Moving Madness and Making Money

Moving Madness and Making Money

The past couple weeks have been pretty exhausting. I’m always covered in dust.  My back and arm muscles ache.  Every now and then, I’ll accidentally stub my toe or get a fresh new bruise by bumping into boxes that are EVERYWHERE.  Did I mention that I loathe moving? By now I should be a pro at it, because we’ve moved every year since we’ve been married, but it never gets easier.  

And yet, even though the bulk of my days are spent hunched over packing boxes whilst sweating and stubbing my toes, I’m still grateful because we have some good news regarding Small Bites, our baby and kid’s food-themed product line.

Small Bites will now be sold at Space Montrose, a boutique located in Houston, TX!  We’re definitely excited because this is the first place we’ll be selling our line outside of the internet.  We originally intended Small Bites to be more of an online business, so we didn’t even try to get into a store right now.  But sometimes interesting opportunities present themselves, and you have to adjust your course.

It all began when we applied to and got rejected from a huge well-known craft show called Renegade Craft Fair.  We wanted to participate and set up a booth there.  After we received the rejection letter, we licked our wounds and tried to heal from the disappointment.  Around that time, there was another craft show called Unique LA going on, so we decided to attend just as customers.  There, we networked and talked to various vendors and fellow small business owners.

Amongst them was Jane from Janie XY.  I immediately was drawn to her booth because it was set up like this cute Farmer’s Market stand, where she was selling her adorable smiling stuffed handmade fruit and vegetable toys!  Check out her entire yummy collection at Janie XY.  We chatted for a while and then I found her facebook fan page when we got home.  And that’s how we eventually became online buddies.

Then one day, out of the blue, I received an email from Leila from Space Montrose.  She and her husband own a boutique in Houston where they try to support small businesses and carry unique, made in America items.  She said that she really admired our concept, loved our line, and was interested in carrying our products!

So this is how it all went down.  It turns out that Space Montrose already carries JanieXY products.  Leila told us that she found out about us through Jane’s facebook fan page, which led her to our website and products.  Wow… I’m telling you, that’s the power of facebook!

This all happened only a few weeks ago.  We wanted to send out our products before we had to move this week, so we had to hustle with making signs, price tags, labels, and all that good stuff.  Luckily, I have my own personal in-house graphic designer who can whip up signs and labels in a jiffy.  Here’s what Joe and I came up with for the store display: price signs, pictures, and an “about us.”

Then I had to put packing on pause in order to cut ribbons, stick on labels, and stuff little containers with baby onesies.

Since Leila liked our entire line, and not just the onesies, we ended up sending her a couple prints of each of our eight different Illustrated Recipes, as well as our Measurements print.

Even though the Measurements print is a part of the Chef Julie Yoon line and not Small Bites, Leila was still happy to take a few pieces after I told her that it was pinned on Pinterest over 70,000 times!  Yeah, I’m still shocked about that one.

It’s also doing pretty decently in our online sales.  In fact, I even had to interrupt my packing yesterday to ship out another order for this print.

Only time will tell how well we do at Space Montrose, but in any case, I still can’t believe that the products we created and designed are now being sold in a real store.  I’m so thankful and it’s truly humbling.

So if you’re a reader from Texas, stop by Space Montrose at 2608 Dunlavy Houston, TX, and show us some love by picking up Small Bites products today!  And for the rest, you can still order all of our products online.  Check out our storenvy shop and our etsy shop to view our full Small Bites line, or “like” us on facebook.  We hope you stay hungry for more!

 



1 thought on “Moving Madness and Making Money”

  • Your style is really unique compared to other folks I’ve read stuff from.
    I appreciate you for poting when you have the opportunity,
    Guuess I wll juyst bookmark this site.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.