jewelry.

Whew!  first round done with stocking stores… and the elves at Images in Bloom are working at hyper speed to produce more functional goods.  Our house smells like wonderful soaps, and looks like plastic bins of joy… and little bowls of beads, wire, pliers at my beading station (also known as my end table in the living room).  I have promised myself that once the production push dies down i will turn my spare room into my work area, to reduce the clutter in our living and dining rooms… and allow for me to have a defined space to work.

All this said, I have been sitting on the grant proposal i have been writing to source out funding to do several things:

• Hire help for Steve- a kind of soap maker/apprentice
• Hire help for Barb – working with the plarn – creating it, crocheting the bags.
• Several key pieces of equipment (A decent sewing machine, expansion of supplies, molds, equipment for soap making)
• Start up for rent for a studio space to move our operations out of the house.

At the heart of the proposal is to source out funding to jump start employing people.  Our business is running financially lean… as we earn income, we are paying it out for supplies to replenish our stock and run squeekey tight on our ability to pay others right now.   We have identified several people that have the enthusiasm, knowledge and skills – and they are underemployed, or unemployed… We can see how this might resolve several things at once  – provide us with extra hands for production, and provide them with income.  So nudge me on… i need to just make that video and pop that proposal up on kickstarter.

On an exciting note I have sourced out several elves to help me make my plastic yarn…. they are thrilled to do it, and I am thrilled to pay them for their work.  So thank you to Tori and Belle for your wonderful flying fingers, and the quality product you are making for me.  You rock!